Discovering The Empowered Swan

I am a creative writer who is passionate about sharing my thoughts and ideas with others. I have a strong interest in art, literature, nature, politics and music, and I love to explore new cultures and perspectives.

The following works are pieces of writing I birthed while trying to come to terms with becoming a woman and witnessing growth and regression in myself, and in the world around me. 

They are pieces beginning in 2018. The world fels like an unsure place, but in reading about people who lived through the ages, is there ever a time where people don’t feel like it’s unsure?

Still, it feels shaky. And forces outside of my control wage their fiery dance while I try to become self-assured and autonomous:

An authoritarian president who tore up norms, decency and personal and environmental freedoms while he was in office and led a violent insurrection to try and remain in office after he had lost. And the re-emergence of him as his party’s leader- with the rest of the party becoming consumed by his violence and un-democratic quest for life-long power and dictatorial persuasions. An invasion of a democratic country by a hostile, authoritarian regime who meddles in our elections and is trying to wipe out Ukrainians, and threaten the order of Europe. A global pandemic where we were masked up and trying not to infect each other. Where millions died worldwide and shockingly, the same forces mentioned earlier in the paragraph brought chaos to undermine civil order and people refused to wear masks and attacked science when a vaccine preventing the spread and lowering severity of infections happened.

A person confirmed as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice while being credibly accused of sexual assault. He screamed at his confirmation hearing how he liked beer and he now decides cases of great import on the highest court in our land. Another U.S. Supreme Court seat was stolen after playing dirty tricks in the U.S. Senate and so the violent demagogue appointed three justices. They made quick work of dirtying our progress and overturned Roe v. Wade, paving the way for abortion bans and women dying and being forced to carry rapists babies; gutting environmental protections and voting rights. 

We abandoned our allies the Kurds in Syria while Trump was in office, leaving them to die. Police brutality and the clear discrimination of minorities, which they often paid for with their lives, came into the forefront. LGBTQ+ rights came under attack, being banned and persecuted in state legislatures. Books became banned across the country. White supremacy theories came back into the mainstream and elected officials embraced these and won office in numerous cases. Literally, those who supported Hitler were embraced by politicians in local all the way up to federal offices. 

March after march- for democracy, for science, for nature, for Ukraine, for reproductive rights; for racial, gender, and sexual orientation freedoms, for many other things, were attended. 

And with all that in the background and often times in the foreground, I was on an internal journey to try to become and live as the woman I came here to be. To figure that out, to be comfortable enough to stand in that, and to know when to let go and when to fight… to become a woman in her own right.

Like the outside world, it was (and still is) messy. I went through significant life events- embracing sobriety, the death of my mother, leaving a career I largely got my identity from, multiple geographic moves, the loss of a dream of a major romantic relationship and the awareness that it was not going to be, the loss of my pets… turning 40. A lot of shift happened. 

And still, there was an internal necessity that needed to be watered. A deep stirring in me that needed to put things on paper. There were times when I couldn’t move until I typed something out. A possession would come over me, I’d go into a trance and I’d write and post on a secret blog without editing. 

It felt like the words moved through me and I had to put it out or I would be reneging on my soul if I didn’t. I sat and I let the words and phrases form. And I tried to grow into me. To discover underneath my defenses who it really is. I still am on that journey, but a lot has been cleared. And my hope is by publishing this, it will help move along further. These were some of the heavy stirrings of my gut during these years. 

(But not all of them. There were things that happened I wanted to have cogent thoughts on, but I was clogged. Things that were and are important to me that I didn’t have the skill yet to put on paper- George Floyd and Black Lives Matter; transgender rights; LGBTQ+ rights. Things my personal journals were littered with, but blurbs didn’t come together eloquently.)

I began to, by fits and starts, document. And uncharacteristically for me, I largely didn’t research or put in other’s works. I love to write non-fiction and to research, but this longing felt totally necessary to be purely from me. I needed a space to hear me, to hear my higher self, to hear the celestial and the earth and to rope it down onto paper. There were some works that inspired and guided and I melded a few things with what my insides were dictating.

When I started this series, I found an essay which spoke to the core of me and it let me know what my instructions were from Ralph Waldo Emerson. I asked the writing that formed to allow the freedom to trust myself and to trust that what Emerson has called the “spontaneous impression,” is accepted within myself and trusted enough to share. It is my wish this vocalization will connect with others and allow them to trust their spontaneous impression as well. It is my intention that this space become a haven for me to trust my self-reliance, for as my master Emerson has so eloquently stated:  

“A [wo]man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across [her] his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet [s]he dismisses without notice [her]his thought, because it is [hers]his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.    

Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.”    

I am happy with who I am. I am not done and I am seeking the next pathway to open up, but I am glad that I am on this journey and that I am accepting I have a part to play in this world that no one else can play. I will keep listening to myself and I will keep growing and embodying the woman I came here to be. 

I have found nature, gentleness and femininity seeping through the words. Unity and kindness come from higher planes to be wished in the world and I will remember this as the upcoming years look to be just as eventful and uncertain. 


 My internal work is still coming-and the outside world is not going to get more stable. There are rising totalitarian actors across the world uniting, and the United States is grappling with becoming a healthy multiracial democracy while also stopping the rise of authoritarianism here. In 2024,  the person won the election who is going further in his stated dreams of being a dictator, and scarily, he has consumed the entire party with him. Only one of the major parties in the U.S. right now is pro-democracy. I have a ton of work outside to do, which will still lead to internal work to keep doing. 

But I chose the title, “Empowered Swan,” because the internal grace to balance with the external world felt so right to me. I thought of animals that would fit, but the swan embodied what I hoped and hope I will. Poise, tremendous strength and delicacy. Beauty and balance. The picture of grace gliding on the water. But a fierceness that will not be fucked with. The beauty and gliding comes with an aura of empowered inner strength that will charge at anything that is threatening to the good of the swan. It is a combination of strength and femininity and radiates gracefulness and peace. It doesn’t take the calamity of the external world and turn neurotic. It takes it and holds itself up high, extending and exuding radiance for all who witness it. 

It felt like these were the times for this kind of beauty and grace, gliding through turmoil, both inner and outer. Exuding radiance to elicit peace around you. But it coming at a price of digging deep and transforming pain. 

May my work and may my voice be infused with this gleam of light, and may others recognize theirs as well. Thank you, and welcome to The Empowered Swan.