Tag: truth

Empowering Discussions

How to Tell if a Woman is a Bitch

Impower You
It’s not always easy to spot a bitch, but once you know what to look for it becomes easier to identify, label and put a woman in a box.
1. She stands up for herself and others. Think Harriet Tubman or Wilma Mankiller.
2. She doesn’t care about your opinion of how she should dress or that you want her to smile. Think Serena Williams or Angelina Jolie.
3. She is comfortable with her sexuality, even if it doesn’t exist in a standard form.
4. She is a feminist who publicly speaks for equality. Think Margaret Cho or Jessica Williams.
Now you now how to spot a bitch. What did I miss? Leave a comment below about how you are a bitch or a bitch you admire.
 I have a seesaw relationship with “bitch”. I don’t like the negative connotations, but at the same time it offends me less and less as I really don’t care about a word holding that much power over me. I get called a bitch when I’m walking down the street and ignore the men who sexually harass me. I get called a bitch by internet trolls when I speak for compassion, and by men who don’t understand my NO is as valid as their yes. I was often called a bitch in school when I stood up for myself or talked back to boys and girls. So, yes I am a bitch most of the time and I have no problem with that.
You deserve to love yourself completely, totally, fully as much as anyone does. Keep healing and I will hold your heart in my heart. If you desire extra support to stay on top of your self-care practice, check out my 30 day challenge Dive Deeper Into Self-Care.

I’m an artist and writer with a focus on art therapy. If you would like to support my heart work, please consider becoming a monthly patron on Patreon.com/Loviedo. For $1 a month*, you can fund programs like my D.I.Y. Therapy: Healing Depression E-course, my monthly “Radical” e-zine and other creative healing projects, like “Cultivating Radical Self-Love: A Collaboration of Healers, Artists & Writers“.

*You can also receive also receive art in the mail for a higher contribution.

Empowering Discussions

Walking Downtown in Broad Daylight

Impower You
This is what it’s like to be a tween girl and realize that in our culture, your body doesn’t belong to you.
I understood this when I was in the 5th grade and noticed adult men leering at me, even when I was with my mom or brother, people that I was supposed to feel safe with, I didn’t. I felt exposed and embarrassed.
I have taught self-defense for seven years now. I feel safer to walk alone at night and in shorts. Yet, even just two weeks ago when it was 90 degrees and I chose to wear shorts, I was sexually harassed by a much older man. He was DISGUSTING. I had headphones in my ears to appear as if I wasn’t listening, but I could hear all the gross things he mentioned wanting to do to me. This was not a safe area. I did not feel safe in telling him chinga te. So I waited for the light to change and crossed the street. My stomach felt sick and my heart was so angry. I so wanted to hit that man, but I knew that if I did, I could be considered the assaulter and be arrested. Or worse, he could have hurt me. He was a large man. So I ignored him.
On the same walk at the same time, another younger man was following me on my scooter vying for my attention trying to start a conversation. I ignored him. He wasn’t saying anything rude. but it was clear by the third block I wasn’t talking to him. So at that moment he said ” I know you can hear me” and scootered off. It was annoying, but I wasn’t in the mood to have a conversation with him about how to leave women alone when they are not interested.
It is exhausting being female in this sexist culture we all contribute to creating. This is why I rarely say hello to men when I am walking. It’s why i always try to make eye contact with other women. It’s why I was uncomfortable and often fearful for most of my life to be alone in public. It’s why I don’t have any close straight male friends. I just don’t trust men. Why would I after decades of being sexually harassed?
 If you desire extra support in transforming your life, check out my Dive Deeper Self-Care Challenge.

I’m an artist and writer with a focus on art therapy. If you would like to support my heart work, please consider becoming a monthly patron on Patreon.com/Loviedo. For $1 a month*, you can fund programs like my D.I.Y. Therapy: Healing Depression E-course, my monthly “Radical” e-zine and other creative healing projects, like “Cultivating Radical Self-Love: A Collaboration of Healers, Artists & Writers“.

*You can also receive also receive art in the mail for $12 per month.

Empowering Discussions

Money Guilt and Privilege

Impower You
Yesterday I was chatting about earning more money with my friend Clarice Connolly (Check out her awesomeness) and she asked if I had considered dog walking. I jokingly said, after this current dog sit for an anxious dog who glares at me, I would never do it again. What I realized in that moment is I’m done with focusing my energy on jobs that help pay the bills, yet don’t resonate with me and have nada in common with my goals. Another realization was that I have felt very guilty about my privilege of being able to get by when others are less fortunate. My being poor and my guilt doesn’t stop their suffering. It only adds new suffering to our community.
I feel so much joy with my new mindset of earning what I am worth and knowing that if I continue focusing on writing and creative work, I will continue to succeed. Just a few years ago I would only occasionally find odd writing jobs. It was frustrating, but it didn’t need to be. All that time, I have been building my writing portfolio. I simply wasn’t looking at it like that. I am good at it and my client reviews are 4-5 star.
As my perspective shifts I am feeling a shift in my whole body and my heart. It’s wild, I love it an I’m not going back to my old addictions of guilt and poverty.
Check out the previous post on my new definition of rich.

I’m an artist and writer with a focus on art therapy. If you would like to support my heart work, please consider becoming a monthly patron on Patreon.com/Loviedo. For $1 a month*, you can fund programs like my D.I.Y. Therapy: Healing Depression E-course, my monthly “Radical” e-zine and other creative healing projects, like “Cultivating Radical Self-Love: A Collaboration of Healers, Artists & Writers“.

*You can also receive also receive art in the mail for $12 per month.

Empowering Discussions

What does it mean to be female in our world?

Impower You

It means you have the power to give life. Sure it takes a man and a woman to create life, but women are the people who are accountable for bringing a child into our world. You are a giver of life and you have the power to teach your children that they are beautiful loved and equal in your eyes. Women are more likely to stay at home and nurture a child and spend more time with them than the father. This is an inconvenient truth (Though there is no reason for men to not spend time nurturing a child after they have left the womb. In fact we need more men to nurture their children).

It means you can be raped by a man and told that it is your fault. Or maybe you are told that that person couldn’t control themselves. Well that is just not true. Rapists are not poor troubled boys or disturbed men. Rapists are people who want to control and inflict pain on another person. So it also means that you can fight back. You are NOT a victim. You deserve to be treated with respect and you have a right to say NO!

It means you are strong! You are equal to a man. You are not less, you are not better. You are equal. Perhaps your family, your religion and your culture tell you that you are less and nothing more than an object, but that is just not true. You are capable of being amazing! You can change the world or change your community. You can be a scientist, a writer, a director, a CEO, a mother. You can be whatever you want to be. Always listen to mind and never listen to a world that says you are less than equal.

It means you are beautiful. Your eyes, your hair, the color of your skin, your weight, your height. These make you beautiful and unique. You are beautiful without makeup, with frizzy hair, with freckles, with a few extra pounds or a lack of curves. You are most beautiful when you laugh and when you smile. Don’t believe the hype that you need to look plastic perfect. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!

More here: mpwru.webs.com

What does being a female in our world mean to you?

Empowering Discussions

Sink or Swim

Impower You

“No wonder your heart feels it’s flying, your head feels it’s spinning, each happy endings a brand new beginning, let yourself be enchanted, you just might break through to ever ever after” This song, Ever Ever After from a movie titled “Enchanted” is stuck in my head. Even though I feel the saying “happily ever after” is silly, I love this part of the song.

I don’t want a fairy tale romance, a prince or a castle. I do want to feel enchanted by life and find the magic I believed in as a child. I miss those days when I believed anything was possible and that there really were magical beings, supernatural forces and adventure in every forest, dark attic or foreign land.

I want to feel alive. I crave adventure and a mission that will take me far away from all that I know and submerse me in a new story.

Someday will never come if I continue to play it safe though. Starting today and for the rest of the year my goal is to jump out of my safe zone and see what happens. I would rather sink in a wild ocean filled with my true passion than swim in a calm stream filled with doldrums of a boring life.