I have a birth to announce.
Beautiful babies come in various packages. Some in the warm skin of an infant son or daughter. Others as works of art, music, photography, dance, the written word.
Joan Scharff just gave birth to a wonderful book of poems and pictures. I met her several years ago when she was at our GUTSY Women weekend. Then a year later she completed our flagship Total Leadership Connections program.
Now she has taken two of her passions, photography and poetry and has birthed a beautiful book “Lessons I’ve Learned from a Flower.”
I am so awed by what she has done I want everyone to know about this beautiful new book.
I am including one of the poems. It was sparked by what she learned when she was requested to explore her family history, her Sankofa Map, to see how it connects with her present life at work and home. It is a deep probing of the intricacies of generational connections. Here she used incredible and sensitive language to show how women, mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts give and get from each other. I have printed the entire poem here for all to enjoy:
STRONG STOCK
I come from strong stock
And a long line of strong women too
Sometimes, strong women are silenced
Beaten down
Criticized
Enslaved by housework and thankless tasks
Held back and hidden
Surprisingly even by
And sometimes especially by
Their own mothers
And eventually by their own doing
It is not always safe to be a strong woman
Look at history
DNA remembers
The days when strong women were exiled
Used and abused
Burned in flames
Ostracized and bloodied
With threats and lifetimes of conditioning
On how to stay alive
Even after the need to condition and control have long
Since disappeared
Still tongues are tempered and tamed
Behavior patterns en-grained
Stay small
Stay hidden
For intended survival
Fear lives long after threat is gone
Or motives are remembered
Leaves one believing I must be wrong to want more
Emphasis is put on attributes that serve
Put another’s pleasure first, wait for someone else to move
Even when the cost is steep
Keep your mouth shut
Some attributes matter little in the end
Can be stolen or replaced when tired and old
External beauty weathers
She was so nice, such a good girl
Sweet one
What happened, why is she so bitter and cold?
Bury alive our powers, connection and gifts
All the while fire in the belly smolders
Secret wishes to be more, call and whisper in her ears,
Perhaps by all the others, those before her
Generation upon generation of mothers, sisters, aunts and daughters
A call to come alive again
Buried strength and talents awakened
DNA remembers these too
Wild spirit
Hidden sparks
Passion ignited
By the bands and tribe
By the burning need leaves one thinking, I am so honored
To be alive
Yes
To be strong
To be part of strong stock
You can email Joan at joan.m.scharff@lmco.com Connect with her to thank her for her dedication to this wonderful project and the book is a marvelous gift for birthdays and Valentine’s Day to arrive soon.
