{"id":153,"date":"2010-12-15T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-15T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thequeenofmyself\/2010\/12\/a-creed-for-free-women.html"},"modified":"2010-12-15T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-15T10:00:00","slug":"a-creed-for-free-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/2010\/12\/a-creed-for-free-women.html","title":{"rendered":"A Creed for Free Women"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Creed for Free Women<br \/>(and such men as feel happy with it.)<\/p>\n<p>By <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elsa_Gidlow\">Elsa Gidlow<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>I am.<br \/>I am from and of The Mother.<br \/>I am as I am.<br \/>Willfully harming none, none may question me.<\/p>\n<p>As no free-growing tree serves another or requires to be served.<br \/>As no lion or lamb or mouse is bound or binds,<br \/>No plant or blade of grass nor ocean fish,<br \/>So I am not here to serve or be served.<\/p>\n<p>I am Child of every Mother,<br \/>Mother of each daughter,<br \/>Sister of every woman,<br \/>And lover of whom I choose or chooses me.<\/p>\n<p>Together or alone we dance Her Dance,<br \/>We do the work of The Mother,<br \/>She we have called Goddess for human comprehension.<br \/>She, the Source, never-to-be-grasped Mystery,<br \/>Terrible Cauldron, Womb,<br \/>Spinning out of her the unimaginably small<br \/>And the immeasurably vast &#8212;<br \/>Galaxies, worlds, flaming suns &#8212;<br \/>And our Earth, fertile with her beneficence,<br \/>Here, offering tenderest flowers.<br \/>(Yet flowers whose roots may split rock.)<\/p>\n<p>I, we, Mothers, Sisters, Lovers,<br \/>Infinitely small out of her vastness,<br \/>Yet our roots too may split rock,<br \/>Rock of the rigid, the oppressive<br \/>In human affairs.<\/p>\n<p>Thus is She<br \/>And being of Her<br \/>Thus am I.<br \/>Powered by Her,<br \/>As she gives, I may give,<br \/>Even of my blood and breath:<br \/>But none may require it;<br \/>And none may question me.<\/p>\n<p>I am.<br \/>I am That I am.<\/p>\n<p>***<br \/>The Queen welcomes questions concerning all issues of interest to women in their mature years. Send your inquiries to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elsa_Gidlow\">thequeenofmyself@aol.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/archive.constantcontact.com\/fs080\/1101600634271\/archive\/1103877351136.html\">CONSULT THE MIDLIFE MIDWIFE\u2122<\/a><br \/>Queen Mama Donna offers upbeat, practical and ceremonial guidance for individual women and groups who want to enjoy the fruits of an enriching, influential, purposeful, passionate, and powerful maturity.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Creed for Free Women(and such men as feel happy with it.) By Elsa Gidlow I am.I am from and of The Mother.I am as I am.Willfully harming none, none may question me. As no free-growing tree serves another or requires to be served.As no lion or lamb or mouse is bound or binds,No plant&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goddess","category-self-esteem","category-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Creed for Free Women - The Queen of My Self<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/2010\/12\/a-creed-for-free-women.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Creed for Free Women - The Queen of My Self\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Creed for Free Women(and such men as feel happy with it.) By Elsa Gidlow I am.I am from and of The Mother.I am as I am.Willfully harming none, none may question me. As no free-growing tree serves another or requires to be served.As no lion or lamb or mouse is bound or binds,No plant&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/2010\/12\/a-creed-for-free-women.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Queen of My Self\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-12-15T10:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Donna Henes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Creed for Free Women - The Queen of My Self","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/2010\/12\/a-creed-for-free-women.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Creed for Free Women - The Queen of My Self","og_description":"A Creed for Free Women(and such men as feel happy with it.) 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As no free-growing tree serves another or requires to be served.As no lion or lamb or mouse is bound or binds,No plant&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/2010\/12\/a-creed-for-free-women.html","og_site_name":"The Queen of My Self","article_published_time":"2010-12-15T10:00:00+00:00","author":"Donna Henes","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/2010\/12\/a-creed-for-free-women.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/2010\/12\/a-creed-for-free-women.html","name":"A Creed for Free Women - The Queen of My Self","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-12-15T10:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2010-12-15T10:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/#\/schema\/person\/544e888db264d2e1c6e32fd2f80c031a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/2010\/12\/a-creed-for-free-women.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/2010\/12\/a-creed-for-free-women.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/2010\/12\/a-creed-for-free-women.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Creed for Free Women"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/","name":"The Queen of My Self","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Donna Henes","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/#\/schema\/person\/544e888db264d2e1c6e32fd2f80c031a","name":"Donna Henes","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/0c6\/0c683cd428803d35cf10fae85f8125ebx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/0c6\/0c683cd428803d35cf10fae85f8125ebx96.jpg","caption":"Donna Henes"},"description":"Donna Henes is an internationally renowned urban shaman, ritual expert, award-winning author, popular speaker and workshop leader whose joyful celebrations of celestial events have introduced ancient traditional rituals and contemporary ceremonies to millions of people in more than 100 cities since 1972. She has published four books, a CD, an acclaimed Ezine and writes for The Huffington Post and UPI Religion and Spirituality Forum. Mama Donna, as she is affectionately called, maintains a ceremonial center, spirit shop, ritual practice and consultancy where she works with individuals, groups, institutions, municipalities and corporations to create meaningful ceremonies for every imaginable occasion.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.thequeenofmyself.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/author\/dhenes"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thequeenofmyself\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}