How can she walk around like that?

How dare she walk around like that?

How dare she think she should walk around like that?

• Looking that way
• Wearing that
• Living that way
• Choosing that
• Doing that
• Saying that
• Believing that

Someone needs to set her straight. Someone needs to give her a clue. Someone needs to put her back into her place.

It isn’t necessarily because she’s bad or not good enough or too much. It’s a question of sovereignty. She isn’t afraid of the same things. They hate her because she doesn’t have the same fears underscoring all those desires to align with conformity. She doesn’t fit in because she isn’t scared to believe in her sovereignty. This is worse than being ugly or fat or unfashionable or awkward or shy or poor. It triggers fear in others, which triggers rejection by others.

It is safer to associate with people who share the same fears. It creates a comfort zone. It makes the fear seem rational, reasonable, and normal. It therefore feels rational, reasonable, and normal to live and work and socialize with people who bolster that comfort zone; who reinforce that this is what normal people do, how they feel, and how they act. When she comes along and challenges the notion that the fear isn’t necessary, the comfort is compromised. People are forced to confront the truth behind the fear, which is harder than staying in fear-based choices, and she is outnumbered by frightened people who would default to hurting her before they consider change. It’s simply faster and easier.

Her soul bears the banner of her original sovereignty. She knows it. Their souls also bear banners of their sovereignty. They do not believe it. When she dares to claim and manifest and walk in the sovereignty which comes naturally she fails to make the normal fear-based choices as those who don’t believe such a thing is possible. Confronted by her daring, the collective disbelief of others is manifested as rejection. Others do not appreciate the discomfort of anyone suggesting, even by example, that anyone can be what they are afraid to be (or have been trained to believe they should not be). She must not be what they cannot be; she can’t be allowed. She must not be allowed to carry on as if it is true.

Under the rejection, under the fear of belief, there is another fear, of course.  Should her example make anyone question this disbelief there will be the fear of responsibility. Anyone who dares to believe will become responsible. One would have to accept responsibility for sovereignty. One would have to dare as she dares; to walk around unafraid of it. Reject the possibility to avoid the responsibility. Reject the idea. Reject her. Reject one’s own sovereignty as if it isn’t real, isn’t accessible, and isn’t necessary.

It isn’t just jealousy. It isn’t just insecurity. It isn’t just a mindset of scarcity or lack. It’s a question of sovereignty. We can’t value it if we can’t believe in it. We can’t foster it if we can’t accept it. Every single time a woman deliberately hurts another woman it is because she has failed to acknowledge the other woman’s sovereignty, as well has her own. If we truly believed it about ourselves and about other women, walked in it, manifested it, and cultivated it we would never consider compromising it. We would never hurt, hinder, or kill it. It wouldn’t be a threat. It wouldn’t be a competition. It would be the deliverance for which women have prayed since the first day we were told we could never do it on our own.

— Mercy