Woman

A woman’s heart holds many secrets. We are like a snow-covered field, beautiful and silent, yet hidden underneath is where the life and movement truly lays, secret and deep. A mystery never to be solved, a legacy never to be told.
Like no other creature on earth we live in silence; so many thoughts, hopes, dreams, despairs never spoken of, never expressed. We are the true masters of illusion, able to smile sweetly and make our eyes sparkle in mirth, creating a visage of stillness and grace while we are howling inside, despair clawing up our throats, heartbreak suffocating us, unmet desires embracing us with its icy regret. We can feign indifference when our hearts and souls are burning with love and desire, sit quietly when all we want to do is fly. We’ve all done it, we do it everyday. Sometimes you can glimpse this secret world if you truly look into a woman’s eyes, deep and searching, and you will see the storm hiding in the calm, like fish darting beneath dark waters. A glimpse before she lowers her lashes and closes the door to her soul. 
We carry not only our pain, but the pain of those around us as well. We will hold the ones we love and absorb their pain, buffer their storms and close ourselves to the cries of our own hearts. We will feel the pain of other women, sympathize with it, internalize it and carry it as reminders that we are not alone, that our pain may not be as bad as others, that it may be worse but we can overcome as other have before us. We witness the pain of our enemies, breathe it in, revel in it and walk away with it as an understanding that someday that could be us.
Our inner landscapes link us all together. From the battered woman washing her own blood from her face, to the woman in the boardroom, to the girl crying from a broken heart, to the mother cradling her sleeping child. We are all connected, all intertwined regardless of time or distance. We all hide our storms and they gather force and magnitude as we age until it creates a true silence and sense of peace called acceptance and we hear the tiny whisper behind it all, the lessons inside the bluster. And it frees us.
That is our mystery, the essence of our womanhood, the secret behind Mona Lisa’s smile.

Reviews

[Lipstick_Lesbian]

"We are the true masters of illusion, able to smile sweetly and make our eyes sparkle in mirth, creating a visage of stillness and grace while we are howling inside, despair clawing up our throats, heartbreak suffocating us, unmet desires embracing us with its icy regret. " YES. This is absolutely stunning. While the fierce feminist in me wants to protest that we've come so far, that this image of womanhood is Victorian, I can't deny the truth in what you have written. Yes, we have made great strides politically and socially. But spiritually and emotionally, everything you have addressed about a woman's situation and status is spot on. Excellent, beautiful write.