MichFest

I should probably start this journey at the place that is occupying all the free space in my head right now.  The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival has become my mecca.  I am going next August for the first time and I can't stop thinking about it.  I'll move on eventually until it get closer...but for now, I'm all sucked in.  I want to go so badly and the anticipation of another year to wait is all-consuming.

I'm not sure what it is about this event.  I've known about it my entire life.  My mom is my first and best example of a living feminist today.  I was raised in a home full of women in all different stages of their lives.  I saw her work her ass off and make shit that everyone thought was impossible happen.  I learned, from such a young age, the power and strength of women and I loved it.  I have always loved being a woman.  I never carried the institutionalized shame that so many people carry.  That is not to say that I haven't lived with it through periods, but even when I was mired in the drudgery of female reality, I knew that I always had the strength to get out of that if I chose.  I have always known my strength and it's because I was raised listening to my mother sing Ferron and Chris Williamsom and Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin.  I grew up with women at my back, women leading me forward and women who never failed to catch me and prop me back up.

They went.  My mom and her friends went.  And they talked about it.  I heard about MichFest.

I went to college and immersed myself in women.  I found my first home outside of the my mother in the women's studies department at UMF and I met women who still awe me and help to define my view of the world.  I learned, again, what it meant to be  strong and to take control of my voice and to decide how to use it.  And there was always MichFest.  I always wanted to go and could never afford it.

So now.  Here I am.  I'm not a kid anymore, I'm not a college student struggling through and finding my way.  I'm a woman, I'm a mother and I'm so ready to claim that power and let it change me.

Maybe that's the magic of it all.  Maybe I just want it because I'm ready to be changed and I'm ready to open myself up to the magic of a shared experience with women who want the same things as me.  Maybe I'm just excited to be in a space where I am obligated to be only what I feel in the moment, where my sole responsibility is to myself and my journey.