As women we have been taught to fear our hunger.

We have learned to fight it, to diminish it and to be disgusted by it.

Our hunger is real and will not be denied, no matter how much we compromise, settle, shrink or try to hide it.

Our hunger is holy.

May we see our hunger in the light of truth, for what it really means.

It means we are alive—alive in the face of enormous obstacles and challenges.

It means that we are hungry for larger visions and expressions of ourselves and our potential.

It is the holy desire to eat not the food of the world, but the food from the banquet of our Being—a rich and luscious spread of which we each are the sole source and receiver.

The hunger is for the truth of our very own substance, for an infinite, overflowing abundance within.

A hunger to live out and embody the Truth at the core of who we are.

To know our very bodies, souls and hearts as the outer symbols of the divine and eternal ONE.

Woman, your hunger is legitimate, your hunger is holy.

This hunger is not to be seen as beautiful or “enough” in all the ways that we are constantly evaluated by the collective male gaze.

It is beyond even that.

It is the hunger to be FULL FROM WITHIN.

It is the hunger to be full of the light of your SELF.

This is the only thing that will ever satisfy and fill this hunger.

The hunger to occupy every cell fully and completely.

To abide unapologetically in every nook and cranny of your complex and brilliant self.

It is the hunger to explore the inner terrain with abandon—without the concepts of right/wrong or good/bad as an intermediary.

It is the hunger to roam the wilderness of your Being, to embody the largeness that resides at your core.

Partake of the abundance of your Being, the one true source of fulfillment.

Feast passionately upon your own beauty and love.

Share from your bounty only after you have first contacted the feeling of fullness and completion within.

This hunger may bring with it an ancient anger.

This anger comes from the frustration of being separated from ourselves—starving for ourselves!

Generations upon generations of hungry women, ravenous for what is real and true in ourselves and in the world.

Feel into the legitimacy of this hunger. Own this hunger.

Because only in owning it can it ever be really satisfied.

Anger will eventually give way to a fierce clarity–

A clarity of what must be done to access and live from the inner nourishment.

Let nothing stand between you and your overflowing banquet, your inner abundance of Being.

Give guilt no place at the table of your Self.

You are all yours.

Every last morsel.

Art credit: Elena Ray