For so many of us as children, when we were taught to obey, we did. Our survival depended upon it. My father’s rule was “As long as you live under my roof you do as I say.” So I did. Most of the time.

Society, churches and synagogues insisted on the same, rigid rule adherence. One that also happened to place women beneath men, adding further insult to the situation.

So, indoctrinated in the fear of losing what felt like safety, I played the good girl. Until I realized that not everyone was playing by these rules. So in relatively minor ways, I became a bad girl. Sneaking out of the house to meet my boyfriend, lying to my parents and using their charge cards to buy make up and clothes without their permission.

The shaming and punishment for these relatively minor offenses added cement to the cracks in my belief that I was anything other than selfish, greedy and pretty much inherently bad despite my good girl facade. It added cement to those beliefs and concretized them.

Decades of work have gone into trying to understand and forgive myself for being what I believed was inherently bad. The self-help section in every bookstore in town was my beeline route.

It’s taken me over half a century to discover the simple truth that, at least for me, required repeating, repeatedly: that there is nothing inherently wrong with me. And there is nothing inherently wrong with you.

This is actually no longer a concept that I understand with my intellect, it is my knowing. A knowing in my heart. A knowing that is finally beginning to permeate my tissues, organs and bones.

Now that I have this knowing, this gnosis, firmly rooted in my heart, the rest of me is beginning to detox, to shake it off, to shake it out. To release it from the cells in my body that held onto the poison for far too long.

Most of us, particularly women, have internalized this poison. This belief that we are bad. That we are to be ashamed. That we are wrong. We are flawed. We are broken and have come to believe that we just can’t get it right no matter how hard we try. And we haven’t ever been able to fully forgive ourselves for these shadow aspects. For being human.

There’s this concept called Umbra Solís – the light and its shadow complete the great work. Where there is light, wherever there is light, there is shadow. It’s a part of the whole. We are part of the whole. We are whole. Already.

At our essence we are lovable. We are love. We were born out of love. Not the love that our parents may or may not have had for each other. But the love of the universe. The love of God. Of Goddess. Of all that is by whatever name. We are that. We are love.

It’s been my Life‘s work to come to this absolute knowing. And it is a knowing that my mind isn’t always on board with. This heart knowing, when we can get to it, is unshakable.

Claiming that knowing, that gnosis, is what I AM SHE is all about. One day, lying on a rock in the center of a sun-drenched meadow on Mt. Tamalpias in Northern California, I stood and in full voice declared, “I am She. I came here to be witnessed as All that She is. I am She.“ And then I roared this glorious roar that went on and on and reverberated through the redwoods surrounding the meadow.

It was an awakening. In that moment, one week before my 59th birthday, it all finally landed. This unshakable knowing in my core, in my heart of who She is. Who I am. Who you are.

Underneath all of the layers that have been shellacked over our light, our essence, is where She is. I am She. You are She.

Let us remember. Reclaim her. Together.