“The greatest power we have leads to the greatest work
we can imagine” ~ Shiloh Sophia
Me + Mama Cloud 2018 Cosmic Cowgirls Gathering
Today’s Letter from the Red Thread Cafe #902 is about choosing to matter, which is SO important to me, and was to my mom Caron. In her last days in physical form, we worked on a line of Mattering Matters products. This was one of her wishes before she walked on to her future – that we all knew we mattered and to take the opportunity to let others know they matter too.
I am here today, guiding a global art movement in service to women using their voices and images, because I knew all my life that my own voice truly mattered. I give credit to the women who raised and believed in me – my grandmother Eden, mama Caron and mother of my heart, Sue.
During this full moon energy, I invite you to pause and ponder this inquiry: What would you stand for and who would you be in the world, if you felt your voice mattered enough to make a difference? Take a pen to paper and notice what comes up.
You matter to me, Sumaiyah, which is why I spend my life force serving women to be the most self-expressed beautiful souls they can be. Sharing this work with you is my greatest JOY.
Lately I’m shifting to more audio vs longer letters. Red Thread Letters will continue weekly, and if you want to hear from me more with poetry and musings, come over to my Podcast, Tea with the Muse.
Red Thread Letter #902
Deciding to Matter
Dear One,
Generations of women have been taught and programmed to believe we don’t matter. The suicide rate for girls is getting younger and younger. No matter how many articles we write about it. No matter how much therapy tries to address the root cause, the issue of irrelevance persists and insists.
But not just in young girls, in most of the women we actually know, there is a deeply embedded framework of feeling like our voice is silenced, even and especially from ourselves.
If we do manage to share our voice, we wonder if anyone is listening. Is anyone out there? Do you see me? Do you hear me? Do I exist?
Do we need someone else to listen for us to know we matter?
My grandmother Eden didn’t have any sense of really mattering. She was an uncommon force of nature – a story teller, seamstress, carpenter, farmer herbalist and so much more…
She bought me a typewriter as soon as she could and showed me how to use it. I haven’t stopped writing since. The conversation of whether her life mattered or not wasn’t really explored in her day. Not a question she asked. There was just too much work for her to do. She was in survival, like my mother was in survival, like I spent so many years in survival.
Looking back I can see how many times my grandmother didn’t take credit, or the spotlight, or make her voice heard even when she could, even when she had an audience.
My grandmother Eden was in her early 90’s when I showed her a catalog of my art used to feature my work in hundreds of stores. My paintings, my poetry, my stories in a catalog with hundreds of images.
I had followed in my mother and grandmother’s footsteps to be an entrepreneur and working artist. She looked through each page nodding and smiling. I can see her there in the hallway, in her wheelchair looking.
At the end, she closed the catalog and told me how proud she was of me. Then she paused, and looked at my mother Caron and I. She said “I guess I did show you a thing or two. I guess I am an artist too.”
Yes grandmother, you are… an award winning one at that. Who had solo exhibits and made her living from her art most of her life. Yet she didn’t think of herself as an artist or writer.
Do you?
To hear the rest of this story, including how my mother Caron decided to matter at a young age, which empowered me and so many in our community to believe the same for ourselves, tune in here with a cuppa.
I am sending a big warm hug from my heart to yours. May we all choose to matter, and guide our youth to choose the same for generations to come.
Mama Caron drawing the initial draft for her Mattering Matters products. You can purchase mugs, apparel and art in her honor here. A great gift idea to remind someone how much they matter to you 
