"The Women OF The World Are Crying" Honoring V-Day 2017

V-Day and 1 Billion Rising 2017 - Solidarity to End the Exploitation of Women

V-DAY is a global movement to end violence against women and girls. One Billion Rising Revolution is solidarity to end the exploitation of women. February 14th is an opportunity for women and those that love them to stand together, celebrate women and girls and at the same time demand an end to the violence against women and girls worldwide. 

Each year I try to find a new way to honor and stand with my sisters near and far. For V-DAY 2014 I wrote "Eve Ensler Kicks Off our VDAY Celebration" and "Celebrating VDAY!" This year brought a very special dream of mine into fruition. I had been working with a poem about the abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence directed at women, girls and Mother Nature for over 6 years. Honoring women's and girl's (human) rights and Mother Nature are very important to me and so I agonized over the words to keep and those to let go, the tone, the flow and so on. I edited the poem down from 11 pages to a page and a half and it still didn't feel right until I realized it was meant to be shared by many voices standing as one. With only seven days notice, I sent email invitations and created a Facebook event and invited all the inspiring sisters I knew to stand with me and share their voices and hearts to help give life to the poem "The Women Of The World Are Crying". I was incredibly touched that nine beautiful souls were able to commit on such short notice. 

We read the poem three times as we had technical difficulties and commuting problems. Each time we read in reverence, in prayer and in solidarity. No word was taken for granted. Each one of us felt our sisters' pain, our sisters' despair, our sisters' sadness, our sisters' outrage and our sisters' conviction to end the violence, the suffering, the oppression and the exploitation of women, girls and Mother Earth. This was not an easy read but it gave us the opportunity to speak painful truths and to raise our voices as one..."The women of the world are crying, No More! No More! No More! 

10 women of different ages, ethnic backgrounds and professions, some having never met before this day, standing in solidarity as one voice and one heart sharing, "The Women Of The World Are Crying". 

"The Women Of The World Are Crying" By Aurora Ferrer

The Women Of The World Are Crying

A newborn  
Staring up, through her lifeless eyes
from the bottom of a basin of water,
and the women of the world are crying.

Dissecting nature’s architecture
with a sharpened piece of glass,
the nine year old is held down by her mother,
and the women of the world are crying.

His hand slowly rises up her skirt
while the other covers her mouth,
he promises it won’t hurt one day,
and the women of the world are crying.

Women losing the ownership of their bodies,
religion, man, and culture dictate, 
all pulling in different directions,
and the women of the world are crying.

Large metal shipping containers filled with
rice, water, salted fish and human sardines,
fresh girls needed to feed the starved of virtue,
and the women of the world are crying.

Machetes make short work of what is left of her, 
she is a human sacrifice, 
a female at the altar of war,
and the women of the world are crying.

Sorority girl cocktail with a special knock-out punch,
friends too busy being popular to care,
bruises, hyckies, broken hymen, severed heart,
and the women of the world are crying.

First-world/Third-world; She is a second class citizen,
glass ceilings, economic dependency, poverty, 
keep her soul in slavery and blind her to her worth, 
and the women of the world are crying.

Bombs falling over cities,
cement and mortar turn human bodies 
into abstract sidewalk oil paintings,
and the women of the world are crying.

Their tears gathered, swelling rivers,
turbulent waters of pain, despair, neglect, abuse,
each drop imprinted with their memories.
Screams, howls, and prayers, collide
creating a super-sonic-boom that shakes the land,
faults split, continents shift, waves erase all trace,
and the women of the world are crying.

Collective-female-pain body 
reaching deep into the Earth,
raped and pillaged, drilled and cut
poisoned by toxic minds and greed,
she hemorrhages black into the Gulf,
and the women of the world are crying.

Why can’t we see that we are each other. 
Our molecules intertwined 
dancing from place to space and back again.
We are the children of the Earth
and the children of our Mothers’.
There is no pain inflicted on HER
That does not find its way back to the sender.

Reason - limiting vision 
Intellect - crushing dreams
Aggression - destroying imagination 
The known - impeding discovery
The rhythm of nature is askew  
The angles are silent...

And the women of the world are crying,
NO MORE!!!  NO MORE!!! NO MORE!!!
By Aurora Ferrer

I would like to thank Horacio A. Gomez and Kadante Ferrer of Hip Hop Martial Arts for the photography and filming, Roland H. Ferrer from Sound of Zero for entertaining us with his music and  Roland Ferrer Sr. for proving the food, the setup and the cleanup. Thank you to my all my sisters that were unable to participate but wished us well and were with us in spirit and a very special thank you to the sisters that made this possible Bertha Banuelos, Conchita Gomez, Erin Haffner, Athena Heller, Charlene Larson, Katya Miller, Sandra Neunuebel, Franci Pennington, Brianna Malaya Regan and Miss Bitsy. Your voices and hearts were exactly what this poem had been missing all along. I am forever grateful for your generosity of spirit, your courage and your sisterhood. 

Thank you for honoring the feminine and thank you for visiting. 
Wishing you peace.

You can find more information about Aurora Ferrer and Self-Actualization thru Women's Empowerment at:

Website: http://www.empowerment.ws/home.html
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EmpowermentWS?ref=hl
Kadan Martial Arts and Development Center: http://kadanmartialarts.com

Aurora's "Speak Your Art Blog Hub" combines posts from seven of her other blogs: In the Flow Studios Arts, In the Flow Studios Body, I Love Shelter Dogs, Mana Keepers, PaaMano Eskrima & Performing Arts, Self-Actualization thru Women's Empowerment and Speak Your Art Poetry. It brings her organizations together and offers her readers an easier way to follow new posts in one convenient location. 

POI