Subtly, Snowdrop

Snowdrop is a lady.

Yin is an energy word I've been hearing and using alot recently.

The opposite of yang.

We say yin is the female energy and yang the male energy.

It's funny this makes me think of a conversation we had with some friends over banana splits in the middle of winter. We were talking about gender identity and what it means to us that kids are choosing their gender before they know who they are. It got a little warmer in the room right then.

We take these things to heart turns out.

And man, so do I (pun intended).

I was told that I was high in yang the other week, and I was like, me, manly? To think my brain immediately considered myself strange and out of place. Or even "manly."

It was true too, I was in a yang moment. I was shredding through the garden with tools and a fiery force every other day. I felt a relishing in the control I had, sharp object in hand, re-writing the land.

Really I was ripping out a tapestry of thick weeds that hadn't been tended to in some time, and quite frankly that garden needed some tough love mothering.

You can frame a moment many different ways using words.

Anywho Snowdrop feels yin to me. Here she is demure, head bowed. And she's so pure - that white. Elegant, for sure, with her curving stems and simple leaves. She's a tiny flower, see, and she's tucked away in shady spots, under hedges or small trees. She likes a little shadowy place, because she pulls a little better when she's subtle.

Yin is a pull. Yang is a push.

I got to thinking about a wide open orange Lily, all flashy petals and pistils poking out as us. That flower can be in the centre of the garden bed, no problem. Like how the trumpet section never suffers the back row of the orchestra.

It can handle it.

But the Snowdrop, she needs a tucked away corner, because she knows you'll notice her there. She's the girl hiding ocean eyes behind her bangs at the school dance.

Snowdrop makes her appearance in spring. She'll have her moment because she's first to appear.

Her innocence rings true, because her firstness is somehow youth.

But let's not turn yin into women here, because we're not all sweetness and submission. Maybe that's one of the lessons we can learn from this gender redefinition.

Being female doesn't make me yin, and it doesn't take my yang.

We are balanced human beings because we are all a bit of both. If men spent a million years becoming more yang and women more yin, we'd be different species by now. And then we couldn't produce offspring, so that can't be right.

Flowers after all, including Snowdrop, contain both ovum and stamen.

So what's my point.

All this yang business got me worried I didn't know how to be yin.

Do I know how to exert a pull in this universe?

When I think of what my female friends do best to exert a pull, it's two things.

They are honest, they'll tell you how it is.

"I don't like that, stop please."

"You can do better, I know it."

"You are incredible, you best believe it."

"You did the right thing."

That's attractive. I want the girlfriend who tells me the dress doesn't suit me. That pulls me right in, honesty does.

I know I can believe your praise when you don't blind eye my shortcomings.

The second is they are willing to be real. Yes, I mean cry. Yes, I mean get mad.

I don't care if you're tired of hearing the word vulnerable.

It's not easy to speak a fear out loud. It's not easy to lose your shit and accept that the consequences are outside of your control.

But girl, it is attractive. Your emotional display shows me how mine feels before I've felt it. That's why moms are so darn helpful.

What is Yin. Who ever said honesty was easy?

Who ever said softness was weak?

Snowdrop, turns out, has had alot to teach me.

And she uses all her yin to her advantage.

Thanks for being here.

Izzy <3