As I leave the Zonta Film Festival, I am empty. Not because I hadn’t been impacted by the three films I’d just viewed. I was empty, because life was asking me to let go.
The Zonta Film Festival features films made by women about women, but not solely for women – these pieces of life are for everyone. This year’s stories brought us acid attacks on women in Pakistan, human trafficking of women throughout Europe and the knowledge that it exists in our own neighbourhoods and groups of women from all directions of the globe who have come together to resolve the challenges they face from a damaged earth.
Horrific and horrendous experiences I cannot possibly imagine. I sit in the dark and I observe a screen that makes me want to turn away. Can I pretend that I don’t know any of this? Can I choose to be overwhelmed into believing it is all too big and there is nothing I can do? But I don’t – I sit in silence and I listen to the stories from parts of the world I may never travel to, about women I may never meet.
Upon leaving I thank those for organizing the event and even two women who were the creators of one of the films. I then make my way home.
And I am empty.
And then I begin to fill.
I fill with a choice;
To be a better me. I will achieve this by loving me more. I shall embrace being a woman to the fullest.
I shall give thanks for who I am. I shall give praise for the good fortune of my existence. I will fill with this gratitude. I will send forth all I am blessed with.
The more I fill with this energy – the more it will go out into the world. This will contribute in the shifting of fear that manifests in ignorance and abuse into love in the form of knowledge and acceptance.
This Valentine’s – may you empty.
May you then fill with so much gratitude for who you are, woman or man, that you will overflow and spill out and into the world.
In doing so, you will contribute to the shifting of our planet from fear into love.
Photo: Rose Petal Heart, St. Pete’s Beach, St. Petersburg Florida, by; Sharon Cooke
Zonta Film Festival
November 2012
“Advancing the status of women worldwide”
Saving Face
Directed by; Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy and Daniel Junge
Price of Sex
By; Mimi Chakarova
Arise
Directed by; Lori Joyce and Candice Orlando
Executive Producer; Molly Rose