How hard is it for you to say your truth?
What happens when you see something you are in complete disagreement with?
Do you squirm yourself to silence, inside?
Or flick out the truth like you were tossing a handful of coins in a fountain?
And how about the truth of the way you feel?
Like—let’s say—when you feel scorched with jealousy?
Or unhappy with the way your lover is treating you?
Can you be simple and direct about where you are?
Or do you go to internal overload—like a nuclear power plant in Code Orange, internal sirens blaring?
How about when someone hurts your feelings?
Or disappoints you?
Can you out yourself?
Or do you slam shut like a clam?

What the heck are we so afraid of?
That life as we know it would come to an end?
We would get fired?
Our lover would quit us?
Friends would leave us?
Family might shun us?

When you bury your truth inside, the opposite happens.
You silently and internally fire your boss.  Break up with your lover.  Quit your friends.  And turn your back on your family.
Your truth is your Divinity talking to you.
Otherwise known as your life force.
If you don’t pay attention to her, She can’t exist.

This is not just your challenge, or mine.
There is an international epidemic of women withholding their truth.
The world is starving for the voice of woman.  Parched.
And this is not just a challenge that women face now.
It is a challenge that women have had historically.
When I was in Tanzania last month, we took a few days in Zanzibar.
(Now those are words I can’t believe I got to write, much less, experience!)
I swam in the Indian Ocean, went to a spice farm, and visited a place with the most magical name ever.
The House of Wonders, in Stone Town.

Built in 1883, the House of Wonders was the first place in Zanzibar with electricity.
Now it is a historical museum of the Swahili and Zanzibar culture.
I learned something.
Throughout East Africa, women wear a very specific style of dress, called the Kanga.
The Kanga is a brightly printed piece of fabric, with a strip of words in Swahili down one side.  The words are sometimes a proverb, but sometimes, even more incredibly, they are an outside expression of something going on inside a woman.
Women would wear their truth on the outside.
If a woman was attending the wedding of a girlfriend who was marrying a wealthy, hot man, she might wear a kanga saying “I am desperately jealous of you and your husband!”  Or if she was feeling cocky and flirtatious and very hot, her kanga might read, “You know what I’ve got, what are you staring at?”  Or if she was having a bad day, it might read, “My fate is to be poor, so why should I be enthusiastic about anything?”

I loved this.
Loved.
Beyond loved.
Why?
Well, when a woman is able to live her truth on the outside, she sets herself free.
Free from the invisible slave chains of a culture that asks her to keep herself small and cooperative.  Free from the expectations and demands of what others want from her.  And free to live her full throttle life force—her connection to her divinity.
Truth is sexy.  It is awkward.  It is fresh and delicious.  It is challenging.  It is scary.
Truth is like chlorophyll.
It creates oxygen, not only for you, but for everyone in your world.
It creates freedom.
Inspiration.
You and everyone around you are cut loose from cultural bondage.
The wind of inspiration blows through your hair.
And the world can breathe because a woman has declared herself a priority.

What would happen if we adopted that tradition?
Of wearing our insides on the outside?
What truth would you tell someone today?
What would your Kanga say?
How would your life change if you could speak your deepest most vulnerable truth to everyone in your world?
Tell me in the comments below.

And if you’d like to inspire another woman to speak her deepest truth today, please share this post on Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.

With so much love and pleasure,
Mama Gena