You know the story, right?
Once upon a time there was a little grey, inquisitive, and sensitive, duckling who wondered why she looked so different from her perfectly yellow and carefree siblings. Her own mother had trouble accepting and connecting with her, and everywhere she went, other ducks called her weird, inadequate... everywhere she went, they called her ugly.
She internalized that conviction that there was something wrong with her at the deepest level and—after joining others in her own rejection—she deemed herself a burden for others and left the tribe she didn’t know how to fit in in.
Unbeknownst to herself, she had started her own journey of belonging.
And so our little friend stepped out from the road most traveled and entered the dark forest of the unknown. She was scared, lonely, and sad, but she didn’t complain—because she believed that those were crosses she was meant to carry as a punishment for having been born so flawed.
But then, after a long and dire winter of lonely wandering in the dark woods of consciousness, she came upon a lake and met the most beautiful creatures.
SWANS.
Swans everywhere.
Swans all around her.
At first she was startled by their warm welcome! Couldn’t they see her ugliness? Couldn’t they see she was broken? But then she caught her own reflection in the pond and a deep and warm sense of awe started melting the ice that had walled up hear heart and heartsong away—trying to keep her inner treasures safe from those who couldn’t recognize them.
Now, what did she see in the water? She saw that she was a swan herself.
She saw that she had never been an “ugly” duckling, because she had never been a duck in the first place. She had been a swan since the day she was born—and, far away from the environment she was born into, she realized that she had made her way back home.
Why are swans the symbol of our voice haven?
This is one of my favorite fairy tales.
As a young singer dreaming of New York in a house where dreams, optimism, beauty and a woman’s voice were seen as counterproductive, self-indulgent, and toxic, I carry in my fascia how it feels to be the odd one out.
As the daughter of deeply traumatized parents, I experienced viscerally how it feels to be raised by people who do not trust love and fear any sense of individuality.
As someone who found her people and realized that they had always been there, waiting patiently on the other side of the ocean, I know in my bones that we all belong—and that we were born with a calling for a good reason!
Because we’re being called where we will find all the answers we need to reclaim our own voice… and where we will be, just by being ourselves, the answer to a deep need of this word.
It is the most healing story I was ever told.
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And we all have a "SWAN."
I understood that through the first song I wrote in New York. It’s called the Story of Who I Am Not (SWAN!).
We all have one—a story that was projected on us, be it by our family of origin, based on inherited trauma, through our cultural background or education, because of our gender, skin color or sexual inclination.
Yes, we all have a SWAN.
A SWAN we’re here to outgrow. By becoming the swan we were all along.
Finally, I have found swans to be the most inspirational role models.
They’re fierce yet embody grace. Two things that we have been trained to pit against each other as if grace came from helplessness.
They’re devoted to the ones they love—they’re great parents, they mate for life—but they will never settle for less that what they deserve.
Swans literally do not say thank you for breadcrumbs! They know they’re worthy of awe, freedom, and nourishment.
I like to see them as the cure to the Fawning response which has been such a curse cast on most women’s nervous system (and many many men too, especially if they do not identify as straight).
We can follow swan’s example to rewire our nervous systems from fawning to swaning. We do that by reclaiming our SWANHOOD.
We reclaim our swanhood by unlearning who we never was (lacking, shameful, unlovable, too much, too little, broken or helpless) and embodying who we always have been (love).
And even if some like to project their fear of the shadow on them, black swans are here to remind us that the darkness is just as enchanting, majestic, glorious and precious as the light. The darkness is a nursery of stars.
