To my sisters:

Remembering Cassandra, by Lucy H. Pearce

"We have imbibed the story of Cassandra subconsciously. You may never have heard her legend before in your classroom or at your grandmother's knee, I certainly hadn't. But we know it in our bones.

Cassandra was a woman who was gifted by Apollo with the ability to prophesy. She spoke aloud what was going to happen. But no one believed her prophesies: they were too disturbing to the comfortable reality of those around her. And so she was confined to the care of a warden, driven mad from being disbelieved. Again and again she warned them...Something's wrong. Something's very wrong.

But they did not listen. The painful irony was that it was not really the truth that people could not heed. It was that it came through the body and voice of a woman. That was unbearable.

You see, Cassandra instructed her twin brother in the power of prophecy. Unlike his sister, people believed him. People listened to him when he said: Something's wrong. Something's very wrong.

We are the Cassandras of our world, gifted with highly sensitive bodies that feel what the System would have us ignore. We have been taught to distrust our own body systems, to distrust our inner knowing. We have internalized the message that there's something wrong with us, rather than there's something wrong with the world.

Listen carefully. Something is wrong. Something's very wrong. It's time for us to believe ourselves and rewrite the story with this knowing."

~ Lucy H. Pearce