Songs of Empowerment

I want to share some of my band KIVA’s songs of empowerment with you: Lovin’ Ourselves Into Love, A Call to Beauty and Empowerment. All three of these songs that I wrote and/or performed, were inspired by a lifetime of being treated as “less than” because I wasn’t thin. From being put on a diet from the time I was 6 years old and being told by my parents that if I just lost 10 pounds I could be a model (when I was starving myself as a teenager), to doctors telling me that my “health issue” was happening because I was fat and I would have to lose weight before they’d help me, I’ve been put under pressure for nearly my entire life.

At 63, I’ve outlived some of those doctors. My mother changed her communication with me once, as an adult, I told her the damage it had done. I’m sharing this story because I know that I am not alone and this is a part of the way that the system of patriarchy and corporate greed keep women stuck, as Kathleen said in her song Lovin’ Ourselves Into Love, “trying to starve our way into love.”

Kathleen Hannan and Ariana Lightningstorm

Lovin’ Ourselves Into Love

I met Kathleen Hannan at a women’s spirituality and music festival that was called Womongathering held in Louisiana (north of New Orleans on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain). She was teaching tai chi and performing for the festival. In her performance she sang Lovin’ Ourselves Into Love and another song that KIVA performs of Kathleen’s called Maria which she won the North Carolina Arts Council’s Songwriter Fellowship award for. Both were very moving and I finally got to record Lovin’ Ourselves Into Love (I changed the title to “Loving” having forgotten that she had it as “Lovin’”) in KIVA’s latest album (as of this publication) called KIVA’s Odds & Ends © 2017. There’s a couple of songs that I perform that make me cry – Kathleen’s Lovin’ Ourselves Into Love is one of them. The other is Last Leviathan by Andy Barnes. Kathleen and I became friends and her music is still “music that makes community.” https://www.kathleenhannan.com/

This is a song for the two fat women standing in the grocery store line.
“You know I dropped three pounds this week,” one said with a smile.
How many pounds would she have to lose for her beauty to be seen in the eyes of the world?

Chorus:
Oh… when will we stop trying to starve our way into love?

This is a song for a friend of yours, with beautiful, sparkling eyes
born with a body that was never made to fit a fashionable size,
she’s tried every diet but still never seems to look like those women in the fashion magazines
Chorus

This is a song for the slender daughter. She’s taken the message to heart.
Learned to control her young body. She’s mastered the art.
But lately she seems so much thinner and now she refuses to come down to dinner.
Chorus

This is a song for an ancient Goddess at home everywhere on this earth.
She promises comfort and love, she’s a giver of birth
Big, round, beautiful and strong but she’s gone out of style
Don’t you feel something’s wrong?
Chorus

This is a song for American women caught in the grip of self hate
Wasting our talent and energy forever losing weight.
Teaching and speaking so much hatred of our own bodies so wondrous, so beautiful, so powerful and
Chorus

Now I will sing to the Goddess inside me, the Goddess inside everyone
She who is calling us on, calling us to love. She shines in our mirrors.
She teaches us this tune. We are soft, we are strong, we are round as the moon and

Oh, now we will start, loving ourselves into love
Now we will start, loving ourselves into love
Now we will start, loving ourselves into love

“Loving Ourselves Into Love” by Kathleen Hannan ©1986, on her 1993 album “Somethin’s Been Missing” (no longer available), and, with permission from Kathleen Hanan, recorded by KIVA on KIVA’s “Odds & Ends” in 2017

Ariana, Nicole & Diana M. at Dumbarton Oaks “Fairy Doorway”

A Call to Beauty

A Call to Beauty is a song that was partly inspired by the Diné prayer/poem called The Beauty Way. The song was also inspired by my wanting to have a song calling on maiden Goddesses of different traditions that I had learned about and connected with over the years doing ceremonies and circles with many different groups.

Sestraluna Belly Dancers performing at KIVA’s 20^th Anniversary show.

This was a way of connecting with the word and concept of beauty, especially for women, that goes beyond our more current modern ideal of a tight layer of skin over muscle and bone that has been pushed by media and social media on women and aimed at men as well these days. Though most of us know that women have suffered for centuries to fit whatever the current ideal of beauty was. Having beauty be about connection, magic, healing, and wholeness/oneness with nature brings us back to the reality of what beauty truly is.

I hear the call to beauty
It makes my pain-filled body cry
In harmony spirit sings of life
On earth all things must die

Oshun, Aphrodite, Maha Laksmi
With your sacred breath 2X
I sing of beauty

I hear the call to beauty
Bringing rainbows on the air
Dripping of honey laughter
Coloring my sight fair

Hina, Rhiannon, Parvati
With your sacred bells 2X
I ring in beauty

I hear the call to beauty
Nature’s colors are the paint
Finding balance in my body
Health to cleanse the taint

White Buffalo Calf Woman
I sing of beauty
White Buffalo Calf Woman
I invoke beauty
White Buffalo Calf Woman
I live in beauty

I hear the call to beauty
Forget illusions lies
The beauty lives within us all
We sing it to the skies

Oshun, Aphrodite, Maha Laksmi
With your sacred breath
I sing of beauty

Oshun, Aphrodite, Maha Laksmi
With your sacred breath
I sing of beauty
I invoke beauty
I live in beauty

A Call to Beauty (c) 1993 by Ariana Lightningstorm (updated in 2001) title track of the album “A Call to Beauty”, 2002

Diana Sunday and Ariana Lightningstorm singing

Empowerment

Empowerment came from a dream that I had when someone in that dream was harassing me about being fat and I moved into a more lucid dream where I was singing Loving Ourselves Into Love to them. While I was still in that in-between state I realized that I wanted to express my anger and be more intense about my response to this hatred that was being projected onto me and that I had taken on and in over the years.

I started writing Empowerment in that before waking up state and finished it when I woke up. Diana Sunday and Diana McFadden came up with a great guitar part and a plucked cello part that brought joy and power to the song and we’ve been performing it ever since.

The last lines of the song are… “We’ve learned self-hate and we’ve learned it well, so turn it around and LOVE YOURSELVES WELL!”

Love me or leave me
That’s how it’s to be

I love myself
So I’m settin’ you free

Love me or leave me
That’s how it should be

I’m the best thing that’s happened to me

I feel good about myself
As a matter of fact
I attract – Uh huh

Sisters remember to love yourselves
Whether fat, thin, or over the hill

We won’t stand it a minute more
We’re havin’ fun and we’re hittin’ the floor

(Dance/Drum Break)

Love me or leave me
That’s how it’s to be

I love myself so I’m settin’ you free

Love me or leave me
That’s how it should be

I’m the best thing, that’s happened to me

We’ve learned self-hate and we’ve learned it well
So turn it around

and love yourselves well!

Empowerment © Ariana Lightningstorm – KIVA 12/29/93 recorded by KIVA on “Finding the Balance Within” and “Live at the Forest Inn”

In these times when it seems the whole world wants to “turn back the clock” and live somewhere in the 1600’s but with strictly controlled modern conveniences, I think empowerment is what all loving, empathetic, kind, whole, human beings (and those who are working on these qualities and more) can use. I offer these songs toward that goal.

Blessings to you! May we hold, live and walk in beauty.
~Ariana Lightningstorm – Spring Equinox 2025

For more information about Ariana, including her collected articles here on Pagan Song, her bio, and links to KIVA’s and Ariana’s sites on the web, check out Ariana’s page on Pagan Song.

Cover photo of dancer in blue is also of the Sestraluna Belly Dancers performing at KIVA’s 20^th Anniversary show

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