Material excerpted from the book I Will Not Die an Unlived Life copyright (C) 2000 by Dawna Markova Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC, Newburyport, MA and San Francisco, CA www.redwheelweiser.com.

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible,

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as a seed

goes to the next as a blossom,

and that which came to me as a blossom,

goes on as fruit.