Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion? — Walt Whitman
Blackbird by The Beatles sung in Mi’kmaq
Christopher Pearse Cranch

Louisa May Alcott
Margaret Fuller
The Art of Constructive Criticism:
Trailblazing Feminist Margaret Fuller Rejects Young Thoreau and Helps Him Improve His Writing (BrainPickings)
Margaret Fuller
The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Women versus Women
The Dial, IV, July 1843 (vcu.edu)
Lydia Maria Child
“There is a vitality, a life force . . .”

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.”
— Martha Graham
Mary Moody Emerson Was a Scholar, a Thinker, and an Inspiration

The woman Thoreau once called the “youngest person in Concord” (National Endowment For The Humanities)
Letter from Mary Moody Emerson to Ralph Waldo Emerson
Aunt Margaret
Audio Tour: Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe (Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago)