This morning there was a big downpour of rain.
I woke with a slight niggling of depression in my mind. Not enough to consume me, but enough to notice. A quiet heaviness sitting somewhere beneath the surface as I transition from the old into the new.
And then I understood.
I am grieving an old world.
Prince once described Purple Rain as the end of the world: blood mixing with the blue sky to create purple, while faith carries us through the ending.
For me, this is not the end of the world.
It is the end of my old world, within and without.
Red is blood. Bloodline. Root. Body. Survival. Passion. The suffering carried through generations of women living beneath patriarchal rule.
Red is life-force.
Yet the material world also made red a warning:
Danger. Stop. Beware.
Blue is sky. Throat. Voice. Truth. The ability to speak, to name, to ask, to refuse. To say no. To say yes. To say I want. To say I am here.
And blue, too, was claimed by structures of authority: uniforms, policing, obedience.
Then red meets blue.
Purple.
The colour of the crown.
But even purple was claimed by the old world. Kings. Queens. Thrones. Hierarchy. Authority bestowed upon one person over another.
That was the old Purple Reign.
My Purple Reign is different.
I do not reign over. I reign within.
And suddenly I hear Prince's song differently.
I hear the patriarchy as an old, familiar lover.
It has known my bloodline for generations. It knew the women who came before me. It shaped the world they survived and the world handed down to me.
And now our relationship is ending.
There is grief in that.
Familiar does not mean good. Familiar does not mean I must stay.
I can acknowledge what this old relationship taught me without pretending the suffering was necessary. Patriarchy does not get credit for my sovereignty.
I became sovereign in its presence.
And now I can turn toward this old lover and say:
I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.
And still leave.
Thank you for what I learned while surviving you.
Thank you for showing me what sovereignty is not.
Thank you for giving me something to push against until I discovered the strength of my own roots and the sound of my own voice.
But our dance is finished.
I have reached zero point.
The old timeline ends here.
Red rises from my roots. Blue speaks through my throat.
They meet at the crown.
Purple.
And now I understand why there was such a downpour this morning.
Let it rain.
Let the old world wash away.
Let me grieve what is ending without mistaking grief for a command to return.
Two days ago, Fremantle lost, and a friend said something that stayed with me:
"We wear purple even in defeat."
Yes.
Because sovereignty is not something I earn by winning.
It does not disappear when I lose.
It is not awarded to me by a king, a man, an institution, a lover, or the world outside me.
The crown is mine. The voice is mine. The blood is mine. The Queendom is mine.
So I leave the old Purple Patriarchy behind.
Not raging.
Not running.
Not asking permission.
I simply raise the anchor.
The old world ends.
The rain falls.
And I dance into my Purple Reign—
inside my own Purple Sovereign,
at home, at last,
in my Queendom.