Hello!
Just look at how this Gerber daisy makes herself known! She is bright beauty.
Only here for a very short time, her bright beauty enriches us all.
Today is Friday, and it’s almost the end of March…so hard to believe. This month was women’s history month and I know there have been some great posts about women and women’s history by friends and colleagues all around the blog sphere.
I have a couple of those to share with you!
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Garrett Eastman’s blog is Quit Taking It Personally. This month, Garrett has written a series of posts about Inspiring Women. I’ve read quite a few of them. Garrett has obviously taken a great deal of time to write each post about a woman who has inspired him. I am touched by this. I yearn to know men who honor women out loud. Garrett is one of those men. I am honored to call this man my friend.
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Angela Kelsey, a beautiful writer and dear friend, has collected a series of posts by women and has titled her collection, the Nest-Making Series. These posts are written by other writers, and Angela has done an exquisite job of collating, introducing and bringing this together in a tangible way. I’m looking forward to hear wrap-up post tomorrow!
I’m the featured writer at Angela’s place, today. Here are the first bits of this post that is very dear to my heart:
“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic,
and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.â€Â ~ Adrienne Rich
My mother taught me many things: independence, tenacity, artistry, the joy of finding one’s passion and embracing it. She also taught me to fear: intimacy, being abandoned, being alone in the world with huge responsibilities. And, she taught me to keep going even though the fear was here. She taught me both to not trust myself and to deeply trust myself. Of course, she wasn’t the only one who taught me these things. But, as women, what we learn from our mothers is deeply meaningful because of the nature of relationship and connection between mother and daughter; it also holds deep transformational possibilities, for the same reasons.
My mother was an amazing woman, I mean truly amazing… continue reading over at Angela’s
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As Women’s History month winds down,
How might we take this deep appreciation of women and our history into the days, months and year to come? What have we learned about the nature of women? What have we learned about ourselves?
I know women are resilient. I know women love fiercely. Â And, I know women are learning to not only trust their own voices but to also speak them out loudly into a world that is hungering for our true nature, not the nature we were conditioned to believe is female nature.
I know we embody both the light and the dark, and that reclaiming the dark parts is essential to knowing our wholeness. I’ve shied away from the dark parts, yet talk about transforming force? This is where our riches lie.
This Gerber had to make her way up through the dark soil in order to blossom, as do we.
What if we were all to live our lives out loud, exclaiming our beauty simply because it is and we are, just like this bright and vivid Gerber?
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And, you?
What have you discovered? What is transforming in you? How might your ‘history’ be transformed into awareness of what you really are and what you are here to live?
Julie,
Have you considered the possibility that many women live in the dark and it is the light they need to learn to embrase? The women who live in the darkness of all the assumption, sterotype and presupposition that has been placed upon our gender for centuries? Embracing and reclaiming our light is what some needs.
Irrespective to which realm we live in, I think it is a balance of the archetypes, learning and reclaiming of each side that is deeply needed.
Thank you as always for your lovely post!
Yours,
C
Charlie,
Thanks for the question. Yes, I agree. There are many things the work ‘dark’ can mean. Many women, including myself, came to believe the stereotypes and admonitions placed upon our gender. So it is important we reclaim the basic goodness and innocence, the beauty, the wisdom, all those aspects of being a woman. And, I’ve also been experiencing a reclaiming of the dark aspects of the dark feminine, the void of creativity, the creative power of many emotions that we’ve been taught we shouldn’t feel, even though we do, such as anger, rage, jealousy. To be fully human means we realize we experience the full range of emotions; while this doesn’t mean to subject others to a wild expression of them, it does mean it is in our best interest and health to feel them, not to suppress the energy of them.
The dark feminine has beautiful aspects, just as the light. It is different thing to see and embrace these aspects of being a woman than the dark I think you are talking about.
We are not those stereotypes, assumptions and presuppositions, and the more we can mirror to each other the fullness of what it means to be a woman, the more we’ll come to embrace the entirety of the experience.
My two cents.
Love,
Julie