Wise Woman Wednesday – Lone Mørch

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Wise Woman Wednesday

Occasionally, I share windows into wise women I know. There is no criteria, per se; rather, every now and then I feel called to share something that seems relevant, beautiful, fun, and of course, wise. We women have the opportunity to amplify each other’s voices, to connect women to each other, to share our stories with each other, and it’s something we must do if women are to come into their wholeness and fullness. Plus, it’s just fun to honor and amplify women.

The wise woman: Lone Mørch

I’ve known Lone for about eight years now. We dance regularly together, and we’ve sat and chatted, many times, sipping chai and eating Indian food as we’ve discussed feminism, the sacred feminine and masculine, and how much we’ve learned on this inward journey to wholeness.

Seeing Red

Lone recently published her first book, a memoir titled Seeing Red. In Lone’s words,

“Seeing Red: A Women’s Quest for Truth, Power and the Sacred is an Intimate memoir about a woman’s search for personal power, a journey of climbing inner and outer mountains that takes her to the holy Mt. Kailas in Tibet, through a seven-year marriage, and into the arms of the fierce goddess Kali, where she discovers her powerful feminine self. As much a memoir about coming into one’s own as it is a love affair with the Himalayas, Seeing Red takes the reader on an unforgettable journey of creation and destruction.

This is the story of Denmark native Lone Mørch’s transformation–a story of love and passion, and also a story of self-betrayal. This is every woman’s story because it’s a dispassionate tale of one woman who knowingly gives up on herself, and who has to fight tooth and nail to reclaim herself. In the end, the efforts are worth it, but she has to strip herself bare, lose everything she’s held dear, and strip away everything she’s ever built in order to see the truth.”

 

I loved Seeing Red. It’s fascinating, funny, and moving. It’s Lone’s journey, yet at the same time, in a very universal way, it is every woman’s journey.

The Interview

Lone and I sat down to talk about Seeing Red, but also about how we find our way by being on the journey, not by waiting until we are ready for it. It’s the journey that seasons us with wisdom and healing.

There are many things Lone and I talked about that I feel are universal for us as we reclaim the deep beauty of the feminine. During our chat, Lone revealed, “The story that lived in my belly was the story of power.” Power in the belly…sound familiar?

Over time, what really compelled me to dive more deeply into Lone’s rich experience is what she discovered in her work photographing women through her company, Lolo’s Boudoir. As she worked with more and more women, she discovered she was doing exactly what she needed to do to see what she, herself, was up against in her desire to affirm her own beauty and sexuality. She was seeing and hearing the same beliefs and messages from each woman she photographed that she heard coming from within herself.

During the interview, Lone shared that she was always looking for beauty,for a space for women to be beautiful. As she was starting to step into a deeper sense of sovereignty, she wanted that for the women, too. As she did so, she discovered she could no longer play along with the “slightly superficial boudoir, be sexy” kind of exploration and experience for women.

“The accumulated stories of all these women and their difficulty in accepting their bodies and their difficultures around sensuality and sexuality were piling up. I was starting to be drained and frustrated.”

Lone could clearly see the underbelly of this society, “how it is image driven and how our bodies and our sexuality have been commodified. We become estranged-from-our-essential nature as women.” She didn’t feel in integrity anymore and began to ask herself, “Can I undo stereotypical images of sexy as I create more images?”

Some of Lone’s words of wisdom from her work photographing women:

“Most women end up being naked and feel the most powerful and the most free.”

“I had to allow myself to be more naked and real and put up the front that I’ve got it going on and perfect. It has taught me how to see. It has taught me that I have to fall in love with each person…”

“It healed my mistrust of women; taught me how no matter the age and stage we are at we end up dealing with the same questions.” 

And, as you’ll hear, Lone learned to trust more deeply in her own creative process. She used to be a planner and now she sees she functions really well in the intimate moment. This is so much of what reclaiming the feminine is…learning to trust our deep creative nature and the feminine nature of the creative process, that of the unknown, the fecund, the emergent.

Listen to our chat here. It’s 35 minutes, so you might also want to download it and listen to it on a walk out in the woods…urban or not.

You can buy Seeing Red here, and discover more about Lone’s work here on her ‘Divinely Furious’ blog.

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Lone Mørch, in her words:

I’m an award-winning author, photographer, speaker 
and creative facilitator, driven by a deep sense 
of curiosity, freedom and social justice.
 
I am an advocate for women’s visibility, voice and value in the world. For more than a decade, as a photographer, I’ve witnessed thousands of women heal and transform their body-image and self- perception. I’ve learned that the sovereign path, living from inside out, is the only path to self-liberation. Together, I see us break the chain of invisibility and free our voices. As the patriarchy is falling apart around us, we have the glorious opportunity to re-imagine ourselves and our world in a more feminine, honest and harmonious way. This is the conversation I want to invite you into.
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Creativity is Truth

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I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it! ~ the Pointer Sisters

Why? Because I have just read five different women’s words in the last 24 hours, both written directly to me or in a blog post, express their deepest passion and desire to let go and express what they know is inside, the deepest yearnings and longings of that voice that speaks from the depths. That voice that has a hold of them and won’t take no for an answer.

Why does this excite me so much?

For one thing, this is what I do, I help women who, while they both fear it and hunger for it, surrender to this voice and express it in the world. I guide them turn to listen to it, to see it, to trust it, to honor it, to let go to it, this delicious, yet insistent, voice of sacred creativity.

For another, I know, deep in my heart and belly, that this voice that won’t let go is the voice of an intelligence far greater than our thinking mind. It is an intelligence that knows everything. Each woman and man expressing this voice is bringing this greater intelligence into manifestation, into the world where we so desperately need it, into a world that is thirsting for the wisdom, the passion, the eros that is this voice.

Dig a well in the earth of this body, so that God can draw the divine water up. ~Rumi

This voice comes from the depths of the deep well inside. That place of darkness that germinates the seed we each came into the world to bring forth. It’s a seed of divine grace that can blossom forth into beauty if we stop damming the flow. It takes so much life force to hold it down, to stop it, life force that when set free shouts out in glorious song the praises of the beauty that life is.

Creation not only exists, it also discharges truth…. Wisdom requires a surrender, verging on the mystical, of a person to the glory of existence. ~Gerhard Von Rad

For another, I know this voice is the voice of truth. Not truth where telling it feels hard and heavy and a reaction to the status quo, but truth telling that is a natural flowing response from the passion and expression of the heart, because living truth is what a creative life is all about. It can feel dangerous. And it is. It’s dangerous to those other voices that are doing the damming…both inside you and outside in the world. Because the truth will set you free and those other voices don’t want that. Truth brings you into right relationship with yourself, it grows you up, it takes you from victim to creatrix.

And for yet another reason, and this is most likely the biggest, because if women are speaking this desire aloud, that means the voice inside is being heard and acknowledged. This is huge. Acknowledgment is a necessary, for it is when we acknowledge this voice that we begin our deepest relationship to it. When the ego says, “Yes, I hear you, I want to follow you, yet I’m scared, or confused, or not sure…” then it is turning within to listen, to learn to trust, to begin the process of finding the way to serve the truth that lies within.

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Think of the Pointer Sisters, women letting their voices be heard. They grew up in West Oakland, not far from where I live. They were blood sisters. Yet, we’re all sisters. Soul sisters. When we support another woman to speak up and out, to love herself, to own that powerful voice within, we heal ourselves in the process.

There isn’t a limited amount of love for women. That is an old lie of the patriarchy. There is infinite love for us all, for all of life. And we swim in a deeper, more splendid pool of love when we inspire another to let go and share her beauty in its most raw and vital power.

So this day, and everyday, make it a point to inspire another woman, to encourage her to bring her voice into existence. Notice, when you do, your own vitality and passion grow exponentially.

I hope this has inspired you to know you are not alone in this sense that it is time to bring your creative truth forth into being.

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And, You?

I’d love to hear of your experiences with inspiring women and how it has affected you.

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