to come closer into the body and open to a deep connection with the earth. It is soul time. Time to connect with our own soul, with other souls and with the soul of the earth.
I see how for most of our lives, women have been told what to do and how to do it. It is time for us to allow our own wisdom and intuition to be the guide of our lives, for when we do this, true feminine wisdom will arise in the world. And, we need feminine wisdom desperately.
It is time for all of us, women and men, to stop trying to control everything, and to come to remember the earth’s capacity to regenerate herself. It is time to align with our essential nature, essence, so that we live in harmony with our own body and the body of the earth.
From June 15 -21, I’ll be co-facilitating the ‘Waking the Inner Teacher’, Empowerment Camp 2013
at Feathered Pipe Ranch in Montana, along side Karen Chrappa and Michael Lennox, PhD.Â
There are many reasons why it is important at this time in history for all of us to be waking up to the divinity within. You can listen, here, to the information call we held to share why we feel this retreat will be remarkable.
On this call, Karen Chrappa shares a really important point about why waking the inner teacher is so important right now. She speaks of how we’ve been taught to look outside of ourselves for wisdom, and when we do this we give away our power. I’ve written about this here on the blog over the years, but I really like the way Karen speaks of it. It is so important for each of us to find this inner teacher to awaken the power that lies within us to be of service to this world.
How do we get more deeply in touch with our own wisdom and intuition? We must awaken the inner teacher.
To do this, the body is key. We are here on earth by way of a body. It is the vessel through which we live and create. Â This relationship between the inner teacher and the body is beautiful. When we fear our essential nature, or essence, we can try so tightly to control life, to control ourselves, and to control others. But when we come to feel the inner teacher, to know how it moves, to feel the sensations of its expression within, and to open to how it communicates, we can come to trust in this sacred intelligence that is the essence of all of life. We come to trust in our own nature, and the sacred nature of all beings.
This is really practical stuff. When it comes right down to it, we live smack dab in the middle of a mystery. We might not be so keen on acknowledging that fact, but it is so. Our rational minds try really hard to do the job of figuring out the mystery, of controlling things so we only have those ‘good’ experinces and none of the ‘bad’ ones, but it is not the right tool for the job.
What is the right tool? Life. Or, another more often used word is Intuition. Some say the heart. Other call it compassion. This inner teacher has many facets and qualities. Ultimately it is the intelligence of Life itself. Life knows how to navigate life. We are life. The inner teacher is this intelligence and it moves the body and moves through the body.
When we begin to trust this intelligence, our wonderful rational minds can let go of the job they are exhausted trying to do, and can instead be a wonderful helper in living this life more creatively, intuitively, and ultimately, more joyfully.
Whether or not you might want to come, take a listen to our information call we held on May 8th.. There is much wisdom in these 60 minutes.Â
Find out more about Empowerment Camp 2013 at Feathered Pipe Ranch. I’d love to have you join us!
I took my usual morning walk today, ambling (yup, I only amble on these walks) down to the business section of my neighborhood to get something hot to drink. I like to sit on the bench in front of my favorite place and simply take in the morning smells and light and sounds. It’s my favorite time of day. These spring days here in San Francisco have been amazingly, so this morning was really warm.
As I sat, I could smell a faint odor of smoke, like something was burning. It was very faint, as if perhaps there was some kind of fire in the distance. As I smelled it, I found myself taken back to mornings in India…mostly in Delhi and Varanasi…during my travels there. The smoky haziness guided me back to the vibrancy of those city streets, where there tends to be small street fires, along with very hazy air.
In some of my work with clients (and of course with myself!), I’ve encountered how we are with chaos and wildishness…how it’s all around us, and how in some places we seem to pretend to keep a pretty good  lid on it all.
I thought about the streets I had just ambled down, streets that have some of the finest homes in San Francisco and beautifully manicured yards with streets routinely swept clean of debris. I thought about how around these parts the wildish is kept at bay. I’m not saying I don’t love living here, nor am I saying that I don’t feel blessed to be living this life. What I am saying is that something inside me felt that familiar longing for the wildish nature that I experienced in India, brought on by the smell. I felt the very palpable longing for the vibrancy and aliveness that come when things aren’t so contained and controlled. Smells are strong reminders for us of past experiences.
I’ve felt the wildish in so many places in the world, and even do feel it in the grove of trees in the nearby Presidio. Â This wildish I am referring to is a kind of chaos, a kind of dance that is always happening in life. It’s always happening inside of us, in our bodies, in our souls. When we try to keep it at bay, we have to stuff it down somewhere where we don’t think about it, and perhaps become unconscious to it. We pretend that there isn’t this wildish in our own selves.
This wildish nature is our nature…We know it, even if we don’t let ourselves know we know it.
And, there’s a hankering inside us to allow this nature out, to live it. It is primal. It is creative. And, it is an aspect of life that doesn’t just go away because we pretend it does. I know I have feared it in myself. Yet, when I’ve been with it, when I’ve invited it out, it isn’t what I expected it to be.
When we come into the body, we begin to come back in touch with the wildish.
I know during the short five weeks I spent in India, something vibrant came alive in me. Seeing a world so full of life, and death, reminded me of parts of myself that don’t get much reflection here where I live – these wildlish parts within.
This wildish within – it’s in all of us. Not just women, of course. And, it manifests differently because of the nature of our bodies. For us women, it’s absolutely necessary for us to get in touch with this elemental energy within because as Dr. Christine Page writes,
“A woman’s body is an alchemical vessel that possesses the power, wisdom, and knowledge to bring about transformation and enlightenment. For far too long we have submitted to patriarchal thinking and rejected our body’s seeming imperfections, illogical rhythms, and chaotic expressions. Yet when we stop fighting our body and allow it to do its work, we find ourselves embodying its mysteries and becoming a formidable force that refuses to be hidden or suppressed any longer…”Â
So…
Do you long to know this wildish within?
How do you feel it? How does it call to you?
What does it cost for you to keep the wildish at bay? How much energy? How much disconnection?
How much joy, love, and creativity are kept in the shadow when you keep the wildish at bay?
Come join me on Retreat! Awaken the Inner Teacher
I’ve written on embodiment for a while now, especially as I’ve been on this long journey from the head to the heart.
And, now I’ll be a guide, alongside two remarkable wisdom guides, Michael Lennox, PhD and Karen Chrappa, on how to awaken the inner teacher.
I will be guiding this awakening through movement and visualization. We’ll be inviting out the wildish, waking up the wisdom of the body, this ‘alchemical vessel. This opportunity is for women and men, held at Feathered Pipe Ranch in Montana.
*** Retreat Informational Call
Want to know more? Ask questions? Hear what will be happening?
Wed, May 8th, 7:30 edt, 4:30 pdt. Register here for your call-in number and PIN.
And, if you’re wondering, the wildish within is sacred. It’s not separate from the divine. It is the mystery that is life, the mystery that is you.
When we say, Happy Earth Day!, what are we really saying? We seem to be able to commoditize anything here in the West, especially the US, so the question seems very important.
Are we wishing each other a great day of celebration? A day to celebrate that we live on this amazing planet?
Are we attempting to remember the Earth in a way that brings awareness to our Mother’s plight?
Are we wanting to begin to live more in harmony with Her, attempting to be more conscious of how we treat Her, of how we see Her, of what we do to Her?
Is it just about us, to help us feel better because we, as a human whole, really don’t give Her much thought nor appreciate just how reliant we are on Her for our lives?
Is it for a Happy Earth? If so, maybe we need every day to be Earth Day for a long time, ’cause I’m feeling our Mother is not so happy.
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About seven years ago, I was hiking on Mount Shasta with my partner. We’d had one of the most beautiful days of hiking I think I’ve ever experienced. If you’ve never been to Mount Shasta, it is a remarkable mountain. I know I am not the only one to feel or experience the ability to feel Mother Earth when you are on this mountain.
As we were headed back from our hike, we walked into Panther Meadow. Suddenly, I could feel the pain of the Earth. I could ‘hear’ her song and it wasn’t a song of lightness. It was a song of pain. I began to weep and I could not stop for quite a while. My partner just held me. He completely understood the depth of my feeling, even if he wasn’t feeling it himself. The feeling of grief seared my body, for it is through my body that I feel Her body.
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If we stop and pay attention, if we really feel and listen, if we open our heart to Mother Earth, what will we feel?
What will we come to see?
How will we be touched?
How might it change our relationship to Her?
It is our relationship to Her that matters so much right now. We humans have threatened OUR existence as a species. It can be easy to brush this off because we’ve lived our whole lives on Mother Earth and it can feel like we, and future generations, will always live life here, especially a life where the majority of people have their needs met.
But if we keep going the way we are going, if we do not stop to really pay attention to Her, it seems pretty clear that we’ve already altered how we are living, as well as the kind of life that future generations of human beings will live. And, we don’t have to look far to see how we humans have altered life for other species.
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What does it mean to be in relationship with Mother Earth?
In many, many ways, especially for women, it can be likened to how we are in relationship to our own bodies. For Mother Earth is where our bodies come from. She is where we receive our sustenance and nourishment. She offers us her waters and oxygen. She is where we will return to when we die.
I know, personally, how difficult it can be to remember to pay attention to Her and what is being done to Her in my day-to-day life, making ends meet, taking care of my needs and those of my family. I know how easy it is to take Her for granted, just as I take my body for granted and the wonder that it is.
Our love affair with thinking and logic and reason keeps us up and away from a conscious, feeling relationship with matter. We’ve made reason and science and logic our Holy Grail. And, we’re told God is the one who sits on high, away from Earth. But, that just isn’t so. The divine is in everything, including matter. And, yes, the word matter and Mother have the same root, linguistically.
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We can begin to remember Her every day, when we begin to touch our own bodies with attention, our full awareness. We can deepen our relationship with Her when we deepen it with our body.Â
Can we come down fully into the body, fully into our cells with awareness?
Can we know we belong here in these bodies, here on this planet?
Can we feel ourselves holding ourselves with great affection and compassion?
Can we just be willing to feel, period?
Can we listen to Mother Earth, open heart to the ground? Are we willing to feel what we discover?
I have a sense that we don’t realize just how deeply Her pain affects us. How could it not? She is our Mother.
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A few years ago, I wrote this post for Earth Day in which I shared a wonderful practice to help bring you and your body in closer relationship to Mother Earth. I hope you’ll take a moment to try it.
Life is: Life relating to itself, Knowing itself through relating.
Eighteen years ago, today, my husband died suddenly before my eyes. It was quick and shocking.
The grief journey it took me on was anything but quick.
A friend on Facebook just now asked, “How does one say goodbye and go on?”
How do we live a goodbye and grief? How do we live hello and joy? They go together, goodbye and go on. They go together, hello and go on.
For me, I’ve found it’s a living goodbye, and a living hello. It’s all tangled together, in a beautiful, and sometimes not so easy, dance.
Gary’s death was a doorway into awakening to the depth and beauty, the light and dark, the sacred and mundane. It was a doorway into a true relationship with life, becausewe can’t be in relationship with life if we are not in relationship with death.
I am not romanticizing it. It’s not been easy, nor was it easy for my daughters and family members who grieved Gary’s death. It hasn’t easy for the hundreds of 9/11 family members I worked with, or the hundreds of clients and students I’ve taught and coached. And, I am certain, it’s not easy for you. We all know grief.
If we are looking for easy, we won’t find it in grief, and we won’t find it in life.
Yet, we can find ease. We can find softness and grace. Life is filled with grace if we open our arms to be held in love. Not romantic love, but the love that carries us through it all, even the very painful things we are now witnessing in our world. I write this two days after the Boston bombings. I write this as other  bombings are taking, and will take, place in our world.
Today, I celebrate Gary, our daughters, our four grandchildren, our life together, and the years since that have, I hope, made me a more real and loving woman.
Today, I celebrate you, your grief, your journey, and the way you grace this world.
Today, I celebrate our humanity. In light of all the tragedies we face,the love that we are is greater, by far, than any hateful and violent acts we do to each other.
It’s a killer. Of self-confidence. Of self-love. Of creativity. Of life. Of young women. And, ultimately of us all.
It’s not even ours. Not the kind of shame I’m talking about. At least not to begin with.
Shame is passed around like a hot potato. For many of us, when we are young we’re shamed repeatedly until we become to believe we are shame itself. Our parents probably didn’t even know they were passing it on. I know I didn’t know I was passing it on to my children.
It’s an epidemic. Shaming. We do it in many, many small ways, in many small moments. And, some of us do it in big ways, in big life-altering moments. We pass it on because it is too hot to hold and too much to bear. For the most part, this isn’t done consciously. But it’s done. All the time.
Shame is one of the stickiest tools of the Patriarchy. Shame the woman to quiet her. Shame her to get her to keep her beautiful sexual sacred self down. Shame her so she continues to hold Eve’s shame as her own. Shame her so she won’t remember how powerful she really is.
In the last few days, two stories of the deepest shame and humiliation have come to light. Shame so strong it caused two young women to take their lives. Of course, there are many more, but for now most of those are unknown to us. Shame keeps things quiet. When we feel shame, we keep secrets because the last thing a person who’s been shamed wants if for others to see them.
Just a few days ago in Northern California, three teenage boys were arrested and accused of sexually assaulting Audrie Pott. The accusations also include taking pictures as they assaulted Audrie, then sharing them around with classmates and others. Audrie hanged herself eight days after the assault. According to those who knew her, Audrie was shamed, bullied, propositioned, embarrassed, and humiliated.
Rehtaeh Parsons died on April 7th in Nova Scotia. She was 17 years old. She attempted to take her own life, many many months after struggling to live with shame. Her parents had to take her off of life support. Rehtaeh had been gang raped. As her father wrote, “They took photos of it. They posted it on their Facebook walls. They emailed it to God knows who. They shared it with the world as if it was a funny animation.”
Rehtaeh and Audrie had so much shame and humiliation poured on them they gave up on life. They aren’t the only girls, or women, to know this shame and humiliation.
How could we turn around and shame and blame these young women when they were the ones abused so savagely? I say we, because it is we. Rehtaeh and Audrie are our children. The boys accussed of these crimes are our children. The boys and girls who passed around these pictures, thereby heaping on the pain and suffering, are our children.
As a culture, our shame is deep and thick. It is toxic. It runs underground through us all, deep in the dark recesses of our shadow. And when the hot potato gets too hot to hold, we pass it on to others so we don’t have to know it within our own psyches.
But, this shame stops here. Now.
It is time for each of us to look within at our own internalized shame. It is time to stop passing it around because we don’t want to feel it. It is time to begin to look at how we the adults are raising children who do these things to each other.
Our internalized shame began as somebody else’s shame. And once we’ve internalized it, it is ours to deal with. It is ours to feel. It is ours to heal.
We live in a rape culture. We live in a shame culture. We live in a culture that pretends all is well, that our culture is the best, that we have no demons. The longer we pretend the problem is not ours the more vicious the acts will become.
When we are willing to stand tall to our darkest demons, we find that the dark holds our most sacred and beautiful jewels…sacred because we come to see our own humanity. And, this takes a willingness to step out of denial, and to stop believing in the illusion of some perfect self that is incapable of hurting and destroying others.
Shame. It can take your breath away. Literally. It can try to steal your life. It can keep you holed up like a monastic, far away from eyes that might see that shame and equate it with you.
Shame is handed down, generation to generation. It is passed around man to woman, woman to man, adult to child. I don’t know anyone who’s never been touched by shame.
It is time for us to see the rape and shame culture we live in.
It is time for men to begin to speak out against rape and rape culture, too.
For so long women have carried this shame.
Shame is the darkest weapon that patriarchy uses against women…against the feminine.
Shame is the darkest weapon I use against myself. Ugh.
And, ultimately it is a weapon killing us all, women and men, and the children we love so dearly.Â
On my unexpected walk yesterday morning (car battery died and I walked home from the mechanic), I was suddenly moved by an insight. Unexpected circumstances can do that…bring insights. These times can be our most creative moments, because we’re taken out of our normal routine, which can wake us up to the newness we are always really living in.
The insight? That it’s not so much what we speak as women, but that we speak…that we liberate the female soul’s song.
The feminine was silenced. Our mothers were silenced, as were their mothers, and their mothers, and so on. And, we are continually encouraged to (many times through shame, shunning, threat, and humiliation) stay silent.
I know I silence myself. I learned to do this at a very young age. I watched what was going on, listened to what was expected of me, and learned to manipulate my behavior accordingly. I know others who did the opposite – pushed back with every fiber against being silenced. Pushing back, though, is still a kind of silencing, because being completely free means you simply speak what is true and many times when we push back, we are more caught up in the conflict than being free to simply express what is within. Not always, but many times.
Unlearning silencing isn’t such an easy task.Patterns of silencing are insidious. The patterns are within our psyches. They are in the culture. Everyday on the internet, you can read something powerful posted by a woman who is speaking her mind. And, you don’t have to look far to see the comments that immediately surface attempting to silence her through intimidation and threats of violence and harm.
I believed that silence would keep me safe. When I learned to do it, it did. But silence keeps none of us safe, and in these times we are living, silence keeps us from creating something new in our world that is life-affirming and fueled by the deepest love that is life expressing itself anew in each moment.
This insight was really beautiful…and simple.
I can see that it really doesn’t matter the form we say things in, but that what we say must be true in our hearts, to our souls.
We don’t have to come up with something amazingly wise and transformational. What I see is that the very act of speaking will heal. Speaking the truth in our everyday lives will heal. It opens the channel, and when the channel is open creativity begins to pour forth…a creativity that is rooted in the sacred creativity that women embody. It is this sacred creativity within our beings that is birthing the new consciousness. Speaking opens the channel. It reconnects our awareness with what is true deep within. Speaking can be a metaphor here, yet I also can see that vocalizing, the act of making sound through the body is incredibly powerful.
Speaking begins to end the silencing that has happened to the feminine, and to women. The act of speaking opens channels in the body and soul.
Hearing one’s own voice saying words that have been swallowed too many times to count reawakens a knowing of self that is necessary for healing.
Speaking truth in everyday life is an extremely powerful act…powerful and healing.
In working with women, and in my own experience, I’ve come to see that we can get caught up in the belief that we have to come up with wise words, and even more have to put them into some ‘form’ like a blog, or a book, or a speaking engagement, or you name it. But the insight showed that it is much more simple than what we think.
Imagine millions of women around the world, women who have the freedom to do so, speaking the truth to ourselves, to our families, our lovers, our co-workers, our bosses. Speaking for ourselves and on behalf of those who can’t, who aren’t free to do so.
Hearing our own voice with our own ears. It’s a reclamation of the power that lies within to give voice to the soul.
I don’t know the esoteric details of what happens when a woman speaks truth aloud, but I can see something shifts. When a woman listens to what is happening and feels for resonance and responds with truth, responds in a way that honors life, not only within herself but within all of life, silence is broken, healing happens, and something new is born.
We can support and encourage each other to do this.
What if each of us actively reached out to three other women we know and asked them to speak aloud the words that have been swallowed back down over and over and over?
What if we reached out and invited them to tell us their truth?
What if we saw this opportunity to hear, really hear, another woman’s truth as a sacred act and we listened accordingly?
Will you do this?
Will you offer this gift of inviting out woman’s song?
A good place to begin is with yourself, to hear your own words with your own ears, and to feel them rise up out of your body into the light of day. Really listen for the words to be spoken. Listen then speak. Keep speaking because sometimes those words take a while to reach. Feel the words rise and move and flow as they are offered up.
This IS a sacred act.
John O’Donohue wrote, “All holiness is about learning to hear the voice of your own soul.Â
Doing so calls back a power that was buried when we went silent.
Doing so reconnects you with you.
Doing so liberates woman’s song.
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Image is white ribbons on Flickr under Creative Commons 2.0
I’ve been immersed in this topic since last Fall when I was asked to speak at TEDxIsfeld in British Columbia. For whatever reason, it seemed to keep coming up in my mind. That seems to be how creativity works. Things arise out of that big dark void from which everything emerges. For me, it was around belonging and finding a way back to being a human being connected to the land.
At the time, I wrote about becoming indigenous again, or finding my way back to reverence for the land. I’ve never shared that writing. It was writing for only my eyes. I was longing for something. Longing to feel connected, longing to be wise enough to know how to be with the land. Longing to no longer think of just me, but to begin to consider how I can serve the land.
I squirmed writing those words, “becoming indigenous again”. Sometimes words just come out and then you wonder what they’re about.
I know I am not an indigenous person and totally respect those people who are and the difficulties they face. And, I know indigenous cultures have a reverence for the land, and know a deep responsibility to it that many of us who’ve lost our bearings of belonging don’t seem to live. (I will share much of that writing in my new course:Â Belonging – 21 Days to Find Your Way Home, because it’s at the heart of what it means to be a human being.)It’s taken some time to see that what started as a seed back in the Fall has begun to blossom as new work.
And what has blossomed from that early writing is an exploration into belonging.
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Many of us were disconnected from the land of our ancestors. We’ve lost our connection to the land in a way the indigenous cultures have not. We’ve lost our connection to the matter, to the mother.
Many of us are displaced beings. Yet, we all belong to the earth. The earth is our mother. We are her children.Â
Regardless of where we were born, regardless of where our ancestors came from, we all belong to the earth. And, I am coming to see that this is what gets us to the heart of being a human being – one who lives her humanity. Of course, I guess there are many interpretations of the nature of humanity. I know it can take dark forms…and I know we are moving to evolve toward a living of our light.
At the heart of coming to know a deeper relationship to earth is coming to know we belong.
I have come to see that one of the most important things we must do is come to remember that we belong. To ourselves, to each other, to the earth, and to all beings. Without remembering belonging, we drift aimlessly, believing someone else will take care of the very real responsibilities we have to life…and belonging helps us come to remember this forgotten imperative of relationship.
I hear from so many women that they don’t feel they belong, that they want to find the place where they feel safe and comfortable for being who they are, for living the values they hold dear.
Is this what belonging means to you? Finding a place where you are a natural part of the community, where when you are simply who you are and live what you hold dear, you feel safe and valued? Does it mean finding a place where you feel you are able to fully give of yourself, fully valued, wanted, and respected? Does it mean finally being able to be of service because you know that in relationship there is a shared give and take?
Isn’t that what any human being wants, to be valued, respected, and able to give something back, to be a part of a community?
We’ve devalued half of life’s qualities – the feminine half that exists in all of life, and we’ve devalued half of the population – women, and at the heart of it all, we’ve devalued, dominated, and controlled the material world, including the earth, animals, crops, air, water, etc. Everything that sustains us has been devalued and harmed, including the very vessels that bring human life forth – women’s bodies.
We don’t see the earth as a living being – we see her as material goods.Â
In trying to find our way back, we begin to devalue the masculine. To find fault with it. When what is true is that we are woefully out of balance.
When we look at our culture and the values that seem to be linked to it, it’s no wonder we don’t feel like we belong. Our current cultural landscape is far from balanced, far from a reflection of the beauty we hold dear as women, from the capacity we know as women to nurture life itself.
In a culture that teaches you to conform, you can lose connection to your own values and needs. You slowly forget what matters to you most, and you begin to turn your attention to what will keep you connected to the culture, to what seems as if it will bring a sense of belonging. But this is not belonging. You will never feel you belong when you can’t be who you are. Never. And, somewhere we know this.
Belonging only comes when you are yourself and awake to what is real. Belonging can only happen when you are connected to the real world, to the world that has been here all along.
Our systemic devaluation of the feminine has a direct correlation to how much we feel we belong. When we lose connection to the mother, we lose our connection to matter.
When this devaluation pervades our culture and our internal radar is pointing to this culture for a sense of home, we’ll never find home. Patriarchy causes us to feel out of place because it is out of place. Patriarchy is out of place and alignment with the earth, our home, with the feminine, and with the masculine, and place is where we find belonging.
Everything seems to be coming out of the woodwork. So much violence. So much greed. So much sadness and grief. So much. How can we find our ground, our own ground amidst all of this? How can we touch into what is real when so much destruction is swirling around us?
How can you stay with your values when it seems as if the world that has a voice is telling you they are not valuable? How can you tap into what is real and true for you, when so much around us tries to convince us of what we should believe?
Through the body. Through the land. Through the connection with women. Through the real world.
Through these we find our way back to our own connection between this female body and the earth.Â
There is a ‘real world’ in which we exist. The earth and the stars, the sun and the moon, flowers and birds, animals and another’s warm hand. Nature. We are nature.
These are the elements of belonging. Knowing these in our everyday lives is what brings us back to here. And, here is the only place we can truly belong.
This is where we remember who we are, what we came into the world to do, the nature of our unique gifts, and our connection to a land that is not ours to own but rather ours to serve.
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Please join me on April 1st: Belonging – 21 Days to Find Your Way Home. Finding our way to a true sense of belonging may be one of the most important things we can do in these times.
At this time, the course is only for women. I’ve had men ask if it would be for men, too. Perhaps after this first iteration. Let’s see what happens.
This morning I read about the Steubenville rape case. I read that Jane Doe, the woman who was raped, was receiving death threats. My heart broke.
I then went to Wild Writing where we write using certain phrases from poems that Laurie shares as prompts. The first poem read was “Prayer in My Boot“, by Naomi Shihab Nye. The following is what poured out of me. And as I read it aloud, I could feel waves of grief roll through me.
The phrase from the poem is in teal. The lines that begin with ‘For’ are the elements of my Prayer. May it be so.
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Pray it is universally applicable, because it is. How could Delhi be any different from Stuebenville, India from the United States?
Rape is rape. It tears us all apart.
We are no different here in the US, except we seem to think we are, seem to be really good at turning away, pretending it has nothing to do with us, pretending we aren’t like them. We’re more civilized, more under control, more egalitarian. Everything swept under the rug. Pretending Jane Doe deserved it because she drank too much and tweeted questionable things. Pretending the two boys lives are ruined because they’ve been convicted of a crime that somehow wasn’t of ‘their’ doing.
I pray we see that it is universally applicable because it is and the more we don’t see, the more we refuse to look toward, the more this darkness festers in each and every one of us – Indian and American, woman and man.
For this is our doorway into healing.
For those moments last year in Steubenville when choices were made that led to this.
For that night in Delhi when she boarded the bus with her boyfriend, never suspecting what was about to take place.
For the man in Delhi who suggested she was a whore because she was out at night and suggested her sweetheart was at fault because he didn’t protect her.
For the boys in Steubenville, raised in a culture where we avoid talking about these things, avoid looking right at this rape culture we seem to continue to cling to.
For the girl in Steubenville who woke up the next morning not knowing what had happened to her.
For all the mothers and fathers of these children and young people who in some way tried their best and succeeded, and in other ways failed.
For every young boy and girl, including my four grandchildren, who are learning every day what they must do to belong in a culture that expects certain behavior from all of us so that we fit in and don’t bring attention to our society’s darkest secrets.
For these young girls and boys who still catch glimpses of their souls who know the truth about life, that it has the capacity to be filled with compassion and love, tenderness and integrity.
For all of us who know deep in our hearts that this is not who we are as a species, that we are capable of greatness even in our darkest moments.
I pray that we come to know that this it is universally applicable, because when we know this as a species we will know peace.
I was born in the ‘50s, and grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. I remember shows like Donna Reed and Father Knows Best, where the Mother was always wearing an apron and being sweet and kind, and the Father was the breadwinner and the wise one. By the end of each show, everyone was happy, all problems were resolved, and everyone knew their place. On the surface, so many families seemed to be the same; yet, underneath, most were not even close.
In this kind of ‘pretend’ environment, my parents divorced in 1964. I remember how hard it was for my mother when she became a single mother with three little girls, trying to make ends meet to put enough food on the table and keep the roof over our heads. I remember how afraid she was, how alone she felt, and how judged single mothers were at that time.
I remember the feminist movement. I remember people (not only men) totally trashing the women who were speaking out. These women were speaking out to effect real change so that women, like my mother, could get better jobs, earn more money, and have a modicum of respect in the culture. We were trying to break free from the chains and bindings that had kept women contained. I remember how these women who led the women’s liberation movement were called horrible and ugly names for speaking out.
At my young age, I remember how much I feared being cast-out like that, cast-out for speaking out with power about the truth of how things really were…and are. I am not saying all feminists were right and righteous, and those who opposed them bad; what I am saying is that the cultural paradigm of patriarchy rose up fast and hard to put these women back in their place. It wasn’t pretty.
I remember the not-so-easy discourse around the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). I remember wondering why on earth we needed the ERA. I had learned in school that we were all equal under the constitution. I was beginning to see that real life did not reflect our founding documents or what we saw on television. In growing up, I was beginning to clearly see the truth of the world I was becoming an adult in.
I remember being amazed that the ERA did not get ratified in all fifty states. It is still only in effect in twenty-one states. I remember wondering why people would not want women to have equal rights? What was that about?
In hindsight, I see how the women’s liberation movement had to push hard against a societal construct that was trying to keep women controlled and dominated – in the kitchen, or if they were working, making much less pay with a whole lot less options; how it seemed like the only way out was to prove that we could do what men did just as well as they did it; and how ‘traditional women’s work’ was not the only thing we could do.
I sit here remembering so many ways in which women have been undervalued for far too long. I sit here remembering how hard women, and some men, have worked for equality for women.
It took decades of women fighting for the right to vote to finally win what in hindsight seems only right and natural. Why?
Now in my fifties, a grandmother to four beautiful children, I see this world as it is right now in 2013. I see how little heart is in the institutions of our current culture. I see, still, how little our culture values traditionally ‘feminine’ things such as caring for the poor, teaching the young, honoring the elderly, valuing wisdom, taking care of the planet, and making sure all people have access to basic human needs.
I see that somewhere back in the history of humans, caring for children, caring for others, and caring for the home became something less than, something looked down upon, something not of value. I see how women still are not valued, how feminine traits are denigrated, while masculine ones continue to be praised and admired.
What has this devaluation of the feminine done to our world? When we don’t value, deeply value, that which is at the root of relieving suffering in human lives and the human heart, valuing the very planet on which our lives (and the future lives of generations to come) depend, and seeing the beauty and sacredness of life itself, what do our lives boil down to?
Woman in a barley field, Ladakh, India.
Tenderness of the heart and tending the hearth are not inconsequential offerings. Both literally and metaphorically, our world is hungering for these.
It is inhumane to expect people to continually pull themselves up by their own ‘bootstraps’ without needing anything from anyone. That is what’s expected in a hyper-masculine culture where being needy for anything or anyone is weak, and holding emotions in is strong and righteous. It is inhuman and inhumane.
What is human is the way of the heart, of connection and relationship. We do need each other. It’s a very human thing to need each other. Being human is a vulnerable proposition. To think otherwise, is to pretend we are separate from each other, or that we are machines of some kind.
I remember, somewhere deep within me, a time when I knew life differently as a woman, a time when women walked as noble beings. We can walk again as noble beings, knowing we embody the Feminine and are sacred vessels for life. We can walk again as noble beings, knowing the earth, too, is a sacred vessel for life. It is a deeply sacred relationship women’s bodies have with the earth body.To bring the heart back into life, it is time we women value our femaleness: our power to nurture and nourish, our ability to feel deeply, our wisdom that fills our bones, our vibrant and sacred creativity, our vital life force that fuels our sexuality, our powerful voices, and our capacity for fierce, fierce love. This is not in place of our ability to get things done in the world – we know how to do this. Rather, it is bringing this awareness, this value, and this knowing back into our daily lives.
In valuing these things, we bring ourselves back into balance, a balance of the masculine and feminine within. As we do this, as we embody our femaleness, aware of the sacredness of our bodies, we model what it is to respect the feminine in a world that has forgotten how to do so. And as we do this, we hold out our hands and hearts to the men in our lives, inviting them to do the same – to respect the feminine within us and to embody the feminine within themselves.
May we all, women and men, walk on the earth with feet of love. May we all become conscious of the immense gift of life, and allow this knowing to wake us up to the joyful responsibility we have to be engaged, creative, and giving members of this world village.
As we celebrate International Women’s Day, 2013, let us reclaim what it is to be a whole women. There are aspects of womanhood that have been dormant during these times of patriarchal ways, yet we are now in times of remembering these ways. Let us guide each other back into living the wholeness of womanhood.
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Silver WaterfallÂ
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We’ve all (men and women) been well trained in the ways of the masculine mind. It’s the basis for our school systems. We’ve been trained to believe in, and be good at, black and white thinking, linear problem solving, and rational decision-making. We’ve been taught to value bullet points over poetic imagery, clear thinking over murky emotions, and rugged individuality over interconnectedness. While helpful in some areas of life, in reality, as a way to live life, this training hurts us all, and it especially hurts women.
The linear, rational mind that’s been conditioned to believe it has all the answers, can control and dominate life, and should be the master over feeling and mystery, is not very good at navigating life.
Life is inherently messy.
Life is unknowable.
Life is full of a multitude of experiences.
Life is always changing.
When the conditioned mind believes it is omnipotent, we make decisions (really important decisions) based on ‘hard facts’ – numbers, data, and rational reasoning. We forget we have hearts and bodies. We forget we have souls. We forget we are connected to the web of life. We forget we have an intuitive capacity that is far more intelligent and capable of living life and than our rational capacity could ever hope to be.
We begin to believe we are our thinking patterns and emotional tailspins.
As a young girl, I was wildly energetic and vivaciously in love with color and creation. I remember how it felt – so much beauty, so much feeling, and so much joy. But as I got older, it became clear that the logical, rational mind was king, and everything not logical was to be distrusted. And as I got older, our home became more chaotic, with a deep sense of impending doom. As life became crazy, I longed to have something to gauge things by. Good grades, following rules, being polite became important ways to feel in control and good about myself.
So women’s consciousness can hold many things in relationship all the time. But what happened in the last centuries is that as women became educated in schools and colleges designed by men to teach men how to think in a masculine way, they absorbed this masculine consciousness. They overlaid their feminine relationship understanding with a masculine mind. And because they wanted to succeed in a man’s world, they focused their energy on this masculine way of thinking. But it doesn’t fully work for them – it is not in harmony with their real nature…
~Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, The Return of the Feminine and the World Soul
Goodness in this culture is evaluated in a hierarchical, black and white way…the very essence of the conditioned masculine mind. I learned that wildness and abandon were at the bottom of the scale, ways of being to push away, while a good grasp of math and science was near the top, with obedience to rules (for girls and women) at the very top.
The chaos I felt as a child became manageable if I could find something to hold me, something rigid and knowable, something that felt like structure, and so following the rules gave me a sense of rigidity that allowed me to let go and breathe. Well, not really – it actually caused me to be tight and only breath down to my neck, but then the mind is good at making up fibs…big fat fibs.
When the nuclear family isn’t so nuclear, we long to feel something is holding us. And when we grow up in a culture that only values the nuclear family, we find we don’t have a village to hold us, and we don’t have an understanding of interconnectedness or how this interconnectedness might already be available to us through life itself.
To a certain extent, most of us in the west have been trained to not trust these things, so we neither create them, nor do we look for them. We’ve been taught to believe the earth is dead, so we feel no sense of belonging to something larger than this culture that is hell-bent on women following the rules.
Hence, I internalized a hunter, a predator. This hunter would track down anything too wild, too out there, and too far from the top of the chart of goodness and kill it, and then toss it into the shadow regions to decay. In the wild girl’s place, a good girl was born that was rigid, had to be right, and most importantly had to be polite and nice – although those things don’t really go together do they? Having to be right isn’t really truly nice, is it? It’s funny how none of this is logical at all.
I don’t know about you, but I do know that everything I’ve been taught about the ‘way things are’ is being blown apart by the very clear recognition that nothing is the way it seems to be.
Over the past two decades, I’ve been breaking free from this internal hunter – the one that learned that safety comes from figuring things out, from knowing what is good vs. bad, from being nice and polite and hiding all the juicy, delectable parts of that wild child. This breaking apart has come in chunks, sometimes it comes in big chunks that leave me a bit lost and befuddled.
Deconstruction of the mind is a funny thing. The more it deconstructs, the more I see and know the lack of any kind of solid structure. Yet, what I have found is the heart, the heart and soul that are so beautiful at living a life that is mysterious by nature. While the conditioned mind loves rigidity and structure, the heart knows something the mind could never know – it knows truth, and it knows the soul, which also knows wildness and abandon.
The soul calls us home, and like a wild animal, it leaves a scent as it moves through the brush. But this scent is not a scent the hunter can find. The soul is wily this way.
No, the hunter has no business in this soul brush, so the soul leaves a scent that only the wild child can find. I’ve had to get down on all fours, nose to the earth to discover it. I’ve had to walk barefoot through the mud again; I’ve had to dance until the sweat pours off me and then dance some more; I’ve had to paint large swaths of yellow paint across the paper to remember what this wild child loved; and, I’ve had to leave relationships that I used as structures of seeming safety rather than openings to soul.
I’ve had to come to see that there is no safety, not the kind I longed to know as a child.
What there is instead, now that this child is older and wiser, is a deep belonging to the earth, a belonging that cannot be denied by political positioning, nor laws that don’t honor this woman’s body.
I’ve come to know an autonomy that can only be found within the realm of the soul. I’ve come home to a longing for the divine that can only be traversed through the deepest, most interior chambers of the heart.
Coming home to the soul is the coming home we’ve longed for our entire lives. May we come to remember that we are held by the earth and by the web of life, and may we remember our responsibility to the children, to this earth and all of her creatures, and to each other, women and men.
