women's wildly creative leadership emerging from within
You are here.
Softly,
Joyously,
Persistently,
Reminding.
A one-way conversation
Until I choose to let go
Into the rhythm
Of your pulse.
Much fear has been tossed around
About the inherent weakness of
The tendermost layers
Of your expression.
Yet, I find these places
To be filled with the
Sweetest longings
I can know.
Tendermost places
Lend themselves
To melting into,
To letting go,
To receiving and giving,
To going home.
I believe in the erotic and
I believe in it as an enlightening force within our lives as women.
I have become clearer about the distinctions between the erotic
and other apparently similar forces.
We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal.
I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force,
a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.
And when I say living I mean it as that force which
moves us toward what will accomplish real positive change.
~Audre Lorde
:::
In these days of change, where destruction is so present and many wonder what is next, discovering the enlightening force Lorde speaks of is the rich invitation at hand.
Can we, as women, remember and re-member this force within our bodies and within our lives?
It moves within because it is the deepest life force. To come into alignment with it is to align with life.
Sexuality is not simply having sex. It is awakening to our nature, returning to the wholeness of the feminine, and remembering that at the center of our female bodies lies the void of creation.
We embody the creatrix, the void out of which all arises. To turn our attention inward, to the innermost recesses of the heart and the birthing capacity of the feminine, opens us to re-member this force.
Can we feel life moving within? Can we begin to trust what we see, especially when it is not visible to the eye?
Yet, I learned at a young age to cut them off before they really blossomed in my consciousness; my intellect learned to come in quickly and try to rationalize and explain these unexplainable things.
As a woman, I walk in ways not understood by the intellect. These ways, these feelings and knowings that are irrational to the intellect, but exquisite morsels to the soul, are calling to me to listen. There is no time to dawdle. They call me to play in the stream of deep healing and honoring.
:::
Image: Sun Spot with Light Rays, Let it Shine 
Some rights reserved by Torley
If you could picture your intuition as a person, what would he or she look like? If you sat down together for dinner, what is the first thing he or she would tell you? ***
…
*** question posed by Susan Piver as part of the Trust30 writing challenge.
First Buds by John-Morgan licensed under CC2.0
It makes no sense to use feminine power to succeed in a patriarchy. Like Coke giving micro loans to African women so they can sell its products to villagers. This is life turning against life. Instead, women need to trust in our unique power. We need a leap of faith into ourselves. It might be a long leap – with not many signs of success. But success in a the patriarchy is not the success we long for.
~ Women’s Power Wheel on Facebook
I’ve often wondered why success in this paradigm feels so empty for so many women. I think the wise women at Women’s Power Wheel have succinctly described why this is so. (For more of this contemporary wisdom, ‘Like’ their page, so you can learn more of what they offer.)
Our power does not thirst for acquisition or conquering others. Our power does not grow from making others small. Rather, our power hungers to give sustain life, to support and nurture it.
We are in the midst of a change in how we view power and what it means to be powerful. I have come to see, we are most powerful when we live who we really are…sometimes easier said than done, but if we are to do what this quote suggests, to “trust in our unique power”, then it is in living unabashedly as women that this power will come forth.
Take a moment to think of a time when you felt truly powerful, a joyful power that radiated from your whole being, a sense that you were doing what you are here to do, to serve. Perhaps the word power throws you, because of how it is used in this masculine-centric culture, yet allow your body to show you a time such as this.
What do you see? remember? feel?
What would it take to make this leap of faith into yourself, and into other women?
What is the success you long for?
What you think you’re seeking, is seeking you. You think it’s your Idea, your dream? It’s Life’s… seeking to express and emerge by means of You. For this you have been called. For this you have come to bear witness, full witness to the Glory of The One that is YOU. ~ M Morrissey
And I would add, you have come to bear fruit, ripe fruit borne from The One that is YOU.
::
Reverb10 Day 16
Prompt: Friendship. How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst?
::
This year has brought numerous realizations of this bearing witness; bearing witness to Life seeking to express and emerge by way of this Being in a female body. Much of this realization has been through women friends.
One of the most occluded areas of consciousness for me was in this place of love for other women, for love of woman.
There is no need to go through the ‘whys’ of this. Suffice it to say, past wounds of the feminine had grown great crusty scabs around my heart.
In my friendships with women, I’ve felt both joy and a kind of trembling fear at the possibility of dropping my defenses. I’ve been keenly aware of a place in my heart that was both longing for intimacy and fearing the exposure.
This year brought opportunities to trust that this was a place of great learning for me. And, in letting go into the places that held both fear and deep longing, I’ve found such a sweet, yet powerful, love. It’s a kind of love that is only available between women, because it is intrinsic to women. In this connection from woman to woman, I have come to know a part of womanhood that had been disowned.
This love is tender, yet powerful.
This love is a mirror of purity, for women are pure in a way that is very practical: we are created with the body wisdom to bring the sacred into matter, the soul into human life.
This love makes my knees buckle for it tells me of the power that is at the heart of the receptive, nourishing, ripe and earthy female body.
In a passage that makes me swoon every time I read it, Rilke writes:
Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man, who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily fruit…
We bear bodily fruit, whether or not we bear children. This fruit requires nourishment from the body and soul. Life lingers in us, because life has created our bodies as vessels of creation. Life dwells here in these hips and thighs and breasts. When I open to this deep relationship with another woman, I feel this ripeness in her and in me.
This ripeness tells of a disowned knowing of what it is to be woman, tales long-forgotten in a masculine culture.
In these times, we are begin asked to remember this body wisdom. We are being asked to heal this place of wounding between woman and woman.
My friends are teaching me beautiful things about womanhood, precious powerful things about what we can awaken, enliven, and bring forth in ourselves to heal the crusty scab-bearing wounds of our times.
It is the blossom that brings forth the fruit. The blossom comes right out of the gray, hard bark of the tree. Somewhere within the tree itself lies the kiss that brings forth the apple. We women are no different. Somewhere within us lies the kiss that will awaken our ripeness, our bounty, our gift.
Can we open to, and receive, Life’s kiss?
::
What wounds are you willing to heal?
Where do you feel Life’s Kiss upon you?
How have your friendships with women opened you to this bounty within your own Being?
::
Image courtesy of midnightcomm, under CC2.0
A fruit is not afraid of its own weight. It grows into its skin fully. It is whole, each part of its body equally alive. ~Gayle Brandeis from Fruitflesh
::
Since my last post on despair, my body has been heavy with feeling. Heavy not in a bad way, but simply full, like ripe fruit. Full of the life blood that comes with feeling deeply, down into the body. Not thinking about feeling, but feeling. Not running from the emotions, but rather allowing them to mingle with one another as they move from coming to going.
Sometimes these emotions are ripe for the picking, ready to share their succulent wisdom if one is open to eating the fruit. For me, grief is like the bushel basket that holds the ripe emotions that are being offered up for tasting.
I realized, when I allowed despair to dance, that grief had brought it to my doorstep. Grief is such an intelligent, wise process. It knows what we need to become more alive, more real, more human, more awake. Grief opens the door to feeling fully alive, the raw place where nothing escapes our awareness.
Over the past few days, I came to see that I’m grieving the loss of the way things used to be. It seems so clear to me that life as I knew it has changed. The times of believing life can be one full long sumptuous banquet of eating whatever you want, as much as you want, whenever you want has come to an end. Our culture’s mentality of no-end-in-sight growth, a kind of westward expansion towards a never-ending horizon, had taught me so many things that were lodged in my psyche. When I opened the door to despair, they came tumbling out.
It’s not that I hadn’t seen this before. Heaven knows others have been telling us this all along. This was different though. What came in on the other side of grief is the realization that this banquet I had been taught to enjoy, in many ways had provided little sustenance.
All through the illusion of having my way, getting what I want, a laziness to change my habits, the real riches of life have been offering themselves up to me. Only I was too focused on consuming, acquiring, devouring things in order to feel safe, in control, full. I was too focused on thinking, trying to figure it all out, so I could feel in charge, powerful, again, in control.
I’ve tasted grief many, many times, as have we all. After times of great loss, always, always grief has created room in my heart – if I am willing to invite grief in, to allow it to soak me in its wisdom, to allow it to be my mid-wife, as I birth myself anew. It leaves me able to know more of life’s riches, those riches that can’t be seen, but can certainly be touched and tasted by the heart.
This fullness that is here is not the same as the false fullness of having stuff. It is a weighted down feeling, like a mother heavy with child, like a pear so juicy, the juice almost seeps through the skin, while its mother branch bends deeply to hold it until it no longer can.
Something opens in me – I should say a deeper opening – into the realm of the fullness of life itself. I feel the fullness in the air, in my breath, in my belly. It’s as if I can touch this fullness with my eyes, as I gaze out at the life I swim in. I can hear the fullness. As I listen, it speaks to me, in silence, of its love. It wraps me in its blanket of existence. It pulsates. It throbs. It vibrates and quivers. It’s the fullest, ripest emptiness I could ever imagine.
This fullness is right here, right now. Always here, always now. I’ve come to see it as that which holds me as I dance in the unknown spaces that seem dark and pulse with life. This is what I can trust in when I don’t know, which is only every moment of existence.
::
Image courtesy of Andrew Michaels on Flickr; Creative Commons 2.0 license
 “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” — Rumi
This is the first of a series of posts on this topic of Rumi, Women’s Leadership & Love.
To be a leader, one must truly feel what others are feeling. To be a leader, one must be able to truly love those she leads. How do we learn this most necessary trait? By feeling, deeply, the depth of our own experience. By allowing our own hearts to break. Many spiritual teachers speak of the necessity of allowing one’s heart to break open. It’s not that the heart will break. It cannot break. It must, however, break open, meaning that all the bindings that have grown around one’s heart must give way so that the heart can thrive in its natural expansiveness. When one’s heart is free to be, it is as large, and as expansive, as the whole of the Universe.
Feeling the depths of shame and humiliation from our own experience of being marginalized, disrespected and humiliated generationally is key to women waking up to our fullness and wholeness. Both our lightness and our darkness must be brought back into consciousness if we are to be wholly female and embody the sacred feminine that we are.
Every midwife knows
that not until a mother’s womb
softens from the pain of labour
will a way unfold
and the infant find that opening to be born.
Oh friend!
There is treasure in your heart, it is heavy with child.
Listen.
All the awakened ones, like trusted midwives are saying,
welcome this pain.
It opens the dark passage of Grace.
~Rumi
Opening to the pain of our experience as women, individually and collectively, is our passage to Grace. It is paramount that we open ourselves to feel, deeply feel, that which has been projected onto us over the centuries of oppression. There are many layers to this feeling. How much of our anger, shame and disowned power can accumulate before the dam breaks? We can use this pain as the way into Grace, the way into the opened heart, the way into the depths of our humanity. This humanity has become ripe and fragrant with our own capacity to walk side by side men, no longer simply a complement or accessory, but rejoicing in our sovereignty and self respect.
When we are able to feel the depths of what has been internalized within our own beings through the generational oppression, our hearts will move into an awakened state of love for ourselves, for other women, for men, for all of life. And, when we come to embody this love fully, for ourselves, and for others, every cell of our being will be filled with Grace.
I recently read a post on the PeaceXPeace blog WeekXWeek and the accompanying comments. One comment was written by a woman who labeled herself a “difference” feminist. She went on to explain that she sees and celebrates the differences between men and women in her feminist world view, as opposed to what is traditionally considered to be a feminist approach where women were trying to take on men’s attributes. There is so much to say and write about this topic, but what I want to address here is how this perspective of differences underscores what Unabashedly Female is all about. Men and women are different. This is something to celebrate. If there wasn’t an organic reason for this difference, there would only be one gender here on earth.
For decades, women have been trying to be more like men in order to succeed and be a powerful force in the world. What we are now seeing in so many circles is a shift in realization that our power lies in being authentically ourselves, authentically female. It is important to live into our differences in gender, for when we do we are living into the natural intelligence that underlies all of Life.
One organization celebrating differences and working towards bringing out the change that can come from supporting girls and women is the Nike Foundation. And, rooted in the work of the Nike Foundation is girleffect.org. Girleffect.org has a great video to watch that explains their work, as well as a fact sheet that beautifully speaks to why we should pay attention to girls.
Think about girls and women in your life that could use your love, support and encouragement. Check out the Nike Foundation and girleffect.org. See how you can make a difference in a girl’s life.
If we are to be unabashedly female, we must be aligned with our true female nature. But, what is this nature?
All conditioning conspires against our knowing, yet our desire to know, to really know this nature, runs deep.
We are drawn to healing, drawn to come to wholeness and to knowing what and who we are. We are compelled to lose the binding we believe is wrapped around our feet, and to dissolve the armor that holds our hearts. We are yearning to know the fullness of our feminine vibrancy, that elusive yearning that lies deep in the belly of our bodies.
Everything we are taught about being female is done to keep us from knowing the basic goodness of our innate female nature. All of life, when it is seen for what it really is, is goodness. We simply don’t see it for what it is.
So this is your chance. Open your heart to your own nature. Open your heart to all that conspires to have you know what and who you truly are. Open your heart.
There is more to come…much, much more.
