Telling Our Stories – Page 3 – unabashedly female

November 12, 2014

Unabashed & Revolutionary – Women, Poetry & Desire

Today is a day of celebration!

A day of celebrating women’s voices being heard, trusted, scribed, and released. We’re celebrating Amy Palko, and her new book of poetry, From Revolutionary Lips.

AmyPalkoFRL02

Today, I hostedÂ a Live Google Hangout with Amy so we could talk about her newly releasedÂ book of poetry (the recorded video is below), andÂ about the revolution itself, a revolution of descent, desire, and – following Lilith’s example – leaving the confines of a systemic structure that is too small to hold the power of the feminine as she truly is.

During our chat, we talked about many things, including poetry that comes from this deep place within, what I call writing raw; how to compassionately get your work into the world in the way that is kind to you and that calls upon your sisters to help bring your voice into the world; and how we as women are mirrors for each other, and as we uncover aspects of ourselves that have been veiled and exiled, and shine them into the world, we offer a clearer image of who we all are as Woman.

You can purchase From Revolutionary Lips at Red Thread VoicesÂ as anÂ ebook or MP3s.

Â Â

AmyPalkoFRL03

Amy Palko is the creatrix of Red Thread Voices – a publishing house that aims to offer a home to the voice of exiled feminine.

She is also a goddess guide, poet, photographer and lecturerÂ whose work has been featured internationally.

AmyÂ lives in Edinburgh, Scotland with her husband and three teenage children, in their home that overlooks the deep harbour, and the wide mouth of the River Forth as it opens up to swallow the cold waters of the North Sea.

October 27, 2014

Stay With Yourself and Let Love Handle the Rest

noname — photo by Laura Duldner, (c) 2014

This past Saturday night…

I climbed up onto a stage and did something I’ve never done before. I stood at a microphone and read my intimate poetry to a group of about one hundred and fifty people gathered to support Syzygy Dance Project, a project led by one of my dance teachers, Sylvie Minot, to bring dance into the jails, prisons, veteran’s homes, and recovery groups.

I read four of my poems, three of which I’ve never shared with the public.

As I sat in the audience waiting to take my turn on stage, I could feel butterflies in my stomach. As soon as I felt them, I knew I was caught up in my own mind, caught up inÂ comparison, caught up in wondering how others would feel about, and what they will think about, me and my ‘performance’. I was out there – out away from myself. I could feel it. My thoughts were conjuring up worries about what hadn’t yet even occurred.

It’s a habit I’ve had, many decades old.

But now, when I feel this kind of worry, I know to come back to myself. When I do, I can feel myself coming back in from out there, back into my center.

As I came back to center, all I could ask of myself was to offer what I have, as it is, as I am.

It’s not even a question of being enough, because that would be back in a place of comparison.

Enough compared to what?

Enough compared to whose standards?

For me, center is simply where I know myself as I am. There is no comparison, because at center I simply amÂ what I am.

In coming back to center, I noticed I felt a kind ofÂ joy about sharingÂ my poetry. It was a simple kind of love, a genuine joy, a sense of impending delight. I could sense that I really wanted to do this, not for anything from anyone else, but for me. I wanted to share.

This desireÂ to share was a wonderful feeling. It felt simple. And, I felt a kind of agelessness, with no worry or anxiety to cause time to creep in.

As I felt this desire, I sensed even more clearly something I’ve been holding back on in my life. For years.

My friends know this already because usually what we finally admit to ourselves others have known all along.

I am an artist.

I am an artist.

It’s not the label so much that is important. In fact, it’s not the label at all. When I say, ‘I am an artist’, I’m saying that I am here to create. Yes, I teach. Yes, I coach.

And, at the heart of it all…

I am a champion of Soul-expression – deep, passionate, real Soul-expression.

A champion for others, yes!

And, now, finally, a champion for myself and my own works of art.

To finally get to this place…

I had to realize that I can’t be in the world, doing what I truly desire to do – creating beauty – if I need a certain kind of response from anyone who is on the receiving end of my work. This is different than being in business in a way, because in business we do need a certain kind of response in order to know we are serving our clients, and in turn making a living.

But in art, the fullness of our expression cannot come through if we are attempting to please others, to change our art, our poetry, and our creationsÂ in order to get them to understand it. This is not to say we don’t have to find a way to be clear. But that clarity comes through as part of the creativity, not as something we do on the other end to try to anticipate others’ reactions.

In art, the fullness of expression must come through, and then, after that happens, others get to experience that expression in whatever forms it might take.

And here, once the expression is complete, as it was with my poems, then I could stand and share them, in tact, knowing they are whole without anyone’s approval. They are whole in and of themselves. They are creations in and of themselves. In the act of creating, I can feel this wholeness. I know when the creation is complete and full and true. I can feel it. And, knowing each creation is complete unto itself, as people told me how the poetry affected them I felt joy that they saw the poems for what they are. I felt happy because the poems moved people. I felt a kind of connection with others through the poetry.

In truth…

I think some of my breakthrough came from reading and working through Tanya Geisler and Lauren Bacon‘s new creation, Beyond Compare. Some of it was not new to me, because I teach this work. I teach about the Voice of Judgment and Creativity. But, their work goes deeper. I was finally able to see how much I was still fearing being an artist because of old messages that caused me to try to live up to some external standard. It was comparison in a different guise.

I am not an affiliate for Beyond Compare. I just know that it helped me see through something that’s been blocking me for a long time. Tanya interviewed me for Beyond Compare so I could share what I discovered. In the interview, I shared that I discovered I’d been hiding – hiding my creations, not only from the world, but from myself, because I didn’t think I could handle the criticism. And, I’ve been hiding from my deep longing to be an artist.

noname (1) — photo by Laura Duldner, (c) 2014

My poetry was well received. I know that’s because I received these poems myself, for me first, andÂ because I received myself as I am, coming back to the joy, love, and, yes, delight! that is at the center of who and what I am.

If you wish to find out more about Beyond Compare, you can sign-up here. Beyond Compare will be available tomorrow, October 28th.

May 24, 2014May 24, 2014

Mother Tongue, Part 5: Eyes and Instincts, Knowing and Soul

This is part five of a five-part series on rediscovering, and speaking in, our mother tongue.

How many languages do we ‘speak’ as women?

What streams of wisdom do we have access to?

What is our true mother tongue?

â€œI like you; your eyes are full of language.” ~ Anne Sexton

Eyes Full of Language

We speak many languages. All of us. Women and men. And, for some time now, I’ve been curious about the languages I know that I do not speak, languages that women do not speak because we’ve been silenced for centuries, and ultimately still silencing ourselves.

I am curious about languages of touch, of breath, and of taste. Languages of knowing and instinct. Languages that bring place, feel, and depth into rhythm, cadence, and (perhaps) words.

Words aren’t the only vehicle of language. The eyes speak volumes. Look into your own eyes. Really look, and you’ll find you never reach the end of their infinite offering.

When I first meet someone, I listen to the language of their eyes and the texture of their voice. I feel their presence course through me. I meet them on many levels. We all do this. We may think focus mostly on the words being spoken, but our whole system is soaking up others through the many-layered nuances we ‘speak’.

Our Mother Tongue is instinctual. Our paws meet the ground, our eyes take in the scene, and our hearts take a pulse of what is here. The Mother Tongue knows how to respond, all cells alive, heart open, blood coursing, and knowing flowing.

Everyone, women and men, are most powerful when we simply are what we are, and we are soulful animals, critters with paws… and skin that needs to know it is not alone.

Sometimes, we teeter then choose.

When we speak what we have to speak, telling the truth in whatever language suits it best, we settle into ourselves in a way that is just so. No hiding. No covering up. No trying or attempting. Solely a vessel of life.

When we try to be something we are not, we cover ourselves up, and we lose our power. Veiled, we are much less creative, alive, and impactful.

When we water down our words, they lose their vitality. When we translate in order to soften the impact or change the meaning so others won’t be challenged, what truly wants to be expressed dies.

What happens when we know something so profoundly alive and true within ourselves, and at the same time we know it is not valued, honored, trusted, or wanted in the culture. What happens as we stand between worlds, knowing what we know and teetering on the fence of whether or not to speak it aloud into this culture that seems to have no appetite for our words, this culture that seems to find any way it can to denigrate what it is the Mother Tongue must say?

When we know we have something profoundly alive inside and important to express into the world, it is our responsibility to our own Soul to do that. That is the most important relationship that we can honor. It might be that ultimately no one understands what we say. It might be that people judge and shame. It’s no fun when that happens, yet the feeling of trusting yourself, your Soul, and your own voice, and standing tall in the expression of that trust is much more full and ultimately nourishing than the pain of any negative feedback we could receive.

The Mother Tongue isÂ where we women ‘know what we know’.Â It is outside of cultural conditioning. This is a very important place. It is here we are able to see and know what is true for ourselves, and to hear our own voice, the voice of the Soul. Here we know. Here we see. Here we come to feel the power of our own being, and our own creativity, sexuality and vitality.

We know we know.

Put your ear down close to your Soul and listen hard. ~ Anne Sexton

Sometimes, we just know. Many may try to convince us otherwise. But we know what we know. We might not know how we know it or where we know it, but we know we know.

I only began to remember my mother tongue when I listened to my Soul telling me I had to turn away from the culture. As I began to trust in my own creativity, I began to trust the words that were coming through me. The trust didnâ€™t come easily. Every time I would allow this Mother Tongue to come out on the page, I would shiver a bit with fear about what others might say or think. I was afraid I would be thought of as weird, just like the professors had indicated with their shaming responses. But something inside me kept pushing me to listen and to write. Something was pulsing within, guiding me to remember.

I was listening to something other than what I had been taught was worthy of speaking.Â The listening was to me…and in all my years in school, I can’t say that I was ever truly taught to value my own deepest expression – my creativity.

There is something important in our fear that we will not be heard, that we will be misunderstood, even shamed. We know our wisdom and truth, and we know the beauty of it. To know it will be not valued, and perhaps mocked, is painful.

“I have a piece that I wrote about how the movie Pollyanna affected my life. Iâ€™ve only shown it to one friend because I feel that it would be misunderstood. To be a Pollyanna has such a derogatory meaning, yet I have a different take on it. That piece comes from my mother tongue. Big aha here.” ~Â Kim Manley-Ort (shared in a comment on post 2)

Kim speaks about something many of us experience. We know what we know, and what we know is different than what the culture says is valuable. This is the disconnect. Somewhere we know that it will be misunderstood, and perhaps worse. Â That is painful, especially when deep within we love the Self that knows this ‘different take’. We love it, so when others misunderstand, it hurts.

It just may be they will misunderstand. There are many who would like to keep us from remembering who we are. Sometimes, this fear might mean we are not meant to share it. Some things must be kept close to the heart, especially if they are still working on us, still revealing themselves to us. This is when being quiet is serving us and the Soul.

And sometimes, we must speak.Â Last night, I was listening to Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ audio program, Mother Night (which by the way is a fabulous program). In it she speaks about how we heal from enculturation. Something she said really struck me – because I was thinking of this post. I’m going to paraphrase: Sometimes we feel like we are very strange, very different than others. We feel there is something so different that we don’t dare share whom we know ourselves to be with this world that can so quickly misunderstand and judge. Dr. EstÃ©s explains that when we see this it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t share, but that what we have to share is what is missing from the culture. The very realization that we don’t see ourselves in the culture means that what we have to share is what will fill that hole.

When I heard this, it made so much sense. Of course. No wonder we look out there for something to match what we know and feel, but if we are the ones that are to bring it to the world, then we wouldn’t see it because we haven’t brought it in yet. Isn’t that fabulous?

Settling into Your Mother Tongue:

Listen to Soul

To settle into your mother tongue, begin by separating two things: listening and speaking.Â Separate the listening to what wants to be known from the act of speaking/expressing it, because sometimes what causes us to not hear is the fact we are already thinking about saying what we haven’t even yet heard – and we are afraid.

Just the act of listening to the voice inside is incredibly important. It takes courage to not turn away from what your Soul is saying. It takes a letting go of one’s own desire to control. It takes faith in the very nature of your being. To open, develop, and deepen this relationship is so important and so beautiful. The speaking and expressing might come later. It might not. But this relationship between you and your own Soul is so beautiful. To open your inner ears and eyes, and to open your heart, to your own Soul is life-changing.

To listen, we must get quiet. Very quiet. We must want to hear. We have to open the channel. Sometimes, I meditate with my journal, and actively ask to hear. The question is important. Whatever question is burning, whichever question is ripe, is the one to ask. We have to be willing to receive what we don’t yet know, and don’t even know we will want to hear.

Sit, open, ask, then be still, quiet, and listen. Be receptive. Soften. Breathe.

To listen, we must come down into the body where we hear, feel, and sense so much more than just our thoughts. It has been my experience, that the Soul doesn’t speak through the crazy monkey-mind. The body is the gateway to the Soul. If we avoid it, we may not hear the Mother Tongue. If we don’t trust in our whole being, we cannot hear what Soul is saying.

Speak Soul

She can sense a language
With her whole body
That only her soul can speak
And only her heart can feel.

Next, we speak. We can find a way to speak that which feels unspeakable. We can find a way to do this; first to ourselves; perhaps, next to our girlfriends, or sisters, or partner. Maybe we start by speaking aloud to ourselves. Just to hear your own voice speak in your mother tongue is healing. Eventually, as we begin to live this real, alive relationship with our own Soul, we find a way to speak.

Begin to…

1. Trust in yourself that you do have a mother tongue – a mother tongue that is your native tongue.

2. Know that no matter what, there is a place inside of you that holds what it is you long to speak.

3. Find a place, perhaps to yourself first in a journal, into a recorder, even in meditation, where you can ‘speak’ these words.

4. Begin to get a feel for what it feels like to speak in your own mother tongue. What is the experience of it? Does it speak in words, movement, grunts, silence, paint, images, symbols, touch, or sparkle in your eyes?

5. Listen to your body. Feel what it is saying. Listen to your longing.

6. Notice how much judgment you have toward your own mother tongue and the words inside of you. Is this the judgment you fear you will receive from others? Work with these parts of you that are judging you.

7. Find people to whom you can say what you long to say. Find people who will listen without judgment, people you trust, people who honor your expression.

8. Trust that those men and women whom you fear speaking your Mother Tongue to the most are actually hungering to hear it, to feel it, and to know it themselves. Trust that what you must speak is exactly what the world needs.

9. Check to see if it feels right, and if so, find a way to speak the words you know in a way that others can hear, without losing the heart and soul woven through them.

10. Know that sometimes we never get to the feeling that people will understand. And, we have to speak anyway.Â Sometimes, people won’t be open to hearing what you have to say. And you say it anyway.

Offer Yourself Dignity

Ultimately, is it you who must learn to listen to you, to listen with respect and dignity rather than denigration. We want others to listen to us and to understand us. The first step is to learn to honor your own Mother Tongue and what it wants to say. If we are afraid of it, others will be, too.

Can we honor it within ourselves, and honor it within other women, too?

Maybe we have to leave the boardroom and the cubicle, the florescent lights and the plastic ‘containers’, to rekindle our relationship with the big mother, Mother Earth. Maybe our Mother Tongue is spoken through her. Maybe she is always whispering in our ear, imploring us to sing our own song, asking us to speak from the belly.

Maybe then we can come back into the parched places of our culture, these boardrooms and cubicles, and perhaps even the bedroom, with the instincts and language we’ve rediscovered.

Maybe then our world will be filled with the language of the Mother, the instincts and senses, the fierce beauty of the heart – the Mother Tongue.

Posts in the series are:

Mother Tongue Part 1: Has Your Mother Tongue Been Lost in Translation?

Mother Tongue, Part 2: Speaking Without Translating

Mother Tongue, Part 3: Calling You Home in a Language Long Forgotten

Mother Tongue, Part 4: She Doesn’t Pay Lip Service

Mother Tongue, Part 5: Eyes and Instincts, Knowing and Soul

May 17, 2014May 24, 2014

Mother Tongue, Part 4: She Doesn’t Pay Lip Service

This is part four of a five-part series on rediscovering, and speaking in, our mother tongue.

How many languages do we ‘speak’ as women?

What streams of wisdom do we have access to?

What is our true mother tongue?

She sits looking Into the ancient pool of Wisdom that is Woman.

The way is dark Yet the light is bright.

Something calls to her. She knows she must Turn within To look,Â listen, andÂ sense To remember.

She can sense a language With her whole body That only her soul can speak And only her heart can feel.

A Different Kind of Language

My friend shared this after reading the series so far,

“I think you are on to something here – the mother tongue isn’t a language with different words – it’s a different kind of language.”Â

According to our culture, language is primarily speech. The wordÂ languageÂ itself comes from the Latinlingua, meaning “tongue.” Its original meaning is “that which is produced with the tongue.”Â ~ Mario Pei,Â What’s in a Word? But as Michael Frante sings to us in Speaking of Tongues, the tongue is for so much more than what we sometimes think:

“But a tongue is so much more than a vehicle for greed A tongue is for washing fur Or for licking wounds Or for welcoming newcomers into a room Or cleansing those fresh from the womb Without a tongue there would be no croons Swoons, Junes under the moon No bees pollinating no flowers in bloom No recitation of words at the foot of a tomb Or wills read aloud of the family heirlooms You probably couldn’t even blow up a balloon And that would be a shame Because to exhale’s the name of the game Exhale from the heart Not from the lungs Exhale from the heart Not from the tongue.”

His words bring us into the full richness of life. I sense he is speaking in his Mother Tongue.

The world is a rich, many-layered reality, that holds numinous wonders that could never be put into words. Never. No matter how hard we try, words cannot capture this essence of life. Between the words, Michael’s lyrics are filled with this fullness.

As we stay connected to our hearts, to our bodies, to the earth, to each other, to the children, and to all the furry and winged ones, we stay connected to life. It is here, sitting in the swirl of life that we realize we know what we know.

It is here, when we are connected deeply to life, that this knowing can be expressed through language.

Language is a way of communicating, and we have so many ways and layers with which to do this. Sometimes, our touch speaks volumes, our eyes pierce hearts, our radiance infuses wordless conversation.

When words come forth, so much else does, too. Our bodies ‘sing’ something into being, an accompaniment to the words, making them more full, more real, and more alive.

Mental chatter by itself can simply feel half-dead, only metallic; but words infused with life, with wonder, with the sacredness of this moment come alive. As we sink down into the raw stuff of life, we sink down into a soup concocted and infused with the rich flavor of everything.

One Woman

This being immersed in the raw stuff of life also opens us up to a collective wisdom that is here, always, waiting to be known and heard.Â Our matrilines – our female ancestors – weren’t so different than us. Just like us, like any human being, their souls needed to express, to speak, to touch and be touched. And, so many of them were silenced.

Just prior to beginning this series Â I shared a poem (in fact, that poem was the impetus for this series)Â that came up out of an underground stream ofÂ forsaken voices. That poem was poured into me when I drank from this stream. The poem tells us that there’s a deep well of wisdom voices waiting for us to listen.

Like a river

deep underground

pushed downÂ into the depths

where they canâ€™t be known

in the light of day

these forsaken voices

like clear-pooled water

collect together

woven in rivulets

meander through time

waiting for something

waiting for someone

waitingâ€¦

Clear-pooled water, collected together, woven in rivulets, meandering through time, waiting…waiting. I can feel these voices, unheard, collected, Â and ready now to speak. It’s not as if they need a mouthpiece. No, that is not it. It feels as if the silencing of women has created a fog of forgetting. It has disconnected us from each other, from the single thread that weaves all women together, since the beginning. In attempting to put words to this, I find it hard to capture the depth of feeling and image I see, so I tune into the Mother Tongue. The thread is here. It has always been here, this thread that weaves Woman together. It is here, in our remembering, our tuning to listen, our seeing with open hearts that are no longer willing to shut out our mothers, sisters, and daughters – the whole of our ancient lineage of women Â – Â that we bring this thread back to vibrant health.

Every woman.

All colors, races, nations, clans, classes, religions.

All of time.

One Woman.

Infinite Facets.

The wisdom of the ages is here, within, and we can reconnect with it. This sacred creativity weaves its way through Woman in this weaving of rivulets, a fluid depth of creative wisdom.

I am the river

my sisters and I pool together

our collective voices now ready

to irrigate our parched world

with deep blue love from

aquifers too-long guarded

underground.

–

It is time to speak of

moisture

cool waters of knowing

deep rivulets of wisdom

flesh plump with blood.

This is the Mother Tongue.Â She ‘washes fur’ and ‘cleanses those fresh from the womb’. She is the Mother and she speaks through all of us, and as we women come home to our native Mother Tongue, the very first language we knew, we will give voice to something that feeds, welcomes, nourishes, cleanses, pollinates, and ‘exhales from the heart’. We will offer to the world what it is truly hungry for.Â This language is outside of the culture. She holds the culture in love, yet She doesn’t pay lip service to a world that has silenced this wisdom.Â She brings moisture to a parched world, fire to a world too complacent, air to oxygen-starved cells, and sustenance to a world hungry to live with touch rather than ‘stuff’.

In the final post of the series, part five, we’ll explore how to discover and speak in your Mother Tongue. Posts in the series are:

Mother Tongue Part 1: Has Your Mother Tongue Been Lost in Translation?

Mother Tongue, Part 2: Speaking Without Translating

Mother Tongue, Part 3: Calling You Home in a Language Long Forgotten

Mother Tongue, Part 4: She Doesn’t Pay Lip Service

Mother Tongue, Part 5: Eyes and Instincts, Knowing and Soul We will discover much together. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

May 14, 2014May 24, 2014

Mother Tongue, Part 3: Calling You Home in a Language Long Forgotten

This is the part 3 of a five-part series on rediscovering, and speaking in, our mother tongue.

How many languages do we ‘speak’ as women?

What streams of wisdom do we have access to?

What is our true mother tongue?

Finding the Mother Tongue

Our mother tongue is a Â native tongue we rarely hear women use because it lies underground, under the cultural language we’ve been taught to listen to and trust.

To find it, we must come home – to the soul, the body, and the earth. This is where we find our mother tongue – where we feel our instincts, where we play and know joy, where we sit with heart break, or hearts full of life; with friends, close to the earth, laughing, playing, finding the wildish places within. Even dressed in the cultural garb, we can still go ‘outside’ the norm, find some green grass, lie down, listen to the earth and to our own heartbeat, and begin to listen to the mother tongue – the language of soul.

In this series, I am not attempting to tell you what your mother tongue is. (You must find that for yourself, and in the next and last posts I’ll explore ways to do that.) Rather, I am simply sharing what I have noticed and discovered by listening to women speak, by paying attention to my own experience, and by listening deeply to the words that bubble up through dreams, meditations, deep writing, and asking questions.

This is all in service to discovering, and uncovering, the creativity and wisdom our world does not have access to because women translate in places and ways they may not realize, and because many places, and people (men and women both) in our world value a masculinized expression over the expression of the feminine voice and language.

This does not mean men do not translate or feel their voices stifled. Nor does it mean men don’t have a mother tongue. This is about uncovering the latent mother tongue in women because women have been silenced, and are still silenced in so many places around the world.

The wisdom and creativity of women is vital in the recovery of the feminine principal. We must step outside of the current masculinized models to discover what our souls long to live through these female bodies.

Reconnecting with Soul

There are times when we feel we must translate for our words and contribution to be understood, valued, and accepted. This can be critical to how we are received in the workplace when our livelihood depends upon it. It can also be seen to be critical for our personal relationships when we are trying hard to make a relationship work. I understand this. I have so much compassion for this.Â

Some of us, myself included, have had the luxury to remove ourselves, in some ways, from the ever present stress of the way this culture keeps pulling us to be what it tells us we must be. Sometimes, we have to step away, out of the culture, in order to come to remember that we have a soul, and that if we want to live from soul, we must learn to follow its voice. Many of us are feeling called to do this in some way.

Even physically removed in many ways, though, I have still had a hard time listening more deeply to what this mother tongue is saying. I do know it comes out of my body, by way of my flesh and blood, hair and bones. I do know that when I listen inside myself, and listen in a way that really wants to hear, I begin to speak in this tongue – even if simply to myself. And…

Speaking to self in the mother tongue begins to replenish our own well of dignity.

We are wired to long for connection, to be heard and seen, to be understood. To be seen for who we truly are is food to the soul. It would make sense, then, that we would try to find the way to ensure these would happen – to be understood, to be valued, to be heard and seen.

But if we translate, and lose truth and self in the translation, we aren’t truly being heard or understood, because we aren’t truly being ourselves.

Our own conditioning keeps us from trusting the words that wait – on the tongue, in the throat, in the deep recesses of our heart, in the belly? Our fear keeps our true words silent even from ourselves.

Important questions to ask:

Am I lost in translation?

Is the vibrancy and truth of what I am trying to express lost by changing what I say and how I say it?

Does this matter to me?

It boils down to trust – a trust in the validity, the wisdom, and the value of our own soul’s expression.

Beginning to Write

I began to feel this deep need to write, not too long after leaving Stanford. And when I say write, I mean ‘really write’…from deep inside me, from a voice that had been so long forsaken – perhaps since early childhood, and maybe even before this lifetime.

At first, all that came out was the kind of writing that performs well in academia. I tended to always feel the need to substantiate what I was saying with ‘proof’ of some sort, whether it be a quote form someone else, or a valid article or book. I would feel it necessary to try to explain myself, to get the reader to ‘understand’ what I was saying. And, if my writing got a little too ‘carefree’, I would begin to feel as if it wasn’t weighty enough. Of course, I didn’t see these things then…but I do see them now, for sure.

Sometimes, it takes hindsight to see how far we’ve come, or how much we’ve begun to relax into our own knowingness.

Believe me – I am grateful that I can write well under those circumstances. Knowing how to write in that way has served me well; but, it’s not the whole picture. We are many things, we human beings, and for some of us that includes being students. But we are also much, much more.

As I dove into this new world of writing, something that surprised me was the poetry that would seemingly pop out of thin air. I’d never written poetry, nor had I ever even remotely enjoyed reading it. In full disclosure, I hadn’t really become acquainted with Mary Oliver yet, nor had I read David Whyte. And, I hadn’t known Rumi for long. I did know Hafiz.

Maybe opening the poetry door, opened me to my mother tongue. I do know that Soul speaks in symbols.

Mother Tongue as Guide, or Cicerone…

A Cicerone is a guideÂ who gives information about antiquities and places of interest… and this seems so fitting. In writing, I discovered that what was being written was my own guidebook.

A little way into my deeper writing journey, this poem popped out. It just came out, and after it did, I went into the bathroom and threw up. I didn’t understand that I didn’t have to be sick for my body to expel things that were making it a different kind of sick. Eventually, I came to see that this act of writing was liberating something from my body that had been stuck in there for a long, long time.

This poem, in particular, turned out to be a vivid guide for reconnecting with my soul.

ripe with love

You see me here, strong and soft, eager and afraid,
my heart racing with desire
to be seen and heard,
to be held and to hold.

I am here,
emerging
from this bondage placed on me long ago,
from this cage of sin, fault, and fear.

I found the key
to my release when
I saw myself
in the reflection of your rejection.

My open heart was
both weakness and threat, lover and enemy.
You saw me seeing you
and you shut the door on my escape.

But freedom is funny,
it was mine to find all along.
Redemption came
when I filled my emptiness, with the fullness of me.

The dive was deep, the way was dark.
On the surface I had only seen,
how I never quite matched up
with everything I was expected to be.

But as I dove deeper into the depths of my being,
A glorious Light began to emerge.
It came from a time long ago,
It called me home in a language I had long forgotten.

There, deep inside me, I found the seed
Planted long ago, at the beginning of time.
My deepest Self, my truest Truth
My inner being in perpetual Spring.

I am ripe with love,
Ripe with the nectar of passionate presence
I am here to hold you,
within the folds of my velvet petals.

Fall down, deep down, into the depths of my being.
For I blossom in time to break your fall
As you land with a thundering whisper,
â€œCatch me, please catch me.â€

Open yourself to the center of me.
Drink deeply the love that has been waiting for you,
waiting with timeless patience,
knowing what has always been, will be again.

Let me lay side-by-side with you.
Let me feel again how perfect the fit is,
if we only allow ourselves to relax
into the shape we already are.

Remember the rightness of this fit.
Donâ€™t fight what you know to be true.
I can love side by side again,
Knowing the love comes through me to you.

You see me here,
soft and strong, knowing and sure.
My heart is filled with the truest Truth and the brightest Light
See your Self reflected in my love.

~ Julie Daley

Neither Forgotten nor Forsaken

This poem was a forecast of what was to come in my journey. I couldn’t know that at the time, but the words had a profound impact on me. They were so deeply alive as they came through and my body responded to them so clearly and unequivocally.

My soul was telling me the way through would be deep and dark…

The dive was deep, the way was dark.
On the surface I had only seen,
how I never quite matched up
with everything I was expected to be.

My soul was telling me there was a language to remember…

But as I dove deeper into the depths of my being,
A glorious Light began to emerge.
It came from a time long ago,
It called me home in a language I had long forgotten.

The beautiful thing is, this long forgotten language had not forgotten, nor had it forsaken, me.

And, it has not forgotten, nor has it forsaken, you.

This is part 3 in a five-part series. You’ll find the other parts here:

Mother Tongue Part 1: Has Your Mother Tongue Been Lost in Translation?

Mother Tongue, Part 2: Speaking Without Translating

Mother Tongue, Part 3: Calling You Home in a Language Long Forgotten

Mother Tongue, Part 4: She Doesn’t Pay Lip Service

Mother Tongue, Part 5: Eyes and Instincts, Knowing and Soul

We will discover much together. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

May 10, 2014May 24, 2014

Mother Tongue, Part 2: Speaking Without Translating

Â Lucy Burns,Â AmericanÂ suffragistÂ and women’s rights advocate.

This is part 2 of a five-part series on rediscovering, and speaking in, our mother tongue.

In part 1, Has Your Mother Tongue Been Lost in Translation?, I wrote about how women often translate, or code-switch, from our native way of saying things into a language that the masculinized culture will hear and accept so that we willÂ be ‘taken seriously’, or to be not too ‘threatening’, which ultimately means ‘be accepted’.

In this series, Mother Tongue, I am specifically speaking to women, specifically asking the question:

What wisdom and creativity are we losing because womenâ€™s ways of speaking, a feminized expression, is seen as inferior to masculinized expression?

I make this distinction between the difference of female and male because we are different. Yes, men and women both have masculine and feminine traits and energies. That is so. And, we canâ€™t express our creativity without it coming directly through the body, a gendered body. This directly impacts our creativity, our leadership, and our wisdom. To deny this, is to once again attempt to deny the validity and value of feminized expression.

Why do we translate?

If I reflect on my own experience over the many decades of my life, I can see where Iâ€™ve consciously chosen, many times, to choose my words carefully, to leave certain words out and to replace them with words that would be less challenging and provocative to those I knew would hear them. Itâ€™s startling, in looking back, to see how quickly I could size up a situation and then decide how best to â€˜navigateâ€™ that situation.

Iâ€™ve translated for many reasons. Sometimes, it was merely to figure out how to best communicate to the people I was conversing with. If I wanted them to understand, I could change the words, tone, and content in order to help achieve one-half of that understanding â€“ the other half being their responsibility. I have known for a long time that I canâ€™t make someone understand me, nor can I make anyone even really hear me. But, I can be proactive in helping to make the conversation be more productive for both of us.

Other times, Iâ€™ve translated because I feared that what I would say would be provocative, would cause me to feel scorned and/or shamed. Sometimes, though, when Iâ€™ve been just plain excited to share something, I havenâ€™t been â€˜carefulâ€™. Instead, Iâ€™ve just expressed myself without switching certain words and stories for other ones that would be more digestible â€“ or at least what I thought would be more digestible.

As women, our tendency to translate begins pretty early in. We translate, or code-switch, much earlier than when we first enter a masculine-centric world of business, though. We begin when we enter the masculine-centric world of education. And even before that, many times it begins when we become aware of language within what can be a masculine-centric culture of the nuclear family.

One story

One particular story stands out for me, and it stands out because of the shame I felt when I did not translate.

I attended Stanford University as a non-traditional undergraduate, transferring from a community college as a junior at the age of 42. While I was there, I decided to write an undergraduate honorâ€™s thesis. I had a hard time deciding on the topic. The question swirled around me for months, because I was contemplating a very unusual topic, something that seemed to me to be very unorthodox. I didnâ€™t know if I could find the words to speak about, and write about, what I was seeing, so I was nervous to make this choice.

Finally, the words came in a true â€˜AHAâ€™ moment – Spirituality and the Internet. I felt so much excitement as I thought about designing and writing the thesis, yet I was also nervous about bringing my spiritual side into my studies. I feared being ridiculed for having this â€˜crazyâ€™ topic (yes, my inner judge was working overtime). Keep in mind this was in 2000. The web hadnâ€™t yet been more widely used for very long at this point. Despite my fears, my advisors knew me well, and all four of them responded with nothing but encouragement. With this encouragement, my confidence grew a bit.

Near the end of the quarter, those of us who had honor theses were asked to share our topics at a celebration dinner where our advisors were also in attendance. I was nervous to speak because I anticipated the other professors might not receive such a â€˜differentâ€™ topic as kindly. Iâ€™d been at Stanford for three years, and Iâ€™d found both my age and my way-of-being â€˜non-traditionalâ€™. For a split second, before I stood up, I wondered how I should phrase what I was going to say. I wondered if I should use the words Spirituality and the Internet. I wondered if I should try to coat them with something less â€˜woo-wooâ€™. I feared how I would be received. As I rose to speak, I could feel this inner voice saying to me, just speak the truth because you know this is a really incredible thing you are doing. So I did. I spoke the truth. I said,

â€œMy topic is on Spirituality and the Internet. I am creating a spiritual experience online, and then testing users to see how they experience the space.â€

And whatever other words I decided to share quickly became lost in the bodily sensations of shame as I began to hear laughter and snickering, and saw odd looks on the older, educated, mostly-male faces. As I finished, one professor in particular said,

â€œWhat are you going to do? Play mood music and have virtual incense?â€

Ashamed of my own creativity and wisdom

His words brought more snickering. And with that, I could feel my face turn bright red and I sat down. Believe me, Iâ€™d had to face some pretty awkward moments as a woman undergrad twice the â€˜normalâ€™ age. But this moment was hard. I felt so much shame for something that was actually a really brilliant, and forward-thinking idea, based on my work in the computer science human-computer interaction courses Iâ€™d taken. From that point on, while I finished the topic, I chose my words very carefully, and I carried a kind of shame about what I was doing.

I obviously didnâ€™t have much confidence in myself, and at this point was still allowing othersâ€™ ideas of me influence me way too much. Perhaps this might not have bothered many others, but it shut me down. I realize I shut me down. I allowed othersâ€™ words to shut me down. Some might say they were only teasing, that their words showed their own discomfort, or that a few words shouldnâ€™t sting so much. That isnâ€™t the point. The point is what I did with my wonderful idea. In that moment, I felt the joy go out of it because I began to judge it even more harshly. Even as I created it, somewhere inside the good â€˜translatorâ€™ reigned it in.

Iâ€™m sharing this long story because it gets to the heart of what I am writing about, and I am writing about it because I have experienced it so often in my many years on this planet. Iâ€™ve experienced shame and humiliation because how I see the world and how I speak about what I see is not considered to be sentimental, too deep, not practical enough, too spiritual.

Ultimately it was me, and is me, shaming me.Â AND…I survived. Feeling these feelings did not kill me. Others face far worse in this world.Â

This fear of judgment can cause us to go silent; to keep our amazing creativity and ideas to ourselves. Whether it was â€˜kindâ€™ or not, it really didnâ€™t have to impact me, nor silence me, if I was confident in my own language, my mother tongue as a woman.

This really was about my mother tongue.

This topic, Spirituality and the Internet, came through me. It was my creation. It was coming through this soul, with this internal language, and this wisdom. It wasnâ€™t that my words were unrecognizable. It was that they were foreign to these men in the format I was sharing them. But the nature of this thesis and work was very much coming out of my own mother tongue as a woman, a language that speaks of connection, of wholeness, of relationship, and of healing. It was coming out of my own experience with the divine and knowing that on some level the Internet is a source of light that can bring us together and can heal us as a species.

But these ideas are very feminine in nature. They are about healing and love, about a God that isnâ€™t masculine, nor sits on high, but a God that is Oneness, that is both masculine and feminine in nature, a divinity that isnâ€™t about religion at all, but about life. And these ideas are threatening to many.

My story is just ONE story. I know you must have many stories. How is your creativity and wisdom is being lost every day because you shy away from sharing what your soul must share?

Gender Bi-lingualÂ

Soraya Chemali, in her post, ’10 Ways Society Can Close the Confidence Gap’, shares ways we can begin to help close the confidence gap for women, one of which is to:

â€œStop promoting the idea that masculinized expression is superior and that women have to emulate it to be successful.Â The expectation that women be gender bi-lingual, or code switch, is a function of being part of aÂ muted group. The kind of confidence that many people advocate just means a woman has to work very hard to overcome sexist genderÂ incongruitiesÂ to succeed.

Women learned to be gender bi-lingual in order to be successful.Â If we are gender bi-lingual, we have learned to be because we, at some point, came to the realization that our native language was not the language to speak if we wanted to succeed in the world. We learned this, and then we learned to speak the male language. We learned how to translate, and then at some point we forgot our own mother tongue, at least on the surface of things.

It has been my experience, in teaching about creativity and leadership, thatÂ most men do not even realize that women translate. It would help if they did, and yet this is not about them giving us permission to not translate. It is about bringing forth our own language, our own mother tongue, in a way that honors and values it.

Valuing our expression – our Mother Tongue

Why would non-masculinized expression be any less valuable or honorable? Only because someone, somewhere decided it was so…and we’ve adopted that belief.

If weâ€™ve been educated and conditioned in a masculine-centric world, then what is our mother tongue as women?Â What Iâ€™ve come to discover is that it lies outside of this masculine-centric conditioning â€“ and because it does, it holds a source of wisdom, creativity, and power that could bring about a radical shift in our culture.Â

Perhaps this is why the Dalai Lama said that Western women would save the world – because there is a deep, untapped well of creativity and wisdom waiting to be expressed through women.

In part three, we’ll explore what flows through women – this mother tongue. You can read part one, here.

I look forward to having you join me for the series as it unfolds. Other posts in the series are:

Mother Tongue Part 1: Has Your Mother Tongue Been Lost in Translation?

Mother Tongue, Part 2: Speaking Without Translating

Mother Tongue, Part 3: Calling You Home in a Language Long Forgotten

Mother Tongue, Part 4: She Doesn’t Pay Lip Service

Mother Tongue, Part 5: Eyes and Instincts, Knowing and Soul

We will discover much together. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

April 24, 2014

Forsaken Voices

Audio version is below.

Forsaken Voices

Like a river

deep underground

pushed downÂ into the depths

where they can’t be known

in the light of day

these forsaken voices

like clear-pooled water

collect together

woven in rivulets

meander through time

waiting for something

waiting for someone

waiting…

How rich is this water

generations of heartache

lineage of wisdom

matrilines of power.

I am the river,

now,

in this time

there is no other outlet

no other mouth

no other gateway

for these forsaken voices.

Generations of damming

centuries of cast-down eyes

ears grown cold

mouths sewn shut

and repeated lies told

the pressure pushes back against

walls too tired to hold.

When I am still, quiet, and alone

these forsaken voices

stir the marrow of my bones.

Deeper than the water

runs the grief untold

no one soul can tolerate

the pain of women who’ve come before

silenced

shamed

muzzled

maimed

and told to suffer it alone.

My mother, her mother, her mother, and her’s before

still woven like a river

gather underground

pool together in wisdom circles

where seeds of light collect

knowing spring

one day will come.

I lie in bed

signs of pleurisy all around

water pooling, collecting

in my lungs only to be known

when the grief takes hold

seeds deeply rooted in lungs

that reach back to

generations untold.

These forsaken voices

buried deep underground

can only breathe through

flesh and blood daughters

who now live in their lungs

breathing light into cells

waking oxygen

where none has been known.

I am the river

my sisters and I pool together

our collective voices now ready

to irrigate our parched world

with deep blue love from

aquifers too-long guarded

underground.

It is time to speak of

moisture

cool waters of knowing

deep rivulets of wisdom

flesh plump with blood.

There can never be wholeness when voices are silenced.

There can never be peace without dignity for all.

Image is ‘Donau-Seitenarm’Â byÂ Konstantinos Dafalias,Â Creative Commons 2.0

December 4, 2013December 4, 2013

What if Eve was simply letting the soft animal of her body love what it loved?

A while ago, I wrote about sin in The Courage to Sin. That writing was long and laborious. I felt as though I was giving birth to a 100 pound yam.

It’s not the most comfortable topic for me. All of my writing boogie monsters come out when I even get close to having a thought to blog about it. There are a lot of people invested in maintaining the idea of ‘sin’ as a way to keep us on our best behavior. But boogie monsters or not, the shame is here and I know I have to write about it.

This is a picture of Jody – a beautiful big horse whose gift it is to help heal. Jody taught me something profoundly beautifulÂ about the sacredness of our animal bodies.

I’m coming back again to a big piece of shame that’s been stuck in my body for way too long.Â This is shame that stems from projected sinfulness, meaning sinfulness that others believe is true about women and the world. It’s shame that has to do with sexuality and sensuality, with the power of women, and with women’s joy and passion.

This shame is dark and sticky. It feels as if it resides in my chest, covering over my heart, and even making its way down into my solar plexus and belly.

The shame keeps things pretty darn stuck. It causes me to think twice about using my voice, about writing what I feel called to write. It leads me to be really cautious and careful, to stay away from taking risks.

This shame borne out of projected sinfulness is a ploy used to keep women in check – to keep us small, silent, and dutiful.

It’s not like this is the first time I’ve met it face-to-face. But, this time is different. I realize that in the past, there were many ‘reasons’ to listen to it…but upon closer listening I’ve found all of those reasons aren’t reasonable. They are about as reasonable as the very idea that’s been passed around that women, like Eve, are sinful.

The more aware I become of the shame that is stuck in my body, the more clear I am that a) it is not mine, and b) I don’t want to carry it around any longer for those who decided long ago that I should.

I mean, why would I? Why would I go along with such a cockamamie story that tells me I should feel shame about who and what I am because I am a woman?

In the past, I’ve circled around the shame, mucking up in the shame, trying to figure out where it came from, what it meant, and what I had to do to get rid of it. That worked to a point, but now I see it’s more helpful to back up and look at the whole picture. This isn’t remorse or guilt or something I am feeling because I did something to hurt another. No, this is cultural, religious, systemic and toxic shame that comes from this fishbowl I live in.

Well, in the story that holds Eve was bad, the same story that constantly tells us women we should feel shame for what we are, women are seen as unworthy of love and belonging.

The question is…to what world do we want to belong? Do we want to belong in a story that holds that women are sinful? Or would we rather belong in a story that holds that all of life is sacred and holy?

Mary Oliver wrote:

“You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your bodyÂ love what it loves.”

What if Eve was only letting the soft animal of her body love what it loved?
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I’ve decided that’s how I want to live my life. Shame be damned. I am a soft animal and I know what I love.

September 12, 2013September 12, 2013

Money: A Love Story

Money: A Love Story. A brand new book by Kate Northrup.

I’m happy to offer this review of Kate’s book, something I rarely say yes to.Â It’s not what my blog is about…for the most part. But when I was asked to review it, something inside me tugged at me telling me there was something deeper here for not only me personally, but for you, the beautiful women and men who want to read what I share here. So, I said, Yes.

Money was one of the most painful areas of my life growing up.

I still am working on healing the underlying issues around money. Money itself is just a placeholder for value…and what we learn when we are young around value, worth, and love, of ourselves, others, and things, gets projected onto those pieces of paper. Poor money. It’s really weighed down with so much stuff…Â confusion, pain, and shadow…all of the usual suspects.

I received the book about two weeks ago, and to be entirely honest, I have thoroughly, and thoughtfully, read the words and completed the exercises through page 60, and that’s out of around 200 pages.

Kate’s book has delightfully struck a deep chord within me.

I had hoped to have it read all the way through, and to have done all the exercises within these two weeks, but my relationship with money feels like the crazy tangle of freeway overpasses that guide drivers through the maze that is Los Angeles’ freeway system. And, as Kate states in her book, don’t bypass the exercises. In fact she notes that it might take a full year to really move through whatever the book surfaces.

So, I decided to share with you exactly why I am wiling to do that with her book.

Here’s the thing about Kate’s book, Money: A Love Story.

There is something in her book that speaks to me on a level other than words. I have a sense it is her transmission, those unseen but deeply felt qualities you experience when you read another’s words or listen to them voiced.

The book is light. Her tone is welcoming. As I experience it, there’s a feeling of being loved and supported.

What comes through so clearly is Kate’s unwavering confidence in both her own wisdom and in the possibility that I can do this, that my relationship to money CAN be transformed into one of love.

Perhaps part of this is that I am ready to take this journey with money. Perhaps it is partly that I respond well to a container that deeply holds me in love and confidence. Perhaps there are many reasons I don’t even yet know for why I feel so positive and open about Kate’s book.

Money & Self-Worth

I know my money story is deeply tied up with my own sense of self-worth. I’ve come a long, long way in how I feel about myself, and I sense that’s why I am ready for this.

None of this work around money and self-worth is easy for any of us. But, together, in a container of love, we can heal.

A couple of things I’ve come away with already that have allowed me to access deeper feelings.

In the first handful of pages, Kate shares something she learned from Nicole Daedone. Kate suggests looking back at your whole story, your life story, finding a way to “fall in love with your story”. She goes on to write, “be grateful for it”. And, she mentions seeing yourself as the heroine of your story. When I read these words, I cried. It’s not like I’ve never heard these words before. But, for whatever reason, as I read them from Kate, I suddenly felt everything in me relax as I saw how truly accepting the entirety of my life brought an immediate sense of peace. And then, I could see how strong I’ve been in my life in my ability to respond to a great deal of adversity. Loving my story allowed me to not be at odds with it anymore. It allowed be to have nothing to fight against any more. Yes, so much of the work I’ve done prior to this has probably helped. Yet, I wonder if that’s so. Is there a place where we can simply just accept. After all, the reality is that our lives are what our lives have been. Without the extra stories we lay on it, our life story is our life story.

Through this doorway we can set it all down, so we can be here, now, in this moment, living and breathing in a place of wholeness rather than fracturedness around money, and worth, and love.

The other suggestion she offered was to see what our whole life story has taught us. I could see how incredibly resilient I am. I could see how strong and committed I am. And, I could see how incredibly I persevere in my life. I have these great skills, and sit’s because of the events of my life that I have learned to be so (and maybe I came in with just a tad bit of strength, too!).

I have done a lot of work in my life to heal, and I’ve healed so much within me. The work I do here at Unabashedly Female is a testimony to that. I know we women have learned to devalue ourselves and how the sacred feminine moves through us. The feminine has been denigrated. And, now, in some ways, the masculine is being denigrated as well.

All of us suffer because of this denigration of life, and our stories around money mirror this. If money is simply an exchange of value between people, how we value ourselves and others holds the key to a healthy loving relationship with money.

There are many, many messages, and messengers, out here reflecting back to us how it is time for the money story of humanity to be healed. Deep in our hearts, we are generous compassionate creatures. This I know.

August 26, 2013

Unveiling Untruths about being a Woman

Coming to live the truth of who you are is not about becoming more of something, nor is it about fixing anything. Coming to live the truth of who you are is about stripping away the untruths that you came to believe about yourself.

I’m creatingÂ a complimentary guide for womenÂ and in doing so I decided to reach out and ask friends, colleagues, and readers to share their answers to this question:

What were you told/taught about what it is/means to be a woman
that you’ve since discovered is not true…and why?

I want to know, because I am clear that even though somewhere we KNOW these things we were told are not true, in our everyday world we are faced with the constant messaging that they are…and so as one friend wrote:

“Thank you Julie for the thought provoking question – my comment here would be – most everything that was shared here resonates with me – these things are not true – the confusing part is – we – or society lives or pretends for the most part they are true and hence we get confronted with them on a daily basis – we suck it up and quietly endure – or NOT!!!! : )”

There’s been such a great response, and women have replied that they are really appreciating reading the responses, that I thought I would ask you, my loyal readers, the same question. You never know when something you share will spark an important insight for other women!

There are a couple of options for sharing your responses:

I’ve included the original questions and comments from both my Facebook page and my personal page here. You can respond directly in the threads if you’d like, and you can read the responses.
You can also reply here in the comments, sharing the untruths you’ve come to see.
And if you’d like your comment to remain private, you can send me an email at juliedaley (@) gmail (.) com or send me a private message on my Facebook page.

Please feel free to share the question with other women you know who have something important to add to the conversation.

I’ll be collating the responses into a downloadable complimentary PDF.

Post by Unabashedly Female with Julie Daley.

Post by Julie M Daley.

This one caused my heart to break open, because it is one that took me a long time to heal in my body:

[that women are] “NOT made in the image of the divine.”

As if this could ever have been thought, and taught, to be so!

I do know that it is helpful for all of us to become aware of this strong messaging we are bombarded with not only when we are young, but also on a daily basis.

While we may not resonate with all of the responses, reading them can help us have more compassion for ourselves, for other women, and for all people as we come to realize that both women and men (and of course young boys and girls) are being conditioned to believe so many untruths that keep us from living the truth that already resides in our own souls.

Thank you for sharing whatever you can! By naming what is untrue, we come that much closer to knowing and living the truth of our beings as women in this world. What we bring to the world, just as we are, is deeply needed in these times.