She wanted to share them, knowing they are intended for more ears and eyes and hearts than just hers; yet, she felt they would not be honored in her own circle.
I know, deep in my bones, how important it is for us to bring what is held deep inside out into the light. I know how important it is to tell each other our stories, and to listen to those stories with our hearts, because the heart does not judge. We need each other to simply hold space for the healing that yearns to happen within each of us.
::
Standing in front of the mirror, unadorned and unashamed, I remember in my breasts and my belly, in my shoulders and my thighs the freedom she must have felt in the garden. I know the joy of being surrounded by succulent fruit and the caress of perfumed air. I sense the wonder he felt, watching her, adoring her with his eyes, the pleasure he took – and gave – his hands full of her flesh while the divine moved in their midst.
But when I cover myself with my modern fig leaves, the shame pours in, filling my lungs and threatening to drown me.
How can it be that knowing gets twisted, turned back in on itself, split again and again until the truth no longer exists? Starting with that first juicy bite, she has been blamed. And her daughters have borne the burden with every child they carried. Pendulous breasts and widening hips no longer worshipped but feared. Feet that danced now bound. Mutilated, humiliated, beaten and burned – for what sins? The sin of being, of becoming?
Layers of shame interwoven with layers of soil, each aeon invents brutal new methods of pain. And now, we rape the earth and her daughters with equal impunity. Nothing sacred, nothing safe. No elders have to hold us down for mutilation to ensure desire, we submit to the knife so willingly, impossible images of desire carved out of our flesh. We consume but find no satisfaction. We look for the divine behind men enthroned on the altars of religion and government, but she’s not there, and she no longer moves in our midst.
The garden entrance stands guarded by flaming swords, no hope of return. But the images shimmer just on the horizon. Freedom still beckons, reflected in the morning light. I hear the whisper of the divine still moving.
Hope hangs around my neck – a string of perfect pearls.
Last night, I took a long, hot shower; a long, hot shower after a tepid dance.
The dance was fine; I just wasn’t feeling it, and after eleven years of dance, I know enough to dance “I’m just not feeling it.” Eventually, when you dance, “I’m just not feeling it.”, you come to feel whatever is really here. True on the dance floor, true in life.
Back to my long, hot shower. As the water pulsed against my tired skin, thoughts of apologies came to me: how I learned to apologize upfront, a long time ago; how I hear so many women apologizing for being; how apologies seem to be a part of our conditioning as women in the patriarchy.
In the shower, I saw something: I saw how we can all, all of us women, apologize upfront –
a one time apology.
an apology to end all apologies for simply being female.
an apology that clears the channel.
an apology that says, “Enough is enough.”
an apology that, when we say it, allows us to feel that there is nothing to be sorry for, nothing to apologize for, nothing to hand our power over for.
an apology, out loud, standing in front of the mirror, or with a sister, or with a man who truly has our back and desires for us to feel the depth of feminine beauty and wisdom, stated with full awareness, standing in our beautiful female bodies, feeling the words course through our hearts, touch our souls, conscious enough to feel the words…and either the truth of them or the lie in them.
Maybe by consciously apologizing for being us, for being women, for taking up space, for having a voice, for feeling outrage, for caring about life, for birthing babies, for having vaginas, for being sexual, sensual, creative beings…maybe we get, real-time, aloud, thatin simply being female there is nothing to apologize for.
All the times I have apologized in my life for nothing, for nothing grounded in the truth, I was doing so out of a conditioned habit to be a certain way to make others feel more comfortable…or make myself feel more comfortable in a situation where I couldn’t feel comfortable because I wasn’t being me…wasn’t being who I really am – Â a strong, powerful, creative, woman with deep feelings, a soulful sensuality, and a wise intellect (insert your own true, valuable offerings as a soul, in a female body, put on this earth to be a vibrantly creative contribution to the world!).
I’ve been apologizing for something ungrounded in truth, somewhere deep inside, and all along I haven’t felt one bit sorry for being female. Instead, while I apologized, way inside, some part of me fumed because apologizing for simply being is a horribly violent act to the soul.
Why should any human being apologize for simply being? Why should any human being feel shame for simply being?
Being is a gift. Being is a mystery. Being is creation simply being what it is. No one should EVER apologize for being. It is violent to the soul. And it causes a soul to get confused, angry and sad…
Sometimes, the apology comes out as “I’m sorry.” in response to nothing in particular. Sometimes, the apology comes out as hiding our femaleness by being more male, or hiding our emotions, or putting down our sisters…sometimes the words “I’m sorry.” aren’t there, and instead what is there are actions that try to hide what is true within us.
Turn to look at this mechanism of apology as a habit. Is there any truth to it? Do we really feel like we have to apologize for being women? For being who we are? Dig deep. Look closely. Are those apologies founded in anything other than fear, or desire to be connected, which is really fear in disguise?
If we drop the apologies that are untrue, perhaps we might see opportunities for true apologies for things we’ve said or done that we honestly know in our hearts we want forgiveness for.
Like in my dance, I’m just not feeling it – the ‘apologize for being a woman’ thing – anymore. I’m dancing that, moving that right on out, so I can feel what’s really here and live that – without apology, and with love.
This past Saturday, together with over sixty other dancers for the solstice. We danced and meditated, one following the other, throughout most of the day. Late in the afternoon, when we were dancing deep in the rhythm of chaos, the teacher played “The Age of Aquarius”, from the soundtrack of Hair. As soon as I heard the opening refrain and the words,
“When the Moon enters the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, the Peace will rule the planet and Love will steer the stars”,
I was transported back to my bedroom late in the ’60s. I could feel my young hippie self sitting on my bed, listening to this same song, looking out my window as I would do when I listened to music, and dreaming of what the day would be like when these words were true, when
“Harmony and understanding, Sympathy and trust abounding No more falsehoods or derisions Golden living dreams of visions Mystic crystal revelation And the mind’s true liberation
Aquarius, Aquarius.”
With this winter solstice, the old world ended and a new one is beginning to dawn. We’ve entered the age of aquarius. It doesn’t mean we are all automatically liberated, or that we no longer believe illusion or only have harmony and understanding.
With this new world, we now have the possibility for these things, for this type of world. Who knows how this will come about, but I sense it will if we are open to deep listening and clear seeing, if we are willing to be shown something new, and if we are willing to stop running from ourselves and each other.
Everywhere, there will be the possibility to heal old wounds, to forgive and to make things right.
Everywhere, we are seeing signs of a new way, a way of the feminine to care for our world.
We’ve been preoccupied with consuming, with entertaining ourselves, with numbing out and pretending that the world we’ve created will last forever, with never ending fiscal growth and unlimited natural resources. We’ve ignored the deeper cries for healing and the cries of the earth herself as she’s experienced the pain of being cut up, torn apart, and decimated.
The way there, the way to this new world, can only be found right here. A door has opened. Possibilities for healing will present themselves over and over until we walk into them with the willingness to not turn away from what is right here.
This story caught my heart. I didn’t know all the details or the full history, yet the story resonated deeply. It’s about Chief Spence, a leader of  Ontario’s remote Attawapiskat First Nation, and her hunger strike. In reading about the hunger strike, I discovered that Chief Spence, the leader of northern Ontario’s remote Attawapiskat First Nation, was
“thrust into the international spotlight when she declared a state of emergency over the horrific conditions on the James Bay coast. As the Red Cross touched down with emergency aid, Prime Minister Stephen Harper lashed out against the community, and accused Chief Spence of financial mismanagement. He tried to put an end to the story by deposing the Chief and Council.
It was a serious miscalculation. Chief Spence not only defied the government, but took them to Federal Court where she won a resounding victory. The mishandling of the situation was a black eye for both Minister John Duncan and the Harper government. A little bit of diplomacy and a little bit of compassion would have gone a long way to resolving the crisis before it became an international embarrassment.
As Chief Spence said at the time, “When I declared an emergency, it wasn’t my intention to cause embarrassment to Canada and I didn’t plan this type of exposure. I just wanted to help my community.”
In Huffington Post, Canada, Charlie Angus, MP – Timmins-James Bay, wrote:
“On the day she started her strike, Parliamentarians were focused on getting home for the holidays. It hardly seemed like an auspicious time to begin such a drastic action. She walked up to Parliament Hill with only a handful of supporters. There was no media present. I met her at the Eternal Flame and presented her with some presents of friendship — wool socks, a candle and a tartan blanket. I asked her to reconsider her decision. She wasn’t budging. This was a serious business and she told me she wasn’t backing down.”
Chief Spence is asking for respect, for conversation, for honoring.
This is an opportunity for healing, deep healing in the land of North America. I am wise enough to know that there are many layers to this story. This situation is not black and white. What it is is an opportunity to heal; an opportunity to listen, to discover what we don’t yet know or understand; an opportunity for no more falsehoods or derisions, for harmony and understanding, and for trust abounding.
Prime Minister Harper represents much of the world that just ended, and he represents an aspect of ourselves that has been strongly conditioned to see the world through the lens of power over, and of domination and control. He represents an aspect of ourselves that just wants someone to take care of us, to make it all go away so we don’t have to feel. He is not the bad guy, yet his actions, like all of us, have, and continue to, wreak havoc on the planet. If he doesn’t listen, just as if we don’t listen to the Chief Spence within us, we will lose this opportunity, and all the opportunity this represents, to heal ourselves, and to heal what continues to keep us separate and afraid of each other.
If we continue to see good vs. bad, black vs. white, right vs. wrong, we will miss these opportunities, with this just being one of many. They will present themselves not only within our own psyches, but out there all over our planet.
For me as an American, just taking the time to look into this story, to discover what is happening in Canada, a very close neighbor to the north, is opening me to a larger world than simply my own country. I was just a visitor to Victoria Island, the same place where Chief Spence is holding her hunger strike. It is beautiful land.
For some time, I’ve known in my heart that the egregious things that have been done over the centuries to native peoples, and to those who were brought here to this land in the slave trade, and to numerous others, by the culture that has dominated the lands of North America, must be healed. This wounding is in the land, it is in our psyches, and it is in our bodies. It is easy to say, “It’s not my fault. I didn’t do this.” Yet, our silence shuts the door to healing.
I’m sharing this with you, today, on Christmas Eve. For me, Christ is the light within us all. His way is the way of love in action. It is through the darkness, that we discover the light. It is by acknowledging the wound, that we find our way to healing. It is through the cracks that the light makes itself known.
Chief Spence is vowing “to die unless the government started showing more respect for aboriginal treaties.” She is asking for the government to sit down and talk. In the old world, this would be a sign of weakness on the part of the government. In this new age, if peace is to guide the planet, sitting down with each other is strength. “A little bit of diplomacy and a little bit of compassion goes a long way”, both within ourselves, and between each other.
This is not necessarily going to be easy, yet we can find our way. This I do know.
“During this season of light and magic, something truly magical is spreading. There are round dances by the dollar stores. There are drums drowning out muzak in shopping malls. There are eagle feathers upstaging the fake Santas. The people whose land our founders stole and whose culture they tried to stamp out are rising up, hungry for justice. Canada’s roots are showing. And these roots will make us all stand stronger.”
::
This is just one story. There are countless stories offering themselves to us for healing.
This is the new age, it is an invitation for us all to embody the feminine in real life, and this is the opportunity to discover a healthy masculine within each of us, a masculine that is protective and honoring rather than dominating and controlling.
Find the opportunities that are presenting themselves to you right now. Share stories. Inspire love in action. Bring awareness to places where there is darkness. Discover the strength inherent in simply sitting down together. It is here, out of this, that this new world can flourish.
I don’t want to make you understand how I see things.
I don’t want you to think I have something you don’t.
I don’t want to have to be something I am not in order for you to like me or believe in me.
I used to. When I am unconscious, I still do.
What I do want to be is in relationship with you, and to do that means we each must be who we really are.
How can relationship ever really happen when we are pretending?
Falsity breeds separation.
We’ve been well taught how to be something we are not. And, the invitation is always here to drop all of that and simply be what we are.
I used to think it would be lonely here in this solitude of self. I now know it is full and rich.
Rilke wrote this:
“And this more human love (which will fulfill itself with infinite consideration and gentleness, and kindness and clarity in binding and releasing) will resemble what we are now preparing painfully and with great struggle: the love that consists in this: that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other.”
May we be these ‘two solitudes who protect and border and greet each other’ – with ‘infinite gentleness and kindness’.
I am sharing something that I am excited about, and something vitally important to me, with someone I know.
He listens. Then, he says, “What you are saying is so abstract.†“What does this mean?†“What are the practical implications of this?†“How do we do this?â€
None of his questions are wrong. He is seeing what I am saying from a practical viewpoint, a viewpoint that is about putting things into action. Yet, alongside his questions comes a feeling of frustration within me. I know this feeling well. His words take me back decades, back to when I was very young…
I am excited and want to share what I’m excited about with my parents. I try to say it in words. I try to share what I see and feel, and the complete joy of it all. And when I do, I am met with a look of tightness and almost a kind of disapproval. I can see they want me to calm down. They want me to package all of this joy into words and sentences that ‘make sense’, ways that are logical.
Then I hear these words, “That’s not logical.†and my heart drops to the ground.
The effect of these words on this little psyche is profound: the little voice dries up, the throat quivers, and the tongue becomes tied in knots. I’ve shut myself up tight and there’s no getting me to say another word. I go silent. There is a giving up that happens, a giving up because it feels, emphasis on feels, impossible to take this young one’s heart and soul’s fire and put it into logical words that adult people will get.
It is amazing how we can be taken back to old times so quickly, how the stories stuck in our bodies are coded with the time and place where the story unfolded.
As I sit with his questions, an ages-old fear comes up that there is someone on the other side of what I am going to share and they do not get it. They want me to put what I am saying in terms they understand, terms that are about doing, about how, about it being practical. They want me to take this abstract and make it practical. It feels like I come up against this hard wall on the other side, a very literal, very rational mind that doesn’t get it.
It’s like there is this big beautiful fullness and I fear that I don’t know how to get people to understand. Just feeling this makes me go mute and want to turn away.
I see images and visions. I see them often. They are beautiful. Beautiful images, and deeply intense feelings fill my heart. And yet, this world seems to have this logical, rational mindset that wants me to fit all of ‘this’ into a ‘how to do it in 10 easy steps’ world. And then I see it…
Kapow.
Bammo.
Hell yes.
The rational mind cannot fathom the irrational. It cannot understand that which is beyond the scope of what cannot be explained with reason and logic. It is like trying to fit the vastness of the heart into the tight structure of the rational mind. It cannot be done. The mind tries to know in the only terms it can grasp. It does this all the time, especially with the vastness that is the divine.
And, I see my own internal struggle with this same translation process. The heart is vast. It sees and feels things that cannot be proven, and cannot be put into words without losing the qualities of what we experience. I see the relationship. I see the richness on one side, then the strict structure on the other – the desire to take something multi-layered and condense it down to one.
The feminine, or yin, is multi-layered. It is feeling and knowing. It is rich and mysterious, dark and watery. It is intuitive. The masculine, or yang, relative to yin is straight and clearly defined. It is angular. It is logical. It is linear.
These are actually distinctions to try to help the rational mind understand the relationship between yin and yang…because it’s always about relationship. We can’t know one without the other. Something is only mysterious in relation to something that is clearly known and defined.
As I write this, I can feel, literally feel, life pulsing through my cells, images and visions in my mind’s eye, and emotions fluttering through me. None of this can be put into words without losing richness, texture, and fullness.
Words themselves are definitive. They define.
As a young one, I learned to shut down the feminine mystery, the vast symbolic realm where so many layers exist that it can only be represented through images, poetry, and symbols. I shut my own voice down. I knew the spigot well, and when things got tough, when I felt that old familiar feeling that I must turn something so profoundly beautiful into something logical and practical, I felt this familiar frustration and shut the spigot off. I became quiet. I squelched my voice. And, I gave up trying to paint when it became clear from teachers that they wanted something representational. They wanted things to look like ‘real life’ – whatever that is.
What is so remarkable about this moment, though, is feeling the spigot in my throat, feeling the place where I shut down because I’m feeling a sense that it’s not in terms the man will understand. I haven’t felt this so clearly before. I feel frustration at having to translate to get him to understand what I am saying and fear he will not understand.
In going back to this early experience, I see something clearly. I see old patterns, old beliefs, old messages that tell me I must make things ‘make sense’, must take the vastness that is my heart, take the multi-layered awareness that is my soul, and pare it all down to logical steps.
The struggle I feel within myself is the same struggle I see in the outer world. This finding our way to balance, a balance that brings the masculine tendencies so woven into our cultural institutions together with the under-represented feminine nature I share above, isn’t easy. What we struggle with within our own psyches, are the same things we struggle with as a collective.
Then I realize that perhaps that is why I am feeling such an urge to reclaim the artist in me. Sometimes things must be created with something other than words, with media that lends itself to many layers, rich textures, feeling states and mystery. So many people I know are trying to reclaim the artist within.
I have a sense many of us are seeing things in symbols and images, visions of a new way of being in the world, and perhaps even visions of a new world.
A new way is coming into being. It is being born, and many of us can see images of this new way. Many of us can feel this new way. Many of us know something in our bones that is not at all, or at least not yet, linear or logical.
Birthing isn’t logical or reasonable, nor is it necessarily practical.
It is time to fully re-member the artist within, to share what we see and feel, in whatever way we can. Yes, others may question it, but I also know that we all long to know the mystery, we all long to feel the depth of our humanity, and on some level perhaps we don’t want ten steps to this, or five reasons why.
Perhaps we just create and speak what we know, regardless of whether anyone listens or understands. Perhaps creation simply wants to happen, perhaps it is simply trusting the vision and putting it into form, regardless of the reception it receives.
So many women are writing, writing, and writing. So many are painting and dancing. So many are expressing their voices in ways that aren’t even close to logical and practical.
New worlds come into being through creative acts. The tender shoots of the new world come up through dark rich soil that’s been tilled and fed. Creation rises up out of the void in the belly. Creation comes into form by way of a dark, moist birth canal. It comes in contractions – messy contractions.
It is good for me to remember this when my voice feels tight, when I shy away from speaking because I don’t quite know how it will come out. Something does know what is longing to be created and voiced.
Maybe we say to each other, “Show me what you see. I am listening.â€
This morning I’ve been writing since the early hours. Lately, over the past few weeks, I’ve been craving coffee, and giving into that craving more often than I’d like. This morning as I shifted to finished one project and got ready to move onto another, I had this very familiar urge to go out and grab a cup of coffee to bring back home.
I have to: I love coffee…especially Blue Bottle coffee served here in San Francisco. I love it, but my body does not. When I operate out of habit, I drink it. When I am conscious enough to consider what I am doing to my body, I don’t. I stop myself from doing this seemingly very average thing that so many people do because I know drinking coffee makes my body feel bad.
This isn’t to say that coffee is bad or good. There are a ton of studies that have been done on coffee – some say it is helpful, some say it is harmful. I know others who love coffee and their bodies have no issues with drinking it. I am not one of them. For whatever reason, my body doesn’t like it.
So, back to this morning, I didn’t step out for that cup. Instead, I made another cup of green tea. My body breathed a sigh of relief – a subtle sigh, for sometimes the body’s indicators are somewhat subtle. I have to be paying attention. And, I know I must pay attention to my body. In fact, just before moving onto that next project, I read this quote by Paul Hawken:
No matter what we do to nature—when we cease doing it, within a nanosecond, nature starts to regenerate. And WE are nature.
In reading these words, I realized this thing I go through, trying to become much more conscious about how I treat my body, what foods I put into it and the movement I make sure it enjoys, is no different than what I must do to become more conscious of how I mistreat the earth.
The same is true for the habits I have, and the corresponding choices I make, that contain actions that are ultimately harmful to the earth. Can I see where my actions are causing damage to the earth? Might there be things I do habitually, things I love and enjoy but also harm my body, others, and/or the earth, that I can untangle so that the harm to my body, and to the earth ends?
Habits sometimes come down to not wanting to feel, and sometimes it’s just about habitual stuff we do because we aren’t conscious. Can I learn to do without the plethora of choice I’ve become accustomed to? Yes, of course. Absolutely. I am not, nor have I ever been, entitled to have whatever I want. That’s a big one. Just because I ‘want’ it, does not mean it is best for the whole for me to take it…whether it’s the whole of my body or the whole of life. And, who is the ‘wanter’ anyway? It seems to me, the wanter wants to want more than it wants to get. I have to admit, sometimes just getting that cup of Blue Bottle is much better than drinking it.
For me though, the big reminder here comes from Hawkins’ wisdom that life regenerates and renews, and we are life. As soon as we stop the actions that cause damage, nature begins to renew itself and our bodies do the same. Our bodies are intricately connected to the earth. The earth feeds us, supports us, and provides for us. When we nourish our bodies, we nourish her; when we nourish her, we nourish ourselves.
Habit. Awareness. Choice. It’s in my hands. It’s in your hands. It’s in our hands.
This past weekend, I was very lucky. At this point in my life, I can see how blessed my life is. I have so much, not necessarily as material things, although I don’t lack there, but more importantly in opportunity. Over the past years since my late-husband’s death, my life has changed dramatically. His death, and some other life-changing experiences that I’ve written about before, catapulted me into a life of longing and searching for something I thought I needed, something I thought I did not have already. Sometimes, it takes searching out there to discover what you were searching for has been here all along.
This search has taken me to so many beautiful places and lands. It has allowed me to meet many wise people. I’ve been able to take in many words of wisdom, words that somewhere I already knew, but had no access to. We all have this within, yet sometimes we need guidance to find that which already resides in our own soul.
I share this sense of blessedness, because I know along with it is a responsibility to embrace what I’ve been given and offer it back to the world. Nothing is really ours. Everything is a gift, a gift to in turn be given again.
This past weekend, I once again found myself in a place where much wisdom was offered, much emotion was shared, and so much courage was modeled – Omega Institute’s Women and Power conference. Women such as Sister Joan Chittister, Sally Field, Eve Ensler, Isabelle Allende, Elizabeth Lesser, Jennifer Buffett, Majora Carter, Loung Ung, Pat Mitchell, Chung Hyun Kyung, and so many others, shared deep life experiences and the wisdom they’ve discovered from living them. There are so many things I soaked up over the weekend, so many AHAs, that it’s hard to resource it all into one post. But there are some moments that stood out for me.
Eve Ensler
Eve Ensler spoke of the multitude of atrocities perpetrated on women and children that she’s witnessed. In her words, “There is no word. I have not come close to finding the language to describe what I have seen.”Â
She also spoke of the Cassandra myth, and how it is a curse that keeps women silent because we are considered lunatics when we tell the truth. {I will write more about this later}. Eve went on to mention the ways we break spells and curses:
1. We have each others’ backs. We stand with each other. We speak out immediately if we see a woman being labeled in such a way for speaking truth.
2. We create communities of love where we can tell our stories and be held, cuddled and loved. She shared The City of Joy in The Congo as an example.
Eve also mentioned that a part of the curse was this… She was waiting to be honored, loved, valued and approved of by the Patriarchy…and then she would would win…and she then wondered, win what? This was an AHA moment for her, and she realized there was no winning, but more importantly this was preventing her from living as ‘her full crazy self’.
Elizabeth Lesser
Elizabeth Lesser, author of Broken Open, spoke of the one thing she’s found from sitting with so many wise, alive people who’ve come to teach at Omega. She shared that no one person has the answer, no one can handle idolization, and it is our shared core humanness that has sets us free. She also shared how destructive it is when we “indulge in the habit of comparing”, and that, “No one is living the life you think they are.” She mentioned that Eve Ensler told her, “Everyone is just making it up, including presidents of countries. Everywhere I go, its just people making things up. You can do it, too.”
One last thing Elizabeth Lesser shared is her experience that “when you fully occupy yourself, vast reserves rush in to fill the space that was filled with self-doubt.”
Sister Joan Chittister
Perhaps the most amazing talk for me was the conversation between Pat Mitchell and Sister Joan Chittister. Sister Joan had an amazing transmission, so much that I, and the two women I was sitting between, had tears streaming down our faces through most of what she said. At one point, the woman on my left and I just turned to each other simultaneously and hugged each other. There was so much truth in Sister Joan’s words, as well as passion and fire, that my soul and heart just opened right there.
Her call to us was a call to speak up, to make others feel uncomfortable every time we speak, and to not stop speaking out. She shared with us the falsities of our current day, offering that the culture is not the place to look for truth. Her words, “Religion tells us who we are, and the media tells us who we are supposed to become.”, served to let us know to stop believing these sources of so much false cultural conditioning that does not serve women or anyone.
Insightful comment posted on the sharing board.
My takeaways?
Power, the power spoken of at Omega is the power of life, the power to serve life, the vast life force that is within each of us. Our power as women is to serve life, to serve the life that permeates all of existence, and to know that all of existence is sacred.
Our power is not like that which has been wielded over others to dominate and control. Our true power, the power that flows through us when we are embodying the feminine principle is the power to serve, and it is inclusive, holding, and connecting, and it weaves life together in a supportive bond.
Over 500 women sat in that hall over the weekend, women who are all vibrantly wanting to be part of this healing wave that women must step up to offer to the world. We, you and me, are not alone, sister. We are not alone.
What do you trust in so deeply within yourself that allows you to step out and speak out?
For me, I trust in my own creativity, my own sacredness, my own ability to be with whatever arises because I know that what I am IS the ability to respond to life with love. And, now I know I am also part of a global sisterhood that is rising. We are rising.
Celebrate and radiate the feminine, without apology.
One of the messages I learned early on as a young girl was “Don’t be so full of yourself.”
I remember hearing these words. I think many parents in the 60’s valued modesty, yet this was a false modesty. Instead, what this message really taught me was to hide myself, to not trust myself, to tone myself down and my light.
The verbal message came from many people I knew, including my parents, yet it seemed to be communicated non-verbally in some very insidious ways by the both the men and women in my life. I’ve always wondered if this stemmed from wanting me to be polite, to be modest, to be something that wouldn’t cause jealously, but most importantly something that would keep me safe. I don’t really know all the underlying messages but I do know the effect on me, even to this day as a grown woman – that it is not okay to adorn myself with beauty and to be fully beautiful from the inside out, to glow, to radiate to be full of the life force that is constatnly wanting to move through me.
As I type this, I feel a sense of something akin to shame. After all, at my age I should be over this. Right? How could I, a mother and grandmother, still feel these feelings?
For one thing, we swim in a sea of these feelings, beliefs, and ‘rules’ that we aren’t supposed to be our full and radiant sensual creative selves. We live in this fishbowl of women’s sexuality as something that is here for the enjoyment of men, rather than a core aspect of our own sacred radiance.
Don’t call attention to yourself, and don’t dress in a way that will call attention to yourself. The underlying messages are also that I am not safe if I do dress in a way that is adorned, beautiful, sensual, alive…light-filled.
To celebrate this body is to celebrate life and the sacred.
To celebrate all that moves through me is to celebrate the sacred.
Why is it hard to…?
I’ve wondered why sometimes it is so hard for me to adorn myself with beautiful objects. It’s something to do with these messages…and they seem to be all tangled up…the messages that is.
The word adorn has a couple of meanings, and when I looked it up I was surprised to find the implication that to adorn something means ‘to enhance the appearance of something by adding something unessential’.
Enhancement of appearance isn’t what I am talking about. No, not at all. What I am talking about is celebration. Remembering beauty and its sacredness. Remembering the life force as something to honor.
One of my strongest memories of my time in India was seeing the women dressed in their saris and jewelry. They were completely adorned in brilliant color, sensuous fabrics, and all manner of jewelry. As they walked alongside the roads with baskets on their heads, they cut such a beautiful image on the landscape. As they rode on the back of bikes and motorcycles, their clothing draped then in beauty. They were covered, yes, and absolutely sensuous in the beauty of their form.
Just a few weekends ago, I bought a new pair of flip-flops. They are very plain and all black. Except for a big (albeit fake) diamondy kind of bling. They are fun! And when I wear them, I can feel just a squeak of something left over from my early conditioning. It’s as if there is still a ‘mismatch’ between the sparkle of that bling and a leftover part of me that feels anything but light-filled. I notice that this part is much smaller than it used to be, which is fabulous. And, noticing what is still remaining helps me to heal it.
I have no interest in wearing stuff to cover this radiance. Sometimes, I think we wear a bunch of shiny stuff to hide our feeling of ‘not-so-shiny’. Or sometimes we can pretend to be light-filled with lots of words and bravado. The place of stretch for me is to notice when I feel, even in the slightest, that I owe somebody something when I embody my full self, when I am ‘full of my self.’
Think about how we tell ourselves to breath deeply, taking in the Self that is Spirit, that is breath. Can we breath so deeply that every cell remembers what it is, remembers it’s sacred nature? We can only do this if we are willing to be full of our selves in the most basic sense of the words.
There’s a reclaiming happening within me of the fullness of myself as a soul and as a soul in a woman’s body. I feel a very real and palpable instinctive desire to adorn this female body with beauty and beautiful things.
Can we be full of the Self in celebration for what we really are – sacred, beautiful, creative, sensual, erotic in all the ways life truly is? There are many who want to shut this female power down, and they are trying to find very definite ways to control it. Yet, it continues to want to make itself known. Of course it does. Life is longing to be in balance, to honor itself in all forms. Can we serve life in this way, honoring and adorning the sacredness of the feminine as it moves through us, and as it is manifested in our world?
This image touches me deeply. Two women (one old and one young) are exchanging something beautiful…flower petals. To me, this symbolizes an offering of wisdom, an exchange of beauty, and most likely something more symbolic.
This image also shares something about passing down this wisdom from those of us who have lived long enough to realize life is too short to honor anything that does not feel right in the body, does not feel right and good and loving to the soul.
Can we help young women know what it is be full of themselves without apology, and with the direct knowledge they owe nothing to anyone?
This image moves me to offer my hand in forgiveness to you for all the ways I’ve helped keep the lies alive that continually tell us that our wholeness as women is something to keep in, to be ashamed of, to hide, to be jealous of…and ultimately to owe somebody something for. It is not. It does not belong to anyone, nor is it here solely for anyone else’s benefit or pleasure. It is the Divine’s gift to us to be alive in these bodies of sacred expression.
And, you?
Can you own your sexuality, your fullness, your beauty, your attractiveness and know that you do not owe anybody anything?
Can you celebrate all that it is to be woman?
Can you adorn yourself in whatever way truly allows you to celebrate this flesh, these bones, these cells?
For me, this is a practice – a practice of adornment and celebration.
When my heart first broke, it felt as if something reached into my chest and tore my heart apart. Then, when I realized my heart was not broken, but breaking-open, I could feel a bit of light peeking in. Just a bit. Slowly, very slowly, the light began to grow around and through the scarred tissue that had wrapped its way around my heart. And as the light grew, the scars softened and the tissue that is my heart began to return to a pinkness I once knew, but only vaguely remembered in the cells.
::
The Heart knows.
It remembers.
It longs to break open.
Grief knows this.
It is intelligent.
It will lead you home.
::
I don’t say this lightly, or flippantly. I know grief, well. I know joy, well. They are close cousins.
I’ve been thinking of genius and how we all have it and are it. So many of us never actualize it. And what is this ‘it’, this genius? We are all filled with Spirit, the same Spirit, the same breath. Yet, there is a uniqueness to each of us and that is our genius.
There are ways we can discover more about our genius, and sometimes simply noticing what we love and what is a natural talent are sign posts to that genius. I love taking pictures of flowers (in cased you hadn’t noticed). And friends have mentioned that my pictures seem to evoke something, a kind of beauty that they wouldn’t have seen themselves. Maybe then, genius is our unique window on life, the unique way we see the world through the heart and soul.
Love Reign O’er Me
You may know this rendition of the Who song, “Love Reign O’er Me”, by Bettye Lavette. I’d never heard it until Tuesday night. I had the sublime opportunity to dance to this song. The experience was utterly amazing. Something in the combination of the music, my dance and exactly how I was in that moment (not filled with happiness, but rather an intense anger) all came together in what felt like a pure, organic, and unique expression of my soul.
I was captivated by the beauty of what I experienced. It felt true and alive. The passion was intense, and felt like it was almost too much to take in, but when I was moving to it, the passion in my body totally took it all in and moved every inch of it in a sweaty, intense dance.
Just listen to Bettye’s pure genius.
Sometimes I wonder what this world would be like if we all were liberated into our full genius. Can you imagine?
Alexandra Nechita
Here’s another woman who is living her genius. She’s young, articulate and wise, and she’ll tell you exactly what is most toxic and what gets in the way.
So, what’s your genius?
Yes, you. Just like these two women, you have a genius that when unleashed will bring a sense of ease and lightness, and along with that the feeling of rightness…that you are in flow, and in alignment with your own soul’s seed.
I’m not sure what mine is, but it has something to do with the body, dance, love, sensuality, art, words and flowers filled with light. It has to do with creativity and love. And, it has to do with justice.
The bottom line is love…doing what you absolutely love, beyond a shadow of a doubt love… So, let Love Reign O’er You, let it mix with the marrow of your bones, let it pour out of your skin, let it penetrate every cell of your body. And, don’t worry what others think. Really. When you’re alive with Life, what others think doesn’t even seem to matter. You really can have that much joy. When the time comes for anger or sadness or grief, they will come…on their own. But then you know this. You’ve lived enough life to know that everything comes and everything goes.
Love Reign O’er Me, The Who
Only love
Can make it rain
The way the beach is kissed by the sea.
Only love
Can make it rain
Like the sweat of lovers’
Laying in the fields.
Only love
Can bring the rain
That makes you yearn to the sky.
Only love
Can bring the rain
That falls like tears from on high.
Love Reign O’er me.
On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool cool rain.
The nights are hot and black as ink
I can’t sleep and I lay and I think
Oh God, I need a drink of cool cool rain.
