Truth – unabashedly female

February 19, 2018

Writing Directly Out of the Vast, Deep Mystery

when you are struggling
inÂ your
writing (art).
it usually means
you
are hearing one thing.
but
writing (creating) another.
â€”Â honestÂ | risk

from salt, byÂ nayyirahÂ waheed

We all receive what wants to be created through us in different ways. As a writer and creative, I get images and a sense of what wants to be written/created. I can feel it, but it’s rarely clear. But even then,Â there’sÂ always enough to begin, enough to take that first step.

That’s really the most important piece. To take that first step. To begin.

But what happens along the way to cause the struggle?

I was talking to a friend today about writing. We were sharing with each other about our writing process and how hard it can be sometimes to put words to what we ‘hear’ or ‘sense’ wants to be written.

I usually get a sense of the writing that wants to come. Sometimes it comes in images, other times I ‘hear’ something.Â But to write and create, my mind has to communicate what I sense, see, and or hear. Something deeper than my rational mind, the unconscious, is showing me the writing in its own way, but my mind must take that and put it into words. My mind must communicate the creation into form.

Sometimes I’ve noticed that my mind has a hard time doing that because there’s too big a gap between what I sense and what my mind can translate into words. So my mind fills things in as best it can and what I end up with isn’t at all what I sensed or heard. I’ve lately found myself sitting here at my laptop, fingers poised to write, while my mind attempts to find the words. It’s such an interesting thing to witness in the moment becauseÂ I am aware of a felt sense of frustration within me – seeing/hearing what I’m trying to write and then trying to find the words and phrases that capture it.

Sometimes, too, the writing just flows. There is no gap. The mind is open and free enough that there is no separation in me, the one who is writing. There is only writing.

And then other times, I notice that my Voice of Judgment (VOJ) jumps in almost immediately, judging and criticizing what comes even before the mind gets it down on paper. It’s like an immediate judgment of what comes. It’s crazy how fast theÂ VOJ can grab a hold of the steering wheel and take you right off course.

But really what I want to do is communicate what I am hearing and sensing. That is all I really want to do. It’s easier for me through photography (the image above) and dance. I don’t edit. There’s no judgment. There’s only the expression. But writing has been harder for me to lose the VOJ, the editor that wants to edit before there are even words on the page.

Can you relate?

We want to get it right but so often we come up short. It’s the mind somehow thinking it has to ‘make it happen’, which is really way beyond its job description of simply communicating. It’s trying to play ‘Soul’ rather than letting Soul be Soul and being, doing what it was created to do.

I’ve found that writing regularly helps to shorten this gap. A regular writing practice helps the mind get used to the practice of writing what it receives.

And, what I’ve found always brings me back to writing more naturally and effortlessly is writing about what brings me joy, or what I love, or what I care deeply about. If I’m trying to write something because I think it is what others want to hear, I never do so with much ease. I struggle to get the words out and once I do the piece can feel stilted and tight. And after writing it, I do, too. Because I’ve left Soul by trying to make it happen.

But when I write something that brings me joy or pleasure, then the writing flows. The soul can be heard and felt. When this is true, Soul is so close. That’s also true about writing in my Writing Raw groups. I love diving into writing when I’m surrounded by that sisterhood. Just the energy alone of the circle is a big support. And in these circles, we write from deep within, from the texture and beauty of Soul. We write directly out of the deep and vast ocean of Mystery. But you don’t need to be in a circle. You can begin to deepen your own practice of entering into this deep and vast mysterious oceanÂ that is the source of all that is created.

…

We are so deeply interconnected through something much greater than any one of us. When you write what brings you joy or deeply moves you,Â and you faithfully express it as you hear it, youÂ move those who feel a similar way or need to hear it, or something else related. There is a connection. There is a correlation. We doÂ meet our audience through our words but not in the way we ‘think’ we are supposed to.

Something greater than any one of us connects us through the deep place of love within each of us. It is this that drives creative expression. It is this that we honor when we write what we hear. And our writing becomes so much easier through this honoring.

…

Thank you toÂ nayyirahÂ waheedÂ for her poem, available in her profound book of poetry, salt.Â And thank you toÂ TanyaÂ for reminding me of this poem.

March 20, 2017March 20, 2017

Limned: A Braided Essay For World Storytelling Day

Today, MarchÂ 20th, is World Storytelling Day.

And, I have a story to share with you. Many stories really, but first this one…

For years now…

I’ve been moving in spaces of the feminine, whether that be in energies of the feminine principle, the elements of the Earth, or spaces solely filled with women. My experiences in these have unveiled and reshaped who I know myself to be not just as a human being, but as a woman and who I am with women. This was my hope when I founded Unabashedly Female – to come to know the feminine as She moves through me, as She is in other women, as She is in men, and as She moves through the worlds.

For me, both storytellingÂ and writingÂ have been a part of this process. Two deeply creative acts. Through writing my stories and sharing them here, I’ve discovered deeper layers of the feminine. In writing the stories, I began to see things about myself, my life, and my relationship to the world, from a deeper, wider arc. By sharing them, I began to hear from you that these stories guided you to see things about the feminine, about yourself, and about who you are becoming. Sharing our stories does this. And writing from down in where we excavate the deeper truths does this.

All too often the Voice of Judgment (VOJ), another deep and powerful way of seeing the Inner Critic especially with regard to creativity, vehemently hates us sharing these deeper stories of truth that lay waiting inside of us for breath and life and ears to listen. These are the stories that truly unveil, the stories that cast light where there was shadow.

And so, of course, as Life would want…

I managed to find a way to begin to write these stories AND share them. Though in the beginning, it had to be with a very small group of women who are writers and with whom I felt comfortable enough to go there…to write these stories. Writing with these women – Ronna Detrick, Amy Palko, and- for over two years has been the fertile ground of my becoming, and fertile for each of them as well.

Today on World Storytelling Day…

Our group, which we have named Fierce For One Another, is sharing one of our many braided essays – Limned. We have many braided essays; enough to fill a beautiful woven book of feminine voice and experience. We did this through a process of discovery.

Yes, we are fierce for one another. Through writing together, for the most part weekly over the past two plus years, we have found a place where no matter what we write and read to each other over our weekly calls, we hold the line of fierceness for the words, the stories, and the woman weÂ have been and are becoming.

About a year into our time together, we began to braid our words together. Braiding is a very feminine attribute as is this process of writing together. Weaving together into relationship, through story, finding the lines that meet, walk together, then meander to another. Words that call resonate, phrases that catch the breath and must be penned again, essential fragrances of womanhood that demand to be known again in the light of the heart, in this realm of flesh and blood, in this day and time.

In this process, each of us would begin a piece and then we came together to read them. Then, we would each pass our words onto another woman who would carry on from our last word to share her story that, while indeed her own, was born out of the first. We then came back to read, and then we passed them on again. And so on, until the piece returned to the first woman, who sometimes would finish with her words, and would sometimes feel that the piece already stood on its own.

Today, we offer you Limned.

It is a braided story that in some ways is also about story and tales. But these aren’t fairy tales. These are rich, embodied, stories of our lives, sometimes sharing memories and sometimes coming directly out of our felt experience of thatÂ moment.

I hope you enjoy Limned. And if you do not know Ronna, Amy, or Tanya, I hope this leads you to their work for they are powerfully creative women whose businesses are about empowering the women to live as we are.

A p.s. : we sometimes swear … a fair bit.

After listening, I’d love to know what you feel and think of this long braided story. It’s just over 36 minutes so you might listen as you walk in the woods, or urban woods if you live in the city like me. Or curl up on your sofa and with hot tea in hand, sink in.

However you listen, I hope you feel the power of four women coming together to write what is true in that moment, to share their stories together, to become so in love with each other that we hold each other’s words, stories, and lives as sacred and worthy of ears who will listen without judgment and with love. I wish this for you. Not necessarily the writing, but the closeness with women, this space of love, this acceptance of whom you are and the stories you have to tell.

August 12, 2014

For Life’s Benefit

We live with many powerful beliefs in our culture.

Life is conquerable, controllable.

We are entitled to a ‘good’ life.

What gets in the way of the ‘good’ life is a burden.

If we don’t have a ‘good’ life then there is something wrong with how we are living it.

Do whatever it takes to get over, get rid of, move past, the bad stuff…so we can get back to living the ‘good’ life.

But this IS the life. All of it is life.

The truth is, we aren’t entitled to anything. We don’t deserve anything. We are given life with each breath. And we live until we don’t breathe anymore.

Last week, my grandson received a new heart valve. He’d had two open heart surgeries in his first two years of life (his first on his first day of life). After his second open-heart surgery when he was just two, the doctors told us that researchers were working on a valve that could be delivered to the heart by catheter through the artery in the groin. It seemed like science fiction that he might not have to endure another open heart surgery when this valve wore out.

Eleven years later, this past week, that’s exactly whatÂ we experienced. He received his new valve without having to open his chest again.

His life is not easy on many levels. Multiple complications from that very first day of life have presented him with a life that has its challenges. But this life is hisÂ life. It only seems it should be different when we compare it to some damn ‘ideal’ of what life should be, a fictional ideal that is paraded around our culture on a daily basis, but an ideal that just doesn’t exist.

Yes, on the surface, some have it ‘easier’. Yes, on the surface, some have it ‘harder’. But none of those comparisons actually help in the living of one’s life. And, at the most basic level, the comparisons are not logical, because life doesn’t compare. Life just creates and lives its creations.

What does help is how we hold life. Do we see it as a burden to try to get through? Do we see others problems, or our problems as something to fix so our lives will become the glistening, gleaming perfection we’ve been told they should be?

Or, do we live them in open honesty, at least with ourselves. Do we tell ourselves the truth? Do we allow ourselves to see the messiness of human love that we are, love in a human, frail body, attempting to live as if we are perfect, while all the while denying the divine imperfection that is our humanity.

Life isn’t supposed to feel ‘good’ all the time. How do I know that? Because it doesn’t.

What I discovered this week was that I was holding things in my life as if they were a burden. I was tired of grief, tired of pain, tired of feeling as though another shoe was going to drop. A part of me wanted that easy, gleaming life. But I came to see that it was this very perspective that was causing it to feel like a burden. I was making itÂ happen in my own mind. I was pushing life away, rather than drawing it near to me.

As the day of my grandson’s procedure (yes, they call it a procedure instead of a surgery because he didn’t have to be opened up!) grew near, I realized how damn lucky I am to be his grandmother. And after the procedure, as I sat next to him in recovery, as he slept and his heart beat with gusto, I laid my head and hand on his heart and felt the life move through his body. I felt the pleasure of being with him, the tenderness of the moment borne from joy and elation that he had a new, vibrant lease on life, that he was alive.

I touched his shoulder and kissed his forehead. And, I simply sat with him and felt grateful.

Life isn’t supposed to feel ‘good’ all the time, but it can feel real.

Life isn’t binary, a series of on and offs, zeros and ones, goods and bads, blacks and whites. It just isn’t. No matter how hard we try to make it that way, it isn’t.

Life isn’t a machine. It’s isn’t the enemy. It isn’t something to fix.
I am not a machine. I am not the enemy. I am not something to fix.

There is no good life waiting for us at the end of the rainbow.

Everything moves. Everything changes. We control none of it. All we can do is dance, open to what is here, do our best to be present to it, receive it, sit with it. We can touch it, love it, feel it pulsing, grateful to know it as it is. We can hold our life in our hands and know it wasn’t made for our benefit, it was made for life’s benefit.

This has been the greatest reminder for me…

I was not put here on earth for my benefit, I was put on earth for life’s benefit.Â Am I living this?

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.

May 8, 2014May 24, 2014

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

This is the first part 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?

Our Mother Tongue:

In my last post, I shared a poem that came up out of an underground stream of forsaken voices. Since writing that poem, I’ve been wondering about women’s voices – how silent so many of us can be, how careful we are so often to consider closely what we say and how we say it, and how our world does not have access to the wisdom and creativity it could have if more women (myself included) spoke without fear, without self-judgment, and with a direct clear language that comes when we speak our mother tongue, what is native to us, without translation.

I don’t know exactly what this mother tongue is, but I’ve heard it flow through me in times when the creative impulse was clear and direct and I simply became the vessel through which it flows. This language is more instinctual. It is alive. It flows from the body, and utilizes rational thinking rather than being dictated by it.

Lost in Translation:

Over the past seven years, I’ve lectured at Stanford University in a course titled Creativity and Leadership. I teach with a fabulous male colleague, whom I adore working with. Around five years ago, I suggested we bring in the topic of gender balance (and gender differences) in the workplace and how this might interfere with creativity and leadership into our course, and my colleague was absolutely right there with me. Since then, during our week on Balance, we take a bit of time to break out into groups based on two genders, men and women. I speak with the women, and my colleague speaks with the men, and we inquire into how the work culture impacts our ability to be fully creative, fully ourselves.

In speaking with the women in this separate group, what I soon discovered is that many women ‘translate’ from our own language into a language the masculine corporate culture will understand and value. Keep in mind that most of the students in this course are working in very corporate settings in Silicon Valley. They are successful in their areas of expertise, and many work for good companies who are doing good work in the world. It’s not like they, necessarily, work for ‘bad’ companies that stifle women’s voices knowingly and purposefully.

At first while we were discussing this idea of how gender in the workplace gets in the way of creativity, this sense of being stifled wasn’t being articulated. It was through our discussion (in our gender-separated group) that this tendency to translate came to the surface. In the first instance when I became aware of this tendency, one woman was speaking and as she struggled to articulate her frustrations at work suddenly words popped out that spoke of being tired of translating what she really felt and knew into something that would be acceptable and not belittled or mocked. As she spoke the words, the frustration showed up loud and clear.

At first I was surprised at it being spoken aloud so clearly and distinctly. And then, I remembered how I had done the exact same thing when I was in banking and in information technology. I just hadn’t realized so clearly that I was doing it. I hadn’t become conscious of it…until that moment.

It’s like we do this thing that sometimes we don’t even really consciously know we are doing, because we are so used to doing it.

We’ve been catching our real words in hidden pockets of the throat, while finding and speaking ‘safer’ words into the world.

Some women know they are doing it. Some women have stopped doing it. Some women don’t know they are doing it. Some women don’t even know how to stop doing it. And as I discovered, most men are not aware that women do this. But when this one woman said what she said, so many other female heads nodded up and down in agreement while at the same time holding a look that expressed a sense of AHA – oh my gosh…that’s what I’ve been doing.

Code-Switching:

This idea of ‘translating’ in this way isn’t new. I first found the term code-switchingÂ reading this recent piece by Soraya Chemaly. The term has been used to describe how people of different cultures change how they speak depending on whom they are speaking to, and in what situation they are speaking.

From speaking with friends, people of color know all about code-switching. My friends, while perhaps not using this term, certainly know they’ve had to contend with this their whole lives. Perhaps my privilege has kept me from seeing this. Yes, that feels so true. And, yet, I wonder how many women are very conscious they are changing their language in this way. We’ll explore this more in part 2.

We all have the capacity, as humans, to move between two or more different languages.Â Code-switching is the practice of alternating between two or more languages or (varieties of a single language like English) in conversation. If we speak more than one language, we do this. And let’s face it – most of us, women and men, speak more than one language – even if they are all in our only language. I imagine men speak a different language when they are only with men. I know women speak a different language when they are only with women. And we all speak a different language if we are with children, or with groups of people who come from a different background. We’re all finding our way in communicating something as complex as life into something so confining – words.

I am not going to go into great detail about code-switching in this series. What I am more interested in is the ingrained idea that what we women have to say, when we say it in our more feminized expression is somehow less valuable, insightful, or practical. What I am more interested in is what is NOT being said because it is lost in translation. And, I am more interested in helping us to rediscover our lost mother tongue.

What we will be exploring:

In wanting to explore this idea of the language we women use to express ourselves, I’ve wondered how often we say what we most long to say. Where do we change our words, our inflection? How often does what wants to be said directly and clearly come out sideways and hesitant? If we could say the words we yearn to say, what would those be? And, how do we get to the source of our mother tongue and the courage to speak it?

The rest of the series at a glance:

Part #2
The propensity for many women to code-switch in this culture in order to be ‘taken seriously’, or to be not too ‘threatening’, which ultimately means to ‘be accepted’ – and, ultimately, wondering what wisdom and creativity are we losing when we code-switch.

Part #3
A more native-tongue we rarely hear women use because it lies underground (metaphorically speaking), under the cultural language we’ve been taught to listen to and trust.

Part #4
The groundswell of generations of women’s swallowed words that lies dormant just waiting to be heard, honored, and perhaps shared.

Part #5
And finally, considering your words. What are your words? What are the words that want to flow onto the page and into the conversation through you? What do you need to say, right now, here, in this moment, to feel fully spent – like a word orgasm – where nothing is left unsaid, nothing is left hidden away, nothing within you is shamed? How can we learn to allow ourselves to speak what seems to be so frightening to speak?

My reason for writing about this is my deepest desire for all people, and in this case women, to find their way to pure self-expression, to that creative fire within, to that wisdom voice, that voice of play and delight, and that loving, sensual, sexual voice that is instinctual.

We don’t have access to the depth of wisdom our human culture could bring into the world as long as all people are translating rather than expressing their unique wisdom and genius.

We cannot be truly creative, we cannot be authentic leaders, and we cannot speak from the depths of our heart if we put our focus and energy into ‘translating’ what we say and how we say it rather than being authentic and vulnerable in our expression.

That’s not to say we should not utilize our ability to be fluid with our language depending on context and relationship. But rather, if a certain way to speak is idealized and held up to be the only ‘right’ form of communicating, then we all lose out because of what is being lost in translation.

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 14, 2013April 14, 2013

Shame: A Deadly Hot Potato

Shame.

It’s a killer. Of self-confidence. Of self-love. Of creativity. Of life. Of young women. And, ultimately of us all.

It’s not even ours. Not the kind of shame I’m talking about. At least not to begin with.

Shame is passed around like a hot potato. For many of us, when we are young we’re shamed repeatedly until we become to believe we are shame itself. Our parents probably didn’t even know they were passing it on. I know I didn’t know I was passing it on to my children.

It’s an epidemic. Shaming. We do it in many, many small ways, in many small moments. And, some of us do it in big ways, in big life-altering moments. We pass it on because it is too hot to hold and too much to bear. For the most part, this isn’t done consciously. But it’s done. All the time.

Shame is one of the stickiest tools of the Patriarchy. Shame the woman to quiet her. Shame her to get her to keep her beautiful sexual sacred self down. Shame her so she continues to hold Eve’s shame as her own. Shame her so she won’t remember how powerful she really is.

In the last few days, two stories of the deepest shame and humiliation have come to light. Shame so strong it caused two young women to take their lives. Of course, there are many more, but for now most of those are unknown to us. Shame keeps things quiet. When we feel shame, we keep secrets because the last thing a person who’s been shamed wants if for others to see them.

Just a few days ago in Northern California, three teenage boys were arrested and accused of sexually assaultingÂ Audrie Pott.Â The accusations also include taking pictures as they assaulted Audrie, then sharing them around with classmates and others. Audrie hanged herself eight days after the assault. According to those who knew her, Audrie was shamed, bullied, propositioned, embarrassed, and humiliated.

Rehtaeh ParsonsÂ died on April 7th in Nova Scotia. She was 17 years old. She attempted to take her own life, many many months after struggling to live with shame. Her parents had to take her off of life support. Rehtaeh had been gang raped. As her father wrote, “They took photos of it. They posted it on their Facebook walls. They emailed it to God knows who. They shared it with the world as if it was a funny animation.”

Rehtaeh and Audrie had so much shame and humiliation poured on them they gave up on life. They aren’t the only girls, or women, to know this shame and humiliation.

How could we turn around and shame and blame these young women when they were the ones abused so savagely? I say we, because it is we. Rehtaeh and Audrie are our children. The boys accussed of these crimes are our children. The boys and girls who passed around these pictures, thereby heaping on the pain and suffering, are our children.

As a culture, our shame is deep and thick. It is toxic. It runs underground through us all, deep in the dark recesses of our shadow. And when the hot potato gets too hot to hold, we pass it on to others so we don’t have to know it within our own psyches.

But, this shame stops here. Now.

It is time for each of us to look within at our own internalized shame. It is time to stop passing it around because we don’t want to feel it. It is time to begin to look at how we the adults are raising children who do these things to each other.

Our internalized shame began as somebody else’s shame. And once we’ve internalized it, it is ours to deal with. It is ours to feel. It is ours to heal.

We live in a rape culture. We live in a shame culture. We live in a culture that pretends all is well, that our culture is the best, that we have no demons. The longer we pretend the problem is not ours the more vicious the acts will become.

When we are willing to stand tall to our darkest demons, we find that the dark holds our most sacred and beautiful jewels…sacred because we come to see our own humanity. And, this takes a willingness to step out of denial, and to stop believing in the illusion of some perfect self that is incapable of hurting and destroying others.

Shame. It can take your breath away. Literally. It can try to steal your life. It can keep you holed up like a monastic, far away from eyes that might see that shame and equate it with you.

Shame is handed down, generation to generation. It is passed around man to woman, woman to man, adult to child. I don’t know anyone who’s never been touched by shame.

It is time for us to see the rape and shame culture we live in.

It is time for men to begin to speak out against rape and rape culture, too.

For so long women have carried this shame.

Shame is the darkest weapon that patriarchy uses against women…against the feminine.

Shame is the darkest weapon I use against myself. Ugh.

And, ultimately it is a weapon killing us all, women and men, and the children we love so dearly.Â

April 7, 2013April 8, 2013

Woman’s Song

On my unexpected walk yesterday morning (car battery died and I walked home from the mechanic), I was suddenly moved by an insight. Unexpected circumstances can do that…bring insights. These times can be our most creative moments, because we’re taken out of our normal routine, which can wake us up to the newness we are always really living in.

The insight? That it’s not so much what we speak as women, but that we speak…that we liberate the female soul’s song.

The feminine was silenced. Our mothers were silenced, as were their mothers, and their mothers, and so on. And, we are continually encouraged to (many times through shame, shunning, threat, and humiliation) stay silent.

I know I silence myself. I learned to do this at a very young age. I watched what was going on, listened to what was expected of me, and learned to manipulate my behavior accordingly. I know others who did the opposite – pushed back with every fiber against being silenced. Pushing back, though, is still a kind of silencing, because being completely free means you simply speak what is true and many times when we push back, we are more caught up in the conflict than being free to simply express what is within. Not always, but many times.

Unlearning silencing isn’t such an easy task. Patterns of silencing are insidious. The patterns are within our psyches. They are in the culture. Everyday on the internet, you can read something powerful posted by a woman who is speaking her mind. And, you don’t have to look far to see the comments that immediately surface attempting to silence her through intimidation and threats of violence and harm.

I believed that silence would keep me safe. When I learned to do it, it did. But silence keeps none of us safe, and in these times we are living, silence keeps us from creating something new in our world that is life-affirming and fueled by the deepest love that is life expressing itself anew in each moment.

This insight was really beautiful…and simple.

I can see that it really doesn’t matter the form we say things in, but that what we say must be true in our hearts, to our souls.

We don’t have to come up with something amazingly wise and transformational. What I see is that the very act of speaking will heal. Speaking the truth in our everyday lives will heal. It opens the channel, and when the channel is open creativity begins to pour forth…a creativity that is rooted in the sacred creativity that women embody. It is this sacred creativity within our beings that is birthing the new consciousness. Speaking opens the channel. It reconnects our awareness with what is true deep within. Speaking can be a metaphor here, yet I also can see that vocalizing, the act of making sound through the body is incredibly powerful.

Speaking begins to end the silencing that has happened to the feminine, and to women. The act of speaking opens channels in the body and soul.

Hearing one’s own voice saying words that have been swallowed too many times to count reawakens a knowing of self that is necessary for healing.

Speaking truth in everyday life is an extremely powerful act…powerful and healing.

In working with women, and in my own experience, I’ve come to see that we can get caught up in the belief that we have to come up with wise words, and even more have to put them into some ‘form’ like a blog, or a book, or a speaking engagement, or you name it. But the insight showed that it is much more simple than what we think.

Imagine millions of women around the world, women who have the freedom to do so, speaking the truthÂ to ourselves,Â to our families, our lovers, our co-workers, our bosses. Speaking for ourselves and on behalf of those who can’t, who aren’t free to do so.

Hearing our own voice with our own ears. It’s a reclamation of the power that lies within to give voice to the soul.

I don’t know the esoteric details of what happens when a woman speaks truth aloud, but I can see something shifts. When a woman listens to what is happening and feels for resonance and responds with truth, responds in a way that honors life, not only within herself but within all of life, silence is broken, healing happens, and something new is born.

We can support and encourage each other to do this.

What if each of us actively reached out to three other women we know and asked them to speak aloud the words that have been swallowed back down over and over and over?

What if we reached out and invited them to tell us their truth?

What if we saw this opportunity to hear, really hear, another woman’s truth as a sacred act and we listened accordingly?

Will you do this?

Will you offer this gift of inviting out woman’s song?

A good place to begin is with yourself, to hear your own words with your own ears, and to feel them rise up out of your body into the light of day. Really listen for the words to be spoken. Listen then speak. Keep speaking because sometimes those words take a while to reach. Feel the words rise and move and flow as they are offered up.

This IS a sacred act.

John O’Donohue wrote, “All holiness is about learning to hear the voice of your own soul.Â

Doing so calls back a power that was buried when we went silent.

Doing so reconnects you with you.

Doing so liberates woman’s song.

Image isÂ white ribbonsÂ on Flickr under Creative Commons 2.0