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Old Woman, Wise Woman, Powerful Woman

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But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. ~Kate Chopin

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The other day, surfing across the web in no particularly linear or rational way (I guess that’s what surfing is), I came across this quote from Rush Limbaugh:

“Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?”

It was 2008. A long time ago. He was referring to Hillary Clinton. With a masterful stroke of the mouth, he attempted to dis-empower this woman by using one of the patriarchy’s greatest weapons, the deeply held belief that age makes women ugly, worthless and powerless.

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I remember hearing it then and it made my blood boil. Yesterday, when I saw it again, I wondered about it. About Rush. About men. About women. About being a woman and growing old. About why watching a woman grow old scares the hell out of people. His statement is still a powerful window into how women who are growing older are perceived in our culture.

I am reminded of my mother as she grew fail towards her death. She showed such dignity. Even when she could hardly stand up, she wanted her hair combed, her lipstick on. She didn’t want anyone, including her children, to see her use the commode. She walked towards her death with grace.

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I thought of Robbie Kaye and the amazing work she is doing with women and aging at Beauty of Wisdom. Robbie takes photographs of women getting their hair done; beautiful, proud women.

Photo by Robbie Kaye (c), all rights reserved
Doris, 76 - Long Island, NY

Photo by Robbie Kaye, all rights reserved

I wonder about how Rush felt watching his mother grow old, how he feels watching the women in his life that he loves growing older. How do we feel when we fear the crone out there, and in here, while we are in relationship with our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, great-aunts, and wise old women friends? While we are in relationship with ourselves and our own aging bodies?

And, (this is a ‘big’ and) somewhere a part of me is fully capable of saying something just as hurtful. If I push that away in him, I push it away in myself. I’ve grown up ingesting this patriarchal pabulum every day of my life. I’ve adopted the fears and beliefs and admonitions of a culture steeped in ageism, sexism, racism, and any other ism that has been the foundation of this patriarchal thought structure. It takes a deepening awareness and an opening consciousness to begin to see what I project onto others, how I push others away, how I say stupid things because of my own conditioning.

The structure of patriarchy is insidious. It causes men to oppress all women, because it is ‘linked to a cultural devaluing of femaleness itself.” (Allan G. Johnson, Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy)  It causes men to oppress even the women in their own lives that they dearly love, for you can’t uphold a structure of beliefs, and act within that structure everyday, and somehow not inflict that pain on some women and not others.

Johnson writes:

“One of the deepest reasons for denying the reality of women’s oppression is that we don’t want to admit that a real basis for conflict exists between men and women. We don’t want to admit it because, unlike other groups involved in social oppression, such as white and blacks, female and males really need each other, if only as parents and children.” (emphasis mine)

Think about it: men and women are inextricably linked. We can’t not engage with each other. If we no longer engaged, life wouldn’t continue. That’s what makes it so hard to look at patriarchy and the oppression of the feminine. And yet, we need the reemergence of the feminine to heal ourselves and to heal the earth. We need the nurturing, nourishing, wise and instinctual, wildly creative, and fiercely unconditionally loving feminine to heal ourselves from our ways of destruction and domination. We need this reemergence in women and we need it in men. We need to find balance within ourselves, the balance between the masculine and feminine.

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The old woman was once revered, when people revered the Great Mother, when they saw the beauty of birth, death and rebirth, the power of transformation. Now, we sit around and pretend we don’t get old and we don’t die. We feel the shift happening and we dig our heels in and pretend we can’t be touched.

As I’ve aged, I’ve felt invisibility creep in. The older I get the more invisible I become, in a culture where youth and external beauty reign. All the while, I’ve become more beautiful to myself, because I am embracing and honoring the wisdom that my life experiences have brought, and the kindness, compassion and tenderness that grief and loss have engendered. It takes a certain amount of awareness and effort to keep coming back to what is real, what is true. It isn’t easy at all. Yet, there comes a time when no other way is palatable. I can feel the energy of the crone. I feel her power. I feel her fierce love.

It’s not that I don’t have moments of grief and sadness around aging. Some of those moments come when I get caught up in the never-ending bombardment of the advertising blitz.  I notice my body growing a little stiffer, I am aware of the years passing, and I know death is always a breath away. But, so is life. Life is always a breath away.

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Women’s power in the patriarchy is youth, physical beauty, a sexy toned body, the ability to become more like a man than a woman, so how we act and what we do will move us up the ladder of what this culture deems is successful.

But in an entirely different way, we women are powerful beings, especially as we age. Not powerful in the patriarchal paradigm, but powerful in the sense that we are more authentic, more real, more truthful and more beautiful. And, powerful as the crone. The wise woman, the woman that embodies crone energy. The crone is the woman who no longer sees herself only in relation to others, but as a woman unto herself, a woman who stands alone in the center of her own beingness, in the center of her own truth, and from this center relates to the people in her life from what is real for her.

The patriarchy fears the crone. She is truthful, she is powerfully creative, she is intuitive and instinctual, and she loves fiercely. The patriarchy does everything it can to deny this, even to denigrate this and the women who embody it, because old women are wise women are powerful women. They have gifts to share, gifts that this world desperately needs.

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What if we could be with ourselves in such a way that we no longer projected our deepest fears onto an entire portion of the earth’s population, a group of people that has gifts to share with the world right now, gifts of wisdom, grace and beauty?

What if we could be with ourselves in such a way that we no longer projected our deepest fears onto each other, woman to man, man to woman?

Being with ourselves is the first step.

Being with the misogynistic and misandrist thoughts that ramble around our own minds and consciousness, and questioning if they are true, do we know them to be 100% fact.

Being with our hardened hearts, with the walls we’ve built around them that allow us to engage in such a way where we are just as complicit in this fear and rejection of the wise old woman, and wondering if our hearts really feel this way.

Being with ourselves, with the feelings we don’t want to feel, the feelings we numb ourselves to, day in and day out.

Being with.

Being with the beginning of something, a beginning of a world where we honor and respect each other as men and women.

As Kate Chopin reminds us, the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing.

A world where patriarchy is a distant memory begins with the chaotic, the vague, with the tangled mess of people willing to engage differently, even when we don’t yet know how to do it or what it might look like.

It may feel exceedingly disturbing, but then don’t the happenings in our world right now disturb you greatly?

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Remembrance, Infused with Love

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The Gifted Photographer

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This morning, I’m aware of remembering; yet, this remembrance doesn’t have to take me away from now. It can infuse this moment with love. It can infuse it with possibility. It can infuse it with transformation.

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Today, we remember the ninth anniversary of 9/11, those who died, and those who’ve suffered deeply from the events of that day. Nick Kristoff shares the efforts of two women, both of whom lost their husbands in 9/11, in a post titled The Healers of 9/11. These two women chose to respond to their loss with love and possibility.

“Devastated themselves, they realized that there were more than half a million widows in Afghanistan — and then, with war, there would be even more. Ms. Retik and Ms. Quigley also saw that Afghan widows could be a stabilizing force in that country.

So at a time when the American government reacted to the horror of 9/11 mostly with missiles and bombs, detentions and waterboardings, Ms. Retik and Ms. Quigley turned to education and poverty-alleviation projects — in the very country that had incubated a plot that had pulverized their lives.

The organization they started, Beyond the 11th, has now assisted more than 1,000 Afghan widows in starting tiny businesses. It’s an effort both to help some of the world’s neediest people and to fight back at the distrust, hatred and unemployment that sustain the Taliban.”

Susan Retik and Patti Quigley show us the power of women supporting women. They remind us of how much we are alike rather than how different we are. In the midst of their grief, they could still see just how much they have to give.

In the article, it is clear they know their actions will not end the violence. Yet, their actions underscore something we know about women. Ms. Retik shared, “If we can provide a skill for a woman so that she can provide for her family going forward, then that’s one person or five people who will have a roof over their head, food in their bellies and a chance for education.”

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Remembrance infused with love, keeps us in the here and now. It brings the remembering mind down into the presence of the deep heart.

Remembrance infused with love can bring possibility into this moment, allowing grief to do its deep work, bringing fecundity to fallow ground.

This is the message that was woven through the powerful dating and relationship course I shared with women who lost their husbands in  9/11. And, this is the message they shared with me as we moved through this course together, back in those first few years after.

May we all “unleash our better angels” (as Kristoff suggests) as a response to our grief, our anger and our fears.

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And, you?

What are you grieving?

How might you infuse this grief with love, bringing you deep into the heart?

What is that one small action you might take, infused by the transformative power of loving remembrance?

…

photo by The Gifted Photographer, licensed under Creative Commons (NoDerivs 2.0)

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Lineage of Women

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::

“How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers’ names.”~Alice Walker

moon

Lineage.

A lineage of women.

I once participated in a dance workshop for women only. It was a beautiful experience. I normally dance each week with both women and men in the 5Rhythms. At this one workshop for women only, we were asked at the beginning of the weekend to introduce ourselves as the daughter of the mother that gave us life, and as the granddaughter of the mother that gave our mother life. We were also asked to introduce ourselves in relation to who we’d given life to.

Hello.
I’m Julie,
daughter of Joan,
granddaughter of Pauline,
great-granddaughter of Clarissa,
mother of Jacqueline and Jennifer,
grandmother of Lucas, Aveline, Jamison, and Dante.

A Lineage of Women

This experience of introducing ourselves by way of our mother and her mother was incredibly female affirming. I sat and soaked the names in, along with the feelings that arose in each woman as she spoke the names of her matriline (a mother line – one’s purely female ancestry). While seemingly simple, something profound was honored, and awakened, as we acknowledged the line of women we came from, and the line of children we had borne.

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A lineage of women:
Julie,
daughter of Joan,
daughter of Pauline,
daughter of Clarissa,
daughter of Charlotte…

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Recently, I traveled to the Chicago area with my two sisters for a family wedding. We decided to make a pilgrimage to our great-grandmother’s house in Park Ridge, a small town just near the airport.

With some help from my mother’s cousin, my sisters and I found the family home on South Crescent. This was the house my great-grandmother and great-grandfather had built in 1908. My grandmother grew up in this house. My grandmother was married to my grandfather in this house. My mother was born in this house. My mother’s cousins were born in this house, too.

Before my mother’s death two years ago, she spoke often of her childhood in Park Ridge. She spoke often of her grandmother with fondness, and with a bit of awe. It was a curious feeling to enter the house. It had recently been sold to new owners who were remodeling it before their third child came into the world. This was in June, the baby was due in July, so I imagine she has arrived by now. The owner was there and graciously gave us a tour of the entire place, basement to attic. As I walked through the rooms, it was as if I had been transported back eighty to one hundred years. So much had happened there in the lives of my matriline.

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Strong Women, Strong Lineage

“…to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers’ names.”

My great-grandmother was a healer, a well-known Christian Science healer in that area. She was strong, vibrant, independent. She had to be. Her husband contracted TB and became very ill. She had to put him in a sanitorium, where eventually he died. She had to take care of her family, an extended family that included her siblings.

My grandmother and mother were also strong women. They had to be. They found their strength deep inside, brought it out into their actions when it became necessary to do so, for the sake of their children, and the sake of their family. This strength is in all women. Strength and wisdom.

Wisdom in the Matriline

I feel there is wisdom in the matriline. I learned something about myself that day. I soaked up wisdom… a knowing of myself in a different way, a different light. While I had heard much about these women from my mother, and knew my grandmother fairly well, when I walked through the rooms of this house and felt into all that had happened there, I knew myself in a new way.

It’s been a few weeks since I returned from this trip, and all the while this wisdom has been working on me, and through me.

I now more clearly see these women, not just as my ancestors, but as people who lived lives that were sometimes good, many times hard and painful, but always indescribably beautiful. I feel the lineage of women within me. I can now see the room where my mother was born, the rooms my grandmother played in, the rooms my great-grandmother grieved, celebrated and grew old in.

What a gift it is to feel this lineage within me. In some way, yet unknown, I will pass the knowing and wisdom down to my daughters. I can feel it. It is already happening in ways unseen.

As I write this, I become keenly aware that this wisdom had always been here. Perhaps, it’s just been activated by visiting Nanny Ruh’s house. We all have access to women’s wisdom.

The wisdom of women isn’t clearly articulated, laid out analytically, in a straightforward manner. Rather, it circles, curves and winds its way around. It appears in the moment, if we’re paying attention. It shows up in symbols and in unexpected connections. Like the moon as it shines on water at night, womens’ wisdom illuminates that which is unseen.

I have come to see we can open to this wisdom of our matriline, whether we can go back to a physical place or not…the wisdom is here if we drop deep into our bodies and open to the moonlight.

In ways unseen

Jen Louden writes: “…every writer has to learn to live – and even thrive– in the gap. Creating actually happens in the gap.”

We enter into unknown territory as we write something new. This is where creation happens. In the unknown. Something completely unexpected, and absolutely delightful, appeared in the gap today as I wrote this post. I didn’t know where the writing would take me. I had considered writing about this pilgrimage since I returned home to Berkeley, but as I mentioned, I could feel the wisdom working on me, so I waited.

As I sat down to write, the painting above (and below) popped into my head. It’s a painting I have hanging in my bedroom, of the moon shining on the water. It’s really lovely…this picture of it here doesn’t do it justice.

moonandframe

I found this painting in my mother’s house after she died. She had collected many things throughout her years, things that were passed down through the family, as well as things she picked up in her travels to the second-hand stores and flea markets. As we went through her collection of paintings, we kept the ones that were obviously family heirlooms. We gave most of the others to the Goodwill. This one painting, of the moon on the water, I grabbed as an afterthought. I had so many of mom’s things already, but as I turned away from the items we were leaving, something told me to turn back and take this one home. I liked it enough, but I kept it because it called to me. I hung it in my bedroom, because it called to me.

I took the painting off the wall to get a snapshot of it as I wrote today’s post. The first one didn’t turn out, so I began to clean any dust off of it to try to capture a better one. As I did, I noticed the initials in the bottom corner:

C.R. ’99

My great-grandmother’s name was Clarissa Ruh, but we had always called her Nanny Ruh, which is what my mother called her. I just recently remembered her first name on our trip back to the wedding in June. Nanny Ruh was a painter. We have a few of her paintings spread throughout the family, but none of them have her signature. My great-cousin, Nanny’s other granddaughter, told me when we were with her at this family wedding that Nanny didn’t sign her pictures because she didn’t want to seem presumptuous – she simply wanted to paint. I don’t really know the whole story, but none of the paintings we have have her signature on them…except this one.

Just now, in writing this post, I discovered that this painting was also done by Nanny Ruh. I could hardly believe my eyes. Something unknown and unseen found its way into the light of the moon. This is an unimaginable gift. I don’t believe my mother knew that Nanny Ruh painted this picture, because she told us many times to take great care of the paintings she knew were painted by Nanny. This painting was stuck in a place with so many things that were simply flea market finds. Somehow, I came to know something that had been lost back in the matriline. Now, my daughters have another gift from their matriline, one among many.

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And, you?

I’d love for you to share your mothers’ names with us, to introduce yourself by way of your mother, and your mother’s mother, by leaving a comment below. I think there is something powerful in speaking these names into the world.

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What of your matriline?

What do you know?

What has yet to be discovered?

What wisdom is there, perhaps in the unseen, waiting for you to ask into it, to know yourself as your mothers’ names?

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From Alone to Alive

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Loss can be an opening, a portal to profound transformation.

We all lose in our lives. We all experience loss. When we bring a depth of awareness to the experience of the loss, and the hole the loss leaves, the portal can open wide, embracing us like a mother embraces her child.

Like you, I’ve experienced profound loss in my life. More than once.

Loss, Love and Life

I’ve also worked closely, and intimately, with women who lost their husbands in 9/11. Many of the remarkable moments I experienced with these women came as I facilitated a course on dating and new relationship.

Over the course of 18 months, in numerous groups around the New York City area, we explored the deep desire to love again after profound loss and grief.

Portals opened wide for these women. They had already done some powerful grief work before coming to this particular course that I had developed. Using my own experiences of grief, exploration of self, and beginning to date anew from the death of my late-husband in the design, the course laid out a journey of opening the heart to the deep emotions that had been buried.

After all, if we are to open our hearts to love again, whatever is in our hearts, whatever has been buried in an effort to not feel, will come tumbling out. When we have a safe, nurturing community in which to feel and express these things, transformation can happen – the transformation of our grief into powerful presence, and transformation of who we thought we were into who we come to know ourselves to truly be.

And, when we realize we are still alive, that it’s okay to live again, to really live with joy and passion, we begin to honor the life being offered to us in each moment.

Feeling Grief and Love Together

Loss, love and life are intertwined. In grieving the death of my late-husband, I found transformation happened when I felt both the grief and the love together. Grieving with the love I felt for him, the love I knew he felt for me, and the love I could feel this portal was holding me in, was deep and rich and powerful.

Grief is an entirely intelligent process, if we are willing to open to its embrace. Grief brings us right up against all the things we shield ourselves from feeling.

And, there is deep love in grief. I experienced it as an invitation to come to truly know the limitations of being a human being, living a human life. I came to realize the deep peace in surrendering to life on life’s terms, not on mine. I came to see that life isn’t conspiring against me; rather, life is unfolding to its own rhythm, not ‘mine’.

In the shattering of the illusion of control, what arises is a willingness to dance to this rhythm wherever it takes you. In this rhythm, there is divine love.

Beautiful Strength

In the course with the women who had lost their husbands in 9/11, a beautiful strength began to make itself known from within them. Through our time together, a natural delight in the idea of embracing life again began to emerge. The women organically began to follow their own heart’s desires to love. In some, the desire was to date, in others it wasn’t. What did appear, though, was a desire to truly live again, knowing that it is okay to be the survivor. One can move forward from something as profoundly devastating as 9/11, as the survivor, and learn to truly have gratitude for the experience of being alive.

This gratitude comes from embracing the totality of experience; not just the ‘good’ things life offers, but embracing the gift of life itself.

One thing loss has taught me is that each day I am here is truly a divine gift. Each year the life odometer turns over, and in that turning I can honestly say I am grateful to be getting older. Getting older means I am still here, alive, living in this mystery. and receiving the wisdom that comes from living into these rich years.

Toward the end of the eighteen months that this course was offered, one woman renamed our course, “From alone to alive”.

Back in May, the lovely Nicola Warwick invited me to be a part of a beautiful project. She was putting together an ebook offering titled, “Loss Love Life”. This was to be a compilation of writings about the power of loss, transition and change with contributions from Thursday’s Child, Patti Digh, Margaret Fuller, Danielle LaPorte, Michael Nobbs, Carolyn Rubenstein, Andrea Schroeder, Kate Swoboda, Julie Jordan Scott, Dyana Valentine, Eydie Watts Nicola Warwick, and me.

I was honored to submit my offering to this work. This ebook is now available for download. It is truly a remarkable collection of open-hearted writing about these three powerful things, Loss, Love and Life. If you feel called, visit Nicola’s site and download this work. I think you’ll find reading what is shared here to be transformative in itself.

And, you?

I’d love to know what you’ve experienced with loss and the powerful tumult that follows. If you feel willing, share here, with us, any insights, experiences, or understandings you’ve had.

Image: courtesy of Tapperboy on Flickr; Creative Commons 2.0

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The more truth, the more love.

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Your ability to feel love is directly proportional to your ability to tell the truth. The more truth, the more love. ~ John Gray

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Telling the truth opens us up to something greater than us. It brings us into congruency with the truth of who we are. It brings us into alignment with the way things really are, right now, right here. This is where love is. Right now. Right here. Love, the stuff of God.

Telling the truth opens us up to the edge of that vast void, the huge unknown called the new.

The New. The Now. It’s all the same. It’s the edge of unfolding.

When we tell the truth, we open ourselves to the unknown. Rather than staying in our conditioned responses, which simply lead to more conditioned responses either by us or those we are responding to, the truth leads us right into the unknown.

This is one of the reasons we shy away from telling it. And, it’s why the truth is where we are most powerful as human beings. When we are in truth, we are in our authority, we are in our power. We are aligned with the creative force of the universe. This is where we are most in service to that which calls us to speak, be, and live truth.

We also shy away from telling it because feeling this amount of love can be frightening. Can we love ourselves this much to tell the truth completely? To speak the truth within takes great courage, and that is why the root of the word courage is cour, the French word for “heart.” It also takes love. And, it gives love. Truth telling takes heart and it gives love.

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Yesterday’s post, Truth and Validation, generated some pretty awesome comments. As I read through them to begin to respond, I realized a conversation is occurring right here around this topic of truth and validation, of men and women, masculine and feminine, and what happens when we are validated, either back then, or now.

I began to write responses to each of you, but considering the elegance and intelligence in each comment, that seemed almost an impossibility. Instead, I felt a new post might be more fitting.

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As you’ve noticed over the years my blog has been here, I write about living the question of what it is to be female. Sometimes, I write about how this culture devalues the feminine, while honoring the masculine. And, when I write ‘this culture’, I’m including myself. I, too, was conditioned to do this, and even today, I continue to find ways in which I still, unconsciously do so.

This devaluing of the feminine causes all of us – children, women, men, animals, the earth, all of life – suffering. We are being called to honor both the masculine and feminine, within ourselves and out there in the world. Coming into balance is the key…the sacred marriage.

AND, (this is definitely a time for both/and, rather than either/or) many women experience invalidation, simply because they were girls…and are women. From the time they are young, others in their life teach them life will be different for them because they are girls, rather than boys.

These two things are different. One is something we all experience that causes us all pain. The other is something women experience. Women are the embodiment of the feminine. In a culture that devalues the feminine, it makes sense that women would be devalued, too.

Stating this doesn’t mean men don’t experience their own suffering.

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From the comments:

Strand Girl writes:

“I have consistently struggled with believing that I have the same authority as the men in my world seem to have…even when I know in my gut that something feels healthy for me or my kids, I “hiccup” and let those thoughts of self-doubt creep in.”

…

Dian remembers the day, and its events, that caused her to believe she would amount to nothing in her life:

“I can pinpoint the exact moment I began to believe I would amount to nothing in my life…the moment my grandfather told me it was so, and simply because I was not—am NOT—a man. Today, I am grateful for that fact, but it’s been a long and windy road, full of hiccups (yes, thank you for naming that part of the process!) and questioning.”

While many women don’t specifically see occurrences of being invalidated simply for our gender, many do.

What I have found to be so important as we move into deeper acceptances of our own worth, authority, and self-love is that we honor every woman’s experiences and insights. We give room for each truth to be so. A big ol’ fat Yes/And always helps, just like in improv.

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The reason I created Unabashedly Female is just this: that many of us were taught being female is the last thing on earth one should want to be.

As Jeanne wrote:

“when i first met you and discovered your juicy blog, i was somewhat taken aback by the word “female.” “feminine” – i’m okay with that. comfortable. like it. but “female”? i put my arm out to create a little space between me and that word. see, somewhere alone the way, i came to believe that being female is undesirable, something to be embarrassed about, something to (constantly) apologize for. and to precede the word “female” with the word “unabashedly”????

when i think of all the things i did and said in an effort to be “just one of the guys”, i sag. when i think of the time i covered up every picture of every female in that teen magazine with the article about the popular male singing group – taped construction paper over the females – a teen magazine, i tell you. when i think of all the persisting back problems i caused by trying for so long to kiss my elbow because someone assured me that when i did, i would become a male.”

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Things are changing:

As Rebecca wrote,

“Here’s the positive: we are coming together now to restore the balance…and when this happens, our world will be strikingly different. Exciting times! I am so thankful for each one of you who bravely steps forward in creating this change by reclaiming your own truth.”

and Karen wrote,

“BUT I feel a change a’comin’”.

things are changing, and it is an exciting time. We are beginning to see a shift in how we validate each other as women, and how the culture is beginning to validate us as well.

AND, it is of the utmost importance we don’t step over anything because we feel we don’t have the right to say it, or it feels like we’re complaining, or it feels like we’re being a victim. Shoving those things down only causes them to fester, harden, and get really crusty.

Once, after my late-husband died, a grief counselor told me that grief is like dirty dishes. Grief sits in the sink waiting to be washed. The longer it sits, the more crusty it gets. Those dishes don’t just walk away.

Grief around being invalidated for simply being a girl can feel devastating…so much so that we push down the feelings way into the body where they wait for the day to be felt. It’s like any other grief. The process is one of allowing its fullness to be felt, and in so doing, it passes on its way.

There is something profound that happens when we see clearly through an old fallacy. For me, the awakening of the sacred feminine within came after I was willing to be with the feelings of bad, sinful and dirty I felt simply because I was a girl.

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As Renae wrote:

“I hope that means I can, I am, stepping more and more into my own authority, listening to my own heart, believing in the good at the core of me.”

As Ronna wrote:

“I ached as I read it – aware of my own loss; the many years (from childhood into my 40s, frankly) in which I could not and did not even know how to validate my own truth.

The road back, the journey into validation (and celebration) of my own truth has been arduous – but so worth it! To be able to stand in myself, on my own, strong, confident, assured, and in this know-that-I-know-that-I-know space brings me such rest, comfort, and relief.”

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When we are willing to see everything as it is, our innate wisdom becomes available.

As Heather wrote,

“Suddenly it occurred to me that I had enough wisdom, after 13 years in management, to be able to trust the way that worked for ME, not just HR management.”

Heather let go of what she had been told to do, and simply allowed herself to act from her own wisdom. The results of her actions told her clearly just how much she knows within herself.

…

Sharing our stories with each other is so important. Having honest truth-telling conversations helps us all to re-cognize what it means to be female in our own experience, rather than through the filter of what we were told.

As Alana so wrote:

“The conversations that happen here are so FULL and feel transformative – like we all walk away thinking and feeling more deeply into ourselves. The women who come here, share here, are powerful forces of change, of truth, of love and compassion.”

Women are powerful forces of change, the kind of change our world is dying for.

The path to transformation is through our experiences, not in spite of them. Telling the truth about the ways we’ve been invalidated is not whining or playing the victim. Feeling into and moving through these experiences transform them into wisdom.

The more truth, the more love.

…

As I hope you can see, I so value the wisdom you write here on this blog in response to the words I share. You help me to deepen my understanding of what it is to be female. You help me to see the places I have blinders on. You help me to know I am not alone in this inner journey to wholeness.



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What Is It To Be Female?

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Why is it that sometimes the words don’t come?

I can’t tell if they really aren’t there, or if I am straining too much to find them, causing me to miss them entirely.

…

Sometimes, when I sit to write, my fingers can’t wait to share what they know is coming.

…

Sometimes, when I sit to write, fingers on the keyboard, poised to go, I feel into what’s here. I sit with the silence that hovers between the key and my finger ready to strike. I wait. I notice the emptiness, the stillness from which all comes. Then a smile seems to form on this face, and something moves within me. The keys begin to tap and words are formed. I don’t know why, or what or even how. I just know it’s time to write, because I am writing. I am writing from my body, from that which knows.

…

I do know there is much that wants to be said in words, by way of these hands and this blog. There is much to be discovered and shared about being female; what it’s like to consciously live in a female body within a culture that doesn’t really celebrate, respect or honor female bodies or the feminine, even though it likes to think it does.

…

I do know the power of living a question, especially the one I offer up here, “What is it to be Female?” With so many images bombarding us, notions filling our brains, judgments piercing our hearts, how do we discover our own experience of being a woman in this culture at this time?

We live the question, as Rilke suggested.

We become aware of the unfolding of our own lived wisdom.

We ask our bodies to share what they experience as robes of feminine flesh, which provide the spirit a home in this world.

We offer our ears and hearts to other women when they yearn to speak of their experiences and can no longer hold them within.

We open to holding each woman as sacred, even when we see eye-to-eye on absolutely nothing, knowing that the sacred feminine within her is the same within me.

We learn to honor what longs to be known through this body, this spirit, this expression of the sacred feminine in female form.

…

Many ask me why I focus on being female, since the feminine is within men, too, and within all of life.

Firstly, it’s what I am compelled to do. Somewhere there is no reason for it, other than the question compels me.

Secondly, I know, absolutely know, from lived experience, that there is something divinely important about women coming to know the sacred creativity they are imbued with.

Thirdly, while I believe we are still a long way from equality for both genders, equality doesn’t mean sameness. There is richness in discovering the diverse natures that women and men have – discovery that leads to embodiment and expression rather than that which becomes rigid roles to act out of.

…

How might what we discover, as women, in our own unfolding be brought to a world that is yearning for truth, for love, and for balance of the feminine and masculine within and without?

What do women have to offer that is uniquely female? I will be exploring more of this in the days to come. As the Dalai Lama recently said,

“The world will be saved by the western woman.”

If we are to bring our gifts to this world that is crying out for balance, we must know in our hearts what this gift is.

…

And, you?

I’d love to know what you’ve discovered about being female. Yes, you were taught what it is supposed to mean, but if you toss that out, what is your direct lived experience of being a woman?

Please share what you come to see here. I am listening with both ears and an open heart.

…

This post is part of Bindu Wiles 2.15.800 Blog Challenge.

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Warriors of Love’s Wisdom

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Wisdom
Wisdom

::

Some time back, I became quite aware of where I looked for wisdom. Like the baby bird in its nest with beak wide open, clamoring for Mama Bird to feed it, I noticed myself constantly looking to others to feed me. I hungered for answers. I wanted answers to questions I wasn’t willing to live. I began to see I had to live them to grow the wisdom from within.

Sometimes, we’re thrown into the living of such. Like the fledgling bird that finds itself no longer in the safety of the nest, we too must discover how to get along in the world, and no amount of advice from others can begin to match what we learn when we navigate the new world on our own.

A few years ago, I taught what was loosely called a dating/relationship class to women who had lost their spouses in 9/11. In reality, what it turned out to be was a course on learning how to go ‘from alone to alive’ (how one woman named her experience after moving through it).

For 18 months, I commuted between California and New York to teach this course. It consisted of three day-long classes, each held two weeks apart. We structured it this way, so the women would have time in-between each class to practice what they learned, and even begin to dip their toes in the dating pool.

My colleague, Julie Saltonstall, and I designed the course based on my own experiences as a widow, her experience as a remarried woman with a blended family, on many of the coaching modalities we’d learned over the years, but most importantly on the realization that each woman had her own unique internal wisdom to bring to what she was facing as a widow, as a new single mother, and as a woman who wanted to love again. Because of the nature of the loss, there was no shortage of people offering advice on how best to raise the surviving children. Wisdom was key in supporting her moving back into life. Her body and her heart held this wisdom, so we gently encouraged each woman back into communion with this wisdom within.

The class was so much more than simply learning how to date; it was about learning how to be alive again, how to mother and nurture after deep grief, how to trust oneself, and how to allow oneself to know happiness, love and companionship again.

At the end of each class, we held a wisdom circle, using the indigenous tradition of a talking stick. In the circle, one can only speak when she holds the stick. As long she holds the stick, no one else can interrupt her or talk over her. When she holds the stick, if she isn’t talking there is only silence.

What happened in these circles was profound. Even though none of us knew what we would say in advance when we sat down to the circle, when the stick came our way we dropped down into our bodies and trusted what flowed forth from our hearts. And out of every beautiful mouth wisdom flowed. Remarkable wisdom. By the end of the circle, the air was so thick with truth and silence, tears ran down cheeks, eyes gazed knowingly, and smiles broke open. The wisdom was palpable in our bodies, in our circle and in the air.

::

The effect of the realization of internal wisdom spoken aloud in the presence of other women is life-changing. Being in relationship with women, holding each one as a wise being who knows something integral to the whole, something that is yearning to be spoken aloud completely shifted how I see women. I know our wisdom is needed, now, in this world.

I’ve learned deep things from being silenced. I grew up silenced for I learned silence from my mother. It was no fault of hers, as her mother was silenced. It’s a cycle. As Adrienne Rich wrote,

“The woman I needed to call my mother was silenced before I was born.”

The woman I needed to help me know I am wise from within, couldn’t know this herself. The silencing has been here for millenia. How life would be different if we had been taught the wisdom circle from birth, and now we can help each other remember it.

::

In October of 2004, thirteen indigenous Grandmothers from all parts of the world gathered in the land of the people of the Iroquois Confederacy in Phoenicia, New York. The Grandmothers sat together for seven days, creating an alliance in service to the healing of Mother Earth and all Her inhabitants.

Carol Schaefer wrote a fantastic book, ‘Grandmothers Counsel the World‘, collecting the wisdom of these Grandmothers, and includes many other wise women’s wisdom as well.

“We must be warriors with the power of love, the Grandmothers say. The great goal of the Grandmothers is to unite the hearts of the world. We all share the sun and the moon, the planet and the stars, they say. Our blood is altered when we come together as one people, allowing the Divine Feminine within and without to unite us and free us from fear.

The Grandmothers tell us that together as warriors we need to hold the spirit of the land, the spirit of the ancestors, and the spirit of the people who are resisting the yearning in their hearts, which is the Light. Breathe the light of Spirit in, they say. Move with the Divine Feminine.” ~Carol Schaefer

::

I’ve had this yearning in my heart for a long, long time, the yearning in my heart, which is the Light. There has been no logical reason for the yearning. It’s not about logic. I finally figured that out years back. In fact, trying to make sense of the yearning takes me out of my heart, out of the yearning. No, it’s about trust. Trusting that which is calling. Trusting that which moves through me, and you, and all of us. It is the Divine Feminine stirring within, returning now to bring us back into balance. Balance within and balance without.

The Grandmothers say we must remember our nature, our wisdom. They say that “women carry the ancient knowledge of the Divine Feminine deep within the very cells of their being”.

Our wisdom is unique to us, unique to each woman, just as unique as she is. This is another thing we must trust. That we are inherently wise, that our bodies hold this wisdom.

::

Learning to once again trust the body and trust one’s wisdom when we’ve been out of touch with them takes a community of women, where each woman is held by the rest. A community where she is nurtured, loved and supported simply as she is, without having to strive to be something she cannot be, a striving for perfection that keeps her from knowing what is already enough within her.

In reading the Grandmothers, I now look back on those women in New York and realize what was happening. We were holding each other in our hearts, and in this holding, our resistance was melting away. In community we began to move together with the Divine Feminine, both individually and collectively.

::

“Remember, the Grandmothers say, we women have been gifted – we are all-knowing, the creators and makers of life, the seed carriers for the children of the Earth. We must walk strong and walk in our innate knowledge and power…women must wake up this great force they possess and bring the world back to peace and harmony…”

::

Now we can find our community, trust the yearning in our hearts, and awaken to our deep love for all of life. We can awaken to our creativity, the sacred creativity that we’ve been gifted with.

The one thing that shakes me to my bones is looking into the eyes of my three grandchildren, knowing we’ve made an awful mess of things and wondering what kind of world they will have to live in. What will they face?

We are all mothers and grandmothers to all the world’s children. There isn’t time to worry about whether or not we qualify for the job. All women were made for this. As Joan of Arc said,

“I am not afraid…I was born to do this.”

If you get very quiet and listen to your body, it will lead you. Our bodies know the way.

So gather your community. Trust the yearning in your heart. Move with the Divine Feminine. Wake up this great force within. Hold each other in your hearts. Share the talking stick. Walk and talk your wisdom, loudly and clearly. I am honored to be waking up with you.

::

You can purchase this book at Shambhala.com

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Masculinity, Divine Feminine & Creation

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I came across this video yesterday, courtesy of Chameli Ardagh. This young man, Molina Soliel gives me so much hope that one day we will all come to know, honor, and live the divine feminine and divine masculine in ourselves, in others, and in all of life.

Molina is an artist of the spoken word. Molina speaks to the truth that “without women, none of us would exist.” “It’s women who give life.” To hear this strong, passionate, beautiful man speak about both the masculine and feminine within him, within other men, within us all, makes me smile really brightly.

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Ripe With Love

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Back a few years ago, I fell in love with someone new. The moment I met him, I knew he was someone I wanted to know deeply. I met him with a wide-open heart.

You know that feeling of being so ready for love? Where the eagerness and light-heartedness far outweigh your wisdom and discernment? That’s where I was.

You see, I had just completed an intense transformational retreat where my heart was broken open – open so wide, that it found its way back to its natural tendency to trust. I had finally come through the deep grief of my late-husband’s death, a death that had plucked me out of Kansas and dropped me in Oz. Death didn’t provide me with ruby slippers, though. Death seems to be like that. It doesn’t give you a way home to the old life. Instead, you must travel through the darkness to discover the new life waiting on the other side.

So I found myself with this brilliant heart of light. I had known deep lasting love with my late-husband, and I felt eagerness to love again. But, I was different now, and I didn’t yet know how different I was.

So, here I was ready for love. I dove right in. It was deep and rich and sweet. Then it ended. He ended it. It wasn’t mean to be. I can see that now, but back then, I didn’t see it coming. My very pink heart took one hell of a hit.

I fell hard. I curled up inside my shell and thought long and hard about giving my heart away so easily. Why hadn’t I seen it coming? Why did I trust so easily and carelessly?

And then I saw it. I saw how I had left myself to be in relationship with him. I didn’t see it happening at the time. But, in the aftermath of rejection, I realized I felt untethered and unmoored. I was no longer solidly in myself. I was hanging out there. I was perched precariously in no-man’s land – literally. The man I thought was there had moved on.

Somewhere along the way, I had gone from ‘in here with me’ to ‘over there with him’. The realization shook me to the core. When had it happened? How could I have done that to myself?

I decided I wasn’t going to date again until I found the wisdom that must accompany the open trusting heart. I needed time to understand. I needed time to make sense of the lesson that was being offered up.

So I sat with myself. And I felt. And I danced. This is when I began to dance as a practice, a practice that provided the opening to embodiment. And, I began to be really honest with myself. I began to see how much I had projected onto this man. I could see how enveloping an open heart can be when it’s not grounded in oneself and balanced with discernment and wisdom.

My teacher has since talked about what happens when the heart opens, how it can lead us into places we don’t expect to be when its not yet tempered with the wisdom that comes after the opening. But at the time, I had to learn this myself.

While he wasn’t all that gracious or compassionate in how he went about ending the relationship, I saw his ending it as rejection. This was another sign I had left me. The good thing about this was that the feeling of rejection was my doorway in, my doorway into me. I suddenly saw me, my own reflection in his rejection and I realized it was time to come inside to find the love I was longing for. I wasn’t really longing for him, the man out there. I was longing to know me, to stand by me, to stay with me from the beginning.

Then, they came unannounced, as they so often do. Words came. Words came up through my body and out through my fingers. Wisdom wound its way up from somewhere down in the dark recesses, places I had pushed away a long time ago.

Wisdom coursed out my fingers onto the page. No editing was necessary, for it knew itself fully before it was formed.

When the writing was done, I stood up from the desk and went to throw up. I threw up as if I was expelling something poisonous from my body – and I was. They were poisonous beliefs that kept me looking out there for love. As these beliefs were released, wisdom, that had longed to see the light of day, flooded my body and mind, wisdom that was meant for me.

Wisdom hungers to be known by the one it loves.

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,
“Catch me, please catch me.”

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.
Don’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

::

Why am I sharing this with you today? After I wrote my post of last week, The Courage to Sin, I remembered this poem, written as I traveled from ‘out there’ to ‘in here’, as I came back from ‘out there with him’ to ‘back in here with me’. I remembered how I had wound my way out of the structures that I had believed in for all those years, structures that told me I could only find love ‘out there’.

And in writing the post about sin, I revisited the sense of rejection: rejection of self, rejection of  body, women rejecting each other, rejection of men, and rejection by society of the natural, intrinsic beauty of the feminine nature of things. Perhaps I’ve gone from the microcosm to the macrocosm. Seems like I’m traveling in circles.

I see that current-day cultures, fed by patriarchal beliefs and practices, reject the woman who speaks truth, the woman with a voice, the woman with fire, the woman that no longer wishes to roll over and play pretty.

Just as it was with the man ‘out there’, so it is with the world ‘out there’. I can’t find the wisdom ‘out there’. I can only find it in here, in the depths of my own being. And if I’m seeing rejection, then I’ve left myself. That’s the real pain, rejection of self.

Anything growing needs roots down deep into the earth to support its growth, to give it nourishment as it opens to the sun, rain, wind and stars. And so it is with humans. We, too, must have strong roots, grounded in the earth, so that we are nourished with wisdom, the wisdom of the feminine principle, the wisdom of Sophia. With this available to us, we can marry this with our internal masculine and come into a more balanced harmony within.

I have found my heart can open, and stay open, even in the most difficult times, as long as I am rooted in the body, rooted down into the center of things. If I am to truly love another, and I’m not just talking about the other I’m in relationship with, but all beings, my love must come from this grounded place within my own body, within my open heart. When the body is grounded in the earth, the heart is held by the body, and the mind is held by the heart, clarity, compassion and sovereignty can flourish.

I must remember this now as I begin to voice the truth of my own experience and as I listen, with an open heart, to women and men voice theirs.

This is where our power resides as human beings. It is available to us when our open hearts are grounded in wisdom. Power that isn’t power to dominate, but power to all the love we have to give. The seed of our wisdom was planted long ago. It remains, simply waiting for us to turn and look within.

::

And, you?

I wonder what you’ve experienced? What have you learned about an open heart and wisdom? What lessons have relationship, loss, and death taught you? What journeys have you taken within? How has wisdom hungered to be known within you? I’d love to hear. I’d love to know what you’ve discovered down in the depths of your own body and in the openness of your heart

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Digital Thank you Notes From the Edge of A New Decade

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Heart of Midlothian by Niffty on Flickr

image attribution

::

Each day of December, I am being  moved to post by Gwen Bell’s Best of 2009 Blog Challenge:
Today is Day 28 Stationery. When you touch the paper, your heart melts. The ink flows from the pen. What was your stationery find of the year?

::

I do love nice stationery, but this morning I don’t feel compelled to write on this. What I am compelled to do is celebrate and thank. This comes from two things: Gwen Bell’s post on How to Write Non-Digital Thank You Notes and my post from yesterday about social web moments and women connecting.

After I wrote yesterday’s post where I shared about the wonderful connections with women I have made during this year, I felt an urge to celebrate as many of these women in today’s post by thanking as many as I can for the gifts they’ve given me by sharing their personal experiences so vulnerably and beautifully. These women have also shared by coming to my blog, reading and leaving a thank you note to me in the form of a comment – something that lifted me and encouraged me to write with more courage and vulnerability myself.

This is my digital thank you note to you beautiful women. This is my celebration of you!

So, in no particular order at all, here’s to you beautiful women. I celebrate you and your voices of vulnerability and truth!:

Julie Jordan Scott: Passionately Creating

Jeanne Hewell-Chambers: The Barefoot Heart

Karen Caterson: Square Peg People

Kathy Loh: Full Moon Path

Lena West: Xyno Media

Amy Oscar: Story, Spirit, Seed

Emma James: Pleasure Notes

Kelly Diels: Cleavage

Gwen Bell: Big Love in a Small World

Mynde Mayfield: m Squared

Bindu Wiles: The Awakened Life

Marjory Mejia: Sacred Flow

Lindsey Mead: A Design So Vast

Alana Sheeren: Whole Self Coach

Floreta: The Solitary Panda

RandiBuckley: Randi Buckley Coaching

Carrie Bouler: Different World

Dian Reid: Authentic Realities

Olive & Hope

Chris Zydel: Creative Juices Arts

Lisa Lauffer: Deep Waters Coaching

Alicia McLucas: Life Coach

Kate T.W.: Amusing Fire

Mary Liepold: Peace X Peace

Kate Moller: Team Northrup

Danielle Vieth: Team Northrup

::

If you feel compelled, take a moment to check out these beautiful women and the work they do in the world. It is an honor and pleasure to know each of you. I look forward to our deepening friendship in this coming new decade.

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