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Love and the Nature of Women

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Dancing in the Flames, (c) Holly Friesen

When women’s sexual energies are fully allowed to flow unbridled, without fear of punishment, violation or pain, a different consciousness and reality can and will emerge on this planet. ~Laura Amazzone

On this Valentine’s Day,

let’s not content ourselves with the usual flowers and chocolate, the romantic whispers, or feelings of grief over not having someone to share our lives with. Instead, let’s open our hearts and our bodies to a deeper conversation about love and the erotic, creativity and sexuality, rage and the unstoppable nature of women.

As women, can we really have a conversation about love and not drop deep down into our bodies? Deeper than our hearts. Way down into the fiery cauldron of our creativity.

For some time, now, I’ve written about women’s wild creativity; the instinctual, feral creative side that is different than the rational, linear structure of the patriarchal world we live in. This wild creativity is  an expression that comes from the deep wilds of the body, the creative womb. What flows from this place is what we long to know – our true nature, our deepest nature as women. We can give birth to so much more than babies. The creative possibilities are infinite, but not if we stay up in our heads.

Life is erotic.

We are enrobed in these glorious robes of feminine flesh.

Our flesh and bones are sacred.

New life takes hold, and is nurtured and grows deep within the fleshy walls of the womb.

Somewhere deep within,

our bodies know things we can’t know in our heads, like how the cells of the budding creation receive the light of the soul. Like fruit, the fruit we are is filled with sweet nectar, seeds and succulent flesh.

A fruit is not afraid of its own weight. It grows into its skin fully. It is whole, each part of its body equally alive. ~Gayle Brandeis from Fruitflesh

Like the fruit, we can grow into our skin fully, learning how to wake up each part of our body to its full aliveness.

In her book, Goddess Durga and Sacred Female Power, Laura Amazzone writes,

“Regardless of medium, it is essential we create from our bodies, from our experience. Cixous suggests that “women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetoric, regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the ultimate reserve — discourse. “

Yesterday, I was feeling the rage that is usually buried deep inside me. Rage is always here, yet I rarely want to acknowledge it. Rage about so much; for starters: the suppression of the Feminine, the raping of women, trafficking of children, and our seeming indifference to it all.

“Anger is unacceptable because angry women are women in touch with their own autonomous passion and power, especially in relation to men, and this threatens the entire patriarchal order. ” Allan G. Johnson

Yes,

rage is part of this passion, this wildness that doesn’t give a damn about regulations, code or discourse.

The careful part of me wants to know the love in rage. It wants to know that I can share my rage with how the world is and know it is being shared in love. It doesn’t want to polarize or push others away.

In true love, I don’t have to be so careful.

In true love, I could say what needs to be said, and I wouldn’t be ostracized by women and men for showing it.

If I’m truthful with myself, no words are even close to capturing any kind of sense in this rage. It is simply and purely rage.

I know the conditional aspect of being loved well, that as long as I don’t disrupt the apple cart, as long as I don’t say the things that make others uncomfortable, then I am loved. Part of the conditioned beliefs hold that as soon as I come out rageful about what I see, I will be cast out.

Ah, but there’s the rub. This isn’t love at all. This is a kind of keeping in the tribe, the patriarchal tribe. This isn’t love at all.

So what is loving rage? Where do soul and rage meet?

When I ask this question, I feel it rising in my pelvis, deep down in the bowels of my body.

“Getting angry is socially unacceptable, even when the anger is over violence, discrimination, misogyny, and other forms of oppression.” Allan G. Johnson

Socially unacceptable.

Owning and expressing my rage will cast me out of the culture I know, the culture that is here. And, I no longer want to give life and breath to the parts of this culture that I feel most angry about.

Perhaps it is right to be expelled. Perhaps giving breath to this culture through my silence is simply a way to keep the dying alive a little longer, rather than giving my full awareness and attention to what is wanting to be born.

Can this rage fuel what is wanting to be born? Can it be of service to what is nascent?

Is this where rage and love come together, where “the impregnable language” is learned?

On this Valentine’s Day,

a day about love, let’s drop down into the deepest recesses of our bodies, the Yoni. This isn’t old-school passion and eroticism that is all about enticing, this is about tearing down the walls of that which no longer serves.

This is about an eroticism that exists in all of life, a pushing through the old dry bark, so the tender, delicate blossoms can emerge. Think about the power inherent in that push of Life.

This is about creativity that is inextricably tied to our sexuality.

This is about the light of truth, about not paving over the anger and distrust that exists between the genders, a distrust that is created by the very nature of patriarchy, which is based upon domination and control.

This is about love between the genders, finding a love that is true, that can be born out of the cauldron of a creativity that is wild and not so careful.

This is about love.

I want to know this deep nature of women. I want to know it in me and I want to know it in you.

::

The beautiful painting above is by Holly Friesen. Follow her on twitter at @Holly59

This post is part of the Love Sparks Blogging Festival, where you’ll find many other posts about love.

Laura’s Book, Goddess Durga and Sacred Female Power, is available here.

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Her

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Sweet Honey, by K Kendall
Sweet Honey, by K Kendall

Thirty-seven years ago today, 11/11, I held her in my arms for the first time. She came into life, I became a mother.  It was a day that changed me forever.

Holding her in my arms for the first time, I knew a love I’d never even comprehended prior to that moment. A love completely unconditional. A love that would deepen over the years as she grew into womanhood, left home, married, became a mother, and handled life’s challenges and graces with such strength and courage.

Sitting here writing this post, I can’t begin to put into words the depth of this love for my daughters, I have two, and their children. It is completely unconditional. While in my day-to-day life I may do things in very conditional ways, not always showing up in the moment in a way that reflects this unconditional love, the limitless depth of the love in my heart is always here.

…

Four years ago, I was sitting in an ashram in India. Amma’s ashram. I was sitting in meditation while Amma gave darshan. Long lines of people would show up every day she was at home in her ashram, when she wasn’t touring the world giving hugs. Sitting in her love-filled temple, I was profoundly moved. My eyes came upon an Indian woman and her small child. They were sitting across from me, on the other side of the temple. She was holding him in her arms while he slept. She looked like the Madonna with child. A beautiful light surrounded them, a light not visible with my eyes, but wholly visible with my heart.

In that moment, this memory of the moments I became a mother, and the love that filled my heart for my babies, once again flooded my consciousness. This time, though, it wasn’t inside me, it surrounded me. It held me. It was me, and I was it. This love was so deep, so full, so rich that everything in my awareness was bathed in love.

Sitting here, writing this post, I feel it once again. This love. This universal motherhood consciousness that Amma speaks of. It is in us all. We are all bathed in it. Women and men, whether parents or not, are all universal mothers to all the world’s children.

…

Thirty-seven years ago, I was seventeen. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was meant to give birth to this child. I knew it in a place within me that was ancient and wise, a place that knows what I am here to do. As a young mother, I drew upon a strength and wisdom that flowed from this ancient place, a fountain of wisdom and love. I drew upon the sacred feminine consciousness within me, within my body, within my heart.

I certainly was far from a perfect mother. Far from it. Yet, something deeper flowed through my imperfect actions. Something unconditional infused my ways of loving conditionally.

This female intelligence, this wisdom, strength and knowing, runs through all women. We know what is right for our souls. We know what is right for our bodies. We know what is right for our children. When we are in touch with this wisdom, we know.

I knew this was right for me, for my soul and the soul of my daughter from some deep place within me. No one else could make this choice but me. It was the right choice for me, and that says nothing about what is right for any other woman.

…

So much that has been done through the structure and paradigm of patriarchy has clouded and obscured our female intelligence, our feminine ways of knowing. We’ve been cut off from the sacred feminine. We’ve been led to believe She is not here, that we can’t trust our own knowing and wisdom. She has been kept down in the dark. Yet, don’t let that fool you for a moment. This female intelligence has always been here. She is now rising into the light, up into consciousness.

She is living and breathing inside you right now. Somewhere you know this, even if you can’t quite yet trust Her.

Open to Her. Receive Her. Remember Her in your cells. Let Her bring forth your tears of grief for having lost touch with Her. Let Her bring forth this universal wisdom within you, so that you may shower your own heart and body with Her love. For Her love is your love, Her wisdom is your wisdom, Her ferocity is your ferocity.

…

Happy Birthday, beautiful daughter, wise woman.

…

And, you?

I’d love to hear about your female intelligence. What you know. What you see. What you feel. We all learn by knowing what another woman knows of her own experience.

…

image by K. Kendall, licensed under CC2.0


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I Bow Down to Love

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I bow down in complete awe to the immense depth and breadth of what is possible to experience as a human being.

…

To know the full range of being human is to know the capacity for great joy and great sorrow. To feel so alive that nothing is pushed away. Nothing is deemed too difficult to feel, too shallow to experience, too risky to allow out into the world.

Yesterday, I was feeling playful and light. Totally free. Smiling from my belly.

This morning, I woke up a little groggy. Had some tea. Sat down to email, twitter and facebook. I found a tweet from Yoko Ono, followed the thread and wound my way to this video that Yoko created to celebrate what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday.

I watched the footage from the seventies, and listened intently to the brilliance of John’s genius. I listened to his wisdom, how he was willing to do things no one else dared. How he spoke of Ghandi and Martin Luther King embodying non-violence as a way to peace, and how he spoke of them being shot for it. I thought of how amazing it is that John was sharing his vision for love and peace, and he, too, was shot for it.

And then I began to cry. A deep cry, a cry of grief. A feeling of grief so deep that it found its way back to love. I cried for the beauty of John Lennon’s vision. I cried for his vision that still has not come to pass thirty years after his death. I discovered unexpected grief. Perhaps mine. Perhaps the collective. It doesn’t really matter. I cried.

…

Grief is the doorway to love, and to life. It is by way of grief, we begin to know death.

Grief teaches us about what we’ve killed within ourselves, and therefore it teaches us what we’ve killed in others, and in the world itself. What we’ve pushed down into the dark because we couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t allow ourselves to feel the immensity of its pain.

Bindu Wiles writes, “If you run from the sorrow, you live a half life.”

Some of us avoid pain and sorrow. Some of us avoid play and joy. Some of us avoid anger and rage. Some of us avoid vulnerability and softness.Whatever we avoid is in the other half of life that we aren’t living.

I ask myself, “What’s in that other half that I am not living?”

I have found the more I am willing to be with the grief that is always present when we’re living a half life, the more it teaches me what it is I’ve been avoiding.

Grief is a loving companion. It takes our hand and walks with us. It wakes us up to the power and vulnerability inherent in a heart that is willing to open to the mystery of life.

…

Love and grief are deeply intertwined.

When my late husband died, I feared being obliterated by the grief. I discovered I couldn’t feel the grief fully until I allowed myself to feel the love I had for him fully.

When my mother died and I sat with her body, and sat with the grief that was raging through me, I was mysteriously given the opportunity to experience a profound love for her I had never  known.

How can I be a whole human being, if I’m living a half life?

Isn’t it our humanity that’s needed right now, our very real and vulnerable humanness? Isn’t it an embodied spirit that’s needed, a playful, joyful humanity that doesn’t shy away from another’s suffering?

I know many people who don’t travel to ‘difficult places’ because they fear seeing the suffering that is very real. I, too, feared traveling to India because I didn’t know if I could handle seeing the poverty. That fear was keeping me from a whole life. That fear was keeping me in the half life Bindu speaks of. What I discovered was a delightful playfulness in the children that were begging on the Ghats of Varanasi. Yes, they experience a great amount of difficulty. And, in seeing the difficulty up close, I realized that everything I think they are experiencing is only what I imagine in my mind. When I am not willing to be with something in another, it is my own fear of being with that in myself. It stems from living a half life.

…

When I am stuck in the land of ‘there is no mystery’, I think I know what this world needs to heal. I think I know how to save it, or even that it needs to be saved. Maybe it’s humans that need to be saved, and I don’t mean saved as in born again. I mean saved as in waking up to what we believe we have killed within ourselves. Maybe it’s as simple as waking up to what I believe I have killed within me, waking up to the love that is waiting in the half of my heart I don’t dare open, the half of my heart I don’t dare share.

I do know that we humans have imposed ourselves on this world for far too long. We’ve become great at dominating and not so good at coming into rhythm with Life. Sometimes doing is too much. Sometimes it is good to stop and listen, to feel, to open and receive that which might cause us to remember humility and awe for life itself, for the sheer wonder and delight that we are breathing at all, that something is breathing us.

When I am in fix-it mode, I think my powers as a human being are far greater than the intelligence of the creative mystery that breathes us, that smiles us, that can heal us. The old way of doing things was to impose our ideas of what was wrong with the situation so that we could fix it, and in turn feel better about not feeling that place in ourselves that was being mirrored out there. I know this way well. I’ve wanted to fix the things that I see are broken. I’ve wanted to fix the things that cause ME pain.

As I write this, I see how I (over and over again) react to what causes me pain by attempting to impose what I believe to be a better way to be. It’s painful to see it, and I’m not all that proud of it. And, what I also know from experience, is that when I choose to feel the pain I am fleeing by my attempts to ‘fix it’, what emerges is love, a love so bright and clean and full because it came out of the cauldron of grief. And in this love, is a different way, a new way that is about coming together, collaboration, creativity, sharing, living simply, honoring, respecting. This love isn’t about not doing, but rather it is about moving from a deeper, wiser place.

I know deep in my bones that grieving, and the healing and love it brings, is a natural, intelligent process. And, it takes being open to that process, which is a deep mystery. Whether we want to know it or not, we are bathed in that mystery. We are that mystery.

That mystery is trying to get our attention. It is whispering to us, giving voice to a different way to be. I know I hear that voice from within, a voice that scares the crap out of me, because it asks that I surrender to it. I would be lying to you if I told you it no longer scared me. Yet, I’ve come to a place where the voice that wants to ‘fix it all’ scares me more. I see where trying to fix it all has gotten us. I see where trying to fix it all has gotten me.

This quiet, yet insistent voice within doesn’t bargain with me. There is no bargaining with it. It only shares one step at a time. It asks us to trust in something greater than ourselves. It asks us to trust in love.

I bow down in complete awe to the immense depth and breadth of what is possible to experience as a human being. I bow down to love.

…

Love, by John Lennon

Love is real, real is love
Love is feeling, feeling love
Love is wanting to be loved

Love is touch, touch is love
Love is reaching, reaching love
Love is asking to be loved

Love is you
You and me
Love is knowing
we can be

Love is free, free is love
Love is living, living love
Love is needed to be loved

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Remembrance, Infused with Love

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The Gifted Photographer

…

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.

…

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.”

…

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.

…

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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The Nature of Power

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In the 21st Century, power will not change the nature of women, women will change the nature of power. ~ Bella Abzug


Power is only a Word

Power is only a word, but it’s a word with a sordid past…and a very sordid present. It has a lot of baggage.

Power, as we know it today, dominates. Silences. Abuses.

Power is abused, too. At some point, power became power-over.

Somewhere, at some time, in the ‘rules’ of the human world, a rule was written about power, men and women. A rule was made that says, men have power over women. Somehow we, men and women, seem to believe in this story.

The recent, deeply disturbing, widely broadcast story of Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani’s imminent death by stoning, once again, brought the tyrannical abuses of power-over into the bright light of our awareness.

A few days after the international outcry about both her death sentence and the method the Iranian government threatened to use, the archaic practice of stoning, I still couldn’t shake the visceral anger, sadness and powerlessness I felt. This was such blatant, abuse of power; power so egregious, that I shudder to contemplate just how often and how much this kind of sadistic power is used against those who are completely vulnerable to it.

In the swirl of these emotions, I felt a very real sensation of complete vulnerability as a woman. Here was this beautiful woman, waiting in an Iranian prison for a death sentence to be carried out in a most barbaric and painful way. And, here I was, sitting safely in my home, but acutely feeling an intense vulnerability, as if there was no separation between us.

Then it hit me, there is no separation between us. In a very real collective sense, what is done to any part of life, is done to us all. If we are aware of the deeper feelings that move through the human soul, we know this.

On this same level, we all feel the pain of abusive power, oppression and misogyny whether we are the abuser or victim.

As I sat with these feelings, I suddenly felt a tenderness open up that was deep. It was painful, vulnerable and raw. It filled every part of every thing.

I wrote about this tenderness, about a revolution of tenderness in the first post of this three-part series on Tenderness, Power and Grace.


Soft Power

I know many women who push their power away because the only power they’ve known has been used against them. I’m one of those women.

And yet, my power keeps pulling me to it. This is a different kind of power than power-over. It comes from deep in the bowels of my femaleness. It feels rooted to the earth. It feeds my soul. It nurtures my creativity. It is the source of my deep and abiding love for all of life.

There is an unwritten, unspoken, yet very palpable threat of violence against women if we do step fully into the power we know is contained within our beings.

I feel this threat of violence. Yet, this power must come to life, regardless. This is soft power, a tremendous tenderness toward all of life. It is a great compassionate love. It compels me to drop even more deeply into this place of fierce tenderness.

Of course we’re coming to the brink of extinction of so many forms of life, including our own – our way for so long has been to dominate, control and destroy the life principle, namely that of woman. She is the embodiment of the life principle.

What would life be like if power-over, once again, became simply power, the power to be able – to express, to create, to be, to act? I don’t know, but I do know it will have something to do with love. It will come from not rejecting anything, because what we reject and condemn in another, is the same as rejecting ourselves, and no peace can ever come from that.


The Power of Woman

This is the power of woman: to love everything, without exception. As the embodiment of the life principle, she holds it all, without division. This power can only come when she no longer believes she must be everything to everyone. It can only come when she comes home to herself, with love for all the beauty she is. When she sees the value of herself, she can know the fullest power that is available to her as woman.

How does woman do that when she faces the immensity of oppression, degradation and misogyny?

By turning to look at another woman, to look deeply in another woman’s heart, to see within her what she can’t see in herself. By turning to the earth, to look deeply in the earth’s heart.

By opening our hearts to earth, to feel the incredible suffering this beautiful, living, pulsing beauty is enduring, and at the same time seeing her strength, her capacity to heal, her desire to continue to provide a home for all of life.

Woman is tied to the earth more deeply than man. When we open to her power to heal and regenerate, we can know our own capacity to heal and regenerate.

Anne Baring speaks of women:

There is a danger that in seeking power and equality with men in order for her voice and her creative gifts to be recognised, woman may unconsciously reject the very foundation which gives, through her millennial experience as custodian of life, something of supreme importance to say.

Can we…

There is no question that women are changing the nature of power. We see it occurring everywhere. As we do…

Can we encourage each other to come forth into our power?

Can we hold each other in supreme love and compassion as we travel this sacred path together?

Can we stand firm in the knowledge that we are worthy of the sacred nature we know is at the core of our womanhood?

Can we love those parts of ourselves that feel so difficult to love?

Can we know, in our experience, that we are all mothers to all the world’s children?

Can we love others with the fierce tenderness that might melt the deepest darkest hate into the most brilliant light of love?


And, you?

I’d love to know your feelings and thoughts about power and women; about what is emerging through us; about your story with power.


This is the second post in a series of three on tenderness, power and grace. All three posts are part of the Summer of Love Invitational, where the lovely Mahala Mazerov has invited bloggers to write about loving kindness.

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A Revolution of Tenderness

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It is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender. ~ Jenny Holzer

The power of tenderness.

The tender skin of one touching the tender skin of another, causing an exquisite encounter, not possible in any other way.

The tender eyes that want nothing from the world, except to welcome and embrace all that generously spills into view.

The tender heart that loves simply for love’s sake, rather than for what one might get out of loving.

Some tender places of the heart can only be known in relationship, when one is willing to lay down arms, open the heart and wait, exposed.

I know the power of tenderness.

We all know the power of tenderness.

Revolution begins with changes in the individual. ~ Jenny Holzer

We already know, well, revolutions of domination, where ‘power over’ has all but brought the human race to death’s door.

We know the power of tenderness in intimate moments.

What if we were to realize that it is in our own self-interest to engage in a revolution of tenderness?

What if we were to realize that the power of tenderness is so much greater than the power of tyranny?

I, too, wonder how this might happen, how we shift from tyranny to tenderness.

Those that engage in domination and destruction stand in a perspective that sees tenderness as weakness, not strength.

But, I also know the only way to begin a revolution within is with a tender ‘yes’, a surrendered ‘yes’.

It begins with trusting that ultimately, the power of tenderness rather than the power of domination will be what saves us.


Which is the more powerful act?

Somewhere within each of us is a place that dominates and condemns – others and ourselves. This place is the most tender of places, because, it fears tenderness, yet longs to be showered with it. This place learned to dominate early. It learned to condemn and judge at an early age. When tenderness was what this place was longing for, instead it received judgment. Somewhere this place believes judgment and condemnation are the best way to be strong in an unsafe world; yet, if you check-in closely, what’s really going on is a longing to be touched with tender hands, to be seen, really seen, with tender eyes, and to be held and embraced by the most tender places of the heart. Hence, it is in your own self-interest to be tender.

We may fear being tender and loving will be seen as weak by those that continue to shower our beautiful world with hate, violence, oppression and greed. And as long as we see it as being weak, they will. When we know the strength of tenderness as a gift to ourselves, and when we see the powerful effects of the offering of tenderness to another, the perspective that ‘tenderness is weakness’ can begin to shift.

Try it. Feel the effects it has on you and others. Compare these to the moments when you judge and condemn others. Then, ask yourself, truly look to see, which is the more powerful act? Which way of being requires true vulnerability and fierce loyalty to love?

We’ve all judged and been judged. We’ve all condemned and been condemned We’ve all dominated and been dominated.We all know these experiences. What if we were to caress another’s ragged coat of life with the tender touch of one who knows these things intimately? This is the real revolution of tenderness that is poised to unfold.

::

This is the first post in a series of three on tenderness, power and grace. All three posts are part of the Summer of Love Invitational, where the lovely Mahala Mazerov has invited bloggers to write about loving kindness.

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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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Love of Woman

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“…this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love.” ~David Whyte

I want to write about love.

Between women.

Love between women that was never part of the world I grew up in.

Love between women that defies the (il)logic of patriarchy.

Love that is outside the acceptable norm of patriarchal society.

This love between me and woman has been a long time coming.

To love woman in this way goes against unspoken rules.

It pushes up against learned fears.

And it compels me to belly-up to the place of trust, where the tenderness of past hurts reveals its pink flesh.

This love is far beyond simply promising not to put other women down.

This love is far beyond knowing that supporting another woman does not diminish me.

This love is more simple than all of these thinking things.

This love comes from the place deep within my body that is the radiance of the living, breathing essence of the sacred, divine feminine.

To love woman is to know the purity of the place made ready for new life, whether or not this place ever produces new life.

It has taken me a long time to learn to love woman – in myself, in others, and in its most essential form, the sacred, divine feminine.

::

This post is in response to The Summer of Love Invitational, where the lovely Mahala Mazerov has invited bloggers to write about loving kindness.

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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

…

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.

…

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.

…

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.

…

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.

…

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.”

…

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.

…

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.”

…

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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Rage, Love, God & Red-Tailed Hawks

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All the fear has left me now
I’m not frightened anymore
It’s my heart that pounds beneath my flesh
It’s my mouth that pushes out this breath
And if I shed a tear I won’t cage it
I won’t fear love
And if I feel a rage I won’t deny it
I won’t fear love.
~Sarah McLachlan

Okay. I admit it. Here. To you. Now.

I… am in love with… God.

I know, I know. The ‘G’ word scares people.

I could say Spirit, the Sacred, the Divine, the Universe, Nature. I have and I do and I will.

But, something in me melts when I acknowledge I am in love with God. This isn’t the love I always thought love was; it’s the deep humility and awe I feel each time I experience the love and grace available to me when I’m stumbling out of my own distractedness, and ‘fumbling towards ecstasy‘.

Even as I write the word God here, and share it with you, I can feel old thoughts and feelings of fear creep across my mind. Old feelings brought about by a system that turned God into something I felt I had to fear, because if I didn’t, I would find myself in some bad kinda way.

Last night, Jeff and I went to Inspiration point in Tilden Park, here in the Berkeley hills. We went to mark the Solstice, the longest day of the year, by sitting in nature. You know, the nature that is hills, trees, birds, sun, wind, moon. It’s easy to say, “I’m going to go spend time in nature”, as if somewhere I’ve forgotten I am nature, you’re nature, we’re all nature.

We found a bench where the view didn’t quite catch the sun setting, but we could see its orange glow spreading out across Mt. Tam and the Golden Gate.

From our spot, I breathed in the scent of the wild.

Two red-tail hawks, life mates, followed each other from tree top to tree top. Each time they sang out their tell-tale ‘Screeeee’, and each mate responded to the other, something in me also responded, as if I were also being called by this wild, untamable force that moves both the red-tail and me.

A gopher, close by to my right foot, chewed vigorously on the long grass, causing it (the grass) to disappear down into the earth. She was chewing with such intensity, such wild ferocity.

As the sun set, the slighty-over-a-half moon glowed intensely against the deep blue almost-night sky.

Something stirred deep within me. It always does when I open to the wild forces, the wilderness that we really live in…and that lives us. I am wild and feral, even though so much of my personality was created to keep this bit of reality away from my conscious awareness. After all, if I remember how wild I really am, what will I do? What kind of trouble will I create? What kind of joy might I know? What kind of emptiness and ecstasy might I fumble into? What kind of rage might I feel and express?

This wilderness is God. I know my old fears of a mean, sitting in a throne man, are the lies I was told. This wilderness out there, and in here, are God. This wild and woolly force, which is completely unknowable and yet totally available,  is God. This life force pulsing through my veins is God. It is powerful. It is fierce. It is loving.

I can’t say I don’t fear it or that I’m not frightened of it anymore. In fact, the opposite is true. The wilderness scares the bejeebers out of me. But this fear is not the fear I was taught about God. This fear is not about my sinfulness, my automatic ticket to hell simply because I am human…and female to boot.

This fear is that heart-thumping, breath-catching feeling when you know you’re being called to step into the wilderness within, that fullest place of empty that awaits.

This fear comes from my remembrance of wild, of passion, of unleashing. This wild has nothing to do with pretending to be an over-sexed psuedo-goddess that lives to please others. This wild will never be tamed. It can’t be tamed. This wild knows tears and rage. It doesn’t deny them.

This wild is calling me to know the tears and rage that remain buried deep in this body. It is calling me to know the shame and humiliation. It is calling me to know the love and the power that waits, just under the darkest of dark emotions.

All of this, all of everything, all of nothing is God. And even then, I don’t have a clue as to what God is. I just know the love.

And, you?

There is much rage hidden in women’s bodies.

Do you feel rage? Do you deny tears? Do you fear this wildness? Do you fear love?

And, if you are a man?

What can you share about rage? About the wilderness? About your own fear of tears?

I’d love to know…

This post on Wilderness is part of Dian Reid’s blog challenge, as well as Bindu Wiles #215800 blog challenge.

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