Unabashed & Revolutionary – Women, Poetry & Desire

Share

 

Today is a day of celebration!

 

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

AmyPalkoFRL02

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

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

You can purchase From Revolutionary Lips at Red Thread Voices as an ebook or MP3s.

 

   

 

divider graphic

 

 

AmyPalkoFRL03

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

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

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

Share

No Longer Spitting in the Face of God

Share

 

woman with a basket of mandarins

What is woman?

She is woman.
She is not an imitation of man.
She is not made from man.
She is unique unto herself.
She isn’t perfect, yet she is sacred.
She is the vessel from which life is born.
She isn’t superior to man, nor is she inferior.
She is the female human being.

::

To denigrate women is to spit in the face of God. ~ Desmond Tutu

We live in a culture that has, for centuries, maybe millennium, denigrated the Feminine…and as walking embodiments of the Feminine, women and girls are living, breathing targets of this fear and hatred of the Feminine – also known as misogyny.

Allan G. Johnson writes in The Gender Knot:

“Misogyny plays a complex role in patriarchy. It fuels men’s sense of superiority, justifies male aggression against women, and works to keep women on the defensive and in their place. Misogyny is especially powerful in encouraging women to hate their own femaleness, an example of internalized oppression. The more women internalize misogynist images and attitudes, the harder it is to challenge male privilege or patriarchy as a system. In fact, women won’t tend to see patriarchy as even problematic since the essence of self-hatred is to focus on the self as the sole cause of misery, including the self-hatred.”  (italics mine)

 

Allan Johnson also writes,

…patriarchy is not simply another way of saying “men.” Patriarchy is a kind of society, and a society is more than a collection of people. It also involves as one of its key aspects the oppression of women.”

 

Patriarchy is NOT men. It’s a system. It’s a system we are born into. It’s a system we all hold up, and continue to breath life into, when we don’t question the assumptions we hold about men, women, and power, and about how we are in the world with each other.

It’s a system we give power to when we don’t question how we value ourselves as women, and how we value womanhood.

It’s a system we help to keep in place when we ‘hate our own femaleness’.

It’s a system that continues to control how we view ourselves when we don’t question these internalized misogynist images.

 

This isn’t about men vs. women.

Not at all. We often think when one attempts to have a conversation about this subject matter that we are blaming men, but if you read further into Johnson’s book (which I hope you will!), you will see that attempts to subvert these discussions are ways to keep this kind of system alive and well.

And if we focus on the self-hate, we are doing exactly what Johnson mentions – not seeing the mechanism of patriarchy at work.

 

This post IS about…

…the images we, women and men, carry around within ourselves of the Feminine, women, and the value of women.

This post IS about…

…the places within us that are outside of the realm of patriarchy.

 

We are all, men and women, given images when we are young of what a woman is and what a man is. In a world (for the most part – some indigenous cultures do not do this) that has denigrated the Feminine for centuries, it would make sense that our images of the Feminine would be less than helpful at best, and downright misogynist at worst; and our images of men would be championed (although as we’ve explored coming to terms with equality for women over the past decades, there’s been a lot of mud slinging both ways.)

Of course, as I’ve been writing this over the past few days, the writing has been working on me. What initially began as a more cerebral exploration and post, soon became very personal and emotional for me. As I sat with, something I try to do when I am writing a post, these images that I hold of myself, these misogynistic images I’ve ingested over my lifetime, I began to truly grasp the depth of this programming by a system that is misogynistic to its core.

Some of the images I see in my own psyche about myself are deeply misogynistic. Of course they are. I’ve been swimming in this system my entire life. I’ve been ingesting these images from the time I began to be conscious of what was around me. We wonder why it is so hard for women to love themselves. We don’t have to look far. We just have to be willing to look inside, into the depths of what we’ve come to believe, and feel, about our womanhood, and about our female bodies.

And, men do not escape the pain of this culture. Not at all. The Feminine is within them. And, their mothers, sisters, daughters, friends are women. When they hold these misogynistic images within their psyches, they must deaden the pain of knowing that the women they love deeply are walking, breathing, embodiments of this Feminine that is so feared and so hated.

 

Instead, if we are willing…

What we can is come to know the images of what it is to be female that lay outside the realm of patriarchal conditioning. These images come to us as we honestly, and wholly, ask the question, “What is it to be female?”

We can question what we’ve believed to be true. We can look directly at the images we hold of ourselves as women, of other women, and of the Feminine itself.

Inquire into the images of the Feminine that YOU are carrying around within you. Look inside. What images are YOU holding of woman? What images do you believe to be true about you and your femaleness?

This is what matters, because when we hold images, and we all do, they are the images we offer to others about ourselves. They are the images we give to others, mostly unconsciously, that tell others about who we believe ourselves to be, how much worth we believe we have, and how the people in our lives should treat us.

The images of self and gender we hold that speak to self-hatred are not natural. They are not native to us.

Images of self-hatred are not native to us. Images of self-hatred are not native to that place within us that has never been under the control of patriarchal thought and conditioning. 

We are love.  And, we can be fierce love. When we begin to hold images of ourselves as women worthy of dignity, respect, and love, we begin to view ourselves differently. I’m not talking band-aid images – I’m talking a real and true transformation of the images we hold about ourselves, other women, and the Feminine. When we find these places of dignity, respect, and love within ourselves, we begin to know something new, something real, something sacredly creative.

Anne Baring writes,

“The recovery of the feminine principle is the key to the transformation of our world culture from decay and disintegration and progressive regression into uniformity, banality and brutality, into something longed for and extraordinary.

Woman’s own awakening to the realisation of her value is part of the recovery of the feminine principle. It is as if a momentous birth is taking place in the collective psyche of woman. This birth may be experienced as something that is deeply perplexing and difficult as well as something exciting and challenging. As woman gives birth to herself, to her unique individuality, to the emerging awareness of her value as woman (not an imitation of man), the feminine principle will also emerge in the consciousness of humanity which for so long has suffered from its repression and rejection.

Woman, whose essential nature is to respond to suffering and need, is now responding to life’s own need and is experiencing herself as the vessel of transformation in which a new consciousness is being born.”

 

A woman is reborn as she gives birth “to her unique individuality, to the emerging awareness of her value as woman (not an imitation of man).

We are reborn when we ask the question (with a longing to listen so we truly hear the answer), What is it to be female? We are reborn in the space from which we listen. This isn’t woman as imitation of man, or woman born from man’s rib. This is, as Rilke wrote, “the female human being.”

 

 As Woman

When I come to know myself as Woman,
as sacredly female outside of patriarchal control,
I am held in the lap of Love,
I am back in the garden of Earth,
I breathe in the fragrance of Life,
I eat of the fruit of Wisdom,
I am no longer a stranger in the holy land,
the only land in which I am truly alive,
the land of my own body,
the realm of my own Soul.

::

image from Flickr Commons: Woman with a basket of mandarins, 1920-1930,
Photographer: Unidentified, Location: Queensland, Australia; No known copyright restrictions

 

 

Share

Opening to the Pull of the Feminine…Together

Share

hollowedouttruckwithtendershoots

Twelve years ago, Her invitation was strong. It was obvious, but it wasn’t clear. Not to my intellect. Only to my body.

She pulled me down into Her, or at the time what felt like being pulled down into the earth. And She came up to meet me.

I suppose there were times prior to this moment in 2002 when She called to me. I don’t know. Maybe She calls to us our whole lives, or perhaps She tries to reawaken us to Her after we’ve shut down our connection with Her.

I was sitting on a bench outside of a Peet’s coffee shop on the Berkeley/Oakland border, sitting in a little courtyard where I would spend time reading and writing. Really, I was searching. I was in my free fall period, or what some might call the dark night of the soul, where I had no idea where I was headed or what I would be doing with my life. I’d been in this place for some months, yet it felt like nothing was getting any clearer. I was trying to make sense of what felt like a path, but in reality was no path at all. She doesn’t lead you in a straight line. She offers only a bit, just a small bit that leads from where you are. She requires trust.

I didn’t yet have that trust.

I’d been through so much grief and change, and was looking for something solid to stand on. Seven years before, my husband had died suddenly. One year before, I graduated from Stanford University at the ripe age of 45. And, my first grandchild was just over a year old. His first year was harrowing to say the least. Twenty surgeries in that year alone caused it to be a truly trying, traumatic time.

So, on this day, as I was sitting, I began to feel something pulling me down into it. It sounds sort of odd as I write it here, but at the time the feeling was strong, very strong. It was an energy, but was more than that. It was a knowing, a pull, a feeling that something greater than me was calling to me and leading me down into it.

The feeling of down and in was incredibly visceral. It was as if something was wrapping around my legs, something alive and pulsing, something real yet completely unseen. And it was pulling down into the dark, a very dark place.

I feared the dark. I wanted no part of this. That’s the truth.

I remember, distinctly, saying inside to that which was calling me, “Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.” At the time, I felt as if I had been through so much and I simply didn’t want more growth or transformation. I just didn’t. I wanted to rest. I didn’t want what I had a sense it was asking of me. I notice I sensed it was asking something, but I didn’t have the energy to respond in the way I felt I should. No. I didn’t want to.

I feared it, this force. I feared the unknown of it. More than that, though, I feared the power of it.

I’ve found that we don’t get to choose when we are called, but we can choose to fight it…sometimes. At least, I chose to fight it. I didn’t trust this. And that was the crux of the whole damn thing. I didn’t trust this and I knew it was Her. I knew it was the feminine. I knew it was the dark. I knew it.

Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to awaken to the feminine. During this time, I’d felt the pull and the call. I’d been devouring books trying to understand what kept calling me. There weren’t as many books out then, back then. But, part of me still thought it was a romantic idea, an exciting thing. But, I wanted it to look like I wanted. I wanted to control how it all went down. I wanted to control.

Now, I know differently. She’s like a flame that I’m drawn to. She is this ripe and fertile void. She is my Soul. She is the Feminine. She is Goddess. I don’t even really know what She is. I just know I have a longing that is deep. When I acknowledge my longing, tears run like rivers. None of it is intellectually logical at all. But the Soul knows when it is time to come home, and it can be relentless as it pulls us back home.

This invitation. This pull. This relentlessness.

These are why Amy Oscar and I are holding a small, intimate retreat in just a few weeks in Western Massachusetts. This is why.

 

OpeningToHer

 

Because…

We can gather together as women as we are waking back up to Her.
We can come together to weave our wisdom, come to speak what we feel we cannot speak yet aloud, out in the world.
We can come together to share what it feels like to be drawn to Her, and to open to Her.

And in doing so, we learn from ourselves, we learn from each other, and we open more deeply to Her.

Ultimately, I don’t know there are answers…but we can come into a conscious experience of what it means to live and breathe the Feminine in real life.

If you feel called, please come.

If you have questions, please ask.

If you feel pulled and cannot come, or you feel pulled but not to this retreat, open to your heart, to your sisters, to life itself. She will guide you.

And, if you feel called to, please share of your experience of opening to the pull of the Feminine in the comments below. I’d love to know.

Share

Somewhere, under all those layers, She is a Force of Nature

Share

 

We wear many veils, veils that keep us from both seeing ourselves, and being seen by others,  as we really are.

Like this beautiful Iris, the petals protect the soft layers and fragrance of the Feminine. At some point, the petals spread themselves out to slow dance with the sun, and the beautiful soft places within come into the light.

What causes this flower to pulse and push and open to the sun? A fierce aliveness, a fierce desire to be fully expressed, fully seen, and fully held. Held by the earth, held by the hips, and held by One who loves her…deeply.

To know you are held by this Love within yourself, truly, madly and deeply, is what ultimately allows your inner flesh to be revealed. 

Think of the force of nature it takes for this flower to open. Fully. Unabashedly. To the Light.

Within every woman lives the Feminine. But, She almost always lives deep within the shadows, underneath the many layers. For eons, it hasn’t been safe to let her out so women have kept her hidden. She’s been dormant. But no more.

 

She is here.

Somewhere, under all those layers, She is fiercely alive.

Can you feel Her?

Can you hear Her speaking to you in symbol and image, dream and metaphor?

She doesn’t speak the way we’re accustomed to being spoken to. She speaks in heartbeats, pulses, beauty, and fire.

Deep in your pelvis is a cauldron – a cauldron where She mixes her creations, where She nourishes and sustains creation until it is ready to breathe on its own. She lives within you. She is you. You ARE fiercely alive.

When you know She lives within you, when you feel Her pulsing every cell of your body with Life, you begin to feel this pulsation opening you from within.

At one point in my own life, I crossed the threshold from invitation to insistence. She no longer invited me to open, She insisted I open, and as every part of me pushed this away, She stood her ground. Literally. She came up into me through my feet, my legs, and into my core. She was lovingly and fiercely insistent.

I share this here, because She’s been insistent once again.

 

Becoming a Force of Nature

My new course, Becoming a Force of Nature, has been gestating for a long, long time. I was telling my mentor, Michael Ray, just this past Wednesday, that I feel like the gestational period must have been that of a dinosaur, ’cause it feels much longer than the 12 months of an elephant, and I don’t know anything much bigger than an elephant except for a dinosaur.

Becoming a Force of Nature is a potent, provocative, and highly practical 24-week journey. The Stanford curriculum has been taught for over three decades, in various places, with wildly successful results. It became famous, really, at the height of the boom of Silicon Valley because so many of the valley’s successful people were students in the course. And, with the rising feminine infusing all of us with a new way to be conscious in the world, the timing of these two aspects coming together is perfect.

The course is also an opportunity to hear and share experiences and stories of the Feminine making herself known within us. This is one very important way we come to see what is happening within us as women as we awaken to Her. I’ll have interviews with women who share their experiences, and there will be plenty of opportunity to share yours, or even to begin to articulate it.

 

The Inaugural Offering

The first one! A little wet behind the ears; assuredly a little messy. Fur needs to be licked. Legs need to be shaken out. But, She’s here. And, from what I can see, She is beautiful. And rich. And powerful. And tender. And waiting…

Waiting for you…if it’s right. And, you’ll know if it’s right by reading about Her, feeling Her in your body, sending into what might be possible if you allow Her to move you from where you are to where your soul is calling you to lead, live, and love from.

This course is a container to hold whatever transformation is right for you at this time, and it is indeed a time of transformation for us all and for the planet.

 

The Unknown IS a Creative Process

Whether we call it the Hero’s journey, the Shero’s journey, or the Human journey, it is about entering into the mystery of the creative process. If we are stepping out into the unknown in the world from a place of action, we must ultimately surrender to this creative process because the unknown is just that…a creative process. If we are going within, as this journey requires, in order to rescue ourselves in the deep way the feminine is asking us to do, we must disrobe, unveil, and offer ourselves into this mystery.

The creative process is this. If it is truly creative, it is a transformational process. If it is truly creative, it is a receiving of what comes. If it is truly creative, it is a letting of what we want and becoming a vessel for our soul to express in the world.

I’ve been teaching this Stanford curriculum for eleven years, and I’ve been living into the feminine for about the same time. That is no coincidence. These two pieces, married together, are a vehicle to bring together, into balance, the masculine and feminine within, bridging the two worlds within us that have been divided for so many centuries.

I tell you all of this, because I want you to know I understand this is not easy, but it can be filled with ease. It will be filled with grace.

You can learn more about the course, here, as well as listen to two audio pieces: one where I talk about the course, and one that is just a small sample of the kind of guided meditations and exercises you’ll do as part of the course.

Please consider joining me. We’re gathering a beautiful circle of women who feel called at this time to let go of the old way and to receive the new, the truly creative that is hungering to be expressed.

 

 

Share

You are a Shero, and It’s time to attend The Shero’s School for Revolutionaries.

Share

 

For many years, my Shero’s Journey has been unfolding. I’ve been unveiling the deeper, softer layers of myself through the letting go of who I thought I was, and who I thought I had to be.

I’ve come to experience the deep, dark feminine within that is the source of my creativity, sexuality, vitality…my life force. 

 

The Shero’s journey

is about turning within, shining a light on the dark places where we’ve hidden the beautiful aspects of the feminine that were not safe in this world, and reclaiming the fullness and wholeness of who we really are.

It’s about rescuing ourselves from the dark places where we hid what we believed was not sacred, and reclaiming our wholeness.

And, the Shero’s Journey is about living this wholeness in our everyday lives, living the wholeness of love in service to Life.

Our female bodies are made for this. It’s why we are here, leading, loving,and living through these female bodies.

It’s about love. It’s about life. It’s about knowing we belong here on this earth, in this life. It’s about being what we are fully, vulnerably, openly, in relationship to all of our relations…all of life.

It is time for us to live this, knowing we are not alone, telling our stories, hearing the stories and wisdom of others, and coming to truly believe that we have everything we need already. We always have.

It is time.

To that end…

 

Jennifer Louden has…

brought together an eclectic mix of women and men for her Shero’s School For Revolutionaries who have answered the call. I’m happy, and honored, to be one of these 25+ people  interviewed by Jen, along with wise souls like Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Angeles Arrien, Seane Corn, Gala Darling, Justine Musk, Dani Shapiro, Marianne Elliott, Tara Mohr, and more.

The Shero’s School for Revolutionaries will be in session all next week, September 23rd through the 28th. You’ll hear insights and wisdom about what it means to be a Shero and how we must bring our gifts forward in service to healing.

But, this isn’t the kind of school we’re used to. It’s a school for revolutionaries, a school asking you to listen even more deeply to what your own heart knows, to the wisdom of your own soul, to the knowing in your own bones.

This is a revolution of love, of spiritual activism, of the joy of allowing service to heal and transform you.

 

In Jen’s words:

What is calling you these days?  Does it have something to do with healing, with mending, with tending, your corner of the world? Are  you afraid of what calls you, sure you aren’t up for it, sure there is no time, perhaps have no idea where to start? 

If so, what good news! Doubt, confusion and fear are all great signs that you are ready to own your power to take real action. YES, you are embarked upon your Shero’s journey, starting to reclaim what has been lost & bring it back as a boon to your community. Weaving together inner work and outer action. Owning your gifts in service to something larger than you. Discovering your deepest joy.

These are practical, intimate and mystical conversations, designed to support you wherever you are in your journey, you’ll hear about:

  • explore how to start a movement
  • where self-care fits
  • how to take care of yourself financially
  • how to unhook from blame and praise
  • and lots of practical tips for activism and fear management

and much, much more.

 

An intimate conversation with Jen

I sat down with Jen to ask her to share why this is so important to her. If you know Jen online, in person, from her books and blogs, you know how passionate and she is about savoring and serving. Listen in to this short, and wonderful, conversation…

Jen Louden on her Shero’s School for Revolutionaries

[audio:https://unabashedlyfemale.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/SherosSchool.mp3|titles=Conversation with Jen Louden]

The details:
Dates: September 23 -28, 2013
Price: FREE
Where: Sign up online here to have free access to these live-streamed interviews.

You’ll be able to hear my interview on the first day of school, Monday, September 23rd. The interview will be available for 24 hours. I loved doing this interview. Something beautiful comes through. In Jen’s words,

“Julie gives a radiant transmission of someone living her shero journey – it’s like the Goddess is speaking through her.”

 Each interview will be available for 24 hours. If, at the end of the school, you choose to purchase them, you’ll be able to do that for $47. Jen is donating her proceeds, so this is also a fundraiser.

 

And, in the spirit of Sheros, Love, and Sacred Activism,

[Revised Sept 26, 2013]

Registration is now open for my new course,

Becoming a Force of Nature

It’s a blend of:

  • Stanford University curriculum
  • exploration of embodying the sacred feminine
  • practical tools, practices, meditations, worksheets
  • and ways to live what you truly are – a Force of Nature.

It’s a potent, provocative, and practical 24-week deep dive your creative process and your feminine nature.

 

Share

In My Skin

Share

I’ve come here to live in my skin. Not to hide away from life, but to shimmy right up to this ever-so-thin layer of dermis so I can truly touch and be touched.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To relate to life, caressed by breeze, by sun, by dew.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. It’s the only thing that separates what I sometimes believe is me from what I sometimes believe is not me. It’s a tender line, isn’t it? This thin skin – a membrane so thin it defies rationality.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. A soft wrapping around the tender-most flesh, it gifts me with what many only speak of in hushed tones – one of the most joyous experiences of life – that of being touched, deeply, reverently consciously.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To know the true intimacy of life is to know the sublime interaction that happens here. It is so simple, yet so profoundly mysterious. We can describe these bodies in scientific, physiological terms. We can say, “Oh yes, I know how it works.” But when we touch another with our whole being, our whole awareness, at the point of connection there are no words to describe it. Nothing we can say can capture this moment of exquisite intimacy.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To be alive, fully and vulnerably, is to offer this skin to the world. To do so is to allow yourself to be touched by what greets you.

I’ve come here to live in my skin, yet along the way I learned so well how not to live in my skin. Each of us has moments when what we experienced was too much, too painful, or too frightening to feel the immensity of the sensations of those experiences.

Over these past many years, I’ve been taking this long journey back into the body. Along with many things, one thing I’ve discovered is that sometimes what I long to say can only be said through my body. Sometimes, there is no way to say with words what the body longs to say. It must be said with touch, with movement, with song or dance.

Maybe that’s our journey, to come back into the skin. We are here in bodies.  We are alive in these bodies, in this skin that was created to know the sublimity of touch and sensation and life.

Why are we alive if not to fully live in this skin?

 

Share

Women as Noble Beings

Share

 

 

I was born in the ‘50s, and grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. I remember shows like Donna Reed and Father Knows Best, where the Mother was always wearing an apron and being sweet and kind, and the Father was the breadwinner and the wise one. By the end of each show, everyone was happy, all problems were resolved, and everyone knew their place. On the surface, so many families seemed to be the same; yet, underneath, most were not even close.

In this kind of ‘pretend’ environment, my parents divorced in 1964. I remember how hard it was for my mother when she became a single mother with three little girls, trying to make ends meet to put enough food on the table and keep the roof over our heads. I remember how afraid she was, how alone she felt, and how judged single mothers were at that time.

I remember the feminist movement. I remember people (not only men) totally trashing the women who were speaking out. These women were speaking out to effect real change so that women, like my mother, could get better jobs, earn more money, and have a modicum of respect in the culture. We were trying to break free from the chains and bindings that had kept women contained. I remember how these women who led the women’s liberation movement were called horrible and ugly names for speaking out.

At my young age, I remember how much I feared being cast-out like that, cast-out for speaking out with power about the truth of how things really were…and are. I am not saying all feminists were right and righteous, and those who opposed them bad; what I am saying is that the cultural paradigm of patriarchy rose up fast and hard to put these women back in their place. It wasn’t pretty.

I remember the not-so-easy discourse around the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). I remember wondering why on earth we needed the ERA. I had learned in school that we were all equal under the constitution. I was beginning to see that real life did not reflect our founding documents or what we saw on television. In growing up, I was beginning to clearly see the truth of the world I was becoming an adult in.

I remember being amazed that the ERA did not get ratified in all fifty states. It is still only in effect in twenty-one states. I remember wondering why people would not want women to have equal rights? What was that about?

In hindsight, I see how the women’s liberation movement had to push hard against a societal construct that was trying to keep women controlled and dominated – in the kitchen, or if they were working, making much less pay with a whole lot less options; how it seemed like the only way out was to prove that we could do what men did just as well as they did it; and how ‘traditional women’s work’ was not the only thing we could do.

I sit here remembering so many ways in which women have been undervalued for far too long. I sit here remembering how hard women, and some men, have worked for equality for women.

It took decades of women fighting for the right to vote to finally win what in hindsight seems only right and natural. Why?

Now in my fifties, a grandmother to four beautiful children, I see this world as it is right now in 2013. I see how little heart is in the institutions of our current culture. I see, still, how little our culture values traditionally ‘feminine’ things such as caring for the poor, teaching the young, honoring the elderly, valuing wisdom, taking care of the planet, and making sure all people have access to basic human needs.

I see that somewhere back in the history of humans, caring for children, caring for others, and caring for the home became something less than, something looked down upon, something not of value. I see how women still are not valued, how feminine traits are denigrated, while masculine ones continue to be praised and admired.

What has this devaluation of the feminine done to our world? When we don’t value, deeply value, that which is at the root of relieving suffering in human lives and the human heart, valuing the very planet on which our lives (and the future lives of generations to come) depend, and seeing the beauty and sacredness of life itself, what do our lives boil down to?

Woman in a barley field, Ladakh, India.

Tenderness of the heart and tending the hearth are not inconsequential offerings. Both literally and metaphorically, our world is hungering for these.

It is inhumane to expect people to continually pull themselves up by their own ‘bootstraps’ without needing anything from anyone. That is what’s expected in a hyper-masculine culture where being needy for anything or anyone is weak, and holding emotions in is strong and righteous. It is inhuman and inhumane.

What is human is the way of the heart, of connection and relationship. We do need each other. It’s a very human thing to need each other. Being human is a vulnerable proposition. To think otherwise, is to pretend we are separate from each other, or that we are machines of some kind.

I remember, somewhere deep within me, a time when I knew life differently as a woman, a time when women walked as noble beings. We can walk again as noble beings, knowing we embody the Feminine and are sacred vessels for life. We can walk again as noble beings, knowing the earth, too, is a sacred vessel for life. It is a deeply sacred relationship women’s bodies have with the earth body.To bring the heart back into life, it is time we women value our femaleness: our power to nurture and nourish, our ability to feel deeply, our wisdom that fills our bones, our vibrant and sacred creativity, our vital life force that fuels our sexuality, our powerful voices, and our capacity for fierce, fierce love. This is not in place of our ability to get things done in the world – we know how to do this. Rather, it is bringing this awareness, this value, and this knowing back into our daily lives.

In valuing these things, we bring ourselves back into balance, a balance of the masculine and feminine within. As we do this, as we embody our femaleness, aware of the sacredness of our bodies, we model what it is to respect the feminine in a world that has forgotten how to do so. And as we do this, we hold out our hands and hearts to the men in our lives, inviting them to do the same – to respect the feminine within us and to embody the feminine within themselves.

May we all, women and men, walk on the earth with feet of love. May we all become conscious of the immense gift of life, and allow this knowing to wake us up to the joyful responsibility we have to be engaged, creative, and giving members of this world village.

::

Originally posted at Roots of She.

 

Share

The Whole World is Alive in Play

Share

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ~ Buckminster Fuller

And so it seems fighting the structure that is patriarchy is not where to put our energy. Fighting something only keeps us attached to it, and there seems to be enough fighting going on in this world already.

Instead, what is this new model? Bucky Fuller was into building things. The old model that is dying was built up during the Industrial Revolution. It’s been about mechanization, about thought, and about a large serving of the masculine.

Birthing

What is coming, though, is very different. What is new is not about mechanization and won’t come about by building it. It will come about through birthing. Yes, that’s right. BIRTHING.

We are giving birth to the new consciousness. Women hold that archetype, whether or not we birth babies. And this new consciousness is being born by women who are rebirthing themselves into a conscious knowing of the sacred feminine.

This new consciousness is not about women taking over, it’s about coming into balance, about healing the earth and realizing our roles as stewards of life. It’s about realizing the sacredness of life, in all of life.

What will it take for us to relax into the delivery? Anyone who has either given birth, or who has witnessed a baby being birthed, knows the mother basically has to surrender to the birth process.

Hanging on makes birth, and life, painful and intense. And letting go, receiving the birth, brings a little more ease. Maybe. Either way, birth brings transformation.

Play

I remember how I transformed after having each child. Birth transformed me in completely unexpected ways. The birth of any creation through us transforms us. We leave the old behind. There’s a kind of death, and from that death the new is born. The whole world is alive in play. Why would we be any different?

I’ve noticed that one of the hardest things for me to relax into is this sense of play; a sense of flow and ease, of not having to have a label for everything. I have been in a place of in-between for some time, now, and it isn’t so easy to navigate. I make it hard. I try to put solidity to flow, firmness to malleability, exact labels to what it is I will be doing, and perhaps it is as simple as I am doing what I am doing, whatever name I give it, whatever I call myself.

And then I see that we know what we know. If we are really truthful with ourselves, we know. Can we trust ourselves and this knowing? This is the question, because the answer is crucial to birthing something new.

I’ve shared some words about trusting yourself… you know what you know… over on Andrea Olson’s site, A Multitude of Things. Please read on…I think it will speak to you.

And you?

As always, I’d love to know what you think, what’s happening in your life and how you’re experiencing this process of birth and re-birth. I hope you’ll share them here in the comments.

With love, Julie

 

 

 

Share

A Glorious Tribe of Erotic Visionaries

Share

You’re my tribe.

This is a conversation I’ve needed to have with myself for quite a while, now. So, I’m gonna have it here, and share it with you all, too. You’re my tribe.

I’m going to out myself… in service to helping me know, and hopefully any of you out there who are in the same place, that I am indeed part of a remarkable tribe of visionaries.

Sometimes, it is easy to think everyone else has it together, everyone else is completely comfortable in their work, no one else hears that inner critical voice…

The fact is, I’ve had an incessant voice in my head that has driven me somewhat bat crazy with its insistence that the stuff I write and teach about is ‘out there’, a bit ‘too much’, ‘too sexual’, too crazy, over the top, not important, too esoteric, not what people are willing to pay for, that people won’t ‘get it’ … you get the picture.

women’s ways of knowing

the mystery and the unseen world

ways of the heart

the sensual, erotic nature of life

raw and wild creativity…

are out there, a bit wacko, not all that important…

WOAH. Doesn’t that look odd?

Just hearing myself say these things aloud, on paper, on this computer screen remind me of how powerful our inner critics are, how desperately they want to keep us safe, tied to the tribe, one like everyone else.

And…we no longer have the luxury of listening to this voice.

Isn’t it just flat-out crazy?

how our inner-critics keep on pushing that old boulder up the hill, no matter how much feedback we get that we are doing our work in the world?

How many times I have heard in the past month from people who are writing about the feminine, God, spirituality, love, kindness, women’s rage, the plight of life here on earth, and who’ve also expressed fear about speaking out, fear that friends will think what they are saying, writing and sharing is weird and out there.

Right now, so much of what fills our airwaves still reflects the old paradigm. It still mirrors old ways of being, ways that denigrated the feminine, saw only the logical and reasonable as valuable, and so on.

What we share from our hearts, what we teach to our clients, what we write on our blogs, the ways we do business, are all creating a new world, a new way of being with each other. This IS the new paradigm.

The idea that what we are saying, writing and teaching is weird to the old way makes sense. It IS Weird, different, new to the old way. And, isn’t that perfect? It means this IS a new way.

An Enlightening Force

I believe in the erotic and I believe in it as an enlightening force within our lives as women. I have become clearer about the distinctions between the erotic and other apparently similar forces. We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way. And when I say living I mean it as that force which moves us toward what will accomplish real positive change. ~Audre Lorde

Think of the Suffragettes and their amazing work to bring the vote to women in our country. They worked for decades, facing all sorts of backlash from so many. What gave them such incredible determination to work toward this goal for so long?

I wonder if it was this enlightening force that Lorde wrote of…

The thing is, we’ve reached a tipping point. I can feel it. There are so many of us doing this work to bring women’s wisdom forward to serve life.

What if?

What if we just realize that the voice inside doesn’t really want us to stay quiet… it just wants to be listened to, heard, loved? What if it wants to know that we are surrounded by those that understand us, those that love us, those that will stand by us as we do our visionary work in the world?

What if we make sure we tell others we support their work, champion and advocate for them, send them a little love note every now and then, remind them they are not alone…

It’s both an inside job – realizing our wholeness within, and also an outside job – finding the people in our lives who truly honor and support our work in the world… our tribe.

Heal within:
Slip your inner critic a love note… tell it that you now know and realize you are not alone…you are part of a glorious band of creative lovers of life telling a bold new story of a new way of life on earth…

Reach out to others:
We are not alone. We are not individual bodies, swimming alone upstream against an immovable force. 
We’re all together… a glorious tribe of erotic visionaries with an eye for beauty and a deep vast love for the sacredness of life…and we are held by life itself, life that at its core is love.

And, you…

If you see yourself as one of this tribe of erotic visionaries, a woman who feels this ‘enlightening force’ in your life and is working to accomplish real positive change in service to life, please share this in the comments!

Please let me know, let us all know, so we can see just how big and luscious this tribe is!

 

Share

The Feminine: Presence in a Lullaby

Share

I’ve been wanting to include some examples of the feminine in real life here on the blog, so you can have a sense of what I am talking about when I speak of the sacred feminine. She is revealed, more and more, each day.

I’ve created a new category, The Feminine in Real Life, that will include some great examples of how She is rising in the everyday world.

A Lullaby

The first post is this absolutely gorgeous lullaby in the video below. It cuts right to my heart. Her voice, the words, and what is unseen all come together to create such beauty. It brings me to tears, and to a feeling of deep relatedness to life.

Before you watch,

I want to share these words that I saw just yesterday from Marion Woodman:

“…when we’re talking about that feminine that’s missing, we’re talking about the heart energy. That can fill a room. Certainly in a relationship it’s the energy that holds presence. By which I mean the child comes in or the person comes in, has something to tell you or they have prepared a little bouquet. Have you got the time to see it? Have you got the time to see the love that went into it? Can you hear the anguish in the voice that is talking to you?”

The feminine principle would attempt to relate. Instead of breaking things off into parts, it would say, where are we alike? How can we connect? Where is the love? Can you listen to me? Can you really hear what I am saying? Can you see me? Do you care whether you see me or not?

…it is so difficult… to talk about the feminine because so few people have experienced it. What I’m talking about here is presence, and relatedness.”

The video:

The lyrics:

I Have Never Loved Someone, by My Brightest Diamond

I have never loved someone the way I love you
I have never seen a smile like yours
And if you grow up to be king, or clown, or pauper
I will say you are my favorite one in town
I have never held a hand so soft and sacred
When I see you laugh, I know heaven’s key
And when I grow to be a poppy in the graveyard
I will send you all my love upon the breeze
And if the breeze won’t blow your way, I will be the sun
And if the sun won’t shine your way, I will be the rain
And if the rain won’t wash away all your aches and pains
I will find some other way to tell you you’re okay

::

The presence of the feminine, receptive, tender, and powerful: “I have never held a hand so soft and sacred.” “When I see you laugh, I know heaven’s key.”

You can feel the presence as she sings the song. You can see its effect on the people in the restaurant. Tears. They have been touched. She, the singer, is touched by the presence moving through her.

In fact, in the description below the video, the person filming writes of the effect:

“After the concert I finally dared to ask her what I wanted to ask her that morning, to sing us this lullaby that struck me down. It’s Sunday morning, a morning of hangovers. The whole hotel seems suspended in the air. We ask her to get to the bar, to make it sing for her, to sing for her son (for whom she had written this song). We erase ourselves. She, she doesn’t. After we’re done filming, I cry. She cries too.”

Struck me down. Powerful words on the effect of this presence. It is clear that this presence touches everyone. How did it touch you? How does this radiance affect you?

What would our world be like if we embodied this feminine receptivity more deeply? Would we come to know, as experience, that the hands we hold are ‘soft and sacred’, that when we hear laughter from those we love, that we are knowing ‘heaven’s key’? Would we listen, deeply listen?

To embody the feminine in life is to come to know it as experience, not just as an idea in our heads but as real life experience. We haven’t experienced it much, for it has denigrated, called weak.

This is the receptive radiance of the feminine in us all, women and men, that aspect of self that can simply receive and bear witness.

It’s a beingness, and it calls for a not-doing, a letting go of doing so you can be with.

::

 I discovered this lullabye (by way of Jamie Wallace) on Amy Palko’s gorgeous post, Whispering Lullabies to the Goddess. Amy’s words speak to the goddess within each of us.

Blog Widget by LinkWithin
Share