Tag: Women

Men o pause : Freedom

“No longer do I bleed

Nor children bear

An unseen enigma

That arouses fear

But listen closely

When I say these words

I’m now more powerful

With a scream that

Pierces the veil as

I grab hold of a potency

You’ll never see coming

Ignore me, berate me

But don’t turn your back on me for

I’m rising into a power

You can’t even imagine

Much less see or understand

You’ll beg for my days of bleeding

My days of fertility

My days of youth and motherhood

For those you could control

Too late, those parts are

Transitioning and destined

To be held in the past with my old life

I am a new woman becoming

A woman who holds

Her wise blood within

And with that comes a wisdom

And power that should send

Chills through you as

I lift my skirts and let lose

A guttural scream

As the new me births

For I am free

I am Finally free!”

Poem: Menopause as Rebellion, Arlene Bailey ©2022. Poem from the upcoming anthology from Girl God Books, The Crone Initiation and Invitation: Women Speak on the Menopause Journey.

Art: Aleah Chapman

She Who Is : The Calling

This is one I am not going to even try to quantify – I feel strongly that either you’ll get it, or you won’t (although being my tribe, I do feel more of you fall more towards the former rather the latter). It’s also one that is so deeply personal, I hesitate in sharing it. Which is almost always an indicator that I should.

Where it comes from is some place beyond words, in the depth of me where the knowing resides. It is a song of the spirit that many of us hear, cosmic and born of stars, and it’s been with us since birth. It guides our lives and path, that we are here for something far greater, and many of us spend our entire lives seeking it out.

It is the search for the ineffable that exists beyond everything we know. Our raison d’etre. We get glimpses of it during our lives, something touches it’s resonance, we touch the hem of it – and we know that we know that we know. And we know that we know that they know.

It is deep calling unto deep.

And there are others hearing that same song, feeling that same pull, and though we are all of that same source, our corporeal senses are not always engaged so that we easily recognize that this isn’t just a subjective, singular experience.

That there are others, and even within our reach was the impetus for it, however. As a reminder that at any given moment, the woman next to us may be feeling and reacting to this same sense-beyond-sense, we are not alone.

“For I see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then shall I know, even as also I am known.”

No, we are not alone.

“The Calling”

Mixed Media

2022

Available now, limited quantities:

8X10 Matted and signed Gallery Print (on an 11X14 mat) – $35 https://etsy.me/3Qkq1az

4X6 Altar Art Print – (matted on a 5X7 mat) – $10 https://etsy.me/3ASgfqr

Message 2Men The Great Remembrance

Dear Men..

We miss you.

Deeply.

When women gather together in circles..

we tell stories of how much we long for you. Crave you.

Pray for you to rise and meet us here.

We mourn your missing presence.

In our childhoods.

In the homes we’ve built without you.

In our beds.

We hold hands and beg God to set you free from whatever keeps you from standing at our sides.

Right here.

Here In intimacy.

In integrity.

In wholeness.

In freedom.

The places where you are caught in dishonesty..

shame..

fear..

addiction..

we grieve and rage over.

We see your pain and we see your power.

We miss you.

We love you.

We can’t wait for you to come home

For the men who have..

thank you so much.

Please call your brothers..

start men’s circles..

show them the manuals.

Tell them of what you gave up.

Of your brokenness and acceptance.

Of what it truly means to take up the mantle of protector.

Please.

There aren’t enough fathers..

resources and leaders for men to sit at the feet of.

The women have tried.

We can’t do it.

The restoration must come from within the Masculine.

The Feminine cannot mother grown men into wholeness.

We cannot strap men to our backs and walk.

We tried.

We bow out.

Not gracefully.

But in mournful acceptance nonetheless.

And we will wait for you to burst free from the shackles patriarchy has placed on you.

We pray.

We pray.

We pray.

For the Great Remembrance.

~ Shade Ashani

The Grace Project

So I had shared this lovely photograph of my beautiful artist friend and Grace Goddess Marianne Duquette Cuozzo… along with these fabulous words of Glennon Doyle… The post went viral… and now Facebook deleted it and said “I was going too fast”… Ugh… this platform!! Here are these fabulous words and Mariannes gorgeous photo again: “Your body is not your masterpiece — your life is.

It is suggested to us a million times a day that our BODIES are PROJECTS. They aren’t. Our lives are. Our spirituality is. Our relationships are. Our work is.

Stop spending all day obsessing, cursing, perfecting your body like it’s all you’ve got to offer the world. Your body is not your art, it’s your paintbrush. Whether your paintbrush is a tall paintbrush or a thin paintbrush or a stocky paintbrush or a scratched up paintbrush is completely irrelevant. What is relevant is that YOU HAVE A PAINTBRUSH which can be used to transfer your insides onto the canvas of your life — where others can see it and be inspired and comforted by it.

Your body is not your offering. It’s just a really amazing instrument which you can use to create your offering each day. Don’t curse your paintbrush. Don’t sit in a corner wishing you had a different paintbrush. You’re wasting time. You’ve got the one you got. Be grateful, because without it you’d have nothing with which to paint your life’s work. Your life’s work is the love you give and receive — and your body is the instrument you use to accept and offer love on your soul’s behalf. It’s a system.

We are encouraged to obsess over our instrument’s SHAPE — but our body’s shape has no effect on it’s ability to accept and offer love for us. Just none. Maybe we continue to obsess because as long we keep wringing our hands about our paintbrush shape, we don’t have to get to work painting our lives. Stop fretting. The truth is that all paintbrush shapes work just fine — and anybody who tells you different is trying to sell you something. Don’t buy. Just paint.

No wait — first, stop what you are doing and say THANK YOU to your body — right now. Say THANK YOU to your eyes for taking in the beauty of sunsets and storms and children blowing out birthday candles and say THANK YOU to your hands for writing love letters and opening doors and stirring soup and waving to strangers and say THANK YOU to your legs for walking you from danger to safety and climbing so many mountains for you.

Then pick up your instrument and start painting this day beautiful and bold and wild and free and YOU. Paint this day beautiful, bold, wild & free.”~

~Glennon Doyle, Momastery

Love A Woman

“If you want to change the world . . . love a woman — really love her.

Find the one who calls to your soul, who doesn’t make sense.

Throw away your check list and put your ear to her heart and listen.

Hear the names, the prayers, the songs of every living thing —

every winged one, every furry and scaled one,

every underground and underwater one, every green and flowering one,

every not yet born and dying one . . .

Hear their melancholy praises back to the One who gave them life.

If you haven’t heard your own name yet, you haven’t listened long enough.

If your eyes aren’t filled with tears, if you aren’t bowing at her feet, you haven’t ever grieved having almost lost her.

If you want to change the world . . . love a woman — one woman

beyond yourself, beyond desire and reason,

beyond your male preferences for youth, beauty and variety

and all your superficial concepts of freedom.

We have given ourselves so many choices

we have forgotten that true liberation

comes from standing in the middle of the soul’s fire

and burning through our resistance to Love.

There is only one Goddess.

Look into Her eyes and see — really see

if she is the one to bring the axe to your head.

If not, walk away. Right now.

Don’t waste time “trying.”

Know that your decision has nothing to do with her

because ultimately it’s not with who,

but when we choose to surrender.

If you want to change the world . . . love a woman.

Love her for life — beyond your fear of death,

beyond your fear of being manipulated

by the Mother inside your head.

Don’t tell her you’re willing to die for her.

Say you’re willing to LIVE with her,

plant trees with her and watch them grow.

Be her hero by telling her how beautiful she is in her vulnerable majesty,

by helping her to remember every day that she IS Goddess

through your adoration and devotion.

If you want to change the world . . . love a woman

in all her faces, through all her seasons

and she will heal you of your schizophrenia —

your double-mindedness and half-heartedness

which keeps your Spirit and body separate —

which keeps you alone and always looking outside your Self

for something to make your life worth living.

There will always be another woman.

Soon the new shiny one will become the old dull one

and you’ll grow restless again, trading in women like cars,

trading in the Goddess for the latest object of your desire.

Man doesn’t need any more choices.

What man needs is Woman, the Way of the Feminine,

of Patience and Compassion, non-seeking, non-doing,

of breathing in one place and sinking deep intertwining roots

strong enough to hold the Earth together

while she shakes off the cement and steel from her skin.

If you want to change the world . . . love a woman, just one woman.

Love and protect her as if she is the last holy vessel.

Love her through her fear of abandonment

which she has been holding for all of humanity.

No, the wound is not hers to heal alone.

No, she is not weak in her codependence.

If you want to change the world . . . love a woman

all the way through

until she believes you,

until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art, her passion,

her wildness have returned to her —

until she is a force of love more powerful

than all the political media demons who seek to devalue and destroy her.

If you want to change the world,

lay down your causes, your guns and protest signs.

Lay down your inner war, your righteous anger

and love a woman . . .

beyond all of your striving for greatness,

beyond your tenacious quest for enlightenment.

The holy grail stands before you

if you would only take her in your arms

and let go of searching for something beyond this intimacy.

What if peace is a dream which can only be re-membered

through the heart of Woman?

What if a man’s love for Woman, the Way of the Feminine

is the key to opening Her heart?

If you want to change the world . . . love a woman

to the depths of your shadow,

to the highest reaches of your Being,

back to the Garden where you first met her,

to the gateway of the rainbow realm

where you walk through together as Light as One,

to the point of no return,

to the ends and the beginning of a new Earth.”

~ Lisa Citore

If You Want to Change the World, Love a Woman (2008)

Art: Chie Yoshii

Chie Yoshii

#SacredSistersFullMoonCircle #Spirituality #WomensWisdom #WomensEmpowerment #RedTent #SacredFeminine #Goddess #GoddessCircle #GoddessStudies #CyclicalLiving #WheeloftheYear #Mythology #Magick #Folklore #FolkTradition #Woman

Women’s Sacred Power

“You are no longer raising your own family, the menstrual cycle has seized, and you are transitioning into what it means to truly be in your Sacred power and Sovereignty. In the last 5000+ years we have been severed from the Feminine Lunar era as we abruptly entered into the Masculine Solar era, and here the true wisdom of menopause is hidden and even shamed in order to keep women from their power. This is the culture we have been steeped in. And yet all women know deep in their bones, there is a mystery they are biologically and spiritually linked to.

What isn’t spoken about is that since the beginning of time, the SHAMANS were really the MEDICINE WOMEN, honored for holding that holy space between the physical and the spiritual, the seen and the unseen. Medicine Women continuously healed individuals and communities through sacred communication with the Earth, with the Divine, acting as that holy channel between the portals of life and death.

Why have women been so denigrated and devalued? Simply because this very inherent power in women that has been persecuted and horribly condemned for the last 5000+ years, has posed a threat to the power of the domination cultures and their need to control all aspects of life, including the land. But the time has come… all that is changing now… as we awaken to the true Essence of Feminine Consciousness and the holiness that exists within us, within the land and within all of creation.”

-Leonor Murciano-Luna, Ph.D., “Menopause: Initiation of Sovereignty,” excerpt from our upcoming anthology, The Crone Initiation and Invitation: Women Speak on the Menopause Journey.

Painting by Liliana Kleiner

Birthing

“They told you about the contractions but did they tell you about the expansion?

Did they tell you how your body would open to make way for the whole universe to pass through?

Did they tell you how your heart would explode with a love bigger than anything you’ve ever known as you pulled your baby to your chest

They told you about the ring of fire but did they tell you about the crown of stars?

Did they mention that there is a moment when your baby enters the world and you leave your body and touch the heavens and become the light of a million galaxies?

Did they tell you how the pain of stretching to receive your child would be more exquisite than any sensation you’ve felt?

They told you you would scream but did they tell you about how you would roar?

Did they tell you about the power that would rise up from your belly as you called your baby forth with your mighty voice?

Did they tell you how you would embody the wild woman within you and breathe fire with your song?

They told you you would bleed but did they tell you how that sacred blood wouldn’t scare you?

How you would feel grateful for that magical liquid of life as it trickled down your leg?

How you would honor its flow and how it would help you heal a lifetime of hating your body’s bleeding cycles?

They told you these stories and taught you to fear birth, to fear your power, to fear yourself.

But you’re stronger and wiser than that mama.

You know that birth is your divine dance, your soul’s song, your moment with God, and you walk fearlessly into her open arms.”

~ Catie Atkinson

https://m.facebook.com/spiritysol/

@spiritysoul on Instagram

Art: Medha Srivastava, “Motherlove”

https://www.facebook.com/medhasrivastavaa/

#SacredSistersFullMoonCircle #Spirituality. #WomensWisdom #WomensEmpowerment #RedTent #SacredFeminine #Goddess #GoddessCircle #WheeloftheYear #Mythology #Magick #FolkTradition #GivingBirth #Birth #Childbirth #SeasonoftheMother #GodtheMother

I wish I knew

She spoke to the teachers

they told her to sit

to wait for her turn

and to speak with respect

She spoke to her parents

they told her to try

to never give up

to work hard and strive

She spoke to her friends

they told her to change

to act more like them

to stop being strange

She spoke to her self

she wondered what’s wrong?

why don’t I fit in?

why cant I belong?

And finally when

her exhaustion was high

she wandered bereft

out into the night.

She spoke to the moon

and the stars let her see

you’re already enough

why can’t you just be?

You sparkle with life

you’re so full to the brim

why worry about

the need to fit in?

You’re made of pure sunlight

with so much to share

don’t walk down the same road

you’re not going there…

Donna Ashworth

From ‘I wish I knew’: https://amzn.to/3JVMJlZ

#poetry

Art by Josie Wren #josiewrenart

Stepping Out

You are the medicine, woman,

if you dare to embody your healing,

if you step out of the life you had,

the life they tell you that you must lead,

and step with shaking faith, onto another path,

a path of healing,

defined by your boundaries and needs.

If you are prepared to step out of our sick culture

you will step in to healing place.

~ Lucy H. Pearce,” Medicine Woman: Reclaiming the Soul of Healing “

Womancraft Publishing

http://www.linktr.ee/Lucyhpearce

Art by Josephine Klerks :: SoulArt Klerks ::

http://www.josephineklerks.com

The thing about her

“That’s the thing about her.

She was sensitive, loving, kindhearted, and soft.

She felt what you felt.

She felt your happiness, worry, stress, and pain.

Yet she was strong willed and she took no crap.

She voiced her opinion and thoughts, and she stood up for those she cared about.

She wasn’t always that way.

She was made into that at a young age.

Trauma shaped her.

Maybe that was a good thing.

Maybe she had to go through all that to become the person she is today.

A mix of both heaven and hell. Softness and strength.

Chaos and wild.

Fragility, and steadiness.

Follows the rules, yet goes against the crowd.

She could break glass ceilings with eloquent precision.”~

~Michele, Simple Elegance