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Being Woman. Supple. Unified. Amplified.

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Anjali, by Ramona Klee on Flickr

She is here.

If you sit, quietly listening with heart ears, feeling with heart touch, you will know Her. She has been on her way. A few years ago, the author, Arundhati Roy, wrote,

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

And, now… She is no longer on her way… She is here.

With the turn of this solstice, She is here.

She is here. In all beings. In all of life. 

A new way of being

I’ve been working with two beautiful women to birth something new in business. We don’t really yet know what it is or how it will come to be, but we know we are to be doing this together. We are feeling our way, trusting our intuition, following the petals as they are scattered upon our path, trusting in the intelligence inherent in life.

This is the new way. This is the creative way, the way of trusting in life to guide us as we work together in unity. I remember telling a friend a few years back how much women needed to find solidarity, find a way to realize our wholeness as women, both individually and collectively. At the time, the current paradigm separated women rather than joined them. At the time, there was still so much competition between women, and beliefs that we had to compete with each other for love. But that was then, and this is now.

She is here.

Rainer Marie Rilke wrote of this over 100 years ago when he wrote Letters to a Young Poet. Rilke wrote,

“Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully and more confidently, must surely have become fundamentally riper people, more human people, than easygoing man, who is not pulled down below the surface of life by the weight of any fruit of his body, and who, presumptuous and hasty, under-values who he thinks he loves. This humanity of woman, borne its full time in suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she will have stripped off the conventions of mere femininity in the mutations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching today will be surprised and struck by it. Some day… some day there will be girls and women whose name no longer signify merely the opposite of masculine, but something in itself, something that makes one think, not of any complement and limit, but only of life and existence: the female human being.”

Unity: This Humanity of Woman

Over the last period of time, a time that ended with the solstice and the birth of a new way of being, women were taught to not trust each other. We were conditioned to believe that it was in our best interest to compete with each other. I feel we were all, men and women, taught this, yet for women the distrust went deeper for in the old way, under the patriarchy, men were offered a kind of belonging within the structure that women were not.

Healing this distrust of women has been a beautiful journey for me. And, I hear it has been the same for other women. Now, in this new time, there is more ease and more support for this healing.

Shannon Port of The Art of the Feminine writes,

“Women are uniting in the Heart. We are remembering that we are One Woman. We could never really compete with each other for anything. The illusion taught us that we could be threatened by another woman. It taught us a false belief that we had to compete for love. This has never been so.  …  The old paradigm divided women and caused them to work against each other keeping them from UNITY. The support for this paradigm has left the planet. Anyone who chooses to stay in it will be shaken quite dramatically. We are moving into the knowing of our Oneness. When we align with Oneness willingly, we will be supported by the Universe in ways we never even imagined. The Feminine is being restored to its auspicious place in the World. Those who hold this Vibration of Love in their Heart will be the Teachers, Healers and Leaders of the New Era.”

Amplify

This humanity of woman, this One Woman, is here.

Can you feel Her? Can you feel this burgeoning unity? Can you feel it both within yourself, and within the collective as well? Notice the shift in coming together.

One of my new partners, Jennifer Kenny, speaks of amplification – just how important it is for women to amplify each other’s work in the world. Jennifer sees amplification as the opposite of competition. We can amplify with joy and with love, for not only is there more than enough love in the world, by amplifying we bring ourselves together and aligning ourselves with Oneness. When we follow the thread of Oneness, we amplify not only women’s voices, but also women’s creations into the world.

I used to feel solidarity was so important because it felt as if we were fighting the nature of the patriarchal paradigm and how the paradigm itself made it so difficult for us to know this humanity of woman. Perhaps I was feeling the different energy that was here at the time. Now, with this new shift, we are actively supported in this amplification. Whether we work together through collaboration, spend time in circles sharing, or share each other’s work into the world, the new way is of amplification, of celebrating, of flowing and aligning with Oneness.

It is Simple

Hilary Hart, author and wise woman, shares this about women and power on her Facebook page, Women’s Power Wheel:

“It is simple. It is simple like breathing. It is simple like gathering with friends. It is simple as standing in nature and knowing you are not alone. The trick is trusting how simple real power is… sensing it… knowing it… and not doubting it…”

When I read these words, I feel a softening and a suppleness to my body and breath that have been absent for most of my life. With these words comes an ease in the moment, when I relax into the simplicity of real power.

It may take time to know this more and more. I’ve been well conditioned to believe power not only looks different, but comes from doing. Yet, it is simple. This is being, coming together, and receiving, then offering up, what has always been so generously given – this life.

When I woke up this morning, these words were in my heart: It is so, so easy to take this all for granted, to expect this breath, this sun, this day to come just like it has each morning of our lives, to expect to receive without ever a thought of what is being given.

May today mark a change in how I receive these things…with conscious awareness of the love being so freely given and the opportunity in each breath to offer it back out in love.

The Feminine. She is here. She is you. She is me. She is women. She is men. She is us. She is all beings. She is life.

She is the Goddess.

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Woman’s Tendrils of Wildness

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Somewhere, I learned to be careful rather than carefree. At some point, I learned to think rather than intuit or feel. Along the way, this girl’s wispy tendrils of wildness went way underground, deep down into the depths of the dark places where she learned to put away her very natural, very powerful, and very threatening erotic nature.

Carefulness is not a helpful strategy for a life well lived.

Thinking is good for many things (math, taxes, logic), yet when it runs the show we feel dead inside.

Living what is natural and organic to the soul is what unfolds a life that both sings and serves.

::

Woman’s erotic nature is powerful, yes; but threatening? Only to those who want to control and dominate life.  

The nature of the Feminine principle is the full cycle of creation, all the way around the circle from creation to destruction. For something new to come, something existing must die. This is threatening to those who want to pretend that they continually feed structures based on perpetual growth, never ending profits, unlimited and unsustainable consumption.

There is no such thing as perpetual growth without eventual decay. We know this in our bones and in our cells. When something grows wildly, feeding on itself to keep growing, it is cancerous and eventually leads to its own death.

We can pretend half of life’s cycle doesn’t exist, yet pretending doesn’t make it go away.

In the same way, we can pretend our erotic nature, our power as women, doesn’t exist. We can hide it away thinking we’re fooling everyone, especially ourselves, but this doesn’t make it go away.

Our erotic nature is nature. It doesn’t disappear; we just keep it down. Or, we share it in a small sliver of the way in which it is meant to be shared. Or we allow it out in acceptable ways – acceptable to those who want to control eros.

Keeping our nature down hurts us all, men and women, for no one is happy, truly happy, when life is being controlled, when our hearts our closed, and when our bodies are seen as objects rather than living, breathing creations.

But, the erotic is not simply for sexual pleasure – it is the force that animates all of life and eventually destroys it as well.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower   
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees   
Is my destroyer. ~ Dylan Thomas

Destruction eventually happens anyway. We all die. But while we are living, if we tuck our fullness and power away into the dark., the power to create, to love, to voice, to serve, we over and over again destroy our own capacity to be fully alive vibrant beings here to offer to life what we’ve been created to bring forth.

What does it really mean to serve life?

Just as the leaf doesn’t refuse to fall from the tree in autumn, so, too, must we let go of the need to hold on.

To make an offering of your life to life is to live.  Allowing what you really are to become, to flow, to die…while you are alive, is to serve.

And, by the way, it is here in the allowing that we rediscover and live these wispy tendrils of wildness, this eros and joy.

Image is Tendril: LicenseAttribution Some rights reserved by Hamed Saber

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Rise Sister – Unplugging Your Power

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Unplugging our Power

Lately, I’ve been having some incredible conversations about power with other women. I find it fascinating what this five letter word points to for so many of us, and how unconscious our power dynamics can be.

In a culture based on a kind of power-over dynamic, a hierarchical sense of what power means, it is an act of love and service to unplug from this dynamic and instead discover the autonomous state of offering one’s vital force to life itself. Our vital force, our life force that is at the heart of our creativity, sexuality, joy and expression is sacred and to offer it in the service of life is to live one’s power as an autonomous being. And, the paradox is that it isn’t really our power at all…it is simply the expression of life moving as you.

As Adyashanti writes,

“True autonomy is not trying to fit in or be understood, nor is it a revolt against anything. It is an uncaused phenomenon. Consciously or unconsciously all beings aspire to it, but very few find the courage to step into that infinity of aloneness.

I know I’ve uncovered so many of the ways in which I give my power away in exchange for something I believe I need. The more I become aware of these power bonds and begin to unplug myself from them, the more I feel my own vital force moving within me, and the more creativity, joy and autonomy I feel in my own life. When I am plugged into power dynamics, I am squandering this vitality as I trade it for ‘things’ I believe I need.

And, the more I move into this autonomy, the more I can feel alone. For me to come to know how I was giving it away, I had to be willing to let go of the very things I swore I could never let go of. There are still more, yet as I feel these bonds unplug, I am feeling deep gratitude, an organic longing to serve, and a quiet desire to simply be what I am.

You can listen to more on power, as well as forgiveness and letting go, here in my interview with Tricia Karp. It was a pleasure to speak with her.

Notice what you trade your power for.

Notice what you are plugged into that no longer serves you.

Notice what drains your power.

Notice what causes you to feel more alive, more true, more real, and more quietly joyful. 

Begin to unplug from that which you believe you need so that you can find it within yourself.

Rise Sister

I’m honored, truly honored, to share this song with you. When I first heard this song that Kandice wrote, inspired by my work here at Unabashedly Female, tears flowed. Her music and words encapsulate exactly what has been, and continues to be, at the heart of my work in the world. One day, we will know a sisterhood so strong, so solid, and so loving, that the earth will feel herself wrapped in the arms of all of her sisters, and all of life will know it is held in the lap of the Mother.

Kandice has a beautiful voice, an uncanny ability to write songs that are infused with love and deep meaning. You can find more of Kandice’s music and creative offerings here and follow her on Twitter. In Kandice’s words:

“I write songs and share them with the world (a.k.a. YOU).

I am pursuing a dream that is won’t stop pursuing me. I create songs with high vibrations and inspirational uplifting intention. I write specially commissioned songs for creative entrepreneurs, which makes my heart soar.”

 

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The Sincere Path

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“It’s my contention that there is no sincere path a human being can take without breaking his or her heart…so it can be a lovely, merciful thing to think, ‘Actually, there is no path I can take without having my heart broken, so why not get on with it and stop wanting these extra-special circumstances which stop me from doing something courageous?'” – David Whyte

The Sincere Path

Ah, these words speak to me. In truth, I have had by heart broken open so many times in my life. And, there is so much in this world right now that breaks my heart on a continual basis…if I allow it in. And, there is much in this world right now that brings me great joy.

A sincere path. One of truth and heart. The one that I most resist, because it isn’t ‘my’ path. It is the one that is asked of me.

The times my heart has been most broken are the times when life has happened to me. I am getting more accustomed to handling those things that seem difficult. The place where I’ve been stuck is this place of choosing to walk into the heart-break. Choosing the fire.

I’ve wanted to have it my way. I hadn’t thought of it as extral-special circumstances, but now I see that’s what I have wanted. You know how it is? If only I could choose from ‘this’ menu and not ‘that’ one. If only it could look ‘this’ way, not ‘that’ way.

The sincere path doesn’t come with a menu of choosable circumstances. We either choose to take it or not, and in my life I’ve noticed that the choice is something I must repeatedly make. It’s the same choice, just returned to again and again from wherever forgetting has taken me.

And then sometimes I just get stuck because I don’t want to get sticky. [Thank you, Jen Louden]

It’s one thing to learn to respond to life when your heart is broken open by life. It’s another thing to turn to that which you know will break your heart open and to go anyway, or to head into those circumstances you think will bring you personal pain and go anyway.

This is where courage and trust come in. It is where remembering what I know to be true, and so often forget, that everything is sacred. Everything. Every cell of everything. To remember that what I fear out there, is what I fear within myself is one of the most difficult things to remember because it is not the idea of it that will open me to my sacred path…it is the knowing of it deep in my heart.

I have moments of knowing that all is sacred and those moments are always by way of the heart and never by way of my ego mind. It only sees separation. But the heart, ah the heart. As the bindings around my heart break, my heart breaks open.

I fear being exposed. I fear being censored. I fear being shamed and humiliated.

What I really fear is feeling exposure, feeling being censored, shamed and humiliated. I fear feeling these feelings. I fear the power of them to break me. But can they really break me? Not really. Not what I truly am.

Somewhere I know that a multitude of experiences await me, not just these few my mind seems to focus on.

Somewhere I know that if I meet these circumstances that await me, they won’t kill me.

Somewhere I know that if I sincerely choose the sincere path, what will come are just what I need to experience…not to harm me, but to heal me.

And what I do know is that the more I have deeply grieved in my life, the more joy I am capable of feeling. The more I have opened to the unknown, the more I am surprised by the incredible variety of amazing things there are to feel in this human body.

And, you?

What is your sincere path? Do you know it? Do you skirt around its edges? Do you circle and circle never quite landing?

What don’t you want to feel? What feeling do you avoid at all cost?

Will you allow your heart to break open?

Will you journey with me?

 

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Women’s Love

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Magnolia Flame

Women loving women.

Women trusting women.

Women healing women.

Learning to trust and love women has been a long journey for me. I’ve fought it and I’ve longed for it. Along the way, I have been a lot of things…sometimes kind, sometimes not; sometimes forgiving and deeply caring, sometimes jealous, undermining and a whole host of things part of me would rather not acknowledge, but nonetheless are true.

Learning to really love means meeting ourselves in places we’ve hidden away. I am grateful for the friends who’ve been straight with me about my behavior, both light and dark.

Through all of these experiences, I have come to know this:

There is a unique love that women have for each other. Opening to and embodying this love will change your world, which in turn will heal our world.

When I speak of this love to the women in my life, they acknowledge this love. They know this love, yet it’s seldom spoken about in the culture. It’s a powerful force. When women come together in love, we recognize our power together. When women come together in love, life heals. When women come together in love, we are no longer so easily shamed and or see ourselves as powerless.

It is high time we come together in love. Life beckons us to this love, to heal that which keep us from knowing it.

Leap Day call

The other day, just last week, I hosted a leap day call. On the call, I spoke of how each of us is sacred…every cell, every atom is sacred. And, I spoke of really seeing each other, how doing this is so healing for us all.

When I, a woman, truly and deeply see you, another woman, this love pours forth; love for ourselves and our womanhood, and love for each other. This love then flows out to all of life.

I held the call on Wednesday afternoon. When it was done, I was elated. I felt like I had shared something that really wanted to move through me. I reflected on the comments of the women on the call. They shared both pain and joy, fear and inspiration.

Something healed right then and there on the call. I could feel a healing within myself from participating in the call, from sharing my wisdom. I could feel a healing within myself from taking in the wisdom of other women, and from taking in the collective field that formed because we came together with open hearts.

Then…

The next day, I felt grief rise up, a grief of both fearing and desiring to open my heart fully in relationship. When I was with my late husband, I wasn’t as aware and conscious. I opened my heart at the level I could, and he was deeply respectful and loving.

As I’ve become more conscious, and now know the love that is inherent in a woman, I long to be partnered with someone I can open to in this way; someone whose touch is reverent; someone who wants to love the fullness and power of womanhood, not a muted form of it.

This grief was raw, not reasonable nor rational. It lasted through the evening and into the early morning hours. And then, as it moved through, I could see the innermost space of the heart is only for the divine. It is a place that is solely for the divine, a place that when I honor its sanctity, I feel more tenderness and love for myself. When I honor the inner sanctity of the heart, I open to myself with love, and in turn, open to another.

Knowing this sanctity, I have the full power and awareness to say, “No”, to any touch that is irreverent…including my own touch to myself.

I climbed out of bed and felt serenity and a kind of deep peace with everything as it was and is. I took a walk in the sun, a long walk. I was out longer than expected. As I headed toward home, knowing I would immediately hop on a two-hour call when I walked in the door, I checked my email by phone to check-in to anything I needed to respond to.

A Gift

There in my email was this gift: a comment left on the blog about the leap day call and what followed from listening to it.

“I listened to your wonderful Leap Day call last night, and I wanted to share the beautiful spontaneous loving experience I had. Just shortly before starting the call, I had put warm grapeseed oil, on my hair. I’ve been using pure grapeseed oil as a body moisturizer, after the shower. It’s quite lovely. As I was listening to the call, I was massaging the oil into my hair and scalp, which then turned into massaging my neck, and my face. It felt so wonderful, that before long, I retreived the bottle of grapeseed oil, and was massaging oil onto all of my body. It was such a beautiful experience. Sitting here, in the candlelight, listening to your beautiful voice, and feeling energetically connected to all women, and loving my own body, so tenderly and compassionately. What a beautiful gift.

Something has been shifting in me lately. For a long long time, I have felt that it is unsafe to be female…to be a woman. And so I have been hiding my femininity…my beauty. I had become hard, because it felt like the only way to survive. But lately, after much hard work and soul-searching, I have been feeling a softening happening, along with the wisdom that I now know how to keep myself safe. I have been allowing my femininity to re-surface, and it is such a glorious feeling.

The loving self massage was yet, another turning point, in me accepting myself, and my feminine nature. And a powerful message revealed itself to me. I have been craving physical touch lately. Not just any physical touch, but the wondrous touch of another who adores me, and sees my inherent beauty. It has been a long time, since I felt the tender touch of a lover’s hand on my skin, and I’m quite certain that I’ve never felt it, in the way that I deserve to. This need has been an ever-present companion, in my thoughts, and yet, it felt like there was still a wall between me and receiving this loving touch. There was. It was me. I was not treating myself, and my body, in a way that expressed love and tenderness…and yet, I wanted another to do just that. I was expecting someone else to do what I wasn’t willing to do….to love myself, love my body, love all of me, just as I am. To adore and nurture, treasure and cherish me.”

Synchronicity

I was struck by the synchronicity of our experiences. She was listening to the recording, which opened her to a powerful revelation about her own self worth and healing. She was learning to touch herself with love and reverence.

During that same evening, I was opening to the sanctity of my own heart, and of my connection to the divine, also desiring to be loved and touched again with reverence.

Women healing women healing women…all being healed by the flow of the divine creation that flows through women.

There is something powerfully healing in women that is needed in our world. It is this love. It is this creativity. It is this vulnerability and willingness to share with the world.

This is how we create.

When we offer ourselves and our creations to the world, trusting that each one is exactly what the wisdom of life is pulsing to share with the world, healing happens. Love happens. Connection happens. Relationship happens.

How powerful it is to align with this wise, sacred creative force.

So, I want to know.

What creation wants to be born through you?

What might it take to trust deeply enough in yourself and in the life moving through you to create it?

I know there are voices that tell you differently – both inside you and outside of you. I know this.

AND, the creation wants to be born anyway, does it not?

Can you feel it?

Can you give way to your creation and allow it to flow through you into a world that is so hungry for this sacred, wise love?

I know what flows through you has a direct effect on me, on the world, on life.

At the heart of it all, this power is creation itself.

Do whatever you need to do in your life to honor what wants to be born and give birth to it.

I am, right now, taking in a spoonful of this medicine. I have something very important that is dying to be born. I’ve allowed it to languish and I can no longer allow this.

I know the power of giving and receiving, and the power of knowing the sanctity of my own heart.

Never has there been a more important time than now to be what you are: a sacred creative being expressing through a woman’s body.

Never has there been a more important time than now to be Unabashedly Female. click to tweet this…

::

If you’re inspired to listen to the call, I’ve decided to keep the registration open for a few more days so you can have access to the recording. You can sign-up here.

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You Chose For You

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Put it down.

Put it all down.

Stop fighting.

Feel.

It is the way it is.

You did it.

You were scared shitless and you did it.

Breathe.

Breathe, again.

You are here.

You’ve survived…and you’re not diminished one damn bit.

While the voices in your head tell you otherwise,

You chose for you.

Never believe again, even for one second, that you are powerless.

While the voices out there would love for you to believe that you are,

they are wrong.

Be with your self.

Trust your heart.

Let it all go.

Be with,

Stay with,

You.

::

“heart-shaped candlelight” by Zolivier. Some rights reserved

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Get it Done!

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If you’ve ever wondered what the fierce feminine looks like, watch this video.

Anjali Appadurai is her name. And, as she says to the elected
officials who haven’t gotten it done,

“You have been negotiating all my life.”

“Respect the integral values of humanity. Respect the future of your descendents….

Governments of the developed world: Deep cuts, now. Get it done!”

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A Love That Moves Us

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Power

What is it?
Who can have it?
Who can’t?

The other day, I had a long, lovely conversation with Rachael Maddox. At the end of a long trek by bike across the country, Rachael and her husband had landed in Oakland for a few days, and lucky me got to spend some time with her.

Rachael is beautiful, and her beauty shines both inside and out. She is wise. She is open-hearted. I was touched by her presence.

My time with Rachael opened my mind in an unexpected way, but first,

a small detour:

I was born in the latter part of the 50’s in the United States, a time when most women were housewives, ala Donna Reed (a TV show of the time). While my mother became a single mother in the early 60’s, the majority of women I saw, both in real life and on TV, were housewives.

I grew up with the sense that there would be someone to watch over me, to take care of me, a ‘big-daddy’ kind of sense of the world. Perhaps that’s the big Patriarch out there. After all, the religious traditions I saw espoused a ‘Father in the sky’. My government espoused a ‘Father in Washington’. Most TV shows showed the father as the head of the household making both the money and the decisions.

Looking back it seems odd to me that I would so strongly believe that a male someone, or something, would take care of things, because it was my mother that took care of me, both physically and financially.

Even though I now see and experience (and have for years) that this is not the case, the conditioning is strong. The conditioned mind’s worldview still sees the world this way, or perhaps a better description would be that it hopes the world is this way.

Back to Rachael,

Rachael is more than half my age. Her world view is different, of course, especially because of her age, but also because of her life experience. I don’t want to write of her world view, because that is hers to share. Be sure to read her blog and get to know her. You’ll be glad you did.

What I want to write about is how Rachael and my conversation with her helped me to see things in a new way.

Speaking with Rachael helped to unlock some of this unconscious conditioning about power, and how I unconsciously still hold out hope that someone, most likely a man, will ride in on his powerful horse to save the day, to save me, to save the world.

Many people never have seen this as a possibility.

Speaking with Rachael helped me to see more deeply and clearly that I continue to try to figure out a way to make what I now know is true about my experience (as a woman and the power I know is within me) fit into this cultural structure. It can’t.

This structure is a dream in that it causes us to believe that it is the true nature of reality. The structure exists in our minds, and in the institutions we’ve created with our conditioned minds, minds that believe in scarcity and a hierarchy based on perceived values and worth of different groups of people, and layers of life.

Scarcity and Hierarchy

In a culture where we believe in scarcity and hierarchy, privilege and not-so-privileged, it seems as though power is something held over others, or something where some have it and others don’t. That is how plays out in action in a cultural structure that sees power this way.

In this cultural structure, power is to be wielded over others, offered up by those who have when it is in their interest to do so, and to be adhered to by those who don’t have it.

In this cultural structure, there is a limited amount of power, so if one group has it another doesn’t. If one group decides to step into their power, it seemingly takes away power from others.

Notice that in a structure like this, when we believe what the structure shows us, power from within makes no sense. Even if we feel our own power within, our minds tell us things that support the structure rather than our own experience, because our own internal thought structures have been replicated from the cultural structure in which our minds were conditioned.

In our conditioned minds, power from within, power that is available for all, power that works together, makes no sense and can even seem dangerous to express in this cultural paradigm.

To the conditioned mind, there are few options:

One can acquiesce, consent to it by remaining silent, to the power out there, making one seemingly powerless.

One can join the power out there in beliefs, in actions, in thought, making one seemingly part of.

One can fight it, in actions, in thought, making one feel powerful against.

But to the awakened mind and heart,

one can feel the truth of one’s own internal power and choose from what is true. One can meet the ‘power over’ out there with ‘power from within’.

In very simple terms I use to try to express something that can’t be expressed, ‘power over’ comes from the fear of the conditioned mind; ‘power from within’ comes from realizing the truth of one’s own experience and feeling and expressing the powerful nature of the life that flows from within.

In recent days, I’ve noticed the Occupy Oakland movement showing signs of many of these ways of being with power. While some small bands of people chose to fight the structural power with power against by using violence, the majority of people have been coming from a place of awakened presence, choosing peaceful protest that comes from knowing they choose to no longer acquiesce to a power structure that does not serve its people.

The sands of our culture are shifting.

I know that the only way I can know what is real is what my own heart tells me. And, I know there is no knight riding in to save us.

All that can save us is love, the power of love, the power of the awakened heart. Many years ago, Jimi Hendrix spoke powerful truth when he said, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

Letting go of hope and opening the heart to the power of love.

The place I find myself in is truly looking within to feel the power of love within. It’s not a projected or romantic love, the kind of I’ve known in my life. This love is powerful and it can almost feel too big to experience. And,

as wise Rachael writes, “We are capable of being love that big.”

And, it means one more step, being love that big in action.

Action can be listening. As a grandmother, a woman who has lived many years, I know I hold wisdom. And, one of the wisest things I can do is listen to the wisdom of a younger generation, a generation that sees things differently, a generation that can help us to wake up. And listen to other races and religions. Listen to both women and men.

Action is not silent. For me, remaining silent has been a place of powerlessness. And yet, the action I want to embody is action that comes out of silence. This action is a natural expression of the power of love. Love this big is an active force. Love this big moves us.

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Dahlias, Feminine Flesh and Love – August’s Potpourri

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Dahlias in the Window

Good Morning!

This is a little August Potpourri post.

A potpourri is both

a mixture of flowers, herbs and spices used to scent one’s space and

a more generic mixture of things.

This post is both. We’ve got flowers, spice and…not sure it’s an herb, but then we get to mix it up however we want. I’m hoping this potourri scents your space and day with love and beauty.

The flowers… Dahlias in the window of the flower shop that’s just down the street from me. I love walking by to see what the latest arrangement is. And, I love capturing an image of both inside and outside, looking through the glass both ways.

::

I’m guest posting at 3Sisters, today:

The Mystery Robed in Clothes of Sacred Feminine Flesh

Representation

Humans use representations to make up, in their minds, what the world is like, how people behave and even how they should be and what they should do. We create images in our minds of how things are, and then we compare ourselves to those images, and more often than not, see how we don’t measure up.

There are so many representations of women in our world; so many archetypes; so many images and idols. How do we come to know ourselves anew, broken free of the gazillion ways women are represented in the manifested, constructed and imagined world?

Pin-ups & Centerfolds.

Rubens & Picasso.

Cosmo & Vogue.

Ms & Jezebel.

Mary & Qwan Yin.

Eve & Pandora.

Marilyn & Sophia.

Beyonce & Brittany.

Venus & Aphrodite.

Buffy & Xena.

Kali & Durga.

…continue reading at 3Sisters…

::

I’ll close with a reminder…

Do all of what you do with the great love that you are.

Many, many blessings to you.

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A Leap of Faith Into Ourselves

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It makes no sense to use feminine power to succeed in a patriarchy. Like Coke giving micro loans to African women so they can sell its products to villagers. This is life turning against life. Instead, women need to trust in our unique power. We need a leap of faith into ourselves. It might be a long leap – with not many signs of success. But success in a the patriarchy is not the success we long for.
~ Women’s Power Wheel on Facebook

Womb of Compassion

I’ve often wondered why success in this paradigm feels so empty for so many women. I think the wise women at Women’s Power Wheel have succinctly described why this is so. (For more of this contemporary wisdom, ‘Like’ their page, so you can learn more of what they offer.)

Our power does not thirst for acquisition or conquering others. Our power does not grow from making others small. Rather, our power hungers to give sustain life, to support and nurture it.

We are in the midst of a change in how we view power and what it means to be powerful. I have come to see, we are most powerful when we live who we really are…sometimes easier said than done, but if we are to do what this quote suggests, to “trust in our unique power”, then it is in living unabashedly as women that this power will come forth.

And, you?

Take a moment to think of a time when you felt truly powerful, a joyful power that radiated from your whole being, a sense that you were doing what you are here to do, to serve. Perhaps the word power throws you, because of how it is used in this masculine-centric culture, yet allow your body to show you a time such as this.

What do you see? remember? feel?

What would it take to make this leap of faith into yourself, and into other women?

What is the success you long for?

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