The Spirituality of women awakens with the realization that we have been moved into finally telling ourselves the truths about our lives AND that it’s all right. Which means moving from silence to speech, to finding our own voices. What has meaning for one of us turns out to have meaning for many of us. And as we are telling these truths about our lives the world is splitting open to reveal untold surprise and mystery.
Browsing category: Women
When we start on this journey …
When we start on this journey, we discover a couple of things right away. First, the way is largely uncharted, and second, we are all we’ve got. If women don’t tell our stories and utter our truths in order to chart ways into sacred feminine experience, who will? It is stories women need. Stories give us hope, a little guidance, and a lot of bravery.
When women gather together …
When women gather together, sharing stories is what we naturally do. This is how we learn and find encouragement, allies, and ideas.
The Spring Equinox …
The arrival of the Spring Equinox marks the balancing of equal length for day and night. Our energy and psyches are in a state of anticipation, ready to move forward into the season of rapid growth. Spring is the time of earthly regeneration, expansion, and the drive to implement the visions begun in Winter’s dreaming. Honor the spirit of the young Maiden within you…What wisdom are you bringing with you from the darkness of winter? What are you awakening within yourself? Who are you becoming?
Just like any woman …
Just like any woman,...we weave our stories out of our bodies. Some of us through our children, or our art; some do it just by living. It's all the same.
Plumbing, birth control …
Plumbing, birth control and the vote have been instrumental in allowing women to write.
The invisible power of women’s circles …
The invisible power of women’s circles on the women in them grows out of the power that we have on one another, which can be healing, affirming, and supportive. A safe place to tell the truth is a healing space.
Woman must ‘come of age’ …
Woman must ‘come of age’ by herself. This is the essence of ‘coming of age’ – to learn how to stand alone . . she must find her true center alone. She must become whole.
A grandmother is grander …
A grandmother is grander than a mother, holding one in a wider circle of meanings, a larger perspective …
We might be better off …
We might be better off if we could separate food as nourishment and pleasure from food as the currency of care that leaves so many women laboring long hours to prove affection in that semantic muddle called nurturance.
I realize that I have a tendancy …
I realize that I have a tendency to fall off my own daily radar screen. I will, therefore, make every attempt to give to myself as I give to others.
When a woman listens …
When a woman listens to herself, she changes.
The history of most women …
[The history of most women is] hidden either by silence, or by the flourishes and ornaments that amount to silence.
When one woman doesn’t speak …
When one woman doesn’t speak, other women get hurt.
The unconscious feminine …
The unconscious feminine is the mask of cultural projections which women wear without knowing it, what the late Carolyn Heilbrun called “female impersonation.” The good mother, wicked stepmother, good girl, bad girl, Madonna, whore, etc. What cracks the mask is no more, and no less than the sound of women’s voices telling the truths of our lives—whatever they may be. Conscious feminine energy nurtures without sentimentality or clinginess, is loving and bold, holds paradox, integrates difference, is playful and powerful.
If you want to know a woman …
If you want to know a woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully . . . The more a daughter knows the details of her mother’s life—without flinching or whining—the stronger the daughter.
A drive toward wholeness …
In WomanSpirit, many women have written about how a new sense of their connection to nature has changed their feelings about their bodies. . . A drive toward wholeness, toward healing the splits between people and nature, body and soul, reason and emotion, culture and experience, is evident in all the forms in which women’s spiritual quest is expressed.
Our mutual refusal …
Our mutual refusal to show our true selves, good and bad, to each other does not allow either woman to explore her separate life, her own identity.
If feminism is understood …
If feminism is understood not as a battle in the war between the sexes but rather a movement to transform a world in which both men and women suffer losses that constrain their ability to love, then the story of Cupid and Psyche is a feminist tale (a story which reveals that men must hide love and women cannot know what we know).
It is not the anger …
It is not the anger of other women that will destroy us but our refusals to stand still, to listen to its rhythms, to learn within it, to move beyond the manner of presentation to the substance, to tap that anger as an important source of empowerment.