Sex and the Menopause
A woman in her menopausal years is at her highest sexual potential.
Yes, you read that right.
Contrary to the script of a patriarchal mainstream culture, when a woman reaches menopause, a gateway opens to an entirely new sexual landscape. Our immersion in a culture that recognises female beauty only in the guise of the beauty of maiden or mother has led many of us to believe that the ending of the fertile years brings with it the death of ourselves as sexual women.
Yet here’s the truth: a menopausal woman in her full power has a beauty that shines from deep within her, a radiance that is juicy, alive, truly erotic. When she lays claim to that power, those who come into her energetic field may be transformed. A menopausal woman can access entirely new levels of creativity borne from a radically re-aligned connection of her spiritual self to her sexuality.
Throwing off the domination of her hormones, she may initially find herself at a loss, experiencing a void where her old habits no longer serve her. She may be a mother whose children no longer depend on her. She may be a career woman whose career suddenly loses its gloss. She may be in a committed relationship which now feels unsatisfactory.
And in the bedroom, she may find that the sex she’s gotten used to over the years is the sex she suddenly no longer wants. Worse, because it’s so often a taboo subject, she feels isolated in her dissatisfaction. Without a map, without the familiar currency of the maiden or mother incarnation when sex was equated with lust, desire for family or with her need for love, the spotlight is suddenly on her.
If she doesn’t want to be touched and met like that, then how does she want to be touched and met? Does she want sex at all?
It can be a time when she feels that life has lost its meaning. No point to her job or relationship, no point in sex, no purpose. It’s a time when the mystery calls, the veils thin, and the world of spirit calls more strongly. Without a deeper understanding of the changes she’s going through, she struggles to navigate this time, to step into her new power with grace.
Instead, she may turn to the familiarity of the maiden archetype, using Botox, surgery or HRT to remain youthfully attractive. Or she may subvert her needs once again to those of her partner, of her family, again vacating her own embodied longing in order to lose herself in others.
After all, if she has lost intimacy with her own needs over the years, then to begin to express her longings and desires at this time may seem impossible. She may just give up on sex, believing that she will never be met in the way she yearns for.
Yet menopause offers a profound gift — to enter the temple as a woman whose sexuality is wholly infused with the luminescence of spirit. In order to do so, there is often a reckoning to be made.
An honesty with herself about the times in her life where she has overridden her needs and desires in order to remain in a relationship, or to gain acceptance in a culture that prizes younger women who are sexually available (in just the right way).
With this reckoning often comes a slow-burning resentment, or a raging fire of anger. Sometimes tears and what can feel like a deep well of grief for her own betrayal of herself.
All of these feelings are waymarkers on the rite of passage that is menopause. If she stays connected to her feelings, and connected to the strong call of her spirit, she will stay connected to her sexual energy. Whether or not she is in a relationship, her sexual energy is the essence of her creative energy however she feels to express it.
It offers a pathway into the sacred mystery and an undying spark that can move us beyond nihilism when we feel like we have lost our way. We must, as women, be willing to compost all we have grown familiar with. Our habitual ways of relating to others, our self-identity as sexual women, our identity out there in the world — these are all up for a profound shift as woman enters the cocoon of the menopause.
It can be terrifying. There is no telling what lies on the other side, and in our patriarchal paradigms there are precious few waymarkers, all too few sexy, erotic older women to inspire and guide us through this change.
That’s precisely why we need each other. We need circles of menopausal women to hold a mirror to each other’s inner power and radiance, to remind each other in the midst of a mess of tears and anger how beautiful we are, how desirable we are, how important our needs and our voices are.
It is time to reclaim the ancient temple mysteries, and that which the wise ones of old knew. That a woman beyond her fertile years becomes a bodily transmission of spiritual light. She must be respected and cherished. And often such a woman demands to be met by a partner who can bring him or herself fully, to receive this transmission as an initiation into his or her own deep beauty.
The Dalai Lama famously proclaimed, “The world will be saved by the Western woman.” I would add that it will be saved by the menopausal Western woman, when she is in full possession of her power and vitality.
Such a woman will dare you to meet her.
Your relationship can change the world
Healthy relationships impact our community and our lives in a positive way, far beyond the relationship itself. They are a rocket fuel to awakening that draw in all those around them to their potent heart-field.When we heal our relationship, we overlay a new, healed imprint over an old wound that goes back through deep time to all the generations of hurt between the sexes. It’s a powerful doorway to writing a new story for the new world that is emerging. Old ways of relating are no longer relevant or helpful and the wounds of lifetimes finally can be transformed.When one couple heals their wounds in this way it doesn’t just heal them, it ripples out in the bio resonance of the field around them, to their family and neighbours and friends.We often resist looking at the difficulties in our intimate relationship, because we shy away from feeling what’s in our deepest hearts; it might feel that we are carrying all that sits in that line behind and it will be too much to bear. There’s often a keen edge of grief there. Some recognition of something we lost long ago, a need that wasn’t met, an expectation of love that wasn’t available in the end. Sometimes it’s a feeling that we’re not enough, or just not lovable. These stories can run so deep that we begin to identify with them, and the work of healing them can feel daunting.The good news is that these human wounds are common to so many of us, and when we work with them in the collective way we can accelerate the process of transformation for all of us. As a culture we are gradually growing more open about our innermost workings. It is hard to meet those hurt places alone. We may choose to do the work of grief in community, in a village of people dedicated to hearing what needs to be spoken, or sobbed. We can also do this work with one person that deeply knows us, a person we trust and in whom we feel fully welcomed.This kind of relationship work is radical, it goes beyond just patching up the mind or the personality structure, it’s SOUL work. The healing potential it activates is deep, rippling out down our timelines, mending and tending to all the places inside us that feel scared, vulnerable or hurt. Within the safe container of deep soul intimacy work, those places are seen and held so tenderly that the defences around them can melt away, and with them all the strategies that keep us apart from each other.Through the container of loving relationship, we can begin to heal ourselves, each other, and the whole world.
The medicine within conflict
After an upsetting conflict with your partner, what is it that opens the door back into open hearted connection again?
Have you ever reflected on this?
It’s one of the cornerstone questions in our relationship support work, and holds the key to empowering couples to create Soul Intimacy that lasts.
Most couples experience conflict in their relationship, that’s natural. The mistake so many of us make is to think we can avoid conflict, or that if there is conflict, it is a ‘bad’ thing. Wisdom lies in the understanding that conflict is a part of life; if we are to get close to other humans and truly open our hearts, there will be times when we get hurt.
What’s more important is how we come back from conflict. The best friendships in our lives are those that can not only withstand conflict but are actually deepened through it. Maybe you have one of those in your life ?
There is a trail to follow that leads us back to love.
A conflict brings medicine for soul intimacy. Because after all the upset and hurt, we need to set a trail back to love. To find that trail, we turn inside to look within our own hearts and listen to our deeper longings. To get to know the longing we need to be willing to really feel it and then allow it expression.. Even if it is never met, the expressing of a longing opens our hearts again. It’s an invitation to open out into the field of love that’s bigger than either one of you, a call to remember why it is you are still choosing each other.
The journey to reclaim that magic is experiential, belonging to the realm of Soul. Time after time, I’ve seen alchemy happen, in even the most painful of places a couple is stuck in. An ‘aha’ moment where the sacred space of the heart dissolves all the strategies, all the defences that keep each of you separate, unreachable and scared to let down your guard.
Into that expansive heart-space comes possibilities for new choices, new visions for the relationship.
Join us for Communication Alchemy, a four-week online course for couples beginning 5 January to guide you into communication that creates deep Soul Intimacy through greater trust and empathy between you. You’ll learn to navigate conflict to find its medicine, in a way that’s accessible and sustainable. Book your place by donation.
Join us to receive
- Methods to be able to hear your partner without getting so triggered or reactive
- Support in getting to the root of what gets in the way of being able to talk well together
- Key emotional intelligence tools so you can hear each other
- Ways in which you can make decisions to create the relationship you long for
The gift of shame and guilt
A post for white people on racism, white privilege and unconscious bias
When someone calls us out on our unconscious bias around issues of race, and we get defensive, what we are really saying is “white feelings matter more than the lives of people with colour”.
This is the paradigm of millennia – that people of colour should protect white people’s feelings over their own lives or their voices being heard.
That as white people, what takes priority are the feelings arising in us when we have seen that we are racist after all, when we have believed all our lives that we’re not.
The result is that when a person of colour points out our racism in any given moment (however unintentional we believe it was) we insist that they must say it in the ‘right’ way, deliver their message without anger or blame etc (i.e. gently, carefully and sensitively) so we are protected from having our shame and guilt triggered.
Simply put, this has to stop. Instead we need to see that our feelings of guilt and shame ARE the gateway to change, and a huge catalyst to action. These feelings are the ‘spiritual’ teacher (speaking to the white spiritual community, of which I am also a signed up member) and the fuel to take action over and over and over again until racism is gone from our world.
If we cannot be in relationship with these feelings in us then we’re not gonna be able to be a part of change because we will want to deny, defend, counter attack or justify.
In the past few years the issue of people of colour being in my ‘white spiritual/self development’ workshops has come more and more to the fore front. It has felt hugely challenging at times and a massive steep humbling learning curve for me (and I thought I knew the issues already).
I welcome it, even though it’s hard at times to know how to be with it because I feel so uneducated. I have about 1/4 POC as participants on my workshops and courses and that’s not balanced. I can see now that, however welcoming I thought I was being, there are a million subtle ways that the message I sent out is not welcoming, mostly by simply not understanding the depth of the issue.
The pain, guilt and shame I feel about this is hard to be with but that’s the point, it is MY work to be with them. I have to face the fact that I have been a part of the problem when I thought I was so righteously doing the opposite..
The issue of racism and our uncomfortable feelings in relation to it is also the same in all our intimate relating, and never more so than with our primary partners. And if it’s ‘too much’ of a stretch for us to hold these feelings in relation to the issue of racism then let’s deepen our practising of it in our primary relationships.
How much of the time can we own and hold and bring our open hearted vulnerability and own our own guilt and shame to our partner without collapsing or defending? How often do we want to take the victim position and not look at our own position from a grounded, centred, empowered mature place (without the usual huge dollop of self hatred/blame thrown in).
The issue of racism is not a diversion from the global issues of environmental destruction, pandemic, political corruption or financial poverty. It is a deep expression OF it. It’s not a side issue. If I and my work stand for protecting nature and all life as equal and I exclude people of colour I am a total hypocrite. Anywhere that there is imbalance nature will call it out and do what she can do bring balance back. We are being asked right now as expressions of nature to do exactly that.
It is time for us to listen and keep listening; and if feelings of guilt and shame arise in us then let’s seek support to find ways to face what is inside of us. Much of this is in our ancestral line. I have phrases in my psyche that I heard my Father say when I was a child that are truly shocking, and when I spoke out I got slapped down for speaking up – so I learned not to.
Lets listen, and then listen more and listen more …stand beside people of colour, stand for them and stand with them.
In context to the work I offer, I want to clarify that if you come and work with me I will not be hijacking how you need support with this issue or insisting that you engage with this or my views. But I do hold it in my awareness all the time – it feels interconnected with the work we offer here and it feels important to weave it in. It is not an side issue for me, it is yet another example of our broken world
This is a link to a Facebook group that is going to begin on 15th June to help dismantle the system from the inside out. https://www.facebook.com/groups/528048657834066/
Earth Day
Let’s begin by affirming that every day is Earth Day. We are nature, our lives are intimately held within the web of life on our beautiful planet.
At this time, we are called so clearly into the remembering of ourselves in an honourable and respectful relationship to this web of life.
Because of the lockdown, everything has come to a stop. Nature is flourishing in places where there’s usually too much noise, light, pollution. And there’s a quality that’s specifically available right now that isn’t necessarily always available to us unless we happen to be out in the wild. There’s a stillness, a quietness, a quality of energy that’s in the field. There’s a difference in how the elements around us are expressing themselves.
It’s as if the volume has been turned up on nature and turned down on the business of humanity.
This place of receptivity stillness is a gift of the lockdown. At this potent time, there is an invitation to turn inward, to be more reflective. This is true, even if your home situation feels intense and chaotic, with children and partners at home during the day.
Begin a practice today, this Earth Day. Take time, even 5 minutes, to go outside, into your garden if you have one and if not, then sit by a window and just look out. If you are lucky enough to have access to a garden or wild outdoor space, go barefoot.
Allowing stillness to be your gateway, simply gaze at nature – at a flower, at an insect, at a pot plant. Our sense of vision is usually switched ON, and our eyes are active, engaging our brain in understanding, judging and labelling what we see. Flip your sense of vision, now, into receptive mode, so that you are receiving the vibrational quality of what you are looking at. Feel it in your body, so it becomes a felt sense, kinaesthetic.
Ask yourself this simple question “What is this life, that I am looking at now?”. Let the answer arise, unjudged, as a feeling in your body, as you remember yourself again, into deep relationship with a flower, an insect, a pot plant, a blade of grass. Let that relationship nourish you and the world around you.
Communication breakdown
Good communication is essential for the garden of any relationship to truly bloom. And it is where SO many couples get stuck.
When we’re stuck here, everything our partner says seems to trigger us. We feel misunderstood, blamed, unheard, made wrong and so on. We try over and over again to express ourselves and they just don’t seem to hear us.
Or we can’t really get what it is our partner is trying to express to us. And we end up going around and around in circles, having the same ‘argument’ again and again, it’s almost like you could write each others scripts of what you will each say as you have been there so many times!
This place is deeply painful because our partner is the one person, more than any other, that we want to be understood by and cared for. The breakdown in communication then acts like bindweed in the garden and seems to then wrap itself around every good plant growing there. It spirals around everything.
Styles of miscommunication
There is a myriad of habitual dynamics and styles of how the communication in a relationship can break down.
Maybe one of you tends to shut down and simply stops talking
Maybe you tend to shout at each other, or one of you does and the other collapses into sobs of helplessness.
Maybe you get into who is right, who is wrong getting bogged down with facts and counter facts. Blaming each other.
Whatever your styles the one thing that we can all agree on is that it’s really painful – we either numb out to cope or feel like we are drowning in the feelings.
The sacred wound
From what part of us do we hear what our partner says?
Do we hear it from the place in us that feels secure in ourselves, the place that trusts others and can relax and trust intimacy?
Or do we hear it through the distorted lens? Perhaps from the place of a young place in us that has been wounded and hurt?
If we are hearing our partner from a wounded place, we will ‘translate’ what the other is saying in a way that proves our own beliefs about ourselves, for example that there is something fundamentally wrong with us, or that we are not important, or lovable.
We are at a Threshold
We are being invited into the Great Turning
What is this ‘must keep busy’?
What is this ‘what can I find to distract myself’?
What is this ‘waiting to go back to normal’?
What is this loneliness?
Humanity is at a Threshold and we are being invited into a personal and collective Rite of passage. An Initiation into what it means to be human and to come back into right relationship with all life as sacred.
Journey deep within
What if we could see the lockdown as the perfect opportunity to go on an inner Vision Quest to look within at our relationship to fear?
For hundreds of years humanities way of dealing with fear has been to control or kill anything that threatens human life. To distract ourselves with consumerism and do all we can to avoid our inner life. This method of avoiding fear has cost the Earth too much. It is time for us to become mature human beings, it is time to remember the absolute majesty and awe of natural life. Of what really matters, to remember ourselves as an embodiment of the sacred, of nature rather than have it serve us as a slave.
What is being offered is an Awakening. The old normal is gone, we need to stop dreaming and hoping we can go back. A new Earth is trying to be born, and this can only happen if we allow our old ways to die, to let go and allow the death to happen. No death is painless, there will be huge suffering and much loss on a deep and personal level.
Where did we ever get the idea it would be an easy passage?
What is calling us is courage. Courage to take a journey in and down, to go deep within to the very core of our soul, our true home, and face what we fear to feel. To meet the unbearable place in us that sits in a darkened room. We must go there and sit and sit and sit until we find the thread that leads us back into light, into the rebirth of a new world, the one we ache for in our hearts. Living in balance with all life.
Into a life that is led by connection, simplicity, equality, beauty, love and respect for all life as sacred.
Where money is not the currency for survival.
Where a gift economy of exchange of skills and goods is our wealth.
A life of being embedded and belonging into some kind of a community, a wider family, where the children are cherished and protected and raised within a circle of adults who can guide them into their magnificence.
Where one person having enough does not mean that another is poor.
This Initiation and change being called for from the great Mother is a sobering one. The great leveller is here.
Our collective awakening
If we do not change our ways we will become extinct. Fine, you may say, she will continue to flourish without us, we are but a blip in time. But that does not sit well with me. It’s not OK that we take so much of the diversity of life with us. Nor is this spiritual bypassing a justification for what we have done. It does not respect the web of life as having equal right to exist. We need to become humble again and this can only happen when each of us is willing to go inside and ask the difficult questions to our heart’s wisdom and our souls knowing.
Regardless of each of our personal views (conspiracy theories, or manmade or deliberate, or political etc) what is important is what it is that unites us now so that we can step through this portal into the new world together. At the deepest level whatever the cause – the call is the same for us. To wake up, question everything, everything and seek the truth.
We can do this people……the world that awaits us is more beautiful than we can ever dream. It is what we long for and ache for in those quiet still moments alone, in those moments with a lover, in those moments sitting with the sunset or sunrise. In those moments when our hearts crack – open and we are filled with love and the world in those moments is the one we visit in our dreams…it’s up to us, no one is going to do it for us
A new Earth
As a modern western species denial seems to be the strongest self medication going on right now – I’m totally down with the visioning of the new earth and not going back to ‘normal’ ….and…. in order to make good soil for new life to grow the compost needs to be well rotten down. But we seem to be wanting to jump straight from the old to the new without honouring the process of composting fully in order that rebirth can truly be connected and aligned in us and the earth.
Whether we like it or not we are in a death and rebirth cycle but lets not do what we always do which is to try to jump to the next new thing too fast, sticking small plasters on massive gaping wounds.
The death is hard for sure, it holds HUGE suffering on a monumental scale for each of us. Grief is the path we need to take right now so it can mature us into good compost. Unless we allow ourselves time to really notice and feel the losses in our everyday life we cannot truly know what we want going forwards. We need to let the grief ripen in us till late summer /autumn and not try to pick and eat the fruit before it’s ready. The fruit will let us know when it is ready.
We have been taught that grief is a pointless waste of time. However we only grieve for what we love so it is the key to truly living from the heart. It’s the alchemist of the soul that purifies our hearts into gold so we can really know what is precious and what is not. So for us to truly move to a new earth we need to honour the sacred process of grief and trust it’s alchemy to bring us to Love .
I belief we need to come together in our grief. Alone it tends to feel overwhelming and takes us to depression, despair and powerlessness. Thats perhaps in part why we don’t want to go there.
If we could come to gather body to body in this grief it’s optimum as love becomes the energy field in the space we inhabit. If we cannot be physically together, lets align our hearts and consciousness together and reclaim our indigenous capacity to communicate in other ways through the etheric field and grief collectively.
Underneath the layers I believe we are all grieving the same losses even though on the surface the details differ in each of our lives. Lets focus on what unites us rather than what separates us, this is where our power is.
I am visioning a new world where personal wealth is based on mutual support, where what we give and receive is a mark of our wealth and not how much money we each have. Where our ‘jobs’ are embedded in a community life of giving and receiving of what we need day to day. Where the young and the old are at the centre of this life. Where we live along side animals and the natural world in a balanced and honouring way.
You are warmly invited to join this adventure of inner transformation to outer manifestation through love, awareness, nature and spirit. Read on to discover how you can embark on this journey.
Walk with me
There are various things on offer here to support you, some free, some paid. I invite you to take a look through the sessions and events pages. I walk alongside you and will meet the edges with you, to take those steps that you need to take.
When relationships falter..
Art by Arna Baartz
Most of us were never taught the sacred art of relationship and intimacy.
Instead we are thrown into a fast-flowing current of romantic relationships at puberty, a time when our identities are still fluid, and we’re exploring not only who we are, but the nature of the world around us.
Our dominant Western culture doesn’t value the teachings to show us how deeply we belong to ourselves, to the natural world around us. So by the time we reach puberty many of us ache with un-belonging, with a sense of lostness. And then we are offered so much to fill that gaping hole.
We are bombarded with messages about how ‘love’ should look, how we should look and behave to attract a mate. We are urged to buy products to ensure we fit in, or stand out in just the right way.
Our world reflects back values that are not at all rooted in the sacred. If we get any messages at all from those who should be our elders, those messages may be tinged with judgment or fear or prejudice carried down through generations.
So it’s no wonder, as we grow into adulthood and find partners, that even the most loving relationship begins to falter under pressure. Often couples don’t know where to turn, and sometimes there’s a resistance even to seek help, as if that were somehow to admit failure, a fall from grace.
What a relief it is when we can step out of believing that we have to do it all ourselves – that we have to have the perfect relationship, be the perfect partner, have the perfect children – and all without calling in anyone to share and help and support us!
Sobonfu Some, the African author, teacher and activist who sadly died in 2017, had these powerful words to share with us, to support us to reset our relationships in a sacred context, held within a greater family and community.
“Intimacy in general terms is a song of spirit inviting two people to come and share their spirit together. It is a song that no one can resist. We hear it while awake or sleeping, in community or alone. We cannot ignore it… Two people come together because spirit wants them together.
What is important now is to look at the relationship as spirit-driven, instead of driven by the individual… Once a relationship is taken out of its spiritual context, it faces many dangers. A deep disconnection is created, not only on the spiritual plane, but also at the personal level…
Sobonfu Some
So relationship becomes a crucible for the workings of Spirit through us. We are taken, with this understanding, out of our narrow individualistic perspectives, into a vaster field of possibilities.
We can let go. We can begin to learn to trust one another, in a new way that allows our hearts to be revealed to each other.
We were never meant to do this alone. In other cultures that have retained their ancestral practices and traditions, a couple is offered the support of the village, through ritual, practical support, ceremony and the listening ears of many elders.
It’s time to recreate our villages, here in our culture. To remember our relationships as sacred and to honour each other as mirrors of the divine.
11 Gateways to Intimacy
In our work with couples, we are guided by the 11 Gateways to Intimacy. These act as a framework within which we can find a map to navigate the problems which so often come up in intimate relationship.
Whether in a weekend like Intimate Love, or a yearlong training like Garden of Love, this map proves valuable time and again to couples who come at all stages of their relationship.
Quality time
Creating time specifically for tending the relationship. Not watching tv together or doing practical stasks but time to simply BE together without everyday life distractions. Couples often say “but life is too busy for being” – It is like tending to our garden – without watering, the flowers will die and without regular weeding, they take over.
Self Love
Relating from our centre and caretaking our own inner young places of hurt . This is the foundation stone for optimum relating. When we connect with our partner from a place of loving kindness towards ourselves so much more love is possible together. For many reasons we might struggle in loving ourselves or get affected by our partners actions or words and lose touch with ourselves.
Good communication
A lot of couples get stuck here, one seemingly speaking Italian and the other Japanese and getting lost in translation. The ability to truly hear each other and speak with an honest open heart that is in the service of love is soul food. Both for moving through conflict as well as for being able to express needs and for meeting our partners needs from love and choice rather than shoulds or ‘deals’.
Gratitude
Expressing gratitude with each other on a regular basis, especially if there has been a drought. Expressing the little things day to day that we appreciate about our partner or ourselves is food for the heart. Remembering the good stuff and why we are in relationship rather than focusing on the ‘problems’ helps keep our hearts open even with the hurts.
Emotional maturity and intelligence
Conscious mature emotional expression is healthy and natural and keeps the energy open and flowing in our bodies, hearts and minds. Pent up emotions are like damming up a river. Toxic emotions destroys intimacy. Learning to express our emotions beyond blaming our partner or ourselves keeps the relationship alive and brings a vulnerable open intimacy.
Vulnerability
Taking the risk to express to our partner our ‘undefended self’ creates trust and a deeper field of love. Choosing to show the parts of ourselves that we believe will be judged or rejected is profoundly healing both on a personal level as well as serving to deepen the heart connection together.
Non sexual loving touch
Physical affection and tender loving touch that does not have a sexual agenda creates safety and trust and can sometimes speak louder than words.
Sacred sexuality
Expressing Love through the body and our sexual flow of energy. Going beyond sex as obligation, or using it as a stress management tool, or avoidance of deeper intimacy. Sacred sexuality is a true meeting of Love and Freedom and when this is experienced between you it can transform the whole relationship.
Innocence
Remembering our playfulness and innocence is vital. To delight in the wonder and miracle of life through the eyes and heart of the magical child inside of us bring a softness and creative connection to the relationship.
Divine remembering
The relationship is something Sacred, a sense that you are held by something more than each of you at the level of your humanity and that reminds you of your essential state of Grace. This is specially helpful to in times of difficulty and hurt.
External support
Culturally we have been taught to keep quiet about our relationship struggles and pretend to the world that all is OK. We end up feeling shame and a sense of failure if things are not perfect. We tend to try to sort the problems out alone or ignore them and hope they go away. Rarely do either of these methods work. Having support either with someone professional or good honest friends you trust is a wise and mature act of care for the relationship. This also transforms the personal as well as collective shame that we carry about feelings of failure. It helps to transform not only our own relationship but in the collective field as we discover we are not the only one’s experience these struggles. So take a leap and see if any of the options below could meet your need for support.Qu
Daughters of Earth
The creation myths of our own lands, the ones that still are told in Scotland of the Cailleach for example, are signposts to our indigenous knowing, where women were the holders of such power that they literally created mountains, lakes and whirlpools. They were not meekly waiting in the sidelines for a hero to rescue them, instead they embodied the raw might of love, rage and passion.
Kings derived their entitlement to rule from the goddess of the land, in annual rites his oath to uphold and protect the land would be heard and the goddess petitioned for her gifts to support him in his role. There was a balance, and a harmony in that relationship that has been disrupted by patriarchy for centuries. In the wake of that disruption we have all, men and women, been uprooted.
We find ourselves in a wasteland, haunted by a sense of being lost, having lost something precious. These myths are signposts in that wasteland, a trail that can lead our souls back home. The trail can lead us back into more balanced intimate relationships, as it can lead us collectively back into harmony with nature and mend the terrible disconnection from which comes so much destruction and poisoning of our land, air and water.
We not only have a heritage in these lands of deep beauty and wisdom, we have a role to play in these times. For women to draw inspiration and strength from our own indigenous tales is to support our stepping out into the world with all of ourselves, hiding nothing, and in full radiance, with the roar of our rage and the howl of our passion on the winds.
Art by Joshua Mays