This morning, I heard an interview with a journalist who advocated for mothers who used drugs during pregnancy but who later gave up their addictions to parent their children. Her articles saved them from incarceration in Mississippi where women like these are charged as criminals and sentenced to twenty or more years in prison. Even women who had already been incarcerated, were freed due to this journalist’s writing.
Your voice makes a difference. That is what we learn from this interview. Cultivate it. Refine it. Use it and spread it far and wide. It is your most potent resource. This may not have been what you learned growing up. I was told, for instance, that my mouth was “too big” and that I should learn how to keep it shut rather than how to voice my truth. But that teaching was based on ignorance and fear.
Even when it appears that the odds are against us, as they were for this journalist in Mississippi, and as appears to be the case now in the United States, our voices are potent, effective activism. Investing in cultivating them and learning how to be clear and outspoken, and where to voice our truth, is beyond worthwhile, it is game changing.
Self-serving heads of state, who ravage our beautiful country and steal the futures of our youth, can be stopped. They want to dumb down our young people with disinformation. Enlightened, outspoken, confident women will never let politicians obscure the original brilliance of our children. You and I are those women.
I have studied human development for four decades. The culmination of my research, said succinctly, is that individuals fuel their own evolution. We can be side-tracked, but the resilience that is innate in us is indestructible. We can move forward, no matter what impedes us, with embryonic creativity, regardless of age or background. Yet, rather than celebrate and nurture the expansive capacities of consciousness, politicians now are trying to undermine unique selfhood and suffocate it with misinformation. It may look like they are succeeding, but that is an illusion. Women won’t allow it. We will always stand for original brilliance and those who do not, are lost in the disinformation trance.
In retrospect, I learned more about how to be brave with my words and voice my truth from the women’s movement than from my academic training or writing programs. In fact, I would say that I had to unlearn what the academicians and “authorities” taught me. Writing is effective when you know who you are, what you want to say, and with whom to communicate. Only you can write like you. Let me explain more about my reference to the women’s movement because that illustrates best what I am getting at here.
Often all you need is mirroring to manifest what is nascent, incipient, embryonic within you. That is what the women’s movement gave me. Pure, authentic, clear, non-manipulative mirroring. The hormonal cascade that resulted from that, within seconds, did everything else. My writer’s voice was lubricated by the other women’s mirroring of me, and soon thereafter my writing become itself.
The mirroring I speak of here must be unconditional. If you are mirrored by someone who wants you to enroll in their writing program, it is entirely different than being mirrored heuristically or for its own sake. Anything transactional will antidote the neurohormal dosage and will not ignite creativity and confidence. This is a physiological law.
In the consciousness raising women’s circles that I entered in the early ‘70’s, women were just beginning to articulate what they appreciated or saw in each other. For most of us, this had never happened before. We were raised to be of service and to earn approval by serving well. Every woman in those initial circles was an activist, but none of us had been advocates for ourselves. On the contrary, we were educated to suppress our personal needs and if we responded to them, we did so secretively, in whatever few moments we could sequester. Self-care and respite were unknowns.
For many women in the world, this is still the orientation. Is it any wonder that women hesitate to have a public voice? Is it any wonder that we writhe with helplessness and frustration while witnessing and experiencing the brutality and violence enacted in our name, and feel as if nothing we do will make a difference? Many of us bought that lie.
Crone Speak exists to mirror you, as much as is possible through this venue. I can feel into your burgeoning voice of protest in the midst of the theft of our land, our healthcare, our education, our money, the futures of our children, our generosity, our compassion, our connection to the world. These are all being stripped away without purpose except to aggrandize a sick, extractive, greedy oligarchy that is insatiable. We must actively oppose this inhumane despotism.
The women’s consciousness raising circles I attended in the early 1970’s reflected back to me that I was born to voice my truth and that I had the confidence to do so, even though it was buried. Now, three decades later, I want to do that for you.
Stand in front of a mirror until you have the eerie feeling that you are looking back at yourself. Stay there, and then tell the you that you see, exactly what you value about them. Say it slowly, whilst looking deeply in the eyes of the you in the mirror. Wait to feel the ripples of sensation. Take it in.
Authentic, unconditional mirroring is absorbed immediately into the neuro-fabric of one’s being and transmutes into straightforward action that is skillful and effective. We then experience ourselves as masterful, as the precious gifts that we are, and we recognize the singular importance of caring for ourselves and protecting our gifts. In indigenous cultures identifying individual gifts is often a practice, but our Western societies have forgotten how to do that. This is why people wander far from home seeking their direction and their purpose when it is all within us. No one has helped us extract it and polish the gift, which is our life path.
There is no more time to waste. Speaking out must happen now. We cannot allow the takeover of this incredible land and its creatures to go any further. What is being threatened for our country is contrary to the laws of nature and the Constitutional principles that steer democracy. We are witnessing a massive treaty violation in the United States. Women say No.
Find your No and everything that is behind it and shout it out. Make your No beautiful. Make it a song that rebounds off the mountains. The women say NO.
Women’s voices must rise and lead first, before further change can happen. The earth is waiting for us to speak out. This is why I created The Mother of Medicine events. If you are a healer, a birth advocate, a doula, a midwife, a lactation consultant, or a women’s health representative, it is your voice that I want to rally through The Mother of Medicine.