Living the Healed Feminine

Greetings under this New Moon, and at this fulcrum Equinox moment! Days and nights are of equal length in both hemispheres as the Sun shines down on the Equator. Metaphorically, we are invited to bring equilibrium to our lives at this time.

The Spring Equinox (celebrated in the Northern Hemisphere tomorrow) is known as Ostara, from which it is a short jump to the word ‘Easter.’ This holy-day is equivalent to 6am, sunrise, the beginning of the day, breakfast, the First-Quarter Moon, our energy increasing as our menstrual cycle waxes, the life stage of the Maiden and the rite-of-passage of Menarche.

So a seasonally relevant question for right now is:
what am I calling in, in order to bring balance to my life?

The Autumn Equinox (celebrated in the Southern Hemisphere tomorrow) is known as Mabon. Mabon is the second of three harvest festivals. This holy-day is equivalent to 6pm, sunset, dinner time, the Last-Quarter Moon, pre-menstrual symptoms, the life stage of Maga/Empress/Grandmother and the rite-of-passage of Menopause.

Our seasonal question could be:
what am I letting go of, in order to bring balance to my life?


OPENING GATHERING

I am just back from the Opening Gathering of the Four Seasons Journey in Victoria, teaching/hosting this circle with Nymh Fox and a team of generous, diligent apprentices. #bestlifeever

Feeling privileged and humbled by the trust these women brought, and the love that flowed around the circle (all 28 of us) right from the beginning. Every second woman brought rose quartz for the altar, unplanned! A simple yet powerful evidencing of our shared desire for an open-hearted, loving immersion together into these ways of the healed feminine.

Sedna is our matron goddess for this year, Inuit figure of the frozen Northern seas, special creature of fear, tragedy and nourishment.

Sedna resides in the icy depths of Adlivun, the Arctic underworld beneath the sea. There she rules all marine life and controls the fate of humans by releasing her bounty to respectful hunters and withholding it from the careless. From her pain and dismemberment came the sea creatures: seals, whales, polar bears, fish, dolphins and walruses. Disregard for the sacredness of life is the worst offence. When this happens, her long hair tangles with filth and requires a shaman’s journey to appease her rage.

Using Sedna’s story as a metaphor, I felt that one of the reasons the Opening Gathering circle was so loving, right from the start – even when everything was new, the place, the food, these sisters, these teachers, this language, these processes, and an understandable response to the not-yet-known is mistrust – is because each woman showed up fully self-response-able, tending with consciousness and gentleness to her process.

We came, comb in hand. We came to do the work, for ourselves, for all our relations, and in solidarity with each other. We know this is a place in which we can comb out some of our soul-knots, in order for us to flow free.

Blessed to be flowing into the upcoming Full Moon Gathering in April, and also looking forward my next Opening Gathering in November this year, with a Four Seasons Journey hopefully up and running in Québec, Canada, with Sequoia Krop!

ECOLOGICAL NICHE OF THE HEALED FEMININE
At the beginning of our Opening Gathering circle, our intention to live the healed feminine was stated and invoked many times. We all come scarred to a greater or lesser extent from the manifestation of the wounded feminine: competition, bitchiness, gossiping, cliques, exclusion, back-stabbing, comparison, ostracism and all the other ways this negative energy between women presents itself.

These are the effects of five thousand years of patriarchy which has consistently set women up against each other and encouraged schism between us.

But times are changing – can you feel it?! The tides within womanhood, within humanity, are shifting…

We used the analogy of an ecological niche: if we as a society, as a world, are an ecosystem (and we are, everything is interconnected!), then this circle of women choosing to deliberately journey the depths in search of healing and wholeness is a niche in which to live and grow the healed feminine.

This is a niche in which to attune to the healed feminine, to remember it, to live our part of it, to feel the whole of it, and to take this attunement, this ‘standard,’ and ripple it out into the world! Such medicine the world is thirsty for…

This, for me, is what the School of Shamanic Womancraft is: an ecosystem of love and support in which I have tasted what is possible when we come from an unshakeable bedrock of love and trust.

Which doesn’t mean it’s all roses and happy sisters! What this bedrock means is that when I’m triggered, when I run straight into one of my edges, and all the devastating painfulness and familiarity of that, I can remember that our default story and language as sisters is one of trust and love. No one’s doing anything on purpose to hurt me.

The voice of mistrust is instantly strong in my head, as a defense mechanism, but I invite myself to remember what lies beneath… the love between us.

This changes what I do with my triggered self, with my wounded story. And it opens up new ways to be with my ego, fears and conditioning which cause me to live out the wounding…

Not freakin’ easy at all… but in this context of relational safety and love, so much repatterning is possible. I keep showing up for this re-weaving, and blessed am I that my sisters keep showing up too… we are not alone in this pivotal work, undervalued though it is in our culture…

BALANCING MASCULINE AND FEMININE
Calling in the healed feminine is a way of bringing balance to our journey as a human species, and to our current patriarchal culture. So, we can nuance our seasonal questions, in this Equinox moment!

Northern Hemisphere/Ostara:
            What do I/we need to call in, in order to sing up the healed feminine?

Southern Hemisphere/Mabon:
        What do I/we need to let go of, in order to sing up the healed feminine?

Blessings on our answers and actions!

Like Sedna’s fingers, many aspects of ourselves as women, as sisters, as priestesses, have been cut off – along with our powerful tools such as herbs, drums, tarot, astrology, and midwifery. Even now, the patriarchy seeks to eradicate homebirth midwifery here in Victoria – motivated by fear and misunderstanding. There are less than 100 homebirth midwives left in Victoria. What will we do about it?

The oppression is real, but the tides are turning. We as women are Re-Membering.

And a conscious, awake, active, nourished woman grounded in a community of such women is an absolutely unstoppable force!

Bring it the f*** on, is all I can say! We need us now!

Xxx Grace