Unleashing your deepest, strongest power

This is a time when the feminine is increasingly being called and welcomed back into the world.

Women are occupying ever greater positions of power. Little girls in our society generally have no conception that there is something they can’t do. Men are opening up to previous taboos like: childrearing, doing housework, showing emotion, eschewing violence. The earth – the ultimate feminine energy – is crying so loudly for our attention that Her voice is in the news daily – and all around the world people are calling out that we must pay attention to her. We must pay attention to the feminine.

The rise of feminine power has everything to do with old women

Today I got my hair cut and thought again about my decision to go grey two years ago. “If I dye it brown again, I will look much younger, “ I thought. It feels weird to look in the mirror and see a “grey-haired lady”.

The story we are told is: get older, lose power. We’re silently told: “Fear getting older, girls! Fear becoming invisible, unimportant, cast off, a bag lady! The worst thing that can happen to you is to lose your looks, remember that every time you look in the mirror after 35!”

But what actually happened when I let my hair go grey? People whom I didn’t know started treating me with respect, as though I had something valuable to say and as if I was powerful. Men started giving me appreciative glances (which had been pretty rare before, let me tell you!). People I did know started saying how fabulous I look. I had a sense of myself as a powerful, capable woman.

In essence, I gained status by going grey. The paradigm is changing.

The change is happening very quickly

My Lebanese grandmother was forced into an arranged marriage to a man she hated who was twenty years her senior.

My mother, unlike her mother, was free to marry whom she chose. Her boss however told her that she was never going to rise at work because she was female. 

(That's my mom on the right)

I, on the other hand, was raised with the knowledge that I could be anything I want to be and can marry whomever I choose.

Women have feared getting older because it has meant losing that little power we had – our sexual power. But things are changing. Women are more powerful in the western world than ever before. Maybe we don’t need to fear getting older as women. Maybe we can look forward to it!

For the first time in thousands of years, some of the leaders in our society are also grandmothers. Leaders who have borne babies in their wombs, and watched those babies bear babies. Leaders who will be very concerned, not just for the current generations, but for the ones to come.

When I think of it, grandmothers are the perfect leaders: they have lived a long time, they have left their hormonal motivations largely behind, they know the value of life because they have nurtured it with their breasts and with their hands.

All of which leads me to these questions:

What if the inner struggle with our bodies -  that all woman share in different ways - is in fact a symptom of the suppression of the divine feminine? And what if it is more specifically the suppression of the divine elder feminine? The feminine energy that has nothing to do with our sexual appeal, and everything to do with our wisdom and loving kindness?

What if I lived in a culture that honoured elder women? What would it feel like to know I was now entering into their esteemed company?

What if I unleashed that crone power in me? A power that has been chained up, devalued and mocked for centuries?

Can I fearlessly claim my fullest, deepest power? Can I be that powerful, and loving and kind?

An unleashing the inner goddess ceremony

 

You need: a long ribbon and some scissors.

Bind the ribbon around your hands

As you tie the knot in the ribbon, say:

            This ribbon and this knot

            are the chains upon my divine feminine spirit

            as all men and women have had this spirit bound

            Today I cut these bonds

            and allow my feminine divinity free

            may she be powerful

            may she be strong

            may she be kind

            may she be abundant

            may she always act for the benefit of seven generations to come

            may she be free

Now cut the ribbon and say:

            As the divine feminine rises up in me

            May I see her divinity

            honour her

            bow to her

            allow her her freedom

            I allow her her freedom

Warning: your inner female divinity may be a little cranky for having been bound so long. Be patient. J

mandala by Erin Dragonsong (psst she has a cool make-your-own mandala e-book.)