The Weight of Women’s Worth

Vivacious Venus

I am wading into an extremely vulnerable subject here. This is a core wounding for most females, and my work is women’s empowerment. I am heart broken about how most Western women relate to their bodies and sense of self worth. I do not mean to disregard men’s issues with appearance and body image, they have also been reared in a culture based on separation and disconnection, but I have witnessed that there is a different field men are allowed with issues of body shape and value.

A series of events happened over the last while and a cascade of experiences and perceptions flowed into my mind about my life in this body and the other women I have known well enough to speak frankly about their relationship with their bodies.

Our bodies are our Temples, our homes, the way we bounce around in this pinball machine of life. They are how we play, experience, create, give life, make love to ourselves, others and the world at large.

If there is a perceived “difference” in your external form from the culturally dictated norms, it may cause a host of issues with connection, value and belonging. If one is albino in Africa, or in a wheel chair, or slim in a culture that values the Rubinesque women, it could cause a deep sense of separation and isolation. Our ego desperately wants to be valued, safe, and successful in order to feel good enough. Western culture at this time suggest success should look fame, beauty, wealth, and status. So if our body, our Temple, is different than the color, hair type, or proportions deemed superior and success worthy at this time , where does one find a healthy sense of self? If this year/decade/century women are to be rail thin, where do the Rubinesque women fit? Venus of Willendorf lives, even if she would be called obese at this time.

These same “differences” can also be the distinction that marks you as unique; as an artist, a visionary, the Medicine person in the tribe. But in contemporary Western Culture difference takes a lot of chutzpah and power to carry. Barbara Streisand made the nose her trademark. Lauren Hutton rocks the gap in her front teeth. Queen Latifah carries herself as the royalty that she is.

My relationship to my own body has been a long journey. Three years ago, when I was thirty-nine, I started a series of self-portraits on the land called “Earthen Body.” There were a variety of reasons I did this, but one of them was to witness my value, worth and beauty to myself, by myself. Not what the culture thought, not what men thought, not what my family thought, but how did I feel about this body I have inhabited for so many decades? I was also attempting to find a sense of connection to myself as I age.

What ended up happening over the year and half period with the Earthen Body process was a revolution within myself. I FOUND MYSELF, through the land; through adventure; through creativity; through surrender; through primal wildness; through dancing with The Spirits in ancient ways. I found my way back home. And it was in my body, nude, alone on the land with the Earth and Ancestral Spirits.

I am a different woman now, and I can still get caught up in cultural expectations of value and worth. Each time I have committed to being awake and incarnating more onto the earth-plane I have gained weight. This has happened recently. My jeans do not fit. I wear yoga pants all the time {thank god they stretch}. I have been struggling with the change in my form, judging it at times, feeling less valuable. This is so odd. It’s like a bad hair day. How can the way our hair sits affect our entire psyche? The first time this happened about 5 or 6 years ago I was going to a wedding and wanted a new dress. I went into the dressing room and started trying things on. The first dress horrified me. As I looked in the mirror, I perceive myself as looking  “fat.” I am an anomaly on this issue because I have not consistency battled my bodies size and form. Now I am not saying I was always deeply connected to my body, but I didn’t wake up hating it. But when I had this experience in the department store dressing room I got a sense of how other women feel all the time.

If we are in the middle of a cultural/energetic/spiritual revolution of reclaiming the feminine, where does women’s self hatred through their bodies come in? Where does the violent disregard and over-consumption of Mother Earth’s resources become rebalanced? How do we women carry the dignity and worth of our variant cycles, rhythms and seasons?

Dance has also been a major way for me to embody myself. I came to it in my mid- thirties and like the Earthen Body photography it has completely changed my life. I am taking Haitian dance classes now and have found that a little extra junk in my trunk is a good thing. Not all cultures have disregarded curvier women; Sir Mix A Lot made a career glorifying bodacious bottoms.

I am also forty-two, and single. There are entire books focusing on how I need to be less “picky” in choosing a man because my days of being desirable are over. If my body and looks are deteriorating I am “used goods” and no longer the choice of the litter. This is outrageous, and many women subliminally operate on this notion. Remember the statistic that it was more likely for a woman over thirty-five to be involved in an airplane crash than find a mate….wacky. What happened to our position being elevated by age? We mature women are in a different cycle than the maiden, but we can also be wiser, calmer, and for many of us more relaxed and juicier. If our greatest value still lies in our looks, what do we do when that power position is weakened?

Most women spend a huge amount of time judging their bodies. Worrying about their thighs/tummy/ass being too “fat.” This shuts women DOWN. This is a place of constantly not being enough, of being afraid to have the lights on when you make love, of fearing the foods you want to eat, of judging other women and how their temples are transforming.  A friend was talking to a group of men and women and it came to light that most of the men did not know what their butts looked like. They have not inspected, judged, and cataloged every square inch of their flesh for its {perceived} positive or negative characteristic. Think of all the time, energy and resources women are using to try to fix themselves when they could be exploring their inner worlds, having more rest from raising the children, or creating the next revolution.

I am part of this revolution, and my part is to find the places within me that shine and expand through my own challenges and gifts. I am also unpacking the messages I digested as a child about my value through money, a mate, a career with status, and a skinny “pretty” body {and persona I will add-be the nice accommodating girl…not the fierce and powerful WOMAN we fear. We ALL have The Dark Mother in us somewhere}. I write and dream and dance and laugh as I age, much more able to unplug from my younger woman’s judgments, and I still have days when I think I should have a washboard stomach. I am not willing to become a slave to these external ideas of worth, and I still have not made it out the other side of consistently holding my value beyond my package.

This week I am attending a women and girls rights of passage retreat on the land. I am thinking about what we teach our children, overtly and subliminally. How do we carry ourselves, how do we open their worlds to their beauty and brilliance for simply existing? How do we nurture their sense of worth and help them find the unique light within themselves? How do we honor the earthened beings that we are, and come back in to alignment with her beauty and wisdom? I mean this for our boys too. What is our responsibility as Elders and Wise Ones to create a saner and more sustainable world for all of them?

I will be off-line for a week, so if I do not answer your comments to these musings immediately, have patience, I am doing my joyful work…

Thank you to another woman of great dignity, Jeanne Abella, for these words of wisdom; may we all hold this vision of walking this way together.

IMAGINE A WOMAN

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is woman.

A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories.

Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.

A woman who listens to her needs and desires.

Who meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past’s influence on the present.

A woman who has walked through her past.

Who has healed the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life.

A woman who exerts, initiates and moves on her own behalf.

Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods.

A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.

Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.

A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.

Who celebrates her body’s rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honors the body of the Goddess in her changing body.

A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.

Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.

A woman who sits in circles of women.

Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine yourself as this woman.

Written by Patricia Lynne Reilly, 1995

I am 8 Years Old Today

My new life began eight years ago today. It has been a great passage, filled with more adventure, revelations and hard work than I could have imagined. The journey has yielded invaluable lessons in surrendering and receiving, as well as also how one can clutch to the past. I look back now, over these eight cycles considering what has passed away, and what wishes to continue forth. Today I give profound honor to one of my great initiators, my wonderful husband Christopher, Christ-bearer, who died eight years ago today of cancer. His return home was the gateway into my new life. He is Saint Christopher in my life now, a protector on my journeys, a baptizer, a giver of the staff of life that now bears fruit, and a guardian at the thresholds seeking to the serve the greatest Spirit…

On Vashon Island with beloved Rowdy

I laid out a spread from my Oracle of Initiation divination deck asking what has been released and what wishes to be reclaimed. The deck has been one of the astonishing blessings that appeared during this quest of emergence. The Oracle was created directly out of my own process of redefining the challenges I faced throughout my life, and especially the last eight years, embracing the creativity and gifts within my struggles. The Oracle deck is how I recognized my own Rainbows in the Dark, the juice, passion and power within my shadows and complexities.

The three cards representing what I have released over the last eight years are:

58. Remembrance; 36. Trust; 31. Knowing. Both Remembrance and Trust are reversed.

The three cards  representing what I am reclaiming as I move forward are:

51. Refining; 55. Alignment; 63. Regeneration. All three of these are reversed.

A little background on the Oracle deck. There are eight stages within the deck, eight levels one passes through within a process of spiritual transformation. I directly experienced this progression within my own journey of renewal. In the reading above, four of the stages are represented:  Discernment; Alliance; Offering; and Unity. Each of these four sections speaks to a series of trials and tests we may experience during a pathway of spiritual awakening. The levels also speak to the gifts and transformations available by meeting the challenges and claiming the courage, compassion and depth within the process. The reversals speak to a possibility emerging; an opportunity that is waiting to sprout. Reversals can also be something you have overcome, old patterns that have been shifted.

When I look to the three cards representing what has been released, it speaks to the claiming of my power and knowing. 58. Remembrance, is the card of reconnection to ones ancient knowing. It is the card of Divinity reclaimed, the willingness to journey down Alice’s rabbit hole returning with insights, wisdom and skills for our modern era. In its reversed position it speaks to my underworld journey traveling between the realms and rekindling those channels of knowing. It resides within the Unity section, the re-union with our essential illumination and essence.

36. Trust has been one of my greatest challenges in this lifetime. Trusting myself, trusting the Universe, trusting others, I got it all. For many years I was isolated from my true essence, feeling a sense of abandonment and detachment from my relationship to Source. Reclaiming trust has been my greatest transformation, recognizing the fact that I am always guided, supported and greatly loved. I still need refreshers now and again, but it is anchored much more solidly than it was in the past. Hallelujah. It also speaks to the golden glow of trusting your own instincts and inner fire. Trust is within the Alliance section of the Oracle. The stage where you open to a broader and more refined view of universal connection, relying on your Spirit Guides and earthly soul family’s collaboration on your path of evolution.

31. Knowing in the ancient magical child who is both wise and enchanted. She has a directness and power in her gaze; she wears the cape of glowing rainbows. She is the Guardian of all our indigenous knowing, she is fierce and strong and true. She has no doubt of her worth and rightful place as a Holy One. She is dark. She is fertile. She is the power in the subterranean forest we all must meet to reach our wholeness. In order to carry true illumination, we need to integrate the paradox of our sparkling darkness. She carries all that is, she is the Sun and the Moon, the fullness and the constriction, all colors within the void. Knowing resides in the Discernment section of the deck, the stage after the initiatory breakdowns when you embrace your instinctual wisdom and begin the resurrection process with greater clarity and intuitive insight.

Honoring Christopher

He was so alive. He climbed mountains, painted allegories, embodied chivalry, traveled the world, adored his clan, devoted himself to beauty, loved his work, recognized magic, and was funny as hell. He was a chameleon, at home in both the natural world and urban environments. His Virgo had such a sense of decorum, propriety and respect, but not in a constricting way. He also had one of the finest design and aesthetic awarenesses of any straight man I have known. And he knew how to love. Thank you Gram-bits, R & D. You gifted the world with a being who knew his worth.

Beloved Roberta

There are some interesting Saint Christopher parallels with Chris’s life and death. The Myth of St. Christopher is that he chose to serve God by ferrying people across a dangerous river. He was a giant who used his immense size to navigate a difficult channel. One day a small child asked to be transported, and Christopher waded thought the water with his staff supporting their passage. The child became almost unbearably heavy, but St. Christopher labored through it, almost sinking and baptizing them both. On the other side of the river he asked the child what happened, and the infant reveled he was Jesus and Christopher had been carrying the weight of the worlds sins. After this great offering St. Christopher’s staff was given the power to sprout leaves and bear fruit. His bravery and dedication to supporting other’s passages is why he is the patron saint of travelers.

I do believe my Christopher was baptized and renewed during his ordeal. He crossed the river between the worlds, and became holy from his initiatory trials. As Sonya Lea said in a Tarot reading after his death {she was one of the first people he came to directly-in Spirit-after his death. He always shows up in our readings together}, he thanked me for my support because he had transformed from a knight to a king through this ordeal. Soon after his death, on the rugged Pacific Northwest coast, he gifted me with three things along my beach walk. The first item was a little plastic knight figure, the second was a little pink cross, and the third was a beautiful wooden staff. He laid out in offerings the journey he achieved, gifting me with my own staff of resurrection from the process.   I have been walking with its support since.

My Staff from Christopher

A story about his sense of humor. We were both stubborn and opinionated {I’ve left that all behind-wink-wink}, so our shared sense of delight and play helped get us through some bucking of horns. One day we were in need of an energy shift, and he picked up an empty paper-towel tube and barked at me through it in a funny voice… Mission accomplished, giggles ensued. Well, as a “happy marriage tool” I took two of those tubes, writing “his,” and “hers” on each one. We kept them in the kitchen and at opportune moments would bust them out to shift the dynamics. Try it, its fun.

So here I am, eight years later, and what do I choose to bring forth from all of these shifts and experiences?

51. Refining 55. Alignment 63. Regeneration.

51. Refining is the kundalini opening, the snake rising up through the social construct of “the face,” the persona, illuminating the crown chakra. It is the tempering fires of chaos and order, of golden re-illumination. The shadows and the light held in the delicate and regenerative balance of yin and yang, active and receptive energies. There is the “light at the beginning of the tunnel” as Stacey Robyn said to me, the ascension process through which we become divinity incarnate, lights at the beginning of the tunnels, illuminated holy humans. 51. Refining and 55. Alignment are both from the Offering section within the Oracle, the stage where you have integrated, balanced and surrendered yourself to such a degree that now your unique gifts and talents become a sacred offering to the collective.  You returned from the hero’s journey, ready to bring the wisdom of the quest back to the tribe.

55. Alignment is another card speaking to the process of integrated wholeness. Alignment is the pathway up or down the sacred ladder of life, the levels of development within the tree of life as you  mediate between the worlds. You have surrendered to your truth and destiny, you are the traveler between the realms who is both archetypal and mundane, skeletal and animate; a reclining Days of the Dead skeleton delighting in the life-death-life cycle of decay and regeneration.

63. Regeneration is your existence as a Rainbow Web Dreamer. You are fully vibrating your own rhythms, your own multidimensional brilliance. Every act, every though, every impulse feeds your works for the collective. Your life is joy and magic and creative force, without the differentiation of culture, class or ego construct. You are One.

I have dedicated myself to apprenticing to the wild and integrative forces of co-creative visions, claiming the blessings and gifts within this challenging loss. Today, I would not change any of it, and this took me almost this long to hold that. This complexity does not disregard my profound love and connection to Christopher, his beautiful family, and the life we shared together, and yet my soul has been freed to a much larger potential than I could have ever dreamed.

Today I honor you Christopher, and also one of my family members who passed yesterday as well. The oldest sibling in my mother’s Scandinavian lineage, my Aunt Nancy died yesterday quietly in her home. I read once that the compliments we give others are actually reflections of ourselves. Aunt Nancy once said about Christopher, “He is a class act.” Well, right back at yah Nancy, rest in peace.

The Scandinavians-Aunt Nancy is second from the left, between my mother and Grandma Maxine with Rusty

“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds”  The Notebook

Thank you for everything Chris, it was ALL a blessing.