Why all the talk about Goddesses?

I’ve often categorized women as on my team or not. Those on my team I have taken with me to explore and adventure and love, but, admittedly, it has been a long practice of learning to celebrate with them for their successes and gifts. For a long time, I felt jealous or sad, even angry if they got something or had something I wanted. Now, I can honestly say that has changed and I am truly happy, proud, and grateful when my girl friend’s dreams and desires come to life. I now stand and celebrate with them, whole heartedly. But, for those not on my team, I am still working on being aware of the judgement and comparison and then, choosing how I respond, deciding if love, empathy, compassion, and celebration, is truly what I want to extend. Now, once I notice I’m judging or comparing, I am choosing to stand with them, even from afar.

For such a long time, life has been a competition and I tried to win at the XYZ game (smarts, physical ability, guys, yoga, etc.). But wow, it’s exhausting! I know I am not alone. We women learn these things from books, magazines, TV (hello: advertising is all about making us women feel less than; we then cure this feeling by buying the sh*t being touted as the miracle answer to us being fat, having cellulite, wrinkles, being tired, sick, etc.), the movies we watch (when was the last time you noticed more than one woman in a movie or a woman who didn’t talk to another woman only about guys, in a movie that wasn’t titled a “chick flick”). We women are programmed to compete and feel less than.

Now, I’m finding more and more I’m celebrating women, their dreams, their truths, their desires and like a drug addiction, it’s so much more fun. I’ve begun to call this the “Goddess Rising” phenomenon. It’s a throw back to the worship of the female entity, to a time when women were revered and celebrated, instead of crushed, held down, and told to be subservient. The word goddess evokes a stirring that something isn’t right, it pokes, it shakes, it rattles, and that is exactly the intention. The word goddess reminds us women that we too have the Divine in us.

All this started with awareness, with meditation, with yoga. From there, it moved into celebrating my own achievements and gifts and then, with this new found confidence, I began to share and talk about it/them. This practice has continued and deepened, moving into desire and longing, getting in touch with my sacred female qualities (which men have also: collaboration, joy, pleasure, sensuality, vulnerability, surrender, patience, intuition, creativity, community, etc.). All this is counter-cultural. This is risky. This is new. This isn’t easy, but it’s what the world has been missing for a few thousand years as we have swung to the worshipping of masculine traits (profit, bigger, better, faster, harder, being practical, an individual, logical, non-expressive, competitive, war).

Yoga and meditation, have been the vehicles, the tools through which this has blossomed. And now, I’m all in. It is now be my life’s mission to follow my deepest yearnings and desires, no matter how scary or hard or weird, and be here to champion the same in others.

So, here’s to desires realized and the tree of life growing from their actualization. (Proverbs 13:12)

“The greatest threat to a woman’s happiness and success is her own negative judgment of herself, and other women.

Every flower/woman has her very own unique way of blooming.

I have mine.

You have yours.

She has hers.

The point is to damn the torpedoes and bloom.

Full speed ahead, and bloom.

Bloom in this lifetime.

Bloom now.

Really. Right now.

Don’t let the cultural prejudices against blooming stop you from stepping up to your own plate.

Don’t wait, just in case we don’t get another round.

Bloom, even if the sun generated from another woman’s light hurts your eyes.”

– Regena Thomashauer

This pic is from one of my many adventures with the goddesses Heather Phillips and Tara Huff. 💞 So thankful for these and the other women in my life! And, now, I’m truly thankful for those women not in my life, I’m celebrating you too.

xoxo