Women's Voices - Women's Choices

Kofi Annan has said that the future of the world is in the hands of women. Others have said similar things. Inside - where I live - I know this to be true.

Women are unbelievably powerful! Not when we strive to be like men but when we choose to be the woman that we are. We are still the gender that gives birth. We are still the hand that rocks the cradle - and shapes the future. When we forget that - not because of its function but because of the form from which it emanates - we become complacent and silent partners to our own demise.

The September Newsletter carries a piece that I wrote because it is meaningful to me. I've included it below.


Women's Voices - Women's Choices

Women talk. It’s what we do. It’s also one of the things we do best.

We come together in small clusters and we talk about the things that matter to us. We talk about the people we care about. We talk about our dreams and the things that get in the way. We talk about what we love and what we hate. We talk about our children, and their children, and how their worlds are working or not.

So essential to who we are is our desire to talk that it has long been the butt of jokes, held up for scorn and ridicule, and made fun of in sitcoms, cartoons and the movies. So compelling is its impact on all of our lives that the simple act of choosing NOT to speak, in and of itself, wreaks havoc and causes great distress to the people around us. In our stony silence, the absence of what we do so naturally becomes the punishment that others must endure.

We are not just talking to hear the sound of our own voice – we are shaping our worlds.

Conversations. Conversations that connect us. Conversations that allow us to move closer together or push apart. Conversations that redirect focus and attention, the nature of which will feed or starve an issue, an event or an intention. Conversations designed to soothe or disrupt; to create space or collapse it; to build relationships or to destroy them.

Conversations. Conversations filled with tears of joy, of fear or of rage! Conversations that forgive and others that let us get even. Conversations that are designed to make us forget. Conversations all, fueled by the words that flow up and through us, carried by the sound of our unique voice and tumbling out of our mouths. Without exception, they end up designing our lives and that of the people we care about. They invite or force change; or they keep us locked into the patterns that are already shaping our lives.

This is not to be messed with! These conversations can make or break a person or a process; build an empire or destroy one; lift spirits – ours and that of others – or cause hope to come crashing to the ground. They can shape an outcome or make it disappear entirely from our reality. The ‘slip of a tongue’ can transform lives faster than any great plan or strategy ever could. Small wonder that so many, for so long, have made fun of it. Were we to recognize in ourselves the power of this force that so many others fear, we would end our commitment to living small, colorless lives.

Women are the world’s masters at gathering in small groups and having conversations. Effortlessly masterful.

Women are also the world’s best hope for a living, organic collective that supports life.

Gather this force mindfully and direct it with intention. Gather the force of what comes naturally to us; determine that this world and its future are up to us; and begin the conversations that offer hope, evoke potential and define new ways of being. The ones that free us from the secrets that keep our world small and dark. The ones that keep us bound to the 'truth' of the dogma that our bodies know to be lies. The ones that reveal to the world who we are, what we care about and that we are no longer willing to hide behind the veil of our history, our cultural conditioning or the shame, long carried, that does not belong to us.

What we talk about with each other can change our world! Many among us have already chosen to awaken from the cultural slumber that has allowed us to lie still and silent while our lives have been determined for us by others. . These voices now carry the quality of an aware and unique presence, given strength by their discoveries from Fully Alive….or Sekhmet Rising or the Horses book….or the Women and Power cd’s….and they are awake! The alternative is to continue to keep our voices small and tinny that we may tolerate the drivel that consumes our lives.

As we harness the power of that at which we are effortlessly masterful; as we become determined to engage in conversations worthy of the sound of our own voices and the magnitude of our own potential; as we gather the women in small groups and bring voice to the deeper truth we all carry, we have begun to declare: we are this world’s best hope.

Louise

I have chosen to share it with others in the event that something...some small vibration of remembrance...will awaken in other women. A vibration that will grow in density and intensity and strength that will allow us to be who we are naturally, to do what we do naturally and to engage it all for a deeper truth that will allow the force that we are - particularly as a collective! - to emerge.

Women's Voices - Women's Choices is, in some way, my declaration of what I believe it will take to profoundly change our world - quickly! Women sitting around the kitchen table. Women in conversations over lunch. Women chairing staff meetings, board meetings and family disputes. Women chatting while they tend to their children, at home or at the park. Women talking about designs, of buildings and clothing and people's lives. Women - on telephones, in letters, on email - with other women talking about themselves. Not about the stories they tell of what was or what could have been but about their truths long hidden and now revealed.

Breathing is good.....