International Women's Day
For the last few weeks we’ve been enjoying the incremental growth of the feminine presence at our land here in Brazil, the Eco Aldeia Flecha da Mata. We recently opened up a Temporary Resident program for people who want to integrate into the Eco Aldeia’s routine and work in exchange for residency, but we didn’t narrow it to only women or anything. It just happened this way! There were eleven women staying and working on the land for a few days, and this doesn’t include me and our three other female property mates here at the house who spend much time at the Eco Aldeia. This feminine force is like a wave washing over us. Many of these women are staying for a few months, and already well into the swing of things. Some of them came for a mutirão, a sort of elongated work party, to build a rainwater capturing system at the Eco Aldeia, and were only here for a few days, but more are coming. Two Columbian women are supposed to arrive Tuesday, and then two French women will come soon. Along with the long awaited rain we’re finally having, it’s raining women!! And as Sunday March 8 was International Women’s Day, it feels like a celestial gift, and I am grateful to the heavens.
At the Santo Daime church here we are always lamenting the imbalance between the masculine side and the feminine side, and usually struggling to have the minimum number of women required to do our work, material and spiritual. Because of this it's always nice when we come together with our brother church in Cascavel for bigger works. You have to be a strong woman to live here, as it's known to be a very macho place, and as a woman who has often felt more in touch with my own masculine side than my feminine, I am coming to learn more and more how much I need other women in my life, and the more women the better. I love men, too. Don't get me wrong. But right now, I need women! We are blessed to have three very creative, powerful women from the south of Brazil living in the guest house for the last two years, and their presence here has been like a “before” and “after” for me. I call them my angels, as so much progress, creativity and organization has been happening since they came. Vivi has come on as the coordinator of the Eco Aldeia. Carol and Mari have mounted a little store, as well, with natural products and repurposed goods, making use of recycled items. They were also recently contracted to remodel the house of one of the founders of Biodanza nearby, a big house which will be used for trainings and gatherings, using bionconstruction, recycled materials and permaculture principles. We call each other “eco bitches,” lovingly. Having these powerhouse women on our team feels like it might have something to do with this “mulherada” we’re experienging lately.
This cosmic coming together of women is something that has peppered my life since I was an adolescent, and now as an adult I am so grateful to have had these experiences. When I was fifteen I left Soquel High School to attend Santa Catalina, an all-girls Catholic boarding school in Monterey, and for two years I boarded with about two hundred girls from all over the world. There were a bunch of girls from Mexico City, Canada, and even as far away as Korea and Africa. I remember that it was a bit shocking at first coming from public school, but I soon embraced the liberty and relief of being with only girls, wearing a uniform, and was able to focus my energy on studying. Then later when I was living in New York City as a young adult, I found myself in an all women theater company, in which the director mounted two plays by Caryl churchill, a British feminist playwright, to take advantage of the situation. I played two parts in the play Top Girls. Dulle Gret, a fantasy character based on a Dutch painting about a warrior woman who leads other women out of hell during the Spanish inquisition, and the other, a girl who was raised by her aunt because her own mother wanted to pursue a career and rejected motherhood. Later when I moved back to California I was in an all women aerial dance group directed by Miranda Janeschild, another tough, multitalented woman. Neither of these groups was intentionally all-women. It just happened to be only women who showed up. As for my own experience, though, I can’t negate the repetition of this theme in my life, and am feeling a need, a desire, to consciously work more with women, and as a woman, cultivate unity and sisterhood.
One powerful testimony to this natural need to come together is our monthly menstrual cycle. Last year our dear friend Fany Carolina planted the seed of the Moon Lodge with us here at the Eco Aldeia. She works with women as the Mulher da Arranha or “Spider Woman,” weaving her web of feminine power by bringing women together all over the world. The Moon Lodge is a sacred place and practice in which women retreat when we are bleeding to give our blood back to Mama Earth. It is also a place for coming together and sharing our wisdom. My own awakening into the Moon Lodge has also been one of those “before” and “after” experiences for me, as I have been menstruating now for thirty years, but receiving this wisdom was like finding the hidden treasure that had been missing for all of that time. Our moon is not a time for suffering, embarrassment, shame and regret. It is a time of power. We understand the biology of this cycle in terms of reproduction, but there is something much bigger that we mostly have been missing for hundreds of years now. It is a time of deep spiritual insight, and of collective women’s wisdom. Why is it that women who are together for a period of time begin to menstruate together? I believe that this is Creator’s design for us so that once a month we come together, patiently giving our blood and resting our bodies and our souls, and sharing the insights that we are blessed with during this time of concentration and respect. We can trust the insights and understandings that come to us in this time of cleansing and renewal as it is the same giant force that governs the cosmos that brings them to us as we slow down and listen. We can validate them and put them into practice for the benefit of not only us, but our families, our communities, and beyond. I read the book “The Red Tent” years ago and have heard of different versions of the Moon Lodge from different cultures all over the world and from various ages, and I have the impression that it used to be commonly practiced all over the world, and then somehow along the way we lost it, and began believing that it is God’s intention that we suffer, because we are bad and we deserve to pay for all of the sins of humanity through our wombs. I now believe that it’s just the opposite, and this confusion has everything to do with the frustrating patterns of separation and war on the planet, as Mother Earth calls for our blood, and will get it one way or another until we all wake up.
My Madrinha, Luzia, has invited me to participate in a year long initiation and training for women called “Adult Girls into Women,” which will take place in the Santa Cruz mountains over five long weekends starting the beginning of April. The training will include exporation of all the different phases in a woman’s life, different challenges and tools for moving through them with consciousness, realizing our full potential as women, different therapies and meditations, sweat lodge, working with medicines, and terminating with an inititation/completion ceremony. I will be guiding a movement and dance exploration in the fourth module, but would love to participate in all of them if I could. For a while now I’ve been aware of the need for more ritual in the lives of most modern human beings, and the lack of rites of passages, particularly when girls become women. My friend Lori Halliday and I held several Red Tent gatherings for her daughter and her friends as they were all coming of age, sharing basic information about menstruation and celebrating this profound transformation, but most women that I talk to did not pass into womanhood with any kind of ritual or indoctrination. Rather, many women have told me horror stories of shame and embarrassment ushering them into womanhood, experiences which surely have had repercussions throughout their menstruating years, an open loop cycle that repeats every month, or goes haywire and leaves us manic, crazy, or totally depressed, none of which, I believe, is Nature’s design for us. What if we all grew up cultivating the belief that our menses are a priviledge, that our blood and our bodies are sacred and should be treated as such, and that being a woman is a high honor, of which we need not prove anything to anyone, nor manipulate anyone with our pretty packaging, nor hide our blood and suffer in silence. It’s time for us women to step fully into our power, Spiritual power, with deep roots connected to our ancestors, and our original design, which is what the world needs right now as the water is drying up and war and insanity abound. The first module of “Adult Girls into Women” is starting soon so if anyone is interested, please check out the website, http://adultgirlsintowomen.com. At 41 I’m still happily learning how to be a woman in this world, but I have to say that the older I get, and the more strong, creative, loving women I meet, I’m proud to be one! Aha!
