FAQs

What are the Ways of the Rising Woman?

We’ll learn together essential skills, practices, routines, and Ways of Being that:

• Deepen your connection to your core desired feelings because this keeps you aligned with your inner truth.

• Build psychological characteristics that enhance resilience, stress-hardiness, a sense of stability and groundedness, compassion, and resilience.

• Enhance inner and interpersonal attunement and expand your perspective.

• Foster fierce and loving boundaries, discernment, and clarity.

• Build trauma-sensitive and culturally-aware ways of dwelling in place that decolonize your heart, body, and mind and foster a discerning relationship with the world.

• Stand rooted in a sovereign, balanced relationality with the authentic feminine and masculine.

• Develop clarity around what troubles you the most in the service of becoming the change you wish to see in the world.

• Develop enhanced focus and organization toward values-based mobilization, using your privilege potential as fuel for creating sustainable communities that engage, empower, and inspire meaningful change in the world.

What are Sacred Ancient Ways? What is Ancestral Healing? What do I mean about Reweaving Ourselves into the Fabric of the Animate World?

Up until about 2,000 years ago, our experience of the world was deeply interwoven with the more-than-human world. We celebrated groves of trees. We carried plant medicine in our pouches. Our children were educated by and with the village. Our stories were born of place and land, of moon and stars, of storms and spiders. Women were the medicine keepers and the Divine Feminine guided us as we bathed our babies, as we sang over our nightly fire circles, as we stirred steaming pots of nourishing food, as we gazed up at the blazing stars. Our ancestors were animated by Mother Earth in every way. It has been only in the last few seconds on the timeline of humanity that our experience of interbeing and right-relationship with the Earth has been severed, subjugated, dishonored, and defiled. The Feminine has been pillaged and desecrated.

We became dissociated from our bodies in the process. We’re living in a state of profound cultural and spiritual poverty. We don’t even know what we’ve lost since we’re born into this madness. We don’t know what we’re missing. We only feel the hole. We don’t know what gifts we could be cultivating. We attempt to fill the emptiness with all that our capitalistic culture produces.

I’m here to help us remember and in the process I am helping myself remember. I weave together my many years of research into the social, cultural, and psycho-physiological experiences of women with my knowledge of embodied wisdom and ancestral healing to guide women back to the wells of their deepest values, their intuitive bodies, their power, and purpose and to reconnect them with the more-than-human world. The more-than-human world is everywhere, it’s here in this very moment, it is the other-than-human, the elements that keep us alive, the plants, the other-than-human animals and when we attune to this and respectfully reweave ourselves into this world we begin to heal parts of ourselves that became disconnected.

We begin a process of decolonization which told us lies that we’re separate from the animate world. When in reality we are deeply interwoven and when we live into this truth we are profoundly nourished by it.

What about Radical Self-Care and Self-Compassion?

Self-care, self-compassion, self-devotion, self-love, non-judgemental presence, and lovingkindness are all alchemical healing antidotes to what ails us and the world. And every moment of our lives is an opportunity to build the neuroplasticity of kindness and this compassionate way of being and relating to ourselves and the world. When we relate to ourselves with self-compassion, care, and tenderness we are healing old childhood and lifetime wounds of patriarchal domination since The Patriarchy feeds off of self-judgement and self-hatred in all its forms. Setting fierce and loving boundaries for ourselves is a form of self-care, it dissolves The Patriarchy, and elevates the Divine Feminine. Every time we tend to our hearts, bodies, and minds we come closer to what we deeply value for ourselves and the world, we come into our power and voice and we enter the path of liberation, connection, love, and radiance. This is a foundation practice of the Rising Woman.

What do I mean by Living a Life of Meaning and Purpose?

Meaning and purpose arise as the life-giving fruit of our Rising Woman labors and it is accessible right here, now, in this moment. We only need to attune to it, kindle its tender flames, sing over it, and evoke it in our daily lives. Meaning and purpose are intricately interwoven with our deepest longings and entangled with grief, awe, wonder, and joy. When we arrive fully in the present moment and in our bodies, we come to experience the extraordinary beauty and the breathtaking reality, the paradox, that is being alive. And this precious present moment is the only one we get! It’s a gift that we are not entitled to. In integrating the work of present-moment living and embodiment we evoke more joy and pleasure and this is fuel for the elevation of profound meaning and purpose in our lives as we act in ways that align with our deepest desires for ourselves and the world. A woman living her purpose is a powerful agent for meaningful change. This work is self-fulfilling and self-sustaining as it is nourishment for the soul. And it’s a kind of sacred activism that is an essential part of our being of service, of burning our privilege as fuel for co-creating the more just and joyous world we all know in our hearts is possible.

What is the Divine Feminine? Where Does She Reside?

While the Divine Feminine is becoming more known, she’s still very elusive in our society. She’s been subjugated and terrorized by many hundreds of generations of destructive patriarchal rule and colonization. As an adaptive response to trauma, domination, and abuse the Divine Feminine has gone "underground" and hidden herself away, putting our species into a profoundly disconnected experience of what is possible for ourselves and the world.

The destructive masculine force is all we know in our society because we have all been born into it. So we can hardly recognize it is as dysfunctional. How to be feminine has been defined by this diseased force and we perpetuate it in our thoughts and behaviors. It’s time for us to discover, express, and embody our true Feminine reality and not the one that has been defined for us.

The Divine Feminine resides within you and she has healing powers for you. Imagine her as a goddess force of nature. We can experience Her, cultivate Her, evoke Her in our lives, in every moment. She holds healing powers of courage, strength, radiance, vitality, connection, beauty, freedom, creativity, advocacy, genius, imagination, clarity, embodiment, and love. And she is right here within you, as you!

The Divine Feminine is sacred and can be experienced and felt in your body, mind, and soul. She’s your direct line of connection to Love-aligned Source. She’s the Loving Mother that has gone missing in our lives. Her subjugation has been a fundamental and necessary element to the rise of destructive patriarchal capitalism. Both men and women have been adversely affected and traumatized by this. Basic human drives for connection have been co-opted in the service of corporate profit, individualism, delusion, and greed.

The great news is that the Divine Feminine is here. She never left us. She’s accessible in every moment and there are many ways to evoke Her and amplify Her in our lives. And when we do, everything changes because the act of attuning to the Divine Feminine is a process and practice of:

• Reconnecting ourselves to our own inner and ancestral wisdom

• Reconnecting us to and honoring our bodies

• Honoring and acknowledging our emotions

• Reclaiming our core desired values and living and acting from this place

• Setting healthy boundaries for ourselves

• Evoking the sacred through gestures of gratitude and appreciation through ritual and routines

• Re-entangling ourselves with the more than human world bringing us into right relationship with the Earth

All of which brings profound meaning and purpose into our lives as we emerge as advocates for Love. This is the work of the Rising Woman and in this process we become healing agents for the bloodstream of humanity co-creating the world we all know in our hearts is possible.

What’s decolonization? Why is it essential work in these modern times? How do we engage in it?

When we engage in ancestral healing work we come to realize that all peoples, all over the Earth have experienced the destructive forces of colonization as a result of the rise of patriarchal domination and control. To be colonized is to be forced through varying degrees of domination (from domination to cruelty to psychological terror) to swallow the dominant narrative, to learn and perpetuate its language and its systems without question even though its foundational mechanisms are to disconnect, extract, subjugate, objectify, pillage, and exploit. In its essence it is inhumane, unjust and it is systemic. It lives and plays itself out in our thoughts and behaviors. It keeps us small, quiet, obedient, and going along with the program. When we rise up and speak out, when we hold healthy boundaries around it, when we step off the treadmill, when we acknowledge and name the dysfunction, we are often considered heretics, outcasts, and problematic. Therefore, this work requires courage, strength, resolve, resilience, clarity, a sense of groundedness and stability that Life willingly offers to anyone who evokes it.

Decolonization is the work of all people, all over the planet, in these modern times, in this moment and there are many ways to do it and the present moment is the only time to engage in it and it reveals gifts of profound magnitude, nourishes our souls, and has multi-generational rippling effects of healing. Thankfully so, because this is difficult and challenging work, and it is worth it. Our freedom is tied up in each others freedom and we all want to live free, liberated and vibrant lives of meaning and purpose. The planet's wellbeing is inextricably entangled with our own wellbeing and we all want to breath clean air, eat clean food, and drink clean water.

An ancient Celtic prophecy that teaches us that when the Feminine is pillaged and subjugated by destructive masculine and unchecked patriarchal reign, the world order will be disrupted and there will be life-changing and catastrophic repercussions. Here we are in these modern times living at the precipice of the collapse of destructive patriarchal rule and it’s time for women to rise, connected with the Earth, in communication with their own embodied Source for the co-creation of the more just and joyous world we know is possible. If you are here, on a deep level, you understand this. Join us. There are so many ways to heal ourselves, humanity, and the Earth on our collective journeys as we rise rooted, and in the process, decolonize out heart, bodies, minds, and spirits.

What’s Embodiment? How do we engage in it?

Our magnificent body only ever exists in the present moment and can act as a powerful source of strength, stability, and groundedness, and can connect us to our deepest values and act as our compass as we navigate our complex lives. Neuroscience has shown that every single time we bring our awareness into the present moment, we are building the neural networks of Presence. Thankfully our body is always here for us to anchor us.
The wisdom of our body is deep and profound and as we reclaim and connect with our body, we come to know our truth, our Wholeness, and we come into alignment with our inner compass. It can be likened to the rudder on our sailboat. Once it's in place, we can't help but act in ways that are true to our core values even if that means that we have to make difficult decisions.
The guided mindfulness practices I offer in my shop are a great way to build the neuroplasticity of embodiment. This is a lifetime's work and it is palpable, practical, and deeply healing.

What do you mean by "self-healing"?

Self-healing is a practice of honoring our own Wholeness completely as we are and complete as we are. It is a radical act of sanity because it goes against the messages we are fed by our destructive patriarchal culture that tell us that something is wrong with us and if only we did ____ we'd be ____.
Self-healing is not needing to be anyway other than who and how we are in this moment! It’s a practice of putting out the welcome mat for our whole complex spectrum of human experience with self-compassion and open-heartedness.
We learn the skills of self-regulation which include radical self-nourishment, self-care, resilience, knowing where to put our energy, and developing healthy boundaries.
Stepping to the side of the treadmill of patriarchal normativity, to the degree we are able to, is an act of sanity and healing. It gives us a chance to gain perspective, to connect with our own inner wisdom, and to stay closely aligned with our core values. Our actions spring forth from this place of embodied centeredness with clarity, discernment, and courage. All of which tilt ourselves in the direction of greater degrees of health and healing that ripple out way beyond our own lives.