Browsing Tag

clarissa pinkola estes

Lineage, Wild Woman

My Wild Grandmothers

February 2, 2014

The breaking of the bond between a woman and her wildish nature is often misunderstood as the intuition itself being broken.  This is not the fact.  It is not intuition which is broken, but rather the matrilineal blessing on intuition, the handing down of intuitive reliance between a woman and all females of her lines who have gone before her – it is that long river of women that has been dammed. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes  

mama lion meghan genge

Lineage. Matrilineal lines. Ancestors. Those words have been finding me a lot lately. I admit that I haven’t been paying attention to their call.

Then I read this quote this morning on Ronna Detrick’s site and looked it up in my own battered copy of Women Who Run with the Wolves. Sure enough, I had underlined it. The colour of the line tells me that it first attracted me back in 2003.

I missed my Great Grandmothers even then.

I’m lucky. My relationship with my Mom and my Grandmothers is and was very good. But it occurs to me as I write this, that they never really told me stories about their Grandmothers. I have heard a few, but it doesn’t take very long even for my Oma – who, though in her 90s still remembers everything – to run out of stories about the women who came before. My Mother’s family immigrated to Canada when she was three. She never knew her Grandmothers, so neither do I. Their stories were not passed on.

But I know it goes deeper than that. There is a reason that women’s stories stopped being told.

This post and I have spent several hours together as I waited for inspiration on how to end it. I wanted some great stroke of insight that would tell me where to go next, but the truth is that I don’t know. Part of me wants to simply hit delete. But there is a knowing deep in my core that is telling me to sit with these questions. To put them down and sit with them and then listen for the next steps.

And so I will.

xo

 

 

 

 

 

Quotes, Sacred Feminine, Stillness, Uncategorized, Wild Woman

Over the Bones

June 19, 2012

“I am a writer. I am a seeker. I can find magic anywhere. I want to tell you stories and tell your stories. I love to celebrate everything in every way. I can see to the heart and the possibilities in anything. I am still afraid of my own bigness. I want to consciously decide how to live each day.  I have a profound belief in the sacredness of all things. I want to shine a light.” – meghan genge

 

venice door 1 meg web

It’s all there.

I have done the research. I have the books (nearly all of the books!) I have the paint and the glue and the glitter. I have the mala and the camera. I have the computer and the pen. I have the crystals and the sage and the websites. I have the DVDs and the pdfs. I have the words – especially the ones I wrote at the top of this post – and the support.

The bones are ready.

In Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes:

“La Loba sings over the bones she has gathered. To sing means to use the soul-voice. It means to say on the breath the truth of one’s power and one’s need, to breathe soul over the thing that is ailing or in need of restoration…That is singing over the bones.”

I read those lines for the first time when I was about 23. I didn’t get it then, and I am not totally certain I get it now.  What I do finally understand is that I have been collecting bones ever since.

How I understand the story of La Loba today is that now I need to consciously choose to stop collecting and start singing. I need to “…say on the breath the truth of [my] power and [my] need.”  My daily practice has been collecting and searching, collecting and searching for as long as I can remember. Now it is time to sit still and breathe soul.

Sit still and breathe soul.

Yes.

ox

archetypes, Quotes, Sacred Feminine, Wild Woman

A Magical Day

January 2, 2010

“You do not require permission to be extraordinary.” – Richard Quick

 

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…one night
there’s a heartbeat at the door.
Outside, a woman in the fog,
with hair of twigs and dress of weed,
dripping green lake water.
She says, “I am you,
and I have traveled a long distance.
Come with me, there is something I must show you…”
She turns to go, her cloak falls open,
Suddenly, golden light… everywhere golden light…”
– Clarissa Pinkola Estes

(The universe gave me a new book to write this morning!  I’ve been muddling through trying to write something new for ages, but again I have realized that TRYING isn’t going to get me anywhere.  When I let go, a book appeared.  Hungry, wild, greedy, and noisy, it has settled in.  I’m looking forward to getting to know it.)

Have a wonderful day.