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Authors: Sue Monk Kidd
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have seen nothing.
Maybe thatâs what happened to the man. Maybe the womenâs gentleness opened his eyes and their fierceness forced him to perceive from the bottom up, because he was quiet for a while. Then he said, âI think I see what you mean.â
As the first spring of my awakening approached and I struggled to see, I grew less and less prudent. I would look at my daughter and think how I didnât want her female life wounded. I didnât want it wounded by the church or my own unconsciousness. Neither did I want my husband or my son to remain unconscious. And how would the cycle be broken, how would patterns be redeemed, if I kept resisting?
And I couldnât help feeling a growing discontent with my female life, flashes of anger and sadness about the âway it is.â My attention was being drawn more and more to symptoms that cropped up inside me from time to time. I began to ask myself: Why do I sometimes feel tentative and self-doubtful? Why do I silence myreal self? Why do I fall into driven and perfectionistic patterns? Why do I occasionally lapse into passivity, afraid to rock the boat? Why do I work so hard to fulfill outward expectations? Why does it matter that I please everyone? Are these things emanating from the feminine wound? And how can I keep ignoring them?
My dreams were full of earthquakes and floods. Old buildings crumbling and washing away. I was still reluctant to open myself up to the quaking and torrents inside, but the dream voice was telling me that whether I chose to recognize it or not, I was in the midst of upheaval. Something was toppling, and Iâd better pay attention.
Dancing Women
In May I attended a Journey into Wholeness Conference on St. Simon Island off the coast of Georgia, a conference that explored the concepts of C. G. Jung. Toward the end of the conference week, around forty or fifty women decided to go to the beach and have something they were calling a full moon celebration. I donât know what possessed me to go along. I suppose curiosity. Maybe some intuition that this was a moment to be seized, a now-or-never moment.
So I found myself following a long line of women winding through the sand dunes, walking by the light of a large moon suspended over the ocean. As the sound of the surf swelled in the distance, I felt the urge to turn back. But weâd all come together in several cars and a couple of vans; there was nothing to do now but get through it.
Someone had brought along a Native American drum, and she began to beat it as we wound through sea oats and darkness. On the beach we gathered driftwood and built a fire, then sat around it. The women began to sing, laugh, tell stories. They talked about their lives as women, their struggles to âbring forth an authentic female life.â There was an awful lot of talk about the âGreat Motherâ (whoever she was) and being connected to the earth and the moon (whatever that meant). I hugged my knees tight and didnât say a word.
As their sense of feminine celebration rose, and since thesewomen were being their instinctual selves and nothing else, a whole lot of them got up and danced. They twirled and swayed along the border of waves. Treading into the water, they dipped it up with their hands and tossed it toward the sky, letting it fall around them like wedding rice.
Playing and dancing, casting fluid shadows on the beach, they looked half-real to me, like mermaids whoâd swum ashore and found their legs. I sat dazed by the whole thing. It was like landing on Venus.
I donât think Iâd ever felt so awkward, bewildered, or unsettled in my life, yet I was mesmerized. These women were embodying an experience of their femininity I knew nothing about. They seemed to truly love their womanhood. They didnât appear to doubt their thoughts and feelings as women. Instead they seemed naturally themselves, self-defined, self-connected.
Then almost against my
Maybe thatâs what happened to the man. Maybe the womenâs gentleness opened his eyes and their fierceness forced him to perceive from the bottom up, because he was quiet for a while. Then he said, âI think I see what you mean.â
As the first spring of my awakening approached and I struggled to see, I grew less and less prudent. I would look at my daughter and think how I didnât want her female life wounded. I didnât want it wounded by the church or my own unconsciousness. Neither did I want my husband or my son to remain unconscious. And how would the cycle be broken, how would patterns be redeemed, if I kept resisting?
And I couldnât help feeling a growing discontent with my female life, flashes of anger and sadness about the âway it is.â My attention was being drawn more and more to symptoms that cropped up inside me from time to time. I began to ask myself: Why do I sometimes feel tentative and self-doubtful? Why do I silence myreal self? Why do I fall into driven and perfectionistic patterns? Why do I occasionally lapse into passivity, afraid to rock the boat? Why do I work so hard to fulfill outward expectations? Why does it matter that I please everyone? Are these things emanating from the feminine wound? And how can I keep ignoring them?
My dreams were full of earthquakes and floods. Old buildings crumbling and washing away. I was still reluctant to open myself up to the quaking and torrents inside, but the dream voice was telling me that whether I chose to recognize it or not, I was in the midst of upheaval. Something was toppling, and Iâd better pay attention.
Dancing Women
In May I attended a Journey into Wholeness Conference on St. Simon Island off the coast of Georgia, a conference that explored the concepts of C. G. Jung. Toward the end of the conference week, around forty or fifty women decided to go to the beach and have something they were calling a full moon celebration. I donât know what possessed me to go along. I suppose curiosity. Maybe some intuition that this was a moment to be seized, a now-or-never moment.
So I found myself following a long line of women winding through the sand dunes, walking by the light of a large moon suspended over the ocean. As the sound of the surf swelled in the distance, I felt the urge to turn back. But weâd all come together in several cars and a couple of vans; there was nothing to do now but get through it.
Someone had brought along a Native American drum, and she began to beat it as we wound through sea oats and darkness. On the beach we gathered driftwood and built a fire, then sat around it. The women began to sing, laugh, tell stories. They talked about their lives as women, their struggles to âbring forth an authentic female life.â There was an awful lot of talk about the âGreat Motherâ (whoever she was) and being connected to the earth and the moon (whatever that meant). I hugged my knees tight and didnât say a word.
As their sense of feminine celebration rose, and since thesewomen were being their instinctual selves and nothing else, a whole lot of them got up and danced. They twirled and swayed along the border of waves. Treading into the water, they dipped it up with their hands and tossed it toward the sky, letting it fall around them like wedding rice.
Playing and dancing, casting fluid shadows on the beach, they looked half-real to me, like mermaids whoâd swum ashore and found their legs. I sat dazed by the whole thing. It was like landing on Venus.
I donât think Iâd ever felt so awkward, bewildered, or unsettled in my life, yet I was mesmerized. These women were embodying an experience of their femininity I knew nothing about. They seemed to truly love their womanhood. They didnât appear to doubt their thoughts and feelings as women. Instead they seemed naturally themselves, self-defined, self-connected.
Then almost against my
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