A word about the importance of women’s groups. Patriarchy succeeds because it silences and separates women and eviscerates women’s culture. In the silence and separation it replaces our essential wisdom and wellness with erroneous stories, beliefs and practices; practices that serve to continue to isolate us. One of the particularly sinister truths about our current situation, ten (or so) centuries into this current Patriarchal culture, is that it has been so successful it now has us behaving in ways and believing in things that have us isolating ourselves! We have forgotten the old stories, the old ‘way’s to such an extent that we are now asleep (to varying degrees) to the power and responsibility that is innately ours.

"We are volcanoes. When we offer our experience as truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains." - Ursula K. LeGuin 

When we come together with the specific intention to wake up, to tell our truths, to help each other remember how to listen to our truths, to our wisdom, when we commit to learning how to be with each other in a trustable, skilled and safe (enough) manner, we rehydrate ourselves as the fierce, sovereign, graceful and benevolent force we are meant to be. When we are rehydrated, we are a force to be reckoned with. 

Women, if this were to happen – if even 20% of us across the globe were to wake up, find each other and remember how to speak our truths, and to organize ourselves toward the shared vision of a world in which all Life is sacred –  the change that would occur is on a scale, and of a magnitude, we cannot possibly imagine. None of us can imagine. Certainly, this change would be met with fierce, even violent, resistance. But it could not be stopped. We are the ones endowed with the capacity to envision and catalyze this change.

“We are the midwives of the new aeon. And this time of transformation… this is our time.” - Rev. Teri Ciacchi 

SILENCE

We are silenced in our bodies, silenced in the expression of our truthful experience, with each other, in our relationships with men, silenced by the medical profession in relation to our bodies, silenced in education, in business and more. In this silence we are made to mistrust our instinct, our wisdom and our ways of knowing. In our silence we are made to believe that other women do not share our unique and intimate experience of the world, our ferocity, our values, our power and our longing. We are made to believe we are alone in these ways we feel, think and (want to) behave. Here we make choices of survival. But no matter what we do, we face peril. Because we are alone.

SEPARATION & SEQUESTRATION

It is a requirement of successful Patriarchal culture that women are separated from each other, sequestered from the wild and from our wisdom. Here we are vulnerable to the small stories that we do not belong with each other, that we belong isolated and disempowered within small family structures that do are not capable of nourishing any of us (our mates, our children or us). These isolated structures require us to turn all our attention and formidable power toward barely maintaining rather than truly thriving. These isolated structures take so much of our attention and energy we can no longer listen to our own wisdom, each other’s wisdom or Earth’s wisdom.

“It is a particularly destructive moment in a woman’s life when she hears herself say, ‘I wish I could participate in a woman’s group, but I simply don’t have the time.’”

When we come together, when we are supported by each other, unforeseeable necessary, monumental evolution occurs. We are slowly stirred, awoken, revived. Our spines straighten. Our lungs fill to capacity. Our eyes get sharper. Our ears remember how to hear. Our tongues rewild and our first language roars forth. Here, we are unable to be dissuaded from our truth, from our wisdom.

For those of us who understand this, for those who are not entirely lost in the sleep of deadly forgetting, it is imperative that we create women’s culture, reclaiming our stolen terrain – the language, heritage, history and stories – where possible. This is not a luxury, it is a requirement. We do this for our children, for the Earth and to honor the benevolence and generosity of Life that got us all here. Creating and tending to a women’s group is the first step. 

But creating and nourishing a thriving women’s group is no easy task in cultures that fear women’s sovereignty and wisdom, in cultures where we have been made to fear each other and our ‘women’s ways’. OneWoman is dedicated to supporting and assisting the creation of women’s groups, with our personal guidance, with materials designed and created to address the many layers of need we have as we embark on the endeavor of a women’s group.