Author Archives
Carolyn Lee Boyd writes fiction, poetry, essays, and memoirs celebrating the spirituality and creativity in women's everyday lives. Over the past three decades, she has published in women's and feminist literary, art, and spirituality magazines, both in print and online. You may read her musings and published writings by going to her website, http://goddessinateapot.com. When she isn't writing, she is a human services administrator, grows herbs and native flowers, raises a family, and props up her constantly falling-down Victorian house.
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When Your Garden Gardens You by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Summer is a time when we are surrounded by the power of Nature, the impulse to life, balance, and well being. Even small actions to align ourselves with it can create momentous changes and healing within ourselves and towards a… Read More ›
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Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power by Judy Grahn BOOK REVIEW by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Any new book by Judy Grahn is cause for celebration. For decades, Grahn has been a lyrical and passionate poet, author, mythographer, and cultural theorist whose work features both goddess wisdom and contemporary culture centering on women and queer people…. Read More ›
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Singing Is a Sacred Power by Carolyn Lee Boyd
A moss-soft ballad sung from a mountain top to the sunrise. A parent’s lullaby to soothe a newborn to sleep. Thousands of voices rising together to banish injustice from our planet. A single wavering melody infusing inspiration into a moment… Read More ›
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The Red Hand on the Cave Wall by Carolyn Lee Boyd
As I have gotten older, I find I am drawn more to non-anthropomorphic, inexpressable-in-words, nature, and everyday focused visions of the Divine. Whereas before my spiritual practice involved more rituals and circles, unusually indoors, with others, now I more often… Read More ›
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The Healing Spirit of Sacred Play by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Many years ago I participated in seasonal, Goddess-focused celebrations featuring handmade decorations, including some by enormously talented artists who attended. One year, our spring fete was graced with gorgeous paintings, intricately woven and colorful fabric art, sensuous sculptures, and exquisitely… Read More ›
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Like Water Flowing Down a Mountain: Creating Lasting Change by Carolyn Lee Boyd
As we strive to create a better future, we can look to our rich heritage of global goddess and heroine tales for insight into peaceful, creative, and effective means to achieve our goals. Let me introduce you to the delightful… Read More ›
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Women’s Spiritual Power Is All Around Us by Carolyn Lee Boyd
In this most challenging time, women are showing the world what women’s spiritual power can do. They are guiding nations, states, and communities through the pandemic and towards environmental sanity; feeding the hungry bodies and spirits of their neighbors… Read More ›
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Wisdom from our Ancient Female Lawgiver and Judge Traditions by Carolyn Lee Boyd
As I have witnessed both the joy of so many across the world at the nomination of Kamala Harris for Vice President and the deep sorrow at the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I am struck by the fact that,… Read More ›
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Mourning with the Goddesses, Now More than Ever by Carolyn Lee Boyd
We may all remember 2020 as the year when we could no longer look away from death. Our western culture has hidden death away in hospitals and funeral homes for generations. However, in these past months we have all… Read More ›
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Coming Home to the Sacred by Carolyn Lee Boyd
In 1929, my grandmother wrote the word “HOME” in resounding letters across the bottom of a photo of a herself and my grandfather, smiling lovingly and confidently, with my infant mother propped in between them on a rattan chair. Within… Read More ›
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From the Wasteland Rises Hope by Carolyn Lee Boyd
For millennia, humans have told stories of goddesses who have decreed that, because terrible crimes have been committed against their female loved ones or those under their protection, our world would become a desolate wasteland. They withdrew their spiritual power… Read More ›
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Through the Eyes of the 21st Century Bird Goddess by Carolyn Lee Boyd
When I raise my eyes to a bird soaring over me in flight, I am no longer bound to the Earth by gravity. I stop my round of daily tasks and widen my vision to view myself and our world… Read More ›
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Renewing Our Spirits in the Wilderness of Our World by Carolyn Lee Boyd
In my garden blooming with native wildflowers, in nearby rivers and woods, across the New England landscape, the Earth is healing Herself. Two centuries ago, New England’s forests had been cleared for farms; myriad species of animals, birds, fish, and… Read More ›
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Drumming to the Universal Pulse in an Out of Sync World by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Beneath all being is a universal rhythm that is as deep as natural law and as easy to find as the beat of a drum. After giving up an early interest in percussion 50 years ago when a school music… Read More ›
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Boldly and Outrageously Envisioning Our Way Through the Maelstrom by Carolyn Lee Boyd
As we wander together through the maelstrom of our world today, trying to keep our eyes open, our voices firm and truthful, our feet bravely taking one step and then another, may we reclaim our gift of future-envisioning boldly, outrageously,… Read More ›
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Planting Roses for Our Daughters: Creating a Community in Time by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Outside my childhood home grows a yellow rose bush descended from one planted by my great-grandmother, Jennie, a century ago. That bush has given her descendants many gifts of spirit over the years— her love of beauty despite a life… Read More ›
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Welcoming Asylum Seekers Who Are Running for Their Lives into Our Communities by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Imagine that you live in a society where people like the bloggers and readers of FAR — activists, academic, writers, and others who speak up for human rights — are persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and killed. You have finally escaped with… Read More ›
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A Place for Everyone at the Table by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Winter’s bone-chilling, relentless cold makes it the most treacherous season in the north when you don’t have a warm place to sleep or enough to eat. Poverty may look different in the city and the country, in various countries and… Read More ›
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The Great Mother Calls Us to Action by Carolyn Lee Boyd
When Flint, Michigan’s water supply was poisoned by lead through a policy decision— as has been widely reported, especially by Rachel Maddow — LeeAnne Walters and Melissa Mays started an organization called Water You Fighting For in protest, emphasizing their roles as… Read More ›
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Inanna’s Autumn Gift: Fearless Spirituality by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Fall, the time of the Day of the Dead and All Souls Day, is a perfect season for us to contemplate “fearless spirituality” as we face our most essential fear, that of death. Though humans have celebrated these days for… Read More ›
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Time for Change: What Do the Goddesses Say? by Carolyn Lee Boyd
From our very beginnings, women have danced with time. Our bodies’ moon cycles have always been a human calendar. As the first agriculturists, we partnered with the seasons to feed our families and communities. When we served as midwives and… Read More ›
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Moving the World Forward on the Spiral of Life by Carolyn Lee Boyd
The wasp nest dwells at the edge of my vision waiting for me to notice what it has to show me. In my mind, I have come to this beloved circle of earth beneath the embracing branches of this tree… Read More ›
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Great Hera! Wonder Woman and Taking Women’s Power Back from the Mainstream Media by Carolyn Lee Boyd
When I was a teen in the 1970s, Wonder Woman was everywhere. A feminist cheerfully determined to right the world’s wrongs, especially against women, she boldly sprinted onto the cover of Ms. Magazine’s 1972 inaugural issue. Her tv series spun… Read More ›
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Survivorship to Thrivorship in Sedna’s Ocean by Carolyn Lee Boyd
These past three months I have learned the wonderful, important word “survivorship.” At the cancer center where I receive care, “survivorship” means life’s physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, economic, social, and political aspects affecting the quality and quantity of life after… Read More ›
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The Ocean Refuses No River: Building Our Spiritual Home by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Every day when I drive past one of New England’s ubiquitous small white wooden churches, I am reminded of how in the 17th and 18th century, these simple buildings were the first to be constructed in the center of a new town. They were… Read More ›
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Asking Sacred Questions by Carolyn Lee Boyd
If you could travel over space and time to an ancient holy oracle, a manifestation of the voice of Goddess, what questions would you ask? Imagine you are there, at the gateway to where the oracle sits, and consider which… Read More ›
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Sharing a Snowstorm with The Goddess of Winter by Carolyn Lee Boyd
Though our calendars indicate that we have hit spring, the 32 degree weather and the forecasted snow this coming week in New England indicate otherwise. Here you have one more winter-themed post in an effort to bid it farewell and… Read More ›
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Tending the Fire of Our Circle of Older Women by Carolyn Lee Boyd
In some cultures, late autumn and winter are the seasons associated with the Goddess as an old woman. As the ice, snow, and long nights curl Her chilling fingers around us, it is fitting that we honor the older women… Read More ›
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Feminism: A 21st Century Goddess of Healing by Carolyn Lee Boyd
The healing face of Feminism hovers just out of sight behind your shoulder, but is still always there for you, whispering encouragement and guidance whenever you doubt your own sacredness. Or maybe She has always faced you, bold and strong,… Read More ›
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Matriarchal Societies of Peace Make Sound Social Policy by Carolyn Lee Boyd
The true measure of a society’s success should be the well being of those who live in it. Are they healthy and happy? Do they have their basic needs met? Are they free from the fear of violence? While the… Read More ›
