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.

• Coming Home to the Sacred by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on September 27, 2018 • ( 15 )

  

  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 ›

• From the Wasteland Rises Hope by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on April 7, 2018 • ( 12 )

  

  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 ›

• Through the Eyes of the 21st Century Bird Goddess by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on March 14, 2018 • ( 22 )

  

  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 ›

• Renewing Our Spirits in the Wilderness of Our World by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on March 19, 2017 • ( 15 )

  

  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 ›

• Drumming to the Universal Pulse in an Out of Sync World by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on March 3, 2017 • ( 11 )

  

  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 ›

• Boldly and Outrageously Envisioning Our Way Through the Maelstrom by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on February 10, 2017 • ( 15 )

  

  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 ›

• Planting Roses for Our Daughters: Creating a Community in Time by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on August 19, 2016 • ( 17 )

  

  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 ›

• Welcoming Asylum Seekers Who Are Running for Their Lives into Our Communities by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on March 31, 2016 • ( 12 )

  

  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 ›

• A Place for Everyone at the Table by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on March 5, 2016 • ( 14 )

  

  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 ›

• The Great Mother Calls Us to Action by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on January 28, 2016 • ( 13 )

  

  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 ›

• Inanna’s Autumn Gift: Fearless Spirituality by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on October 22, 2015 • ( 12 )

  

  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 ›

• Time for Change: What Do the Goddesses Say? by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on April 14, 2015 • ( 9 )

  

  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 ›

• Moving the World Forward on the Spiral of Life by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on January 27, 2015 • ( 13 )

  

  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 ›

• Great Hera! Wonder Woman and Taking Women’s Power Back from the Mainstream Media by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on January 1, 2015 • ( 19 )

  

  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 ›

• Survivorship to Thrivorship in Sedna’s Ocean by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on July 22, 2014 • ( 23 )

  

   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 ›

• The Ocean Refuses No River: Building Our Spiritual Home by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on June 19, 2014 • ( 6 )

  

   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 ›

• Asking Sacred Questions by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on April 6, 2014 • ( 11 )

  

  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 ›

• Sharing a Snowstorm with The Goddess of Winter by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on March 23, 2014 • ( 8 )

  

  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 ›

• Tending the Fire of Our Circle of Older Women by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on January 16, 2014 • ( 14 )

  

  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 ›

• Feminism: A 21st Century Goddess of Healing by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on October 7, 2013 • ( 11 )

  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 ›

• Matriarchal Societies of Peace Make Sound Social Policy by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on August 22, 2013 • ( 13 )

  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 ›

• Shining a 21st Century Light on the Face of Mystery by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on July 4, 2013 • ( 5 )

  Mystery: that which is beyond our ability to know except by revelation. This definition has always seemed to me to be only part of Mystery’s true meaning. While deeply meaningful and complete in itself to many, Mystery so defined was… Read More ›

• Dancing with Kali Gets Us to the Other Side by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on April 18, 2013 • ( 14 )

  

  Deep in the New England woods, Kali leaps from behind a pine tree, skulls jangling from her waist and an upraised knife in her hand. A band of women halts and the goddess and mortals face one another.  “What must you do to pass?” Kali… Read More ›

• Awakening to the Mystery of Absolute Beginnings by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on February 1, 2013 • ( 3 )

  As I rise at 5:30 each morning, my spirit reawakens in a between-the-worlds realm of absolute beginnings. For those few minutes of quiet and slowly revealing dawn light, I revel in mystical newness, endless possibility, a horizon that is only the… Read More ›

• Honoring the Older Women of December’s Darkness by Carolyn Lee Boyd

  By Carolyn Lee Boyd on December 18, 2012 • ( 7 )

  

  Winter’s hungry hand has taken another powerful and precious older woman. No one knew Ellen beyond her family and friends, her church and her neighbors. She was 90, a nurse, faithful to her church and of service to her community,… Read More ›