All through my childhood a self-portrait, painted by my mother hung above my parents’ bed. I was fascinated by this image of the stern face of my very beautiful mother with her long wavy chestnut hair. In the painting my… Read More ›
Feminist Awakenings
Not My Story Anymore by Esther Nelson
The meaning we derive from stories—especially religious stories we’ve heard and become familiar with since infancy—shape how we perceive and understand the world. Our beliefs are an amalgam of “my story” (my individual life experience in a specific context) shaped… Read More ›
Are Your Shackles Showing? Hyperbole, Metaphor or Shades of Reality? by Karen Tate
Note: These Comments Might Trigger You You’ve been held in a windowless room for a long time. So long, you can’t remember how long it’s been. You have shackles on your ankles. Sometimes you can see beyond your sleeping pad,… Read More ›
Women’s Circles Need Well-Established Structures to Ensure that Everyone’s Voice Is Heard by Carol P. Christ
In a recent blog on Feminism and Religion, “Insights on Sisterhood,” Eirini Delaki opened a dialogue about problems that arise in women’s circles. According to her, many of us are reacting against the poisonous pedagogy of control which is all… Read More ›
The Matricide Basic to Patriarchy’s Birth by Carol P. Christ
About 20 years ago I witnessed a performance of the 3 plays of the Oresteia (the Orestes plays) by Aeschylus. I was stunned. Watching them in sequence, I understood that the plays were one of patriarchy’s “just so stories” and… Read More ›
ERA—Equal Rights for Women—in the US: Has Our Time Finally Come? by Carol P. Christ
On August 26, 1970, I borrowed an old VW bug from my mentor and summer employer Michael Novak to drive from Oyster Bay, Long Island to New York City to take part in the Women’s Strike for Equality march down… Read More ›
Endings, Beginnings, and Dreamings by Carol P. Christ
Fifteen years ago, I bought my dream home in Molivos, Lesbos, one of the most stunning villages in the world. Over the next two years I renovated a listed Neoclassical house that had been neglected for over thirty years, restoring… Read More ›
This is for colored girls who are movin to the ends of their own rainbows: Ntozake Shange’s Choreopoem of Spiritual Healing by Carol P. Christ
Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has reopened at the Public Theater in New York City to rave reviews. I first saw for colored girls in 1976 after my friend Carolyn Broadaway, who… Read More ›
Pain and Pausing, by Molly Remer
“I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles, in which vital and transforming events take place.” —Rufus Jones Last year in August, I wrote here at FAR about my own pattern of getting sick each July and the… Read More ›
The Earth Heals by Xochitl Alvizo
This post makes more sense if you read my most recent post first, “Grounding My Love.” It’s been over a year now since I started my community garden at the encouragement of my friends Tallessyn and Trelawney. The earth heals,… Read More ›
Grief and Rebirth by Gina Messina
Rebirth is challenging. It demands that we be accountable, acknowledge failures and fears, recognize the ramifications of our actions, and the ways we impact those who share our journey. We often don’t realize that denying self-love and care in favor of sacrifice for others results in a double negative. If we don’t care or ourselves, we cannot care for anyone else.
Grounding My Love by Xochitl Alvizo
I love living in a second-story apartment. Having a view of Los Angeles, of the palm trees, the expansive sky, the distant mountains, and the city lights of downtown, makes life feel bigger, more full of possibilities. In the struggle… Read More ›
Lessons Mothers Might Teach Their Daughters by Lache S.
There might be lots of lessons to consider. These lessons might have holes, for I’m not a wise sage, and I’m not really even a mother. As I am a couple of years from 40, I think about what lessons… Read More ›
Lise Weil – Requiem by Sara Wright
For the Visionaries of the Women’s Movement and Beyond. “I glimpse lines crazing my face in the windowglass, crone’s bones emerging. My eyes are growing larger; soon they will perch on stalks and swivel, crustacean. The better to see how… Read More ›
The Room Where We Support Each Other, Part 2 by Carol P. Christ
Last week, In the Room of Undressing where women strip themselves to the bone, my great-great-grandmothers on my father’s side spoke in me. I had been afraid they would judge me for not being a wife and mother like they… Read More ›
Ariel, just fighting to get above water…by Yara González-Justiniano
I am all for the critical deconstruction of Disney Princesses, especially since now I see more of a commercial push for them as a collection than when I was growing up in the late 80’s. However, I too had a… Read More ›
I am in Peace: The Ministry of Margaret Fell by Mary Sharratt
This linoprint of Margaret Fell can be ordered here. Pendle Hill will forever be associated to the Pendle Witches of 1612 who live on in the undying soul of the landscape and its folklore and who inspired my 2010 novel,… Read More ›
The Mud and the Lotus: What India Is Teaching Me by Vanessa Soriano
About 5 years ago, I began a consistent yoga practice. Right around the same time, I started a PhD program in Women’s Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies where I eventually wrote my dissertation on Women’s Spiritual Leadership. … Read More ›
Bringing About the Revolution by Xochitl Alvizo
Happy day friends. It’s Sunday – maybe you have a day off from your income-making labor, maybe you’re home with the kiddos working more than usual since they have no school, or maybe it’s a day you have all to… Read More ›
This Is What Rape Culture Looks Like in “Great” Art by Carol P. Christ
Warning: contains images of rape portrayed through the lens of the objectifying pornographic male gaze When I reflected on the discovery of a rape fresco from ancient Pompeii that depicted Leda and the swan, I did not mention that the… Read More ›
Part 4: I Was Brainwashed to Believe I Wasn’t Human. Now I’m on a Mission Against that Cult by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir
Disclaimer/Trigger Warning: This post includes content about rape, sexual assault, domestic abuse, graphic sexual. In Part 1 of this story, I introduce a discussion of Johan Galtung’s theory of cultural violence as it relates to my experience as a young… Read More ›
Witness by Sara Wright
Witness It was dark when I first heard Her whooing overhead bearing witness, ushering in the First of the Harvest Moons. The seasonal wheel turning towards ripe fruit and swelling seeds. Summer’s Bounty. This goddess is cloaked in feathery… Read More ›
The Hate U Give by Esther Nelson
These days I live in a perpetual state of simmering outrage given the popular support of the “goings on” and happenings within our current administration. The lies, the deceit, the xenophobia, the racism, the misogyny, the homophobia, the anti-intellectualism—things that… Read More ›
Updating our Fairy Tales by Anjeanette LeBoeuf
The rising voices of female empowerment, consciousness, and position has been an undertaking in the last two centuries. Yet societies are still using fairy tales; tales that were written at least 500 years ago. Many of the fairy tales can be… Read More ›
A Silhouette of a Woman, the Menorah, and a Pillar of Light: Discovering the Origins of the Goddess in Judaism by Alaya A. Dannu
2.24.2017 During a meditation before bed, I saw an image of a candelabra similar to what Jewish people use for Hanukkah. It was yellow/gold in color, engraved/etched onto a surface. All at once I saw the imagery of a star,… Read More ›
On a Friend’s Departure by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente
On June 25th, I received the news that my friend Zubeida Shaikh had passed away in South Africa. This took me by surprise. The last time Zubeida and I exchanged communication, she was as always, strong, determined and full of life,… Read More ›
The Play of Emotional Insecurity and Pull by Lache S.
It is not easy navigating the world with fragile boundaries, self-worth, and a potential history of manipulations. I often seek wisdom in spiritualities and unfamiliar religions because I need a substitute for the childhood traditions I have abandoned as a… Read More ›
Fourth Wave Feminism By Nurete Brenner
Many of us have a growing sense that we are at a crucial inflection point in our civilization and at a crossroads for the future of our planet. I’m not sure if that point needs to be defended, explained or… Read More ›
The Wings of the Butterfly by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente
Shhhhh… good women are quiet. My mother was a beautiful woman, she never complained. Denial is a silent violence that aims to make invisible a trauma maybe evident or not, to make it acceptable as normal and allow the… Read More ›
Please, Let’s Give Feminists a Break by Sara Wright
Please, Let’s Give Feminists a Break. I remember so vividly entering graduate school in my early forties and being told I was an “eco – feminist” by my professors. What does that phrase mean I asked having no relationship that… Read More ›
