Healing – Feminism and Religion

Lucy’s Light by Sara Wright

12/?/ 13 – 7/21/25 written morning after her death 22ⁿ^d

Purple and scarlet
orange flames
lemon and gold
lavender blue
cobalt hues
we are
dogs,
bees, bears,
butterflies,
hummingbirds too
Innocence seeking
a place
we once knew…
Grief pulled us down
into an old familiar
place. Darkness reigned
hopelessness too.
All we had was each other
At Hecate’s Crossroad
she couldn’t let go
and either could I
Lucy was my dog
you see
A ‘familiar’
just like me.
I couldn’t read her.
Forced to make
the decision
for us both
I let her go…
When we lay together
that one last time
nestled under
a purple shroud
she breathed
Feathers of Light
a Tree circle
marks her grave
Earth took her in
roots, soil, leaves
Hemlock
holds
her body
like
I once did.
Between North and East
Bear Medicine flowed
through a crack
in the Round…
Rising
on the wings
of cool green lights
she lives …
Firefly Nights.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: What is the Nature of the Hope that Can Trump Despair in the New Year?

This was originally posed on December 20, 2013

“All hope abandon, ye who enter here.” These words posted on the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno have an eerie resonance in our time.

Marie Cartier recently posted a blog on children and hunger with facts so devastating I could not finish reading it. Earlier in the month Jassy Watson wrote about her deep feelings of grief on hearing Luisah Teish’s “Prayer for Disappearing Species.” Grief, despair, and sadness about the injustices in our world can be overwhelming.

A friend of mine has recently fallen into a deep depression. When I try to talk her out of it, she repeats that they are threatening to cut down the last remaining old growth forest in her home state of Oregon and that she can no longer eat fish because radioactivity released in the Fukishima nuclear plant disaster is reaching the seacoast of Oregon.

When I tell my friend she should not dwell only on these things and that she must remember that the world is still a beautiful place, she responds, “I do not want to give up my feelings. I know I must find a way to acknowledge my sadness and make a place for joy, but I don’t know how to do it.”

I have been in the grip of deep grief about the planet myself, not once but many times. But this happens less frequently than it used to. When I think about the differences between how I once felt and how I feel now, I think the difference is that I have come to terms with and accepted the likelihood that “the world as we know it” is “going to hell in a handbasket”—as I put it.

I believe that the most likely conclusion of the choices human beings are making on planet earth today is massive environmental destruction leading to great suffering and probable extinction for human and many other species on planet earth. This is what I believe, but I also remind myself that I cannot know for sure. The earth and its species including human beings may have resources of resistance and survival, transformation and adaptation,that I do not know about and cannot imagine.

When I began to accept that the world I know and love (where spring follows winter, where birds sing, and where there is hope that injustice can be rectified) may not exist in the very near future, I had an astonishing insight. The death of the world I know and love will not mean the death of our planet or the end of the evolution of the universe.

Thinking about the disappearance of species and the death of human beings from starvation often feels too much to bear. None of this should be happening. Still, it can be strangely comforting to remind myself that the world I love is not the only possible world. There have been other worlds on this very planet—the time when the first cells were formed, the time of the dinosaurs, and many others. Evolution will continue on planet earth for several billion more years, and when our sun burns out, other suns will most likely still be shining in the universe.

This insight was followed by another. The reason for hope is not the conviction that we will be able to save the world we love. The reason for hope—and the reason to keep trying to save our world—is the deep knowing that it is right to try. Even if we cannot save the world we love for all time, we can savor the gift of life, and we can continue to try to create a world in which the gift of life is shared widely today and tomorrow.

I have written many times that we must learn to love a life that ends in death. I was speaking about accepting that each one of us will surely die. I do not fear death. Overcoming this fear has opened me to a greater and more clear-sighted love for life.

Can we learn to love life while accepting that the world we love may be dying? Can we continue to work to improve the conditions of life for individuals and species knowing that the world as we love it may not survive? Do we have any other choice?

For me the hope that can trump despair in our time begins in gratitude for a life that has been given to us, a life that has come down to us through the generations, and through billions of years of the evolutionary process on our planet.

Let us bless the Source of Life.

Let us bless the Source of Life, and the cycles of birth, death, and regeneration.

Let us turn back from despair.

Let us embrace the gift of life and share it with as many others as possible in the new year.

Carol P. Christ learned to be grateful for the gift of life in Crete on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete she leads through Ariadne Institute. It is not too early to sign up for the spring or fall pilgrimages for 2014. Carol can be heard on a WATER Teleconference. Carol’s books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely-used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions. She wishes you great joy in the new year.

Mother Blues: Interfaith Somatic Reflections on Support Systems, Chronic Pain, Tension Relief, and Supporting Oneself by Chaz J

I have had a weird relationship with my stomach or core BEFORE birth.

My back has been hurting since giving birth.

I’ve carried fragments of my birth story like heirlooms,
passed down in murmurs from my mother and family.
They say she went into labor at home,
a warm plate of food in her hands,
My aunt Akami recalls she refused to leave for the hospital
until every bite was finished.

I came into the world under sudden urgency—
an emergency C-section,
my first act a quiet rebellion:
I had soiled the waters before taking my first breath.

My mother remembers it in a haze,
“I was pregnant, went to sleep…
when I woke up, there was a baby in the corner.”

I do not know if every detail is true,
but the outline fits—
the origin of a loneliness that has followed me
like a shadow that never unhooks from the heel.

Healing Soul Loss Through Movement

We tend to imagine soul loss as something rare and dramatic, or reserved for those with deep trauma. But in shamanic paradigms across cultures, soul loss is a normal part of being human. The concept refers to moments when a vital piece of our essence disconnects, often as a survival mechanism. In psychology this is called dissociation. This can happen through shock, illness, relational rupture or subtle decisions we make to fit in, stay safe or succeed. A piece of us leaves in order to preserve the rest.

[Image credits: Detail from Anderson Debernardi’s painting “Iniciacion Shamanica”, seen at Exhibition Visions Chamaniques. Arts de l’Ayahuasca en Amazonie Péruvienne, ‎⁨Musée du Quai Branly, 2024. Photo by Eline Kieft.]

Dancing the Stories That Heal

After a near-death experience in 2019, I found myself immersed in myth and movement—sitting with Clarissa Pinkola Estés, dancing archetypes through Movement Medicine, and weaving stories like the Handless Maiden and the Red Shoes into my everyday life. This post shares some of the journey of how myths became embodied allies and an invitation for you too, to remember what lives in your bones.

Tapestry: *Le Grand Charniers* (1959) by Jean Lurçat, Musée Jean-Lurçat, Angers, photographed in 2024. Image © Eline Kieft.

The Grandeur of Fragility by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Lake Ruban. Jacques-Cartier National Park. Quebec, Canada. By LBM1948 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72309690

Water is mighty. Water was the birthplace of all life on our planet. Water regulates the world’s climate cycles and makes it possible for the matrix of life to exist. Twenty-thousand years ago, ice moved across the Earth creating the planet’s landscape of mountains, lakes, rivers, lakes and oceans that bring us awe in their majestic beauty.

Water is also fragile. Water evaporates and disappears from our sight during the laziest summer day. Frozen water, ice, can shatter into shards at the slightest tap. With just a few degrees of extra warmth even great glaciers disintegrate and slide into the ocean. Water is elemental to much of our species and planet’s fragility, whether there is too much of it in a flood, or not enough in a drought. In just a couple of centuries, humans have endangered water all over the globe through pollution and other actions.

Devi* Has a Sense of Humour by Terry Folks

(*Devi is the feminine principle in Hinduism, the goddess counterpart to Deva, the male aspect.)

I live alone.

I put a small stool on the bathroom floor beside a kitchen chair next to the vanity counter top. My plan was to step on the stool then up on to the chair, then up on to the counter so I could stand and put a hook in the ceiling.

When I finished, I carefully turned around to make my way back down from counter to the chair. As I was stepping down, I felt unstable so I instinctively reached for the towel bar on the wall. The towel bar gave way and I fell directly left side down on to the high back of the chair, bringing the chair down to the floor with me beside the empty stool.

Do You Hear Seal-Woman Calling?

It was beautiful to read Carol P. Christ recent ‘from the archives’ post “Mermaid, Goddess Of The Sea,” especially because I’m in the middle of organising my first live Story-Dance workshop since several years, to move through one of my favourite stories of the Selkie-Seal Woman!

Stories of seal-women drift across the sea from the windswept coasts of Scotland to the icy shores of the Arctic. In the Scottish and Irish Highlands, Seal-women are known as selkies—shapeshifters who live as seals in the ocean, and who, when they shed their skins, walk as women on land. These selkie women dance beneath the moonlight, their laughter echoing across the waves as they rejoin their sisters in joyful reunion with the earth.

Yoga for Witches: Should You Try This at Home?

In this post, I review Yoga for Witches by Sarah Robinson, a practical book that weaves together two ancient practices with surprising similarities, yoga from the East, and witchcraft as practiced in Northwestern Europe.

I start with what I loved, and how Robinson describes the similarities and differences between those two traditions. That weaves into some personal and deeper reflections on the theoretical background and yoga sequences. At the end you’ll find a specific recommendation so you’ll know if this is the book for you!

Overnight at a Neolithic Dolmen: A Womb Healing Ceremony by Eline Kieft

In preparation for my hysterectomy, I decided to spend a night in a dolmen at Samhain last year, to seek guidance and healing. I chose Dolmen de Bajouilière in Saint-Rémy-la-Varenne, in Northern France, a site I had discovered by chance the previous year on my local explorations.

This well-preserved structure, with its spacious square divided into two rooms, felt inviting and safe for an overnight ritual. Though I am accustomed to spending nights in neolithic monuments, mostly in the UK, I felt some hesitation, partly due to my intermediate French and unfamiliarity with the local spirits.

Nevertheless, I recognized this resistance as part of the ego’s fear of the unknown, and I gave myself permission to retreat if needed. If I would feel too vulnerable, it wouldn’t serve my body and spirit ahead of the surgery. Please join me on my overnight Samhain Ceremony full of deep imagery and transformation as I shed my womb three times…