Herstory – Page 12 – Feminism and Religion

From the Archives: Painting Herstory: Our Lady of Silver Lake by Angela Yarber

This was originally posted August 8, 2015

It has become my new routine during the first phase of my queer little family’s year-long journey. After completing my chores, I run along the trails surrounding Silver Lake and once I’m thoroughly drenched in sweat, I grab a book and push our enormous 15-foot canoe into the frigid waters of the little lake we’re calling home for three months. With a smile that has yet to wipe off my face, I paddle fiercely. I’m typically the only person on the lake.

It’s a steep mile hike from the trailhead, and we’re the only ones “living” here for the summer, so my giant green canoe ripples the silvery waters in solitude. Once I find the right spot, I stuff my life vest behind my head and cozy down into the belly of the canoe, book in hand, goofy grin still spread across my flushed face. In the warmth of the sun, I read. In the belly of the canoe, I drift into the history of the lake, the unwritten annals lapping alongside my rocking boat, the portions on record filling the book in my sun-warmed hands.

Into the Light by Beth Bartlett

I looked for my friend, Pamela’s email the morning after she died. Every morning I have looked forward to her email from the day before — the last one sent at 4:37 on the Tuesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. Did she ever see my response sent at 6 AM the next morning – my wish for her to know joy this Thanksgiving, my sending much love? The bulk of it was full of mundanities. How differently might I have written it had I known it would be the last she would see? Our ongoing call and response email conversation — now without response, forever without response.

Ours was a friendship of words — words in the cards she has given me over the years, in her detailed responses to my blog posts, in the thousands of emails passed between us over several years. I’ve saved them all. They were too precious ever to delete. How we both loved words — their poetry, their capacity to communicate, convey, confound, console, comfort. I eagerly anticipated her words every day. For years I have entrusted my daily thoughts, worries, joys, activities, hopes, and the occasional dream to her tender care, always knowing her response would be a mirror, reflecting me back to myself, she reflecting on all I had written – giving witness and testimony, always with the deepest of care and affirmation. As Adrienne Rich wrote in the poem we both loved — “Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev” – I have never seen/my own forces so taken up and shared/and given back. Yes, this – the immensity, the intensity, the profound reciprocity of our sharing.

“Now I Will Have Respect”; “Now I Will Be Looked Up To” – Women Assert Their Worth in the Christmas Story by Liz Cooledge Jenkins

“The Giver of Breath has looked upon me with kindness and has taken away my shame. Now I will have respect in the eyes of my people.” -Elizabeth (Luke 1:25, First Nations Version [FNV])

“From deep in my heart I dance with joy to honor the Great Spirit. Even though I am small and weak, he noticed me. Now I will be looked up to by all. The Mighty One has lifted me up!” -Mary (Luke 1:46-49a, FNV)

Two women, one older, one younger. Both unexpectedly pregnant. Both key players in the Christian Advent story. Both living in a world, not unlike ours today, where women were not fully acknowledged as complete human beings, with all the strength and agency this entails. And both, for this reason, starving for the respect of their loved ones and communities.

Gardens Bloom Between our Wombs by Chaz J.

For years, I have dedicated my life to empowering and uplifting all women in all ways. I have loved women as mothers, aunties, sisters, friends, cousins, teachers, mentors, daughters, God, and most recently myself. The depth of sweetness and emotion for women runs as deep as my life’s work. My life’s work centers and finds a deep well of inspiration in women and women’s lived experiences. My feelings concerning women were confusing for a long time and for a long time I have loved women in every way, except two: sexually and romantically. Giving myself permission to love women in every way has been one of the most liberating personal experiences of my life. It is one of my most radical revolutions. It is self-acceptance and self love in totality.

The object of my desires is fluid and delicate. She is intuitive and evasive. She is real and ethereal. She is Wombman. She created and is the fundamental elements that constantly gives birth to the world around us. She has given birth to all of us. She is fire and fury. She is Mother Gaia. She is the winds of change. She is water’s depth and grace. She is the sunlight after a storm. She IS the storm purging impurities. She is a creator and she is destruction. She simply IS…

Re-claiming Friday the 13th and Other Tidbits by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

I am struck by how language affects our thoughts, values and even our actions. One standout for me is Friday the 13^thwhich is a day accused of being cursed and holding bad luck in modern beliefs. There is even a series of horror films created in the date’s honor. But why has this date been declared so negative? Like so much, the answer is that it is a suppression of women and our strength. Although I have heard different explanations for its meaning, my favorite is this; there are 13 moons in a solar year. That means that a woman will menstruate 13 times in that solar year. Thirteen is a symbol of women’s power. And Friday? Friday is the only day of the week named for a Goddess. In English it is Freya’s day named in honor of the Norse Goddess of love. In Spanish it is viernes, in French vendredi, both named for Freya’s counterpart Venus. I present to you that this makes it an extremely powerful day. Perhaps a horror for misogynists but for we women a day to celebrate.

I have also been thinking about the roots of the word “history” – his story. Many in feminist communities, including here at FAR, counter it with “herstory” – her story. But truly our past is not broken up into genders for the arc of the past affects us all, perhaps differently but all of us nevertheless. We all breathe the same air, live under a culture’s laws, etc. … Here are some names I have been playing around with as replacements: Ancestorstory. Ourstory. Hustory.

The Story of Changing Woman, part 2 by Sara Wright

Part 1 was posted December 7th. You can read it here.

Commentary:

I love this story because it demonstrates the evolutionary and eternal nature of Woman; her intimate relationship to Nature, her ability to give birth, to mother, to let go, her ability to endure, her need for animals and plants as companions and her willingness to stand her ground until she is able to get what she needs. Changing Woman matures from a passive figure who is acted upon by the forces of Nature into a self-directed female power who knows what she wants, and one who finds peace in choosing relationships with animals, plants and humans on her own terms.

Initially, Changing Woman is impregnated by the wind – the power of the spirit moving across the land – and not through sexual intercourse. Spirit and the Body of the Earth are the two equally creative aspects involved in her birth. The same holds true for her children, who are male, but conceived and birthed in a similar manner without the need for male insemination (no room for Patriarchy to enter here), suggesting to me that all three are parts of one spiritual/bodily whole that cannot be separated. As creative principles (beyond gender stereotypes) they work together as a triad to rid the world of monsters, to make the Navajo world a safe place, and to secure the matrilineal line. According to Navajo mythology securing the matrilineal line is primarily how Changing Woman saves the world.

The Story of Changing Woman, part 1 by Sara Wright

Moderator’s comment: Sara wrote this in April, 2019. It has even more resonance today.

Changing Woman – who grows old and then young again. Navajo Sand Painting.

I want to begin by recounting the story of how Changing Woman came to be and why she was so important to Navajo mythology. In these dark and tumultuous times I think Changing Woman’s story has a deep resonance for all of humanity. We seem to have forgotten who we are and are in desperate need of guidance that will help shift our current paradigm.

The Navajo word Diné means the People (every Indigenous group defines its inhabitants by using the same word in their own language).

Kamala Gave us a Tremendous Gift by Karen Tate

So I’m going to assume my readers don’t think meditation is a gateway for the devil to enter our minds and it’s not too woke. I mean, it’s a pretty mainstream practice these days going way back. Meditation originated in India, a very long time ago. According to the Live and Dare website, the oldest documented evidence of the practice of meditation are wall arts in the Indian subcontinent from approximately 5,000 to 3,500 BCE, showing people seated in meditative postures with half-closed eyes. In fact today it’s a recommended self help tool and who among us didn’t need some self help after November 5?

So, I was doing a guided meditation and this figure comes toward me and hands me a box with a key inside but the meditation ended without my knowing what the key symbolized. Then a few days later I was in another meditation circle and that box and key reappeared, only this time I got the message. The key was certainty. The key reminded me of a period in my life, some of my darkest days, when the road ahead was not clear, everything I’d planned for my life seemed gone and I had every reason to despair. I felt those feelings again as I touched the key in the meditation, but I also felt that glimmer of certainty I had back then that if I just kept making my famous lists, putting one foot in front of the other, following my logic, everything would work out and in the end, it did. Actually, in the end, there were even unexpected gifts in the troubles. Call it my Higher Self, my Soul, God, Goddess, my intuition – whatever – I was being reminded in those guided meditations of my ability to persevere. Of my resilience. That good things are ahead and there are gifts in the suffering and challenges if we are willing to see them.

MOTHER OAK by Dale Allen

We sat on the in the leaves, my daughter and I, in the warm autumn sun under the Great Mother Oak. Here and there fallen leaves danced lightly in the breeze. It felt good to be directly connected to the ground, bent knees and bare feet on the land. We leaned back and looked up at the tree in all her glory. She was still filled with yellow green leaves… her canopy so high that from up there, she can “see” the other neighborhood trees with many years like she has.

She has been here in this place since the end of the 1700s or the beginning of the 1800s. She was here with the first European settlers of this place. Her mother had been here before that, with the last generations of the people who were of this land for 15,000 years or more: the Paugussett People. We could feel this history. We could feel the tree’s mother. And then, from beneath the ground where their energy remains steady, we heard the voice of the Paugussett. They thanked us for acknowledging their presence. They said that they can feel our profound love for this place where we live, here in Black Rock, Connecticut… our love for the trees, the leaves, the flowers, the osprey, the red tail hawks, the fox, the squirrels, the rabbits, the insects, the shore, the waters of coastal Connecticut (Long Island Sound), the shells, the sand, the sparkles, the historical homes, the families, the new babies. We love this land. We love our home. And the Paugussett saw this love. The Mother Oak saw this love.

Herstory Profiles: Persistence and Endurance by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

I do not know how else to endure these past few weeks except to continue the fight, to continue to resist, and to continue to speak truth into power. We must once again look to our ancestors, our foremothers, our pillars of human rights, dignity, and compassion. This month’s Herstory Profiles looks at two courageous and unwavering women involved in U.S. politics; Susan Shown Harjo and Patsy Takemoto Mink.

Suzan Shown Harjo (1945-)

Suzan is a Cheyenne Citizen, Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes, and Hotvlkvlke Mvskokvlke, Nuyakv and a Native American Activist. She is a poet, writer, speaker, policy advocate, and curator. She helped to recover and reclaim more than one million acres of Native Lands. Suzan served as the Congressional Liaison for Indian Affairs for President Jimmy Carter. She held the Presidency of the National Council of American Indians. She is active in the Morning Star Institute that advocates for sports teams to drop names and mascots that contain negative stereotypes towards Native Americans. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014 from President Obama. In 2022 Suzan was inducted into the American Philosophical Society.