Exploring the F-word in religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community.
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.
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.
Continue reading “Do You Hear Seal-Woman Calling?”
The story of Sedna is yet another rendition of the Handmaid’s Tale. This one comes from the Arctic and the Inuit people. During this time when it seems as if patriarchy has a stranglehold on so many of us, I offer this Indigenous version of the story to remind feminists that tapping into mythical patterns strengthens us in ways that are impossible to articulate beyond stating that we can access that power when we align ourselves with it. As in all oral traditions there are many versions of the story but the roots of the myth are the same.
In one version of the story a young man comes to sleep with an entire family during a blizzard. By morning he is gone without having revealed his identity, but the father discovers large dog tracks in the snow and realizes his family has been deceived. The young man who slept with the family was a wild dog.
Continue reading “Sedna’s Tale by Sara Wright”
Seal – ever curious – stands up in the water gazing about with her dark, soulful eyes before diving again into the enigmatic, mysterious sea. Seal initiates us into wonder by her extraordinary presence filled with playfulness, adaptability and deep emotions.
Continue reading “Seal – a Soulful Clown by Judith Shaw”
Feminism and Religion 