Tag Archives: woman-craft

A Point of Balance in the Process of Cosmic Birth

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Today is lunar equinox.

A point of balance in the process of cosmic birth. The transition point between the heat of summer and chill of winter. Between our outgoing selves and inward selves.

For me it feels like the point of transition I remember from birth. It can be a place of discomfort. Of relief or terror. It is a point of deep connection, vulnerability, creativity and a place from which we can enter a different stage of consciousness, to make choices about how the next part of the journey will go.

My dearest soul sister is in the middle of her 24 hour performance of her birth journey as I write. Her MA performance piece, she is going back to her birth space, mindfully, reliving and healing, creating a mandala of sand to commemorate her journey. With sound, movement, colour, stillness she is literally dancing birth, drawing birth, living birth. I hold her in my heart.

Tomorrow I am leading a motherblessing at my women’s group for one of our dear members. Where we will hold another woman and her journey to vulnerability and rebirth in our arms and our hearts.

Two of my books are coming into their transition phase – transitioning from private documents in their gestation and creation in my mind and heart and computer screen and starting their journey out into the world of readers.

I find myself in a liminal place. Not wanting to be in the world of busyness and noise and socialising, but called to be here.

Shiloh Sophia McCloud – The Red Key

Shiloh Sophia McCloud, the visionary artist and sacred women’s worker is starting a new course today. It is calling to me – having loved a previous course with her over the summer, I think I will dive in – it promises painting, poetry and women’s connection… (I have no affiliation with her.)

Where are you at, dearest one?

At this point of balance, where do you find yourself? In the midst of these strong energies which are swirling round our planet, catching us all in their spirit of transformation – where are you?

Can you take a moment and breathe? Find a point of balance and just be. Let the world keep turning. Your thoughts keep swirling. What dreams are calling you? What longs to be born? What needs to die?

Breathe and do that!

It is through vulnerability, through conscious rebirth that we find ourselves more clearly and deeply. But crossing the threshold takes courage. Stepping from the lightness into the dark, we are called to have faith – to walk forward in the dance of co-creation even though we cannot see the way.

Go well dear sisters.

 

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TO THE POWER OF YOU: A transformational workshop for everywoman

TO THE POWER OF YOU

A transformational workshop for everywoman

Sunday 15th April, 10.30am-4.30pm
Dervish, 50, Cornmarket Street, Cork City

We as Women are on the edge of a choice:

Do we step into a part of ourselves that we may have never explored, but which we know is strong & powerful & ever present?

Or

Do we continue to support a story which is not sustainable, to live lives which exhaust & undermine us?

What risks do we take to step into our full power? What do we have to lose?

This day-long workshop invites women of all ages & backgrounds to locate & connect with their own inner power. We will create a safe space for you to explore your power.

Through a variety of gentle, creative & reflective practices.

Working with masculine & feminine energies, you will emerge with a greater sense of your own strength to express your needs & claim what is yours.

€60 (€45 concession).

No previous experience necessary. Booking essential – limited places.
For further information, or to book your place please email trebreathnach@gmail.com or call 086 3583136.

Facilitators:
Tracy Evans is a creative facilitator, writer and performer. She runs arts-based workshops with a wide range of communities in Wales. She is currently working on a year-long project for women, which aims to explore themes of isolation and separation for mothers around Wales. She is a keen community activist and supporter of women’s voices.

Lucy Pearce is a facilitator of creativity and woman-craft. She has led women’s yoga, women’s circles, drama and creativity classes for over ten years. A freelance writer she has recently published her first book: ‘Moon Time: A Guide to Celebrating Your Menstrual Cycle’. For more on her woman-craft: http://www.thehappywomb.com

Becoming a woman

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I remember the first time someone called me a woman.

It was my first boyfriend. I was 16.

He was being polite. But I knew I wasn’t.

Sure I had the woman’s body, but I was a girl inside.

I had my first child at 25. I still felt a girl inside. Though the act of birth put me in touch with my woman power in the moment.

Two more babies. Two more touchings of the woman power. But still I felt a girl. At 29 and mama to three. I would think that the neighbours must think I was their older sister 😉

It is only in the past few months I have felt a woman, become a woman, stretched into my woman-skin, inhabited my woman self.

How did it happen? Why did it happen?

I realised that it had happened, in retrospect. I felt like I filled my body fully – my large breasts and swaying hips. I fit my skirts and mama heart. I fit my moods. And I had learned to stake my claim on my own life.

To say: this is what I need. And I DO need it. And it is important. With clarity, with love, with courage, I took my own power in my own two hands and claimed it. I cut the ties I needed to cut, which for years I had trembled to touch, in fear that the world would come tumbling down. I stretched the limits of my reality and possibility. I I marked out the plot on this earth that is mine, and claimed it for my soul. Then flew my flag from the turret to signal to the other women out there that I am here, in the mother-land.

Greetings dear sisters.

When did you become a woman? How did you know you were? What did it take?

I Sit Listening to the Wind

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Have you ever had the experience of reading a book at “the wrong time”. You put it aside, untouched by its message. Then a few years later, by chance, you pick it up again and it literally sings off the pages to your soul.

This just happened to me today.

Judith Duerk’s first book Circle of Stones (for my review see here) introduced me to the world of sacred women’s work and women’s circles. Her book shifted my world perceptibly. So I rushed out to order her second book, I Sit Listening to the Wind: Woman’s Encounter Within Herself, and raced through it untouched.

It is only now four years later that I am in the place to hear her words, to understand what she means about the balancing of the male (animus/ yang) and female (anima/ yin) energies within ourselves.

I Sit Listening to the Wind: Woman's Encounter within Herself

I would like to share a little from the introduction with you:

I feel the pathos of women today with our overdeveloped animus, confronted with the eternal paradox: The nature of the Yin is receptive, to yield… the nature of the Yang is to dominate. The two are forever equal and necesary to the fulfillment of the cosmic cycle. We modern women, with our powerfully developed inner Masculine side, are faced with a new dilemma: whether to ground ourselves in the vibrant receptivity of the Yin, or to give over to our dynamic and compelling animus mode.

This is what I have been struggling with in my own life at the moment (for details see my post The Confessions of a Domesticated Wild Woman). And I see that in the art of woman craft, this fine balancing of these two sides is vital.

Until a woman consciously engages with the Masculine energy within, she remains under its domination. She does not emerge as an individual… but espouses the common patterns and practices of the society around her, She is cut off from her womanly subjectivity, risks losing the underlying guidance of the Self.

…Modern woman has no idea how profoundly she is needed. The world is crying out for a developed Feminine voice, a voice that can mediate, once again, the ancient values of the Feminine… values of interiority, of the sacredness of matter… values that honour the privacy of individual process.

That dear women is why we are here. That is the purpose of this site. To provide (in time) a forum, a storehouse of riches to support you in your woman’s journey.You are needed, dearest woman, more than you can possibly know: by the world at large, those close to you, and yourself. You are precious.

 

Who I am… and why I do what I do…

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I am a visionary, and imaginer, a whisperer, a maven, a witch, and wonderer, a dreamer of better things and exciting projects

I want to give inspiration and ideas to help to paint the future in brighter colours and to wrap women in a cloak of self acceptance and glory, to communicate with the higher visions of others in order to co-create a more vibrant, fulfilling, soulful, joyful, calm, mindful way of life.

I want to light the fire of self love, to fan the flames of beauty which emanate from every woman, to point at the moon and say “this, this radiant beauty is you”. To help women to gain a love and acceptance of their bodies and their miraculous life giving properties, to celebrate the mystery.

I want to whisper in the middle of the storm winds of life “it’s alright, dear one, you are an island with a lighthouse, shine your light, stay calm, stay strong nad soon the clouds will part and the sun break through.

What I want for you dearest one is happiness, awareness, freedom to be who you know yourself to be deep down, the courage and clarity to see your own path and follow it, in tune with your body’s knowing.

I want to help you to make love to your own body, to feel at home in your own skin, to find the peace at your centre which leads you home to yourself, the fullest vision of the woman you always wanted to be – unencumbered by the dreams of others, the demands of your family, the limitations of society, the fear of your physical form. A woman living in truth unto herself. This is what I choose for myself every day. This is what I share with you. A safe space to do it, resources to help you along the way, and a circle of sisters who are travelling this journey to dancing in self knowledge too.

Perhaps the most disempowering message we receive from our culture is about our bodies – they are deficient, untrustworthy, they cause pain and suffering, the get in our way, our reproduction needs to be controlled, is not to be trusted. Our sexuality is seen as a temptation to men, to be exploited or hidden away. Birth scares us. Period pain and PMT hold us hostage, menopause is the final tribulation before we become surplus to requirements, old ladies.

Let us learn a different song. One which celebrates the power to gestate and give birth with courage as a heroine. One which acknowledges stretchmarks as those of the warrior queen, that embraces aging as a stepping into our wisdom, our sexuality as a gift, our bodies are to be honoured and valued as they are. And our intuition is a precious treasure which can guide us living our lives in our own vision.

First self knowledge – knowing who we are, what we are, how we work – emotionally and biologically – to cease the war on our selves

Secondly to know our needs and to claim them for ourselves – both by serving ourselves and by learning to ask others for support. And by learning to give with an open heart rather than as a martyr.

Thirdly by gaining miss-tery over ourselves and visioning our own way forward which serves us (and therefore our families and communities and the earth) in our highest ability.

I am so glad you could join me here.

Woman Craft

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Being a woman is not an illness/ disease (though many doctors have acted as though it is)

Being a woman is not a crime/sin (though many cultures and religions have acted as though it is)

Being a woman is an art/ craft (though we often do not act as though it is)

Being a woman may not come easy…You need support…information…love…initiation into the ways of womanhood

This education is rarely given to us formally by our mothers, our grandmothers, our sisters, our teachers…

Because they are yearning for it too.

Instead we pick it up, piece by piece along the way.

With much suffering, heartbreak, depression, illness, sadness, loss…

What if there could be a different way?

What if there were a place you could come to learn, to share in the wisdom of other women who have walked this path before you, a repository of information to support you in your learning and growth – scientific wisdom… spiritual wisdom

This site is dedicated to womancraft.

To teaching the ways of woman

Ways to keep you on a path of wholeness…happiness…health…creativity…fulfillment…joy

To support you in your swings between the darkness and the light

To help you to find your own rhythm, your own precious equilibrium

To be your own beautiful, natural self…