The Great Remembering: Coming Back Home to Our Ourselves
Last night, I held my first Nude Drawing Women’s Circle, which I must share, SOLD OUT! Not only did it sell out, but it is a women’s circle made up of multigenerational women. Women who are still menstruating and others who are in perimenopause and postmenopause.
Sister, if you are reading this, I need you to celebrate this success with me, not as my own, but as a success for all of us women and for the future of Mother Earth! For we are living in a time and place where it is safe for us to peel back the layers of our clothing and come home to our bodies, each other, and Mother Earth.
Thousands of years ago, many of us would have been a part of Divine Feminine Mystery Schools. Secret schools that taught us about the sacred and alchemical power of our bodies. Schools that taught us how to use our bodies to not only heal ourselves, but also each other and Mother Earth. The naked female body was not something to feel shame over or hide, but a wild, natural and holy vessel. The territories of women’s bodies were seen as fractals of the greater wild body of Mother Earth. Like there were and still are sacred sites all around the Earth, women’s bodies were seen as the living manifestations of these sacred sites.
However, a great forgetting would happen, a forgetting that would last hundreds of generations and thousands of years. A forgetting that would disconnect us from our bodies, each other and Mother Earth. Forgetting feels like such a gentle word to use for the devastation, abuse and colonization that have happened to our bodies and the bodies of our sisters and the body of Mother Earth.
However, we are living in the sacred time of remembrance, where we are remembering our way back home to ourselves, each other and Mother Earth. This is exactly why I created this Nude Drawing Women’s Circle. To help us re-member the territory of our bodies, to know them as wild, natural and holy. To peel back the layers of our clothing, and fully inhabit and reclaim our own bodies. To create a space where we hold and support each other in this reclamation and homecoming. For I know within the core of my being, when we inhabit our true nature, Mother Earth returns to her wild nature.
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The feminist movement that has unfolded over the past nearly 150 years, in its various waves, has, in many ways, accomplished so much. However, like a tree, it has branched in various directions, taking on different forms. And yet, it is has been rooted in the core belief that there should be equal opportunities and freedoms for all.
During the first wave of feminism that began in the 1850’s, the focus was on suffrage. In the 1960s, the second wave of feminism emerged, which challenged traditional gender roles and advocated for social equity.
Last night, the eldest woman in the circle shared how she was a teenager during the second wave of feminism. She shared how though the intention of this movement was to liberate women by allowing them to enter the workforce, the lived experience was women not abandoning traditional gender roles, but simply taking on additional roles and duties. They were free to work outside the home, as long as they still fulfilled their household duties of cooking, cleaning and mothering.
During the third wave of feminism, which began in the 1990s, the focus was on intersectionality, sex-positivity and body autonomy. However, those who menstruated and went through peri-menopause and menopause couldn’t truly claim bodily autonomy, for they were required to fit their bodies into systems and structures that were not designed for them in the first place. Women were told that they were free to be anything, but in reality, they were denied the freedom to be themselves.
There are talks that we are in the midst of a fourth wave of feminism, and that this wave will further branch out in different manifestations and forms. I do see us entering a sacred time of freedom, whether it is called the fourth wave of feminism or something different altogether.
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I personally like to think we are entering the time of the Great Remembering. I feel that when we were in those ancient Mystery Schools together, we would have known a great forgetting was going to happen, and so we made a promise to ourselves and to each other. I believe our collective promise was that when it was safe, we would help each other come home to ourselves and remember once again. This is what we did in our Nude Drawing Women’s Circle last night. We were fulfilling an ancient promise, letting each other know it is safe now for us to be ourselves. This is what we all do, in small and large ways, every time we speak or share our truth. In doing so, we are telling another sister, another person, another soul that it is safe now for them to come home and be themselves.
With love,
Laurel