Following the Lead of Women in Our Movements
Young Dolores Huerta, making way for a new world.
Ripples from this year's Women’s History Month are sure to cast a long shadow. From the revelations of the Epstein files, to Deepak Chopra, to Cesar Chavez, it’s clear that no part of our society has been untouched by entrenched abuse of women and girls. We are being asked to see, in ever greater granularity, the male domination that has structured our current reality.
So what is it we are to do with what’s been revealed?
The journalist Maria Hinojosa interviewed Dolores Huerta following her statement that she was twice raped by Ceasar Chavez. Hinojosa inquired about the two children that Huerta conceived by him. “You gave them away?'” Huerta was quick to respond “I did not give them away. They are my daughters.”
When I hear Huerta insist on having her family correctly recognized and her love of them reported on, I am reminded that women possess a super power that has always fueled the world: the ability to hold complexity with fierce love. To be clear, choosing to abort would have been another perfectly understandable response - one that should be respected. But the validity of that route does not invalidate the sheer power of what Huerta, and other women in similar situations, have been able to do. And that kind of love is instructive for the times through which we are living.
Despite sexist systems – including our own families – women, for the majority of human history, have been able to keep our perspectives generative, broad, and soft enough to love. Even, sometimes, that which is born from our suffering.
Women are the ultimate movement builders.
I believe that it’s time to move from organizing ourselves around our very real experiences of grievance and pain, toward organizing ourselves around our ample and formidable strengths across our differences. And that does not mean pretending that strength like Huerta’s comes cost-free. We must grieve the fullness of what it means that she has chosen to live to the age of 95 with this secret pain, AND that she’s now going through what it means to come out about her abuse. I mean: the ovaries on this woman! Such power for facing WHAT IS, and acting with skill and love. This is medicine we need.
As a society, I hope we will make the abidingly female move of placing our focus back on the collective. Let’s endeavor to better care for all of us. Just as March 31st is being celebrated now as “Farm Workers Day,” instead of “Cesar Chavez Day,” I think moving together into the future will require the leadership of:
we who know how to practice muscular love in the face of brutality
we whose bodies were designed to birth possibilities
we who will not give up hope for our sons
It is time to know and show ourselves boldly, dear women.
This is life-long work, and it can only truly be done together. That’s why I’m offering an opportunity for companionship for the next leg of your journey.
I warmly invite you to Womb Alchemy: Leading From Your Full, Female Self, a 12-week accompaniment this spring and summer. I’ll provide a facilitated space for us to:
use writing and somatic tools for accessing the wisdom of of our bodies
practice deep listening - to ourselves, and one another
set deeply personal goals for how we engage in justice work
build unity, accountability, and power alongside one another as we face the opportunity/peril of living in these times
train our attention on what makes us feel most alive and joyful so we can stay juicy and connected to something larger than ourselves in this ongoing work
and finally, we will have some powerful guest facilitators - do stay tuned!
Wednesdays, May 22-Aug 511:30am-1pm PacificOn Zoom
In my training as a birth doula, I learned to help women face the very edge of what seemed possible for them. And then, to open a little more still. This is an embodied ritual that women have practiced since time immemorial. My clients were amazed by what they could do.
I now see this kind of generous labor as a mandate for our entire society. To love – despite the pain and struggle of it – in ways that are supple enough to hold rupture and repair, while making way for new life.
We know how to do this. The world needs what we know.
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