The Feminine Nature
Two weeks ago, on a balmy Friday evening, I lay on the soft sand with a friend. The night was still and clear. The tide was low and the waves rolling in and hitting the rocks with spirit but not force. We’d come to view the rare planetary alignment and the dark moon-less night didn’t disappoint. The sky was ablaze with stars, shooting stars, planets, satellites. It was vast and magnificent. I looked upwards in awe and left filled up with the mystery of the universe.
The following Friday, the same sky, the same ocean were raging and angry. Cyclonic winds spiralling and the waves crashing up against and eroding the sand dunes. The spot we lay our towels and our bodies unrecognisable. The rock-wall we walked along now a human hazard zone. But I had no less awe than I did the week prior.
The next day, which happened to be International Women’s Day, my sky-gazing friend and I sat huddled in her apartment sharing gas-cooked food, Mother Nature roaring outside on day three of no power. I’d just braved a rain-free patch, walking up the hill from my place to her’s in my now water-drenched slip-on shoes.
We pondered about the history of women. We thought about the times when women spent all day gathering water, tending to the earth, building fires, lighting candles.
We felt into the hygiene we take for granted, flushing toilets, clean water. And the solid frames most of our homes are built from. Even then, we were at the mercy of Mother’s Nature’s whim, she in the driving seat, deciding how strong the approaching cyclone could be and where it would land.
It seemed apt that the ‘gift’ we received on International Women’s Day here in the sub-tropics was this potential cyclone, at the very best, a powerful storm.
For me this day became not only a chance to recall the lineage of women that came before us, and how much has changed, but also a stark reminder of the true nature of the feminine. Not the cultural definition, nor the feminist movement definition, definitely not the marketing/sales definition. But the creative energetic force of life.
Life comes in all shades, colours, textures and seasons, including wild storms and cyclones. She not only creates but destroys too, one doesn’t work without the other. Yes we’d all prefer calm, sunny days, but they never arrive in isolation. To understand our cyclical nature as women, we need to see the reflection around us.
The feminine is also that which opens and receives this life. Us, our bodies, our beings.
And who gives to this life; protects, nurtures, nourishes, holds, loves.
The raging storm outside my window, the bursting creeks and rivers, the spiralling sea, the wild winds is all a reflection of us too. What goes on within us. And what we often don’t like to open to. Parts of us as women the women’s movement maybe deterred us from.
Although I am very grateful for the advocacy of the women who have come before me and for what they’ve left for me, for all of us, in their wake, those who know me, my work and my writing, know I’m no fan of the modern feminist movement. Yes, the original movement gave women rights (although we could also say it took some of those away), but I’ve always felt it would be better recognised as the women’s rights movement. Because it definitely has never been about the feminine, even less so now. It was poorly named and as a result has impacted the way we as a culture see feminine/women’s empowerment now.
If only the feminist movement taught us how to be more in sync with this nature, how to embody these wonderful vessels we inhabit, how to respect cycles and seasons, how to harness our power rather than suppress it or mould it, we wouldn’t need to fight for our rights, because we’d know who we are.
A true feminine movement wouldn’t be about them or us, men or women, it would be about life. Creating life, harnessing life, protecting life, living life.
Our foremothers perhaps tended to the earth better than we did. More conscious. More grateful. More understanding of her gifts, her ways. They understood water, earth, fire, air, ether more than we do. They understood birth and death and all that came between. If only we could have built on this, brought the developments of the modern world together with the ancient wisdom.
Yes we’ve progressed in many aspects, but I do wonder if in some of those most intrinsic parts of life we’ve gone backwards. There is nothing like a natural disaster to give us a nudge.
I feel like the Great Mother gave us a little wake up notice here with her arrival on ‘women’s day’. A little reminder of who we really are and who she really is and what we really need to see.