Something has been happening the last few years what I call the rise of the Goddess movement. Women around the globe are gathering in numbers not in competition but in a spirit of compassion, nurturing, sisterhood, support, caring and collaboration. As these women gather, they are remembering and reawakening to their power.
My socks were blown off after meeting a phenomenal woman named ALisa Starkweather a few years ago and now we were are buddied up as power partners on an online program. I invited ALisa to be a speaker on my tele-summit and she invited me to attend her ‘Daughters of the Earth Gathering’ which is a 3-day women’s retreat held at Earthlands which is a convention-retreat centre beside 4,000 protected acres that are a part of Nipmuck tribal lands in western Massachusetts. People call Earthlands the University of the Wild and what I experienced was wild for sure!
Tents were set up for women of all ages and socio-economic circumstances. We felt and we were welcomed into this sanctuary. These women shared their experiences, sometimes with emotional rawness as they explored what is meant to be a woman throughout all stages of womanhood.
There was laughter, lots of tears, singing dancing, transformational workshops and teachers. I was floored to be witness to ALisa’s body of work. It made such a deep and needed impact and it was a total honor to say the least. Here was a woman who has given her whole life to help empower women and give women a container from which to birth their fierce femininity. That weekend was one of the most powerful experiences of my life and it showed me what real sisterhood is all about. It’s definitely not about competition;; it’s not about, “Let me show you the way because I know best.” I saw that something very real and very magical happens when women come together to share, support, hear, see and bear witness to each other’s journey. There is a deep respect, honoring, holding, even flowering that takes place when women give themselves the PERMISSION to explore the realms and depths of their emotions, stories and that deep, deep call of the wild and call of intuition. This power calls women to always show up anew, show up and birth a new way of being.
This might sound a little wild to you however, women gathering and leading was the way of matriarchal native societies. In those societies, women were the decision makers. They were the ones who connected and found agreement on how to run the village, the house, the tribe and the collective, while the men went out to hunt.
The Red Tent Temple Movement originated from a concept in a 1997 fiction book by Anita Diamant, The Red Tent. The movement accelerated in 2007 as a way for women to gather and nurture one another. Today, these temples are used for relaxation and as worry free spaces from everyday pressures. Instead of taking care of everyone else, women are taking care of each other, resting and renewing. ALisa rekindled the movement and now you can find Red Tents all over the world, in over 24 countries. There is even a movie on the movement.
In these worry free spaces, women gather and listen to one another’s journey, their whispers of yearning, what they are putting to bed, closing chapters on, opening up and saying yes.
I’ve been to several Goddess circles, women’s circles, even facilitated one in Montreal very briefly. I always leave feeling in awe and with a deep gratitude about being a woman. Last night here on Kauai there was a woman’s circle to honor the new moon and to set intentions for the coming moon cycle. A woman shared that her friend’s son at 7-years old knew that when women gathered like this, they became more desirable by their men!
How amazing is it that even a 7-year old boy even knows this. When a women’s cup is full it overflows. Too often women are over giving, running on empty and rarely have any juice to feed themselves.
A Goddess is a woman who puts herself as a priority. She has enough knowledge to know that putting self-love, as a priority will help her do everything with more ease, grace and flow. A Goddess is a woman who owns her inner power and as much as she can, she flows softly like the wind in the trees on a warm summer night. A Goddess accepts who she is and she is awake, aware and committed to the journey and discovers what she really is, even if the journey is a messy one as it often is, she is committed to the end. To walk bravely and show up for herself and her sisters, her family and friends by honoring whom she really is at her core.
I remember feeling stuck in my coaching business. I didn’t want to be any old business or life coach and I was in this existential stage in my career trying to distinguish myself meaningfully. I hired a coach, invested a ton of money to fly to Connecticut three times a year for a Mastermind Seminar. At my first Mastermind, there were 130 or so entrepreneurs in the room and we were directed to play a game of who had accomplished the most in the last 90 days. Well the audience had to vote on the winner and I won! No surprise here, I am a Capricorn, driven, ambitious and when I decide on something then it’s get on my team or get out of my way. At least I know what I am. I had actually written down that goal in my book that morning before winning the challenge. I indeed won, because the winner won a one- hour session with Fabienne Fredrickson the creator of The Client Attraction System, which was worth $15,000!
On that call, I wanted to know what to call myself as a coach. I remember it was a rainy dreary hot July afternoon and Fabienne asked me on the phone, “Vanessa what do your clients come to see you about?” Out popped a few things and then at the end of my ramble I finally spurted out, “I help them take their power back.” Right at that moment, boom, the loudest crackle and thunderclap you have every heard shook the house and it started to pour rain. I had shivers running up and down my spine. “Great,” she said! “Now go buy the domain name, TakeYourPowerBackNow.com and I did.
Fast forward a few days, I’m at ALisa’s ‘Daughters of the Earth Gathering’ at Earthlands and it’s a steamy hot July afternoon. We are maybe 50 women under the big outdoor tent in a sweltering field, doing guided breath work exercise. My yoga teacher had been telling me about the amazing and surreal benefits of this healing breath work for years trying to get me to do it. That afternoon I was all in and committed to the exercise. We had to pair up and each woman had about an hour to go through the process while the other watched and supported her. I heard women screaming, writhing, some laughing hysterically, goodness what was going on here!!? I thought these women were all making this up.
Then it was my turn. The music started and we are guided to continue to deep breath for an hour!! It was explained that holding the emotional charge that is held in the body would release itself through this deep breathing process. Well sure enough, my body began to go numb! I couldn’t feel a thing and my hands started clenching. It was wild! I was not in control of my body any longer. They call this tinnitus. Then all of a sudden, BOOM the thunder strikes outside the tent it starts pouring rain and then there was physical relief from the steamy heat wave.
Just as it thunders, I get a pain in my stomach and liquid squirts out of my vagina! Yes that’s what I said, liquid squirted out of my vagina. It was like labor pains and immediately I thought back to, Take Your Power Back Now when just days earlier, the thunder struck while I had been speaking with Fabienne. Wow! It was as if I was giving birth to this new business. When the exercise was over, I was careful to get up. I felt like I had wet everything under me! It was a wild and surreal experience to say the least and that is the story of how I birthed my business.
The truth is that answering this call - this inner urge, taking your Power Back, owning your past, all that you are and have been to be here now, owning your voice, taking a stand for what you want and deserve can be messy. Look, there is no recipe!
The recipe can get messy. I posted a Facebook rant about my roommate who is a good friend of mine on how she had lost it one night out over a guy she had been seeing. She said that she lost her marbles, acted crazy at a bar and screamed at this guy. I was so proud of her!
“Good for you for standing up for yourself and telling him the truth! It’s better than slinking down, stuffing it down, hating yourself and beating yourself up for putting on a façade,” I told her.
For months, she had been complaining about this guy and not feeling honored yet she kept going back to him and every time she let him back into her life, she felt worse about herself and upset about something.
There’s no nicely paved road to owning your inner power. It’s like swinging from one extreme to the next and somehow you’re on one side of the fence, then way over the other side, landing and balancing out in the middle. Women all over the world are feeling this inner call to show up and answer. It takes tremendous courage and support!
Women have been putting on suits for years and trying to out man men by using masculine energy or force. Why?! Be a woman it’s so much more fun! A woman who is in her feminine energy, who naturally receives, who takes pleasure and revels in the glory of the world of the beauty around her, doesn’t wait for others to make her party or for others to make her happy. “She is the star of her own show,” says Regena Thomashauer (Mama Gena) author of Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts.
If you’re acting out too much of your masculine energy, with a go- go- go, do it, make it happen rule and conquer all type of energy you may be feeling like you are doing all the work in your relationship or being the man to other women in your friendships. Stop it! A woman relaxes and receives in her juicy Goddess feminine essence. Pleasure, beauty and rawness are the keys that open the gateway to grace and ease. Many women feel it is unsafe and too vulnerable to operate from the feminine. Most women believe it’s safer to be a man and to run with masculine energy however, these women are often unsatisfied, feel empty and unfulfilled. They feel like something is missing or that there is something wrong with them, like they’re missing some important memo.
I encourage you to find the Power in sisterhood, a safe place to explore what it is to be a woman because most women were raised by their mothers who hadn’t a clue, about masculine and feminine energy roles, were, and still are trying to figure it out themselves!