A Few years ago, as I was just beginning to put the conversation together that is now the Global Culture of Women, I became obsessed with gathering women. Luckily, I have very forgiving friends, for despite the fact that I bombarded my circle with new classes, workshops, interviews, councils (you name it, they came) they still talk to me today.
One of the offerings that came out of that period of this ever-shifting journey is a course/conversation called "Women in Theory & Reality". The goal was to illuminate the disparities between the mythology of our female lives and the actual, ground zero, reality. The idea being that if we women actually told the full Truth of our lives this would unleash transformation on the planet like nothing we could imagine. This belief is largely what inspired the GCW. Muriel Ruckeyser said, "What if one women told the truth about her life? The world would split open." We live in a world of double-speak. We live in a world that has been spin-doctored to the point where even we, women, often put a saccharine coating over our own realities, even with our closest friends.
For this reason, it has been one of the long-standing desires of the GCW vision not to allow it to get too bogged down in descriptive words. Really, there aren't words within the English language to describe this vision anyway. We won't be missing much by keeping Her safe from jargon. In 'The Great Hoop of Life' Paula Underwood states "English is one of those languages based on naming things rather than describing them. As such it trains us to categorize everything that comes into our lives, in spite of the fact that so many things are neither this nor that."
To know the full reality of our female lives (both the incredible despair and the infinite breathtaking beauty) we have only to take ourselves to the land I just returned from: the borderlands of Texas, the country that is neither this nor that. Where people have been living on land their mother's, mother's, mother & father farmed. Where heritage means you can remember ten generations back because your ancestors made a point of telling their stories and their grandchildren made a point of listening to them. Where a wall is being built that separates families and communities that have been within walking distance of each other for centuries. Where Mexican men, women and children are incarcerated and held without bail or representation for months on end. Here there is no saccharine coating strong enough to cover reality. And it is most certainly not this or that...it is both/and and everything in between. Like the micro-pollutants alive and well within the Rio Grande on any given day coupled with the fact that it is impossible to negate the innate serpentine beauty of that river...it is both/and.
The reality of our female lives is an intimate indicator of the reality of all life on the planet. This trip showed me, in vivid and sometimes shockingly grotesque detail, that all life is in grave jeopardy. Yet the irony of this moment is that in order to get out of it, in order to change it, we have to allow ourselves to be motivated not by what is wrong but by what is so perfectly right. We have to allow ourselves to perceive, be blown away by and remain fiercely dedicated to, the beauty and perfection that is all around us all the time. Armed with these visions, the grotesque, unjust and inhumane could be reversed, healed and transformed easier and faster than waiting for an elected official to do it for us.
Each day, day in and day out, for the 22 days we were on the road, I witnessed the most extraordinary Love and devotion to life. The most extraordinary unconditional nurturing, humanity and courage. The most extraordinary generosity, faith and trust. Over and over I saw this in the women whom we sat with, as they told stories, spoke their Truth. Each time a woman speaks her Truth the spin-doctored mythology of our lives is split wide open and in this space, in this schism, Love is the only thing that grows. And let me tell you, from where I sit, it's nothing but gorgeous...
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