by Elle Luna
Feminine Power is the electric energy that you get when you have unleashed unity and harmony in your story.
“If there ever comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a force such as the world has never known.”—Matthew Arnold Poet
Part Five
Where We Go From Here
“When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.”—Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés Author
Together, we are creating a world that celebrates women’s voices, stories, and lives.
It is time for you to implement change in your life, your community, and the world by exercising your own Feminine Power. The path may be clear for you, or you may want some direction. Below are ideas to make your own.
“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and human. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”—David W. Orr Professor
Love
Appreciate our gender
Advocate for other women. Don’t forget the past and the women who fought for equality. Educate yourself about the lives of other women, including their travails and the ways they have overcome them. Seek counsel from other women, especially elders. For the women you know well, remind them of their dreams and beauty. Revel in being with women and sharing in their knowledge. Advocate for younger women and join mentor programs or become a tutor for girls in your neighborhood and beyond.
Feed the Future
Join nonprofit organizations that combat hunger. Volunteer, donate money, or help with publicity and fund-raising. Fifteen percent of the United States population lives below the poverty line. When you count children alone, the number increases to 20 percent. Now is the time to bring your love forward and do what you can to help children and families meet basic food needs. Beyond the United States, the situation gets worse. Sadly, millions of children are at risk of starvation around the globe.
Love your body
Revel in how your body sustains you. Note how it is engineered to help you move around, get your needs met, hold others, and heal itself. What does your body need? When you look in the mirror, be kind to yourself and find beauty in what you see despite any critical inner voices. Make sure to get health and medical care. When you care for your body, it will provide for you and for the people you want to help.
Love your restful mind
Did you know that stress actually damages your DNA? Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn discovered that stress directly impacts our telomeres, the protective end caps on our chromosomes, which are essential for preserving our genetic information. If your telomeres are not maintained, you can lose your protective shield against aging and diseases, such as cancer. Learn to meditate. Meditation promotes internal happiness, stronger brain functioning, and the capacity to stay attentive. Download an app that will help you meditate for just five minutes a day. Love your restful mind and the practices that allow you to find calm no matter where you are in your day.
Love your whole being by seeking help when you need it
The work presented in this book may trigger memories or feelings that you aren’t familiar with and might bring up more questions than you can answer. This may be a signal to ask for the assistance of others. This is a great practice. In general, it is important to get help when you need it—and even when you just want it. If you are feeling challenged for whatever reason, reach out to others, like a medical professional, therapist, social worker, or spiritual counselor.
Amplify Women’s Voices
During the Obama administration, female White House staffers began noticing that their voices were often drowned out or their ideas were co-opted by male colleagues. “So female staffers adopted a strategy for meetings that they called ‘amplification,’” Juliet Eilperin writes. She describes the strategy: “When a woman made a key point, other women would repeat it, giving credit to its author. This forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution—and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.” The strategy worked, and President Obama took notice, calling on more women during staff meetings.
Celebrate the men who fight for equality
The Women’s March on January 21, 2017, was the largest single-day protest in United States history. Among many reasons for marching—advocating for racial justice, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, and immigration reform—one of the rallying points was the distress many felt about the election of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth president, whose past words and actions were misogynistic. The Women’s March crushed all expectations, and worldwide participation was estimated at five million people. All over the globe, many men joined the women, carrying extraordinary signs, too, and wearing unforgettable T-shirts, reminding everyone that when women’s rights are celebrated, everyone wins.
“I call myself a feminist. Isn’t that what you call someone who fights for women’s rights?”—The Dalai Lama
Vote women into leadership positions everywhere
Join organizations that support women who aspire to positions of political leadership. Almost 15,000 women are now running for office with help from nonprofit organizations. Work on their campaigns and vote for them. Run for office if you feel called. Ask for what you need. Women who care will support you.
Creative nonviolent campaigns
In the classic play Lysistrata, women in ancient Greece refused to have sex with their husbands until they ended the Peloponnesian War. Inspired by the story, modern-day women in a small village, Sirt, in Turkey, refused to have sex with their husbands until they got running water. They got running water.
When Vice President-elect Mike Pence publicly denounced a woman’s right to choose, more than 80,000 people responded by donating to Planned Parenthood. When filling out the online donation form that asked “Who is making this donation?” more than 20,000 people wrote in “Mike Pence.”
Advocate for appropriate representations of women in the media
If you choose not to watch a movie or TV show because of violence, use your social media accounts to ask others to boycott it with you, explaining that the show contains violence against women.
Vote with your dollars and support companies that use healthy-looking models in their advertisements.
Advocate for more films showcasing female power, especially those that feature women over the age of 50!
Celebrate your sexuality and wear what you want to wear.
Celebrate your femininity in any way you want, and when you see a woman who has exuberantly stepped out to celebrate her love of self, compliment her!
A few years ago I started taking a dance class that combines hula, belly, and African dance forms, all of which primarily use hip movements. When I was dancing and moving my hips, I remembered, when I was in high school, my grandmother was horrified that I wanted to study belly dancing because it was considered “cheap” and “too sexy.” Yet as an adult in this class, I had an enlivening and restorative feeling that would stay with me throughout the day. It boosted my self-esteem and energized me. The more I did this class, the more these powerful feelings would fill me. It was like a homecoming for my body. I concluded that in my white, middle-class culture, the hip was the lost body part. Dancing brought this crucial part of the female anatomy, the place that cradles life, back to me.
Tend and Befriend
Support those who support women
Just as the Grameen Bank discovered, women tend to take care of others when they have the resources; they put the money they make back into their communities to make them healthier. Roll
up your sleeves and help women get access to resources they can use to tend to others.
Support women in your community who are trying to get jobs or citizenship by providing a reference or personal letter.
Volunteer your time or donate money to organizations that fight misog yny, such as domestic violence shelters and rape crisis hotlines.
Support female artists—singers, painters, choreographers, filmmakers.
Vote women into leadership positions. Women’s natural tendencies to connect and engage make them outstanding leaders.
Foster understanding and forgiveness
When people begin to understand the limited nature of living in a patriarchal world, some may feel ashamed of their unwitting participation in it. They might start to feel angry or sad about the things they have said or done that have perpetuated this dominating paradigm that has caused so much damage. Mothers and fathers may feel this about messages they’ve given their young daughters and sons. If someone publicly acknowledges this realization, it can be a moment of transformation. Your job is to support, not to shame.
“Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones is not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking, but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing.”—Desmond Tutu Head of the Truth and Reconciliation commission in South Africa
For example, Susie sent an email to her father confronting him about his anger toward her mother, which seemed out of proportion. The disdain he expressed toward her mom reminded her of misogyny. The email was instigated by his angry complaint that his wife had betrayed the marriage when she started planning her own birthday party with her sister without informing him. Susie considered this absurd. Because the party was three months away, she had plenty of time to fill him in, and as far as Susie knew, he had only planned a birthday party for her once in his life. For her father to call this a betrayal seemed over the top, and Susie articulated, in angry and clear terms, that she found her father’s behavior insulting, belittling, and part of a pattern of disrespect for both his wife and his daughter. This email exchange happened during the time that Susie was coming to terms with her own inner misogynist. Amazingly, Susie’s father replied to her email with a genuine apology. Not only that, he told Susie that he was grateful that she felt brave enough to say something. He said:
You’re absolutely right. I can’t do anything about what’s happened, but I sure can try to do differently from now on.
Susie was stunned and amazed at his response. She didn’t expect it, but later it occurred to her that since she had worked long and hard on her own issues, the confidence in her approach was different from the many times she attempted to change his behavior before. She had practiced interacting with an even scarier misogynist than her father, her inner self, so her voice was clear and her words definite. Their relationship was transformed for the better after that. Years later, for his 75th birthday, Susie wrote a song for him that celebrated the insights and changes he had made in his life to support not only his wife but also his daughter, granddaughter, and other women. After Susie’s father’s death, his caregiver told Susie that twice a week he would listen to that song, sing along, and cry.
Susie’s dad once said:
“You know, I came from a chauvinistic kind of family and so did my wife. So I thought it was normal. We both thought it was normal. But the turning point was when I got Susie’s email calling me on my behavior. At first I was going to defend myself, but then my wife reminded me that Susie had really put herself on the line to tell me how she felt and I should take in what she had written. She was right. And in that moment, I could hear the truth. ”
—Jim Herrick
Lead
Identify and honor everyday heroines among us
You most likely encounter women every day, everywhere you go. Celebrate the amazing women you see, work with, and know. Acknowledge other women’s ideas, desires, and contributions. Make it a ritual to tell other women when you notice the marvelous things they do.
Share Feminine Intelligence
Tell your story. Use it to inspire others. Be proud of the insights you’ve gained and, when you see the opportunity, consider that another woman is longing to have access to the knowledge that you have gained.
Bring back and support repressed feminine wisdom from the past, such as:
Natural Birth Practices
Participating in public service and helping the disadvantaged and elderly among us
Plant Medicine
Women’s Circles
Family Rituals
Shared Crafts (Sewing Circles)
Connecting with and relating to your community and neighbors
Stories live inside you and shape your life. Be your own new story. Right here, right now, you get to choose what you want your story to be about!
“We are the curators of life on earth.”—Helen Caldicott Anti-nuclear Advocate
Peacemakers will reawaken their minds to their own code of ethics by allowing themselves to have needs and opinions. If you are a Peacemaker, as you discover what you really think, you will become motivated to come forth and act boldly in life to advocate for the things you love.
When Challengers relax the fear that makes them want to be bigger and stronger than others, they reawaken the child within themselves. If you are a Challenger, know your connection to your own brave, generous, and magnanimous heart, and your powerful vulnerability and innocence will ripple throughout your community.
When Enthusiasts run toward pain and away from gluttony, they gain sobriety, a sense of surefootedness, and a deep-rooted feeling of joy. If you are an Enthusiast, acknowledge your pain and the difficult parts of life, and you will be a beacon of joy and fulfillment for everyone you meet.
When Troubleshooters understand that there will never be guaranteed safety, they remember their heart, they remember what they love, and they begin to find their own courage within. If you are a Troubleshooter, notice what is in your heart and feel the warmth there. Let it guide you.
When Investigators realize that they have collected enough information, they relax their need for knowledge and find their own innate voice. If you are an Investigator, lead with your intuition.
When Reformers judge themselves less, they will start to emanate the glow of loving themselves fully. If you are a Reformer, remember that serenity is a precious aspect for other women to experience in you.
When Caretakers start to prioritize their own needs and relax their need to be “the loving one,” their hearts open to humility and abundant love. If you are a Caretaker, become an example of someone who is comfortable taking care of her needs without shame.
When Achievers relax their need to inflate their own image, they gain authenticity and truth because they start to experience their own vast and honest potential. If you are an Achiever, share your truth so that we will all experience what we need—your true depth and value.
When Individualists start to remember that the grass is greener not on the other side of the fence, but inside of themselves, they experience a deep sense of their own significance and find balance. If you are an Individualist, share the equanimity that you have found within so that we can all experience its beauty and significance.
The ultimate task which you have accomplished with this book, is to find love for yourself so that you can release your fears of the patriarchy. With this love, you recognize that you are the woman that you long to be. And when you reach your heart you bring
all of us with you.
One night, Susie had a dream:
I walked out onto a beach that looked wild and restless, like it could be in northern Scotland. Everything was dark—it was a moonless night, the sand was a volcanic dark gray, and the water reflected the darkness. There was a boat with people in it near where the water and sand met, and I got into the boat. After settling in, before we pushed off to sea, I turned to discover that a huge tsunami was coming toward us. Astonished and terrified, I looked at the people in the boat to warn them and noticed that they were all women. “Don’t worry!” one of the women said, and together, we began to maneuver the boat, passing safely through the curl of the wave, coming out the other side together.
We would both like to thank Mary Ellen O’Neill, our guardian angel editor. Mary Ellen, we love you! Thank you for breathing life into every page of this manuscript. You are so talented at what you do, and we are eternally grateful to have cocreated this book with you. Thank you Ted Weinstein, our literary agent and a skilled matchmaker, for supporting us in finding a marvelous publishing partner for this book! We would also like to thank Michael Naylor, for sharing his exquisite wisdom of the Enneagram, and Christine Hooker and Louann Brizendine, for their neuroscience expertise. Finally, we would like to thank the entire Workman team for helping to shape this offering and launch it into the world to create positive impact.