Here are just a few words, thoughts that I wish to honor all of the Mamas in the world with...Every woman is or has been someone's mama. May we make offerings to all those walking Mama Shrines around us...may we lay flowers and pure water at their feet, fill their bowls with fresh fruit covered with honey and serve them sweet nectars while we dance in the moonlight in honor of their life giving power and eternal sacrifice...
Sistah C
In the house with the tortoise chair
She will give birth to the pearl
To the beautiful feather...
There she sits on the tortoise
Swelling to give us birth
On your way, on your way
Child be on your way to me here
You whom I made new...
--Aztec poem
Imagine a Woman
Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman.
A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories.
Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.
Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.
A woman who listens to her needs and desires.
Who meets them with tenderness and grace.
Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past's influence on the present.
A woman who has walked through her past.
Who has healed into the present.
Imagine a woman who authors her own life.
A woman who exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf.
Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.
Imagine a woman who names her own gods.
A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.
Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.
Imagine a woman in love with her own body.
A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.
Who celebrates its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.
Imagine a woman who honors the body of the Goddess in her changing body.
A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.
Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.
Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.
A woman who sits in circles of women.
Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.
Imagine a woman who is interested in her own life.
A woman who embraces her life as teacher, healer, and challenge.
Who is grateful for the ordinary moments of beauty and grace.
Imagine a woman who participates in her own life.
A woman who meets each challenge with creativity.
Who takes action on her own behalf with clarity and strength.
Imagine a woman who has crafted a fully-formed solitude.
A woman who is available to herself.
Who chooses friends and lovers with the capacity to respect her solitude.
Imagine a woman who acknowledges the full range of human emotion.
A woman who expresses her feelings clearly and directly.
Who allows them to pass through her as naturally as the breath.
Imagine a woman who tells the truth.
A woman who trusts her experience of the world and expresses it.
Who refuses to defer to the thoughts, perceptions, and responses of others.
Imagine a woman who follows her creative impulses.
A woman who produces original creations.
Who refuses to color inside someone else’s lines.
Imagine a woman who has relinquished the desire for intellectual safety and approval.
A woman who makes a powerful statement with every action she takes.
Who asserts to herself the right to reorder the world.
Imagine a woman who has grown in knowledge and love of herself.
A woman who has vowed faithfulness to her own life.
Who remains loyal to herself. Regardless.
Imagine yourself as this woman.
“Imagine a Woman” © Patricia Lynn Reilly, 1995
Excerpt: Imagine a Woman in Love with Herself (Conari, 1999)
"...To find the origin,
trace back the manifestations.
When you recognize the children
and find the mother,
you will be free of sorrow."
-The Tao Teh Ching
"How might your life have been different if there had been a place for you, a place of women? A place where other women, somewhat older, had reached out to help you as you rooted yourself in the earth of the ancient feminine... A place where there was a deep understanding of the ways of woman to nurture you in every season of your life. A place of women to help you measure your own stature...to help you prepare and know when you were ready."
"A place where, after the fires were lighted, and the drumming, and the silence, you would claim, finally, in your Naming, as you spoke slowly into that silence, that the time had come, full circle, for you, also, to reach out...reach out as younger women entered into that place...reach out to help them prepare as they struck root in that same timeless earth."
- Judith Duerk in Circle of Stones: A Woman's Journey to Herself
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