Reclaiming My Divine Femininity: Ushering in a New, Matriarchal Age

Unless you’re living in a cave or under a rock, you recognize that we live in a patriarchal society. What makes it patriarchal? The individualist, competitive, dominator culture that views women as property (the institution of monogamy and marriage being in place in order to establish paternity) is an inherently patriarchal way of being in the world. This is not to say that this model is helping men; quite the contrary, we are all suffering in this disconnected, individualist way of living and being.

Two books on the subject that have really helped crystalize this reality for me are Riane Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future and Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships, by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. With the rise of agriculture, industrialization, and separation from the earth and its natural rhythms, we’ve become a disconnected, synthetic society, stuck in the machine of capitalism.

Yet as overdoses and mass shootings have skyrocketed, as the pandemic has wreaked global havoc, as inflation soars, as affordable housing plummets, and as supply chain issues continue to break down, we are being forced to recognize the toxicity of the materialist, individualist way of life promoted by Western culture. We are being forced to confront the myths of progress and the failure of the 9–5 industrialized workplace model.

Late-stage capitalism is a beast. The system is so deeply entrenched that I have doubts of us being able to form new systems. Yet, as Audre Lorde famously said, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” The difficulty of this time period is that we are in awash in information, making it more difficult to sift through the noise and distinguish credible information from not-so-credible information. And bias is everywhere. None of us is without our biases or subjectivity.

At the same time, there are so many movements that I am excited about. There is the blockchain/web3, for example. But what I am especially thrilled about is that we are seeing the green wave (legalization of cannabis) and the psychedelic renaissance. I believe the re-emergence of scientific and mainstream recognition of natural substances to be both therapeutic and medicinal is monumental. While our conventional medical system and the pharmaceutical industry will likely not go away anytime soon, I do believe that the rise in mainstream knowledge of these powerful earth medicines is key to helping people re-connect to themselves, to their own divinity, and to each other.

Ricki Lake commented on her documentary, “Weed the People,” that it was not so much about cannabis as it was about people’s ability to heal themselves. This is a tremendously difficult liminal time, where we are being tested, mentally and physically, spiritually and socially; but I believe, if we trust ourselves, we can use earth medicines to help us harness our own natural healing abilities. The rise of community health workers (CHWs) and health coaches also signifies the societal demand that we have a more holistic approach to health. We as a society need to become empowered to understand how to put our health in our own hands, and to learn how to make the changes we need in order to find health and healing.

As all things are paradoxes, so too is is the matter of empowered health. We ultimately are our own best healers, but we also tend to benefit from having the support of others to heal. We need time of solitude and reflection to come to peace with our demons, shadows, and traumas, yet we need community to support us as well in our psychic, spiritual, and physical healing.

The impoverished model of monogamy and the nuclear family model is likewise eroding. We are seeing the fallacy, for a lot of people, in the idea that one partner can support another person entirely in all realms of their life. That polyamory and other models of living, such as platonic co-parenting models and intentional community living models, are also gaining more and more traction, speaks to how much we need community. We thrive, both adults and kids, in community. It takes a village to raise a kid, and we need models that better support that.

So while I grieve that I spent my 20’s largely directionless, largely unhealed and living a life of escapism as I coped from my own traumatic childhood, I also find tremendous gratitude for my survival and the healing and wisdom I have since found. I’m grateful to have become a mother and to have become more grounded and intentional in my living. I’m grateful to be able to work toward my goals of helping people empower themselves to find health and healing through both my writing and my coaching work.

I believe we are entering into a more earth-centered, conscious, connected, feminine, matriarchal age, and I am proud to help usher in this new age, one story at a time.

References:

Eisler, Riane. (1988). The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. HarperOne: San Francisco.

Isokauppila, Tero. (March 14, 2019). The healing power of mushrooms [video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZnGwFblXpA&ab_channel=TalksatGoogle

Lake, Ricki & Epstein, Abby. (2018). Weed The People [video]. https://www.weedthepeoplemovie.com/

Lattin, Don. (2017). Changing Our Minds: Psychedelic Sacraments and the New Psychotherapy. Synergetic Press: Santa Fe and London.

Maroon, J., Bost, J. (April 26, 2018). Review of the neurological benefits of phytocannabinoids. 9:91. Retrieved from: http://surgicalneurologyint.com/surgicalint-articles/review-of-the-neurological-benefits-of-phytocannabinoids/

Merry Jane. (2020). The CBD Solution: How Cannabis, CBD, and Other Plant Allies Can Change Your Everyday Life. Lauren Wilson, Ed. Chronicle Books.

Pollan, M. (2018). How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529343/how-to-change-your-mind-by-michael-pollan/

Powell, Martin. (June 6, 2018). Why all mushrooms are magic [video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fITifKJwZZc&ab_channel=BrightonNaturalHealthCentre

Rediger, Jeffrey, M.D. (2020). Cured: The Life-Changing Science of Spontaneous Healing. Flatiron Books: New York. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250193209

Ryan, Christopher and Jetha, Cacilda. (2012). Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships . Harper Perennial: New York.

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