Awakening to Our Feminine Soul—Edge of Grace (foreword by Sil Read)
When a woman becomes a mother, she undoubtedly has transcendent experiences along the way. Whether it be the first moment she lays her eyes on her baby and holds them and gazes into their eyes- or any of the many miraculous milestones that follow — all mamas have downright mystical experiences. Most mothers experience their role as the most meaningful — if not the most meaningful experience of their lives.
And yet, all the mothers I have known or worked with (through my experience as a women’s health nurse practitioner, psychotherapist, and retreat leader) are not fully prepared for the many challenges they will undoubtedly face. Nor are mothers adequately held as they face those challenges.
New mamas in our culture are inevitably pushed to the edge by sleep deprivation and hormonal fluctuations, which are exacerbated by the radical changes in their day-to-day lives. Many don’t have the choice of going back to work or not. And as if these conditions aren’t challenging enough, most mothers encounter a woeful lack of community support, guidance, and/or financial resources that they are in desperate need of. No wonder so many feel unprepared for the task at hand. And who has the time or the capacity to make mothering a meaningful or spiritual experience — a path to awakening — when it can feel as if one’s survival is at stake?
Enter Prajna O’Hara Ginty mother of three daughters, trauma therapist, spiritual seeker and teacher, and Wise Woman extraordinaire. This book is certainly what I needed after a birthing experience that unexpectedly veered away from the natural home birth I had prepared for, to an urgent rush to the hospital for an emergency C-section. Unfortunately, Prajna was not there to meet me as I struggled in the aftermath. I desperately needed a way to meet the challenges that arose around the birthing and then, later, as a mother parenting with an emotionally absent husband. I was mothering without a map.
I want to be clear that it’s not necessary to have a traumatic birthing story to need this book! Prajna has given us mamas a framework for mothering amidst all of the challenges that arise as we embark on the journey. There is no challenge too small or too big that she won’t help you rise to. Prajna’s got your back and is offering you a map for meeting the inevitable roadblocks on your heroine’s journey of mothering. By showing us how to honor difficult challenges as deeply meaningful and universal, we learn that these are rites of passage that will help us to find infinitely resilient places in ourselves.
Prajna found infinitely resilient places in herself. As you will learn within the pages of this book, she had a smooth and natural birth experience with her first daughter, and in every way the opposite when birthing her twin daughters. Prajna faces impossibly difficult excruciating challenges and yet manages to surrender to the agony and the ecstasy of it all with the utmost incredible grit and grace.
When my teacher, the Jungian analyst, and author, Marion Woodman was living through a harrowing bout of cancer and was not sure whether she would live or die she wrote:
I learned the difference between destiny and fate. We are all fated to die. Destiny is recognizing the radiance of the soul that, even when faced with human impossibility, loves all of life. Fate is the death we owe to Nature. Destiny is the life we owe to soul.
Simply put: fate is the shit that can happen to us in life, and destiny is how we choose to meet it and walk it. When faced with impossible tests, Prajna kept choosing to love all of life — the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly. Like a master alchemist who knows that ‘the gold is in the dung’, she transmutes her fate into her soul’s destiny, and she not only survives to tell the tale- she also thrives to tell the tale.
Her tale begins at an early age, working alongside her mother, and unconsciously internalizing the myth of female inferiority. It would take a long time before she saw how her mother was unfairly blamed for a multitude of problems: too many children (eight), her husband’s absence, her son’s delinquent behaviors, unpaid bills, or the inability to clothe her children in suits or dresses for Sunday mass. At age twelve Prajna helped her mother pay the bills by working on her kitchen crew at summer camps. Prajna recalls that when her mother discovered she was pregnant with child number eight, she went to Father Clancy.
Her mother told her,
I went to confession again. I told Father Clancy that I couldn’t take care of any more babies. Harry isn’t paying the bills. I’m on my own.
No matter, my child, the good Lord will provide,” Father said. “Now be a good girl and say your Hail Mary’s and Our Fathers.”
Prajna’s O’Hara Ginty inherited this mothering map from her mother, and when Prajna faced her version of an impossible fate, she managed to meet it and chart an entirely new path. Like Inanna’s descent into the depth of the underworld, Prajna walked naked, exposed, and lacking self-confidence. And through facing and feeling the pain of it all, she ascended as a newly formed, perfectly imperfect, and confident version of herself. By making her life as a mother her dharma, her daughters became her spiritual teachers, and she strove to navigate the madness of America’s broken medical system.
It came as no surprise to me when I learned that the name of our Wise Woman author Prajna means ‘heart wisdom’. In her deliciously salty way, Prajna explains that heart wisdom means “take no shit.” For her, embodying this word means to “no longer be regulated by protocols, social constructs, or sets of instructions, and instead to utilize what is most beneficial at the time.”
Through her rite of passage, she felt her rage, found her voice, and stayed forever true to her feminine soul.She made a vow “to honor everything in life as a treasure with undeniable inherent value, especially at the most vulnerable moments of birthing and dying.”
Holy Mother of God!
Let’s be honest; although we are told that motherhood has the utmost spiritual and moral value, we grow up knowing on some level, deep down, that it has no real value in our culture. Women (and men) in our patriarchal culture grow up receiving the implicit message that mothering (or parenting) is not a real job — and that it’s actually not real work. Ouch.
For better or worse, we are left to find that value on our own, and if we are lucky enough, we have this book in our hands, and it is for better. As Prajna writes: We are “more than enough. Special beyond measure.” By receiving this sweet medicine from the heart wisdom of our Wise Woman Prajna, we can begin to experience true sovereignty — as mothers who don’t question our value — on this precious Mother Earth.
Prajna has offered us the exquisite opportunity to “embody peace amidst broken appliances, family conflicts, single parenting, the heart-wrenching experiences of violence, infidelity, or carrying for the ill, disabled or dying. She assures us that “gathering in circles mend our heartbreaks, and give us the opportunity to be witnessed which rinses shame, mends isolation, and brings us together as a community.”
Awakening to our feminine soul amidst broken appliances, messy diapers, and our messy human lives? I’m all in! Will you join us? Prajna has given us this remarkable opportunity by clearing the path for us to make our way.
Blessed are We Among Awakening Women.
This foreword for the new edition of Edge of Grace, Fierce Awakenings to Love by Prajna is written by the best-selling author and student of Marion Woodman — Sil Read.
Follow this link to download your ebook from this website or go to Amazon for the printed version. The official launch is in October 2014. My twins Abby and Libby’s birthday month. We welcome you to our launch team by submitting a review to Amazon before October 21 to encourage others to read this inspiring and important story.
Sil Read is the best-selling author of Mothering and Daughtering. Little Compton, Rhode Island, 2024
Happy Full Flower Moon This is a wonderful time to reflect on how far you have come…
How do you honor and own your innocence — your power the essence of who you are?
By doing those deeply unfashionable things …
I’ve been drawn to spiritual transformation, conscious soul development, and healing for as long as I can remember. Many of you have received my newsletter for years, know my backstory, and have attended my retreats or events. For those new to my news, I share my current investigations/realizations, and the importance of this deep inner work for mending our collective consciousness. This will help you understand the ‘why’ behind what I offer.
I wish to learn more about your journey as well.
As a young girl, I ached to participate in the high mass of the holy fathers. I wanted to live fully.
I was conditioned to believe the Catholic mass was the way. But the door was not open to my female gender nor was I looking in the right direction. I was looking up to heaven — for transcendence.
I needed a wise elder to point me in the right direction to my body — to my inner knowing.
In my early days of seeking an abrupt injury took place that shattered my sense of self. I felt I had a hole in the bottom of my being that leaked out goodness, dimmed my light, and numbed all feeling. A split occurred as if I were two people, one entirely bad, intoxicated, self-shaming, and sabotaging. The other relentlessly strived to puff up like a perfectly pleasing and colorful peacock who performed tricks for free.
Over time my commitment to mending these fragmented parts has fortified me with gifts, resources, and connections that I would not be alive without. Healing is not linear, I’ve circled many times gathering, polishing, and integrating myself back into wholeness. I am indebted to so many people, including my children.
Today I call this insatiable inner yearning — a need to connect to soul — our life juice.
A sense of mysterious wonder that burns brightly and dances freely with both feet on the ground.
In my therapeutic work with the spirit of the plants and prior, I continue to have the good fortune of meeting many people like myself who want to heal and recover a vital sense of inner value — an empowerment to thrive beyond survival.
Early relational trauma results from the fact that we are interrupted by an experience in this life that we are ill-equipped to metabolize consciously. A young person who is violated or seriously neglected by a trusted adult is overwhelmed by intolerable effects that are impossible to understand or even think about.
A shock to the psychosomatic unity of the personality threatens to extinguish a vital spark of the person so crucial for the experience of aliveness and feeling real — like a whole person. Many psycho-spiritual therapists and indigenous medicine people call this “soul murder.”
This murdered soul or lost heart of the self disappears into the unconsciousness.
What has been broken relationally must be repaired relationally.
Most injuries from our early relational lives can be unpacked, metabolized, and re-experienced toward a different outcome.
Therapeutic processes, relational dynamics, and the spirits of the plants can reach into rigid neural nets that are wired into defensive patterns and reconfigure.
While doing the work of repair — intimate feeling connections stabilize over time.
Recently a middle-aged man who has been attending my retreats for several years arrived at a new place in his healing journey.
The room was pitch black, we were mid-ceremony in altered states of consciousness. I heard snarls and growls cutting through the darkness. I quietly located the source of intrigue — I discovered a mighty feral cat vigorously reclaiming his power.
During our integration sessions, it was evident that a deep inner transformation had taken place. The man looked different—both gentle and strong, at home within himself. Knowing about the predatorial assault he experienced as a young man, I felt privileged to witness how far he has come in his healing journey.
He reported, “I am in my body — with full power.”
This is exactly why I do what I do.
I can hardly call it work. I call it witnessing.
My role is to foster safety and earn trust, call in the presence of Self and the Plants, and hold up a mirror to the beleaguered self, to invite the soul back into embodiment—home.
Most of us have had deforming mirrors held up in our lives that create anti-wholeness defenses. I offer a non-distorting mirror that reflects a larger potential in the interest of wholeness and love.
Sacred tobacco, dreams, and restful integration are essential in this process to guide a way of living life from an empowered and free perspective of reality.
Yesterday I was walking with our dog Woodzie when a patch of grass sprinkled with golden flowers called to me. I sat down, then I laid back. It was a delicious and a rather new behavior to stop during my vigorous morning walk and take time to savor the beauty of the moment.
Imagine receiving a hug from your beloved Nana — the kind that wraps you in a bubble of warmth, when words are unnecessary, and sentiments of affection seep into your bones. You feel completely seen and cherished like a lush virgin forest. This is the essence of ‘deep tender seeing.’ A gaze filled with exquisite tenderness and interest — your endorphins dance wildly, and your body feels whole, connected to your soul. You feel valued, heard, and understood.
In a world where intimate connections are rare, the ability to truly see someone is desperately wanted, and often feels life-saving — transformational.
Yet, despite its invaluable impact, many feel more invisible than ever. The result is an epidemic of aloneness that leads to meanness. Eyes grow pale from so much looking or scrolling and waiting — waiting — waiting to be seen.
Humans are hungry to be seen. Feeling invisible feels like an injustice and causes people to lash out with all the bile stored up from years of not being seen.
We can change this by taking a moment to stop and truly see. To stop and see ourselves, past our misplaced projections and stereotypes.
Since the turn of the millennium, depression rates have soared, and the statistics are disheartening:
Suicide rates among teenage girls have jumped by 60%.
Over half of Americans feel that no one truly knows them, leading to a loneliness crisis where intimate friendships are scarce.
The decline in romantic relationships is notable, with figures dropping by a third— a pool I swim in but I also know tender self-seeing is an immediate remedy.
These statistics were highlighted in a poignant discussion between David Brooks and Ray Suarez on the Art of Knowing a Person, and paint a stark picture of our current social landscape.
I feel fortunate to live close to the forest and the ocean. I can hug a tree and smell the ocean air. I can take a refreshing cold plunge or feel inspired by those who surf the waves. Connecting to nature is essential to our well-being and hers. And to be so lucky to have humans nearby who know you and want to be known by you elevates all of the senses when we let ourselves be seen.
I have three daughters in my home who love to give and receive hugs. One of my twins is quadriplegic and unable to hug but she coos with delight as I kiss her eyelids tenderly and whisper in her ears. Her twin sister with more physical ability, is especially good at tickling with emotional delight. She can sense if I’m speeding through our nighttime routine as if she is missing her coveted chocolate pudding. “I need a hug,” she’ll say as I head to the door eager to have time for me (probably to check my phone).
“I just gave you a hug,” I assure her.
“I need a real hug.” She tells me. Eyes wide open.
I return to her and melt into her tender squeeze. I wait until she initiates the letting go. On a night like this rarely do I check my phone. A crusty old habit in my body relaxes. I no longer feel the urge to seek a false sense of connection outside of myself. I am home in myself—connected and seen.
Both of us rest more deeply knowing we’ve been hugged. Our dreams are vivid. Sleep is restorative. We greet the day with fresh alertness and morning hugs.
Humans are more hungry than ever to feel seen and valued. So much so that books are being written about how to do this. Maybe you write about this as I do.
The essence of my professional work is to grow our capacity to mirror, listen, and see with genuine interest. I do my best to listen to the person in front of me and reflect back what I hear, see, and value in them beyond their words. In turn, they are empowered to meet and mend fractured parts and claim more of who they are.
On a retreat, each person is surrounded by a circle of people who witness them with compassionate curiosity. Isolation vanishes, our social nervous system regulates, we connect to neglected emotions, embody more of who we are, and elicit sparks of creativity, gifts within ourselves that we did not know existed.
Sometimes I bring the daughter I mentioned earlier on retreats with me. She currently lacks employment due to her physical disability but this does not mean she is without purpose. Perhaps due to her limited physical vision, her other senses are enhanced with extra sensitivity. She doesn’t miss a human need. She assists our team in subtle yet critical ways.
In a recent candle-lit ceremony, she told me, “Mom that man over there needs me.”
I told her, “Trust your instinct and go to him.”
She crawled across the earth floor and held his hand. Later the middle-aged man told me, “I hadn’t been able to cry in years. She came at the perfect time and gave me exactly what I needed.”
We call her our “professional hugger.”
She is indispensable for times when eyes are often glued to a screen.She is not a stranger to tenderness and the pleasure of seeing someone exactly as they are.
How do you stay with moments of intimacy and not shy away?
I am new here and would love to hear from you in the comments.
How do you help others feel seen, valued, heard, or understood?
How do you ensure a Nana hug that does not make you invisible?
How do you tend your undeniable human need for ‘deep tender seeing?’
What is an indispensable aspect of your day that recognizes your value?
The new moon in Taurus signifies radical energetic shifts alongside the need to anchor your body in stillness.
In this post, I cover key ideas to skillfully harness your internal energetic codes and turn your dreams and visions into a reality.
Set an intention for your personal and planetary best in May.
If you feel like you’ve been working at a demolition site for the past few months, possibly years, you are not alone. We’ve been undergoing an epic collective deconstruction — a purge on many levels. We’ve been healing ancestral trauma, unloading personal baggage, and working hard to be with the excruciating sting of a world on fire.
Old foundations have collapsed.
Chaos will continue to disrupt what isn’t working for life on our planet yet the emotional charge is relaxing, softening, and feels less intense. As a growing conscious collective, more of us are experiencing REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. As a dream therapist, I appreciate the value of REM for our mental well-being.
Our dreams are more vivid; we process the emotional experiences of our day more easily; our nervous system is regulated; problem-solving and creativity are supported.
(I will post more about the healing potential of dreams and the exquisite value of knowing your dream maker soon. Dreams are soul medicine.)
It’s time to dust off the ashes, walk on, and congratulate yourself for navigating volatile currents. You should feel lighter, relieved, and able to clarify your intention for your work, personal life, relationships, health, and most importantly — play.
Hearts are opening and expanding. Momentum is building.
Let yourself feel the excitement for the vision that is emerging before you.
You do not have to live in the rumble.
On April 18th, I returned from a month in the jungle of Peru where I happily subjected myself to a private month-long shedding. I chose isolation without the internet, people, toiletries, hot water, or electricity. A cup of fruit was delivered to my tambo door each morning and a bowl of rice later in the afternoon. My maestro, Ernesto Torres Garcia visited me each day with a prayer, an Ikaro (medicine song), instructions, and a concoction of the specific tree I was dieting.
Once Ernesto left me, I leaped into an ice-cold shower and began my two-hour cycle of breathing exercises with intermittent interruptions of the inevitable purge. The purge isn’t only a head-in-the-bucket moment. We release through every orifice of the body. In the same way, we receive sensations and information through every orifice of the body. Sometimes all at once like an amplified rock concert.
Purging is similar to throwing out a loaf of stale toast. If we keep it, it turns to mold, the mold becomes horrid, spreads and putrefies the entire kitchen. In a few weeks, our dog might eat it and die. Eventually, the kitchen crawls with germs and critters that we must deconstruct and sanitize the ruin.
Kitchens in dreams are a positive sign that we are making new medicine/food to bring into our bodies or to those we care for.
Every time we shed or unload an old narrative, we feel empowered to step into our sovereignty. We can claim and experience the powerful benefits of what is innate to us, recognize more clearly who we are, and what it is like to live from a state of being that is excited about life.
May is a time to shift inner patterns.
The purpose of transitions is always to empower us and make us feel more alive. Growth is not linear. We may be presented with an early childhood pattern. We can ask ourselves, “Am I going to repeat the same pattern?” “Or am I going to step out of an old house and into my power this time around?”
The new moon in Taurus reinforces endings and beginnings.
What intention will you set for the new seed you want to plant in your life?
What is the medicine you wish to bring forth?
Gaia is also going through an upgrade.
Do you have an intention to support the new earth that is evolving?
Things to keep in mind. Taurus doesn’t like surprises or rocking the boat too quickly.
It is important to let our internal environment be still and anchored with deep roots. We focus on operating from a steady center, a space of stillness to which we can always return.
When energy is moving fast or feeling chaotic, we want to know in advance where is the place that supports us to feel centered and grounded.
Is it a walk barefoot on the beach? Star gazing? Gardening? A walk in the forest? Meditating? Journaling? Calling a friend who feels steady and calm?
Landing in an internal place of stability allows us to observe, go slow, and feel safe. We are empowered to make the best of the energetic shifts being offered throughout this time.
Life can be speedy and complex, while at the same time, we can keep our center very solid and still.
Set an intention for yourself
Throw out the stale bread
Step out of the rubble
Return to stillness
Milk the bliss every step of the way
This new moon is about growth and milking the bliss in the aftermath of shedding.
We circled together as a council of women in the lineage of Marion Woodman to receive her teachings through the embodiment of our lead crone Sil Reynolds. For me, it was a re-initiation into the teachings of my first crone teacher Eunice Zimmerman, who was also an exemplary Jungian Analyst like Marion Woodman. Unfortunately, Eunice died before she became well known yet she left an indelible mark on my soul and guided my apprenticeship into the unconscious realms of the psyche through ‘dream work.”
Marion and Eunice knew each other in the 80’s when I had the good fortune of receiving these teachings long before I could understand the profound meaning and depth they contain for bridging the unconscious to the mature feminine consciousness that our world is hungry for.
When we pay attention to our dreams, the unconscious paints a picture that captures our hearts, minds, and imaginations with metaphors that provide us with new information to live our lives by. Dreams are a way that our soul feeds us. Just listening to the voice in a dream is nourishment that gives us the courage to be who we know we are.
We began each day in noble silence to give space for our dreams to speak to us. After breakfast, we gathered in the sunroom to dance in a circle and call in Sophia or whatever name or names resonated with each woman.
“So If you dream of ISIS— fine. If you dream of your Grandmother — Great Grandmother — and she becomes HER — fine. Call her SOPHIA, Call Her ANN, Call Her BUFFALO WOMAN. IT DOESN’T MATTER — Call Her whatever you like.
BUT CALL HER.
If it bothers you, change it. Try not to get stuck on the little things: God, Goddess, Shiva, Shakti, Yang and Yin. We get caught on old words. Call it what you want. But Call Her.” — Marion Woodman
We continued the morning by looking at and witnessing a dream from each woman, one at a time. This took me back to the late 70’s, my early twenties, a time when I was very lost and captive to destructive behaviors that were killing me. I was acting out unconscious archetypes in the form of addiction. Marion and Eunice refer to addiction as soul starvation. Dreamwork is a powerful way to understand the power of a complex before it takes us out. Complexes are disempowering forces — archetypal energy that defeats our willpower and the natural beauty and instinctual nature of the soul.
Of course, when I sat with Eunice on and off for over five years in her blue room, I understood little about the complexities that overshadowed my life. I had taken a few courses in Jungian Psychology but did not know how to apply conceptual knowledge to my life. By working with Eunice I traversed a transformation. We looked at my dreams, she mirrored the images I brought forth, and she witnessed and held me in a safe container that earned my trust and respect. I eagerly attended our sessions, happy to feel addiction and destruction leave my body. I began to inhabit my body, a vessel I ran from and learned not to trust.
This retreat came at the perfect time for me. I’ve been facilitating healing retreats utilizing the tools I have gathered over the years from my lived experience, professional training, and gifted mentors for three decades but my well ran dry. Now it runneth over.
I was at a hard crossroads in my family life. Amid the bitter-sweet reality of tending to adult twins with disabilities and breaking my leg, I encountered a critical initiation. An initiation that forced me to look at any aspect of my life I might have silenced, numbed, walked away from, pretended didn’t matter, believed would work itself out in time, OR forgot to celebrate and say “F…ing well done, Prajna.” In this process, I chose to retreat a bit from my professional life to plan a structure for my twin’s future — to be sure they will be held well in the years to come when I am no longer here. I do not plan on exiting the planet any time soon! I feel fortified to the bone and there is work to do, more to understand and put in place.
This particular retreat named “Exquisite Tenderness” was exactly what I needed to view my life with a wider lens, to weave a golden thread through the undergrowth, to root deep in my body, and to feel how essential it is to join together in person — live with other bodies. An element that is brutally missing in our disconnected cyberspace cubicles.
We need it. We re-anointed ourselves back home — more deep in our bodies. We tended to each other, witnessed, learned, healed, connected, and weaved the golden medicine thread through working with dreams — in subtle body — in conscious awareness. I was re-initiated into the vitality of Marion and Eunice’s Conscious Feminine Teachings as a Rooted Medicine Crone.
This gives my life meaning. I carry this in my bones, together with all I have received from my indigenous mentors and allies. If you choose to work with me, you will experience more of the same for your balanced embodiment and revival of your instinctual nature, and exquisite tender wise soul.
This is Awashonks. A Native American woman who served as chief of the Sakonnet tribe in Seconet, Rhode Island where we just returned from our Exquisite Tenderness retreat at Stonehouse. Our names, hearts, souls, arts, bodies, and social nervous systems were well tended as we called in Sophia and made prayers for the land.
In 1671, Awashonks was among the signers of a peace agreement between a confederation of local tribes and Plymouth Colony. We stand with you and honor your courage, sacrifice, and love.
I am beyond grateful for this retreat and Sil Reynolds who entrusted us: the crones, mothers, virgins, and maidens while receiving her embodied teachings from the lineage of Marion Woodman. The depth of soul is revealed by retrieving dream images, metaphors, poems, dance, land, song, and stories, and witnessing each other in the vitality of remembrance.
Thank you to the Goddess Baubo for so many deep belly laughs with this council of women. I’m still smiling at you.
We acquainted ourselves with Baubo, a figure from Greek mythology, depicted as a comical or grotesque old woman who plays a role in the story of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, and her search for her daughter Persephone that we explored over three days with great fun.
In the myth, Baubo encounters the grieving and distraught Demeter, who has been wandering in search of her Persephone. Baubo attempts to cheer Demeter up by making her laugh. She does so by lifting her skirt and exposing her breasts as her eyes and her vulva as her mouth, in a gesture of bawdy and irreverent humor. Baubo’s action elicits rip-roaring laughter from all of us in the presence of Demeter. Baubo provides moments of comic relief amid tragedy when we need it the most.
Baubo is often interpreted as a symbol of fertility, renewal, and the power of laughter and humor to bring comfort and healing in times of sorrow. Her role in the Eleusinian Mysteries underscores the connection between humor, sexuality, and the cycles of life and death in ancient Greek religious beliefs.
It is so healing and necessary to laugh again and again.
This is one of the aspects of my retreats that I love the most — the way we get to be silly, come out of hiding, and isolation, wash away shame and denial, and so much that enlivens us to be true to who we are. Life becomes a cosmic celebration of all the parts of who we are — not just the light. If we only look in the light, we miss the messy, muddy middle that gives the totality of life strength and meaning.
This replaces painful patriarchal imprints with exquisite wonder that weaves the tender underbelly of life together again and again. it is not enough to gain power. The real work is to bring our feminine values along with us. By doing so, we change how power is negotiated and understood in the over culture or physical world.
For more information and to book an Exquisite Healing Retreat with Prajna, click here.
You are invited to attend an information session as listed below:
I greet you with care. It is not too often that I send out a second email unless it feels important. It does and I will tell you why in three parts.
First, we are shifting into a time that is brimming with possibilities and transformative energies. How do I know this?
I feel it within and all around me. Mother Earth is calling.
Waters are raging. Mountains are shaking. Fires are burning. Slugginess is melting. Creative functions are full-on, restructuring us and reframing our view. Songs are being sung. Fewer bodies are being killed at least in Gaza (more on this below). The earth is simmering. Joy is rising. Or at least trying.
This is a time to plant seeds and give ample consideration to your inner nest — to cultivate fortitude.
With that said, I warmly invite you to an upcoming retreat to rekindle your inner fire, receive exquisite rest, and connect deeply with who you are — live — in an intimate dynamic and compassionate curative care community.
The local and East Coast events will be posted after I return from my first Crone retreat and work in Peru.
I began learning, healing, and working in Peru with amazing indigenous mentors fifteen years ago. I have many stories to tell and a heart brimming with appreciation and honor for this healthcare system. Suffice it to say, that the jungle is where I feel most at home.
Second, life is a risk… We are all part of the life, death, birth cycle … the only continuous certainty that we have… is living and dying — portals I find intriguing and love to explore, especially the “muddy middle.’
Let me continue…
I get we are more sensitive, distracted, divided, and overstretched than we wish to be.
Or maybe we’ve been forced, pulled inside — invited to reckon with huge horrendous issues for a reason (not the first time).
Our bandwidth is limited. I know this. I perseverate each time I send an email ‘Will it be one too many? Will I meet your heart? Will my intentions be felt? (Part 3)
It takes courage to speak out, to talk about violence, to have an opinion, to challenge the status quo, to get out of bed when you’d rather pull the covers over your head and hope someone else will take out the trash, do the laundry, change the diapers. Or that nothing is wrong, nothing bad has happened, is happening, and say ‘This too shall pass.’
My favorite is when someone close sees the desperate state you are in and rather than call for help, offer you a warm blanket, an extra hand, or something good to eat, says, “I’ll pray for you,” and walks on.
Or something like “We are bliss incarnate,” Remember, so and so said so, therefore don’t ask questions.
Or “Time to get over it.”
Words filled with good intentions, probably, but bypassing deep feelings isn’t satisfactory until we get under something and traverse the muddy middle, where we’re replenished to move on — changed — but we never forget.
Our scars become banners of honor like our wrinkles.
I often receive notes of appreciation for my newsletter,
“That was exactly what I needed to hear,” “I cried and laughed through it all, thank you!” Or “More of that.”
And of course, I get unsubscribed — it can’t be helped. We can only take in so much.
As my message and work evolve, so does everyone else. I applaud this.
My last news was no exception. The Three Secrets of the Crone centered oddities as gifts to be cherished not pathologized. This was well-received.
Then I opened this, which begs the question “Am I being complicit?
“You may respond in the comments. This is a complicated, scary, and tender topic. Let me have it and remember to shower yourself with kindness before responding.
The subject line read: “Current affairs / currency / white supremacy”
With wonder and bewilderment, I opened it. It was from a white woman.
It said, “No word about genocide(s)?
Disappointing.
Whilst thousands of black and brown people’s lives are being snuffed out by imperialist powers using our tax dollars and pounds, we have a duty to speak up and raise awareness. They need our support. They are begging for our help. Staying silent is to be complicit in these heinous acts of violence and domination.
Not even one sentence… 🙁 ”
Long pause. I went into a deep process. I felt happy for the generous probe.
I attempted to respond by video twice but was still in the muddy middle so I didn’t upload it, nor have I climbed out of the mud.
I’ve been in this muddy middle since October 21, 1996.
This is part of what went through my system:
Genocide has been happening for thousands of years in the heinous acts of violence and domination against women and anyone who appears different from the colonized projection of the white human — they become marginalized — pathologized — abnormalized — criminalized — stigmatized — traumatized — brutalized — horrified to live and usually don’t.
It struck a nerve, an all too familiar nerve. As a white female born into a large Irish Catholic family that did not go from rags to riches — I have had and seen my share of patriarchal violence and cultural deprivation.
I thought, okay, does this mean every time a doctor or surgeon who has taken an oath “First Do No Harm” and instead dominates — powers over a woman’s body at birth, and all the stages of her natural life until death do her in — for economic postural gains — as we do nothing, not a peep, silence…
Are we being complicit?
Does this mean that every time a person does not speak up against the industrial medical complex when babies are being ripped out of their mothers’ bodies at a pound or less and handed over to mama in bandages, with tubes, drugs, commercial formulas, and oxygen fixings that mask — pretend the surgery was a success.
And say not even a whisper, are they/we being complicit?
About my captivity to the industrial medical complex that decided without my consent — against my instincts — to C-section my babies out of me at one pound each.
Was my midwife, her assistant, their father, or myself being complicit when we didn’t storm the doors and hijack ourselves to safety?
And of course, the people who swarmed around my body with blue masks, gloves, eager eyes, and knives — what about them?
No, my voice and my body were ignored.
We (me, and my three girls) live with the consequences of that heinous act of violence for life, every day, awake or not. Thousands of people have read my book, only a few said to me, “I am sorry that happened to you.”
Most feel a complex mixture of emotions: anger, inspiration, courage, and tickles from bubbles of humor.
How do you respond when faced with a horrific story of violence?
Usually, we find a way to numb ourselves from the outright shock of it all. (consciously or unconsciously)
Maybe that is why it is so hard for people to submit their reviews about our story.
We don’t want to believe these things happen to women and babies in hospitals every day all over the world. Like me, we believe it will never happen to us until it does.
Does it require forming an opinion/speaking up?
We’re not trained to have difficult conversations, to ask critical questions, to storm the predatorial corridors of life to halt bad behavior.
Yet, we’re here and we’re prey and our learning requires more than ‘pray.’
And we can halt the inner predator.
We have a ways to go.
Take for example Marianne Williamson who is putting her heart and soul out once again for president of the US, and meeting all sorts of violence. A woman attuned to her heart, tax dollars, guns and violence, and what it feels like to be a woman striving to do the right thing for a world on fire.
I could have filed a lawsuit and went to battle with a stack of Stanford lawyers.
Would I have won anything?
Would I have been able to bring my babies to play at the beach?
Would I have been able to stitch my babies back into my womb so they could continue their uncomplicated journey before interventions?
Would we be like “normal’ people?
Would it have been better to fight for a life I was never going to get back?
I chose to focus on being a ‘good enough’ mother to my children.
Of course, it destroyed my hopes and dreams for them and our family for life.
Do I wish for something different?
Of course, I do.
But I have what I have and I decided to nurture what I have and not to pathologize my children and feed the medical industry by accepting their prognosis — drugs — coma-inducing trances of control.
I’m feeding my inner life. No one can take this from you or me. Guaranteed!
KNOW THEIR NAMES:
Elizabeth Joy (Libby) 1.4 pounds at birth, came home in a coma.
Abigayle Rose (Abby), 1.2 pounds at birth.
Abby had eight surgeries at one pound and defied all prognoses. She learned to walk at age six. She’s a dancer, artist and brilliant.
I am a proud mama.
They are small and mighty!
And they tickle me with delight every day. They remind me how precious, tender and exquisite life is, and not to waste one bit of it telling people what they should or should not be doing until you walk a mile in their shoes or roll around a mile in their wheelchair in an abled body world.
If you are new to my work or my newsletters, I want to remind you that I care about many things and have the bandwidth to focus on a few.
Third part: The motivation for anything I share in my news is not solely the wish for each of us to be creatively inspired to live rich soulful happy lives. My longing is that each of us feels — roots home — within ourselves — enough to have ease and power to feed the children — inner and outer. As there are always children in need, many strutting around in adult bodies armed with toys of destruction.
I’m passionate about exploring how we mend ourselves enough to trust our instinctive heart— soul— body — to sense, listen and have the courage and confidence to do the next best thing.
I like to explore listening deep beneath the noise — enough — to gather enough resources to consider the great suffering of others and the fragile state of the world — our great Earth Mother.
As we root out our destructive habits, we are simultaneously shifting our collective consciousness — our Earth Body. Awakening is not a one-way ticket, a box you check off, a one-size meal, or a final destination; it is inherently interwoven with an awakening planet.
Awakening is cyclical and begins with us shedding attitudes, behaviors, projections, and belief systems that shadow the mighty song in our hearts and deaden our souls, and the wombs that birthed us. Life has given all of us a good rumble, for some it is a fierce roar that is a force that moves mountains. For others, it is a whisper that nudges us to rest and nourish our inner nest.
And everything in between, along the way, here and there, and now.
I’m no longer driven to perfection, transcendence, or anything else that deflects from the duty that is directly in front of me. I had my half-awake, half-asleep journey through stagnant transcendent male-dominated spiritual cults. I’ve extricated myself from patriarchal dogmas that at one time seemed attractive, maybe even convenient but don’t feed the children. I’ve accepted that I am enough — doing enough — is enough of a — good sister, citizen, mother, crone.
No apologies, my friend. I earned my medicine. I see best in the dark.
And I’m not done reflecting, maturing, integrating, and growing my heart — soul — badass muscles. If you’re reading this blog, you may be a bit like me — scanning, tracking, and prowling from the muddy middle, never going along for the ride with windows and doors shut. We are protectors and we are prey. Our eyes are wide open, and it’s a bit scary to look at devastation head-on. And we must as this is how we contain the predator with nourishment other than his appetite for children.
Life is alive and brimming over with possibilities for our attention — our one precious life. I know you did not wake up yesterday.
Yes!
Cease—fire, cease—interventions, cease—needles, cease—control, cease—abandoning your inner nest—cease—believing that destructive forces will end if your inner life is barren.
Life matters and it begins with how we birth life — in ourselves — each other, and attend to our dear Earth Mother.
A mentor and good friend of mine Adyashanti used to say something to the effect of — rather than be disappointed, look where you are pointing and turn that finger back to the pointer — appoint yourself. And remember we’re all in this together — together we are stronger.
Thank you for showing up here. I appreciate you!
Learn More About Prajna’s Life-Giving Retreats Here.
