Intro to Conversations with Women of the Collective Matrix- Loving Mothe...

Ancestors- elemental and human- we all are

My body as flowing, living waters. Myself as birthing waters. My connection to Mother Earth through my cervix portal. I am studying with Phyllis Bala, from Sacred Ground in Occidental, CA- a mystical, womb place in the midst of the Northern California redwoods. She is guiding me to an understanding of her Medicine Wheel Program.

I feel an interior journey is taking precedence now on my path- rather than creating events, forming an organization or holding activist campaigns. Ever since my workshop in August, 2013 on Reclaiming our Maternal Lines to our Ancestors, Mother Earth and Future Generations, Womens Sacred Work for the Present Generation, I have been investigating more having to do with my lineage ancestors and the ancestral elemental forces in my body. I have learned that my Conquistador Ancestors- Vallejos- were Converso Sephardi Jews in Spain and after they came to the New World in the 1490s were also mulatto and mestizo.

I have been imagining my connection to so many people, up through marriages, births, grandmothers, grandfathers- all my relations- participating in the full elements that have nurtured those ancestors. I contain all that history and there are some ancestral stories that need to be reconciled in this current world, I believe. And I may be a vehicle to help with that, how I am not sure, but certainly my work with EcoBirth is connected somehow with this realization.

I am learning that connecting to my core-heart and uterus and spine- helps me to get out of my whirling mind to an understanding of what I am really made of, who I really am, from my gut not my intellect. And I am a collection of all those stories, actions, places, environments- heartbreak and ecstasy since the beginning of time.  We all are this.

I connect to women who have the same bodily features that open to our Mother Earth- I call it the Womens Collective Matrix. But I also look to balance my grandfathers and my grandmothers, the masculine and feminine, the Earth and Sky, erasing the division, duality, dichotomy. To become integrated, whole and a healing agent for our world and for our ancestors and for the future generations- this is my intention. May I be blessed by the Ancestors and may I become a Beloved Ancestor for my descendants, who live in a healthy, thriving, beautiful world for thousands of generations to come.

Our bodies as Commons, Womens Collective Matrix

January 16, 2014

Two wonderful connections this morning- with Women's Congress for Future Generations and TreeSisters: women seeding change. 

We are converging in our hearts and philosophies, understanding that women, as first environments, life-givers, have a responsibility to first No Longer Give Consent to what is life-destructive. Which leads to an understanding of Prior and Informed Consent- like choosing how to birth, like preventing involuntary toxins in our bodies that are passed onto the future generations, like claiming the commons for our communities and planting trees. 

Our bodies are Commons, not really our own, made up of all the earths elements that we ingest continuously- its air in our lungs, its water, its harvest- our Mother Earth's bounty. And our ancestors lives and environments from the first starburst. We are intimate and embodied, but not private, not for sale, actually priceless! Sacred and holy. We have authority to consent or not to how our world is being run. I claim this, i embody this, i inherited this, i pass this on to my precious children. I do not consent to poisoning our world, I do not consent to oppression, suppression, detachment. I grieve these ruinations and acknowledge them and stand  up to them.

I have such a strong feeling of the collective movement of women recognizing their authority in this harsh, beautiful world and that connection, network, matrix is pulsing, growing, palpable. We are a part of this extraordinary time and story. I ask women in my life if they feel this, invariably YES. We have done so much individual work, now we can join each other for the beautiful world we want.  For ourselves, for all life, for our Mother Earth, for the Future Generations.

EcoBirth -Three Dimensions of Women’s Sacred Work for The Great Turning

July 2013

EcoBirth -Three Dimensions of Women’s Sacred Work for The Great Turning

    1-Actions to slow the damage to Earth and its beings

a.       Birth revolution-inherent right to birth options

b.      Reproductive rights-motherbaby is the only one who can decide

c.       Preconception, prenatal and perinatal care- supported and resourced

d.      Violence against women-domestic, systemic, harassment, equitable work-restorative justice for womens bodies

e.      GMOs- ban them from poisoning our food

f.        Fracking-stop the poisoning or our water and air

g.       Nuclear waste-in our midst – what do now?

2-      Analysis of structural causes and the creation of structural alternatives

a.       How the present Industrial Growth Society works against women

b.      Long lineage of women’s oppression in history-understanding the cellular level of memory in our bodies

c.       What are the oppressive systems now? State control of our reproductive capabilities, global poisoning of our bodies passed onto our children, medical lack of women-centered care, inequitable work wages and opportunities, authoritarianism, violence against women on all levels of society

d.      Structural alternatives-

                                                               i.      Guardianship of Future Generations, 

                                                             ii.      Womens Congress for Future Generations Convening Conversations outreach

                                                            iii.      UN Commission on Status of Women.

                                                           iv.      Intentional communities like Canticle Farm

                                                             v.      Indigenous and holistic medicine

                                                           vi.      New economics that value womens work

                                                          vii.      Community rights vs individual rights

3-      Shift in Consciousness

a.       Paradigm shift from Fight or Flight to Tend and Befriend

b.      Reclaiming of Women’s wisdom and intuition

c.       Feel the collective grief held in our bodies

d.      Healing our bodies and ourselves and therefore Future Generations

e.      Deep Womb Ecology

                                                               i.      Reclaiming our Maternal lines to our Mother Earth, our Ancestors and Future Generations

                                                             ii.      Women’s sacred work toward healing the Present Generation

Reclaiming our Maternal Lines with Mother Earth, our Ancestors and Future Generations,Women’s sacred work towards healing the Present Generation

June 2013

Reclaiming our Maternal Lines with Mother Earth, our Ancestors and Future Generations

Women’s sacred work towards healing the Present Generation

We are the embodiment of our ancestors and the future generations. We are the present and all the history before and all the history after and the first lifeforce is still in us. Our maternal lines extend to the stuff of stars. We women are the carriers of this lifeforce, create the divine in our bodies-in our wombs. Now we eat from our Mother Earth to form ourselves. We do not realize from what we are created, but it is sacred. We are grief stricken with our acts of evil and separation thru the centuries. We have destroyed that living creation-our earth, air, water-ourselves, we intimately feel this because it is in our embodied cellular level and existential on a cosmological level. We deny ours and the world’s suffering and pain, it is too overwhelming- and we have the illusion that we can avoid it with our efforts at control which becomes pathological addiction and self-idolatry.  

Our hell is the belief in the separation from our holy, unbroken lineage. And women’s particular hell is that we cannot protect ourselves and our babies. Our heaven is knowing that we are here, now, and faithfully it is good- with praise and glory, joy and beauty. We can attempt to understand the sacred compassion that surrounds us, like our mother’s pure womb and the freely given harvests from our Mother Earth. We have free will, but no possibility of certainty. Like birth labor- we must surrender and open with conscious will to create the pathway for life to come forth- our model for living right. It is active surrender to our divine calling, our lineage place and our presence now. We can live consecrated lives and can choose compassion, which is not being afraid of our suffering and the world’s. We can understand that the only way to live is with tending and befriending, caring and nurturance. 

Follow the feminine wisdom, held deeply inside women that is connected to the natural cosmic world in its rhythms, movement, fecund darkness. Help us reclaim our motherforce, our lineage, our motherbaby reverence, our self love. We are the connection of the past and the future and the only way things can get done today- for the better. We must reclaim who we are, heal our core wound of separateness and live the nurturance of compassion. Then we can live with moral authority, with integrity to repair what has been destroyed in ourselves and our world. Working in common, together, in relationship. We will be purified Guardians of passion, love and peace. We will give love so others can Be Loved. We will become Beloved Ancestors and our children to the many generations will be Beloved. With courage, heart, fierce protectiveness, we can heal the world and live lives of meaning.

My granddaughters and the world they will grow up in

May 2013

I am thinking back to when my two granddaughters were growing in my daughter-in-laws womb, two and half years ago. I did not have the physical, embodied relationship with them that I had with my two children. But when they came into this realm, I was immediately different too- a grandmother. Our relationship is immutable, unchangeable- although I had chosen to be called Granmo, their easiest first word for me was Mimi and I love being acknowledged by a name that was given to me by the two most precious people in my life now.

I know that they were seeds growing in the dark, protective womb of their mother which held all that they needed -somehow their spark of life happened, through love, I believe. But there is the biology of it too, that manifests this mysterious life force. And this biology can be affected by outside forces, not by the conscious will of their mother, nor by any truly rational choices of our culture but actually influenced by our place and time and environment.

I believe this changeable biology creates a responsibility on me, because I would never want an action that I do to harm my grandchildren. But I know I have done harmful things and continue to do them. I realize that how I live on this earth is what my granddaughters will inherit.  I understand that my relationship with my all-encompassing Mother Earth somehow is immutable too, just like my relationship with my granddaughters. And I feel that my Mother Earth, who holds and nurtures and feeds me, is beneficent. She would not want to harm either, yet she accepts what is happening to her, with involuntary surrender.

So, I have some real opinions about what is safe in this toxic world for my granddaughters, but I am conscious of the delicate dance with my daughter-in-law of being helpful, not pushy, supportive but not being a know-it-all; at the same time understanding that I have a unique relationship with these new creatures, that confers a particular joy and responsibility that only I have. I could give details about the flame retardants in the nursing pillows, the lead in the bedroom paint and tap water, the hormone disruptors in the plastic toys and diaper rash lotion, the toxic gmo’s in the processed food, the EMF’s from the video monitor, the …. Whew… it is really hard to not be in charge and control. I know the most important thing is to keep in relationship with my daughter-in-law, so I can be close to my granddaughters, so I am very judicious about what I say, when. But it can be an ache in my heart that I relieve by working to change this world to be safer, cleaner and healthier. My work with EcoBirth-Women for Earth and Birth is a part of my mission to do that. Come join me and our wonderful group of mothers to create a better world for our children and grandchildren: they will want to know what we have done, since we knew how important it was to prevent the harm that they are inheriting. I want to be a Beloved Ancestor for them- I know you would too! We can make our world better together- mothers are a dynamic force whose fierce protectiveness can be so effective and powerful- be a part of our work now, creating a loving and caring legacy!