Women Awakening: Healing & Reclaiming Your Power

A celebratory moment at the end of Women Awakening with a few of the other co-creators: Angelica Robinson, Marimar Higgins and Jill Mullenhauer

We were in Mexico City a few weeks ago applying for our citizenship, and last weekend, I was deeply engrossed in Women Awakening, an annual women's summit, of which I am also a co-creator. I haven’t been able to keep up many of my usual practices, including sitting down and writing to you.

I love the reflective nature of Sundays--that slow transition from the weekend to the beginning of a new week. I used to get the Sunday blues when I was in school, or had an office job. The transition between day and night also used to bring me down as well. But now I have a whole new relationship to Sundays and Twilight. I have learned to stay present through the transition, which is usually a time we choose to check out of. I have discovered much complexity in those moments when one thing transforms into another. This experience is good for art, reflection, tuning in to inner guidance, meditation. Maybe this is part of why we are so drawn to sunsets, in addition to their dazzling beauty. Sunsets invite us to embrace change.

For some strange reason, I love transformation. I am hooked on change. I like to change my identity, my hair, my work, my mind, my life. It’s life as art. I love witnessing and facilitating change in others. It's so beautiful to help people discover and express themselves. I see everything as malleable, transmutable, workable-with. Even our selves—our pesky little identities and egos, and attachments, and all the rest—these are forever able to be created, re-invented. 

This is why I believe so profoundly in creativity—because it’s what allows us to evolve. Our ability to create ourselves, our lives, our cultures—this is how we evolve. We are consciously participating in the direction of the stream of life. And change—that is at the epicenter for life itself. Everything is always changing. That is the one thing that stays the same. And the sooner we can accept this, the sooner we can jump in the stream of life with the courage of a hero/ine, with our hearts open and our minds aware.

Last weekend, at Women Awakening, I felt like I was at the epicenter of where healing and change happens. I had heard some feedback from some of the participants that they had expected the weekend to be more about empowerment and less about healing. The theme of this’ years summit was Reclaiming Your Power. I see healing as having everything to do with reclaiming your power.

The heroine’s journey is partially a journey of healing. That healing is the key to our empowerment. I see empowerment as taking responsibility for yourself. And only through knowing and healing ourselves can we love ourselves enough to face our whole selves, shadow and all. I believe it's no accident that there was a big focus on healing--as women, as a collective, and individuals, we have a lot of healing to do. This doesn't mean we can't fight for justice, or create change in the external world, but I believe we need to know who we are before we can point our fingers at others. In my feminism, having a robust and loving inner emotional life is key to being successful at this group project of returning girls, women and the divine feminine back to its rightful and equal place in the universe. Through embracing our wholeness, we can reflect the power of the divine feminine to world. The divine feminine: intuition, emotion, healing, feeling, receiving, being, holding. 

I know this is my impartial perspective, as a healer, but it is also my perspective as a woman who has spent a lifetime healing. We have kept the idea that we need to be healed in the dark. And that’s partly why we are still in need of healing. Of course all humans are in need of healing, not just women. But women have a particular kind of healing and cure that happens in togetherness, with each other. In connection, community, collaboration, cooperation. All the words that start with 'co'. In order to become whole again, as Woman, and as Women, we need each other. We need to see and mirror each other. Even in our imperfections. Especially in our imperfections. We need not to isolate and say to ourselves: I must go it alone. The more we reach out to each other, the more we will feel held, ourselves.

This was the experience I had last weekend at Women Awakening: I held, and felt held, as I shared my presentation and workshop on owning your shadow. I saw a room full of women hungry for a compassionate space to look at, feel into and talk about their shadows. All of us with different shadows, and yet all of us sharing the collective shadow of Power. A part of us that we reclaiming collectively. I believe that because of the collectively destruction towards girls, women and The Feminine, for thousands of years, we all share an unconscious collective experience of being marginalized, violated, or otherwise oppressed, simply because of our gender or sex. This is a wound we all share, whether we are conscious of it or not. And to pretend it’s not there is to keep the wound festering, never to see the light of day. This wound is power. I have spent a lifetime studying power, and learning how to take power. It isn't easy. And there's still a lot of work to be done. It's not all up to women, but it starts with us. It starts with our felt experience.

I gave my talk on shadow for that reason: to create the opportunity for us to bravely and collectively shed our spotlights on that which we prefer to keep hidden, lest we be ostracized from society. We are right to fear that banishment—the risk of speaking up or going against the grain has dire consequences for most of us, on every level imaginable. As a woman, showing your shadow material—your flaws, your ego, your wildness, your selfishness, is a fucking brave act. Women and girls are strongly encouraged not to let our imperfections show. To love all of our selves--that is our revolution.

For my shadow workshop, I decided not to use notes to give my presentation—other than using my hand out. It was exhilarating, to be that present. I wanted to trust that what I needed to say would come out with written words to rely on. The workshop flowed. This was because of the amazing energy and contribution of the group—all I had to do was channel the energy, and then get out of the way. (Plus many years of thinking and writing on the topic.) We ended in a circle where we each expressed two opposite truths about ourselves—one expressing our shadow, the other expressing our persona, or ego. I was so moved to witness and be part of a circle of women who each expressed both a a personal truth and universal truth. The circle held each of us, as individuals and all of us, as women. It was stunning to behold.

There were countless powerful moments for me from Women Awakening—some that come to mind right now: having the opportunity to collaborate in teaching a yoga and movement class with my friend/collaborator/teacher/student Marimar, and then to witness the women again, expressing their uniqueness, while held in a universal connection. I also loved receiving an intensive Spanish lesson through listening to the Spanish and English spontaneous translations. As co-creators of the event we were given the tremendous honor of first receiving the Munay Ki Rite of the Womb and Bands of Power and then giving those sacred rites to the other women, who in turn, are now empowered to give it to others, as well. I loved the eye-opening talk on the yoni, and receiving a new vocabulary and permission to harness the power of my sexuality. Meeting new amazing women who have travelled from far to share their gifts. One surprise moment stands out: hearing Marisol of La Santa Cecilia sing and bless my new ukelele with her compelling voice at an evening gathering. To bring it full circle, the song she sang was called Todo Cambia and it was about how we need to learn to embrace change because everything is always changing.

Even if you didn't have the chance to participate in Women Awakening, I want you to know that you were thought of that weekend. We held you in our hearts. The healing and empowerment that took place is reverberating out to all the circles we are connected with. Not only women and girls, but men and boys, too. Awakening is contagious, and it is happening all over the planet. Each of us has a part in this. Each of us has the power to transform even our most traumatic experiences into gifts to be given to others.  

Empowerment is about taking responsibility for your self. For your actions, your emotions, your dreams, your soul work. In order to take responsibility, in order to find our power, we must first heal. We must look within at our darkest parts. We must face our fears. We must get really really comfy with all our selves and find compassion, humor and healthy expression. We are all in this human project together and no one has it all figured it out. Right alongside of vulnerability is power. We cannot have one with out the other. I will never stop shouting (or singing) this message from the rooftops. I was born to do this work, and this work is what made me see what work is mine to be done.

This is the hero/heroine’s journey. The journey of healing, of becoming whole, as individuals, as a society and as a planet. There is so much suffering on this planet. True. But there has always been suffering. Now, with all the collective awakening, and especially all the women who are awakening to our witchy, feminine, intuitive, wild, instinctive, creative powers, we have the unique opportunity to shed light on all the darkness of our collective human experience. The violence and the greed and the apathy are being seen like never before. We are shining our lights on these age-old shadows, and this is transforming the people and the planet. Let us keep doing the brave work, the hard work, but also the richly rewarding, creative and even fun, work, of going within. To love all of our selves with the understanding that all that exists in the macrocosm exists in the microcosm. Let us join together with open hearts and open minds, supporting each other, instead of being divisive and blaming and pretending that we have nothing to work on, nothing to transform or heal. As the Buddha said: “Drive All Arrows Into The Self”

Love & Power Unite. 

Amen. Aho. Namaste. Fuck Yeah. And all the rest.

Expressive Arts Therapy: Making Art Out of Trouble

ZOELAB DAY 57

For three years I went to graduate school for counseling psychology, focusing on Expressive Arts Therapy. Outside the field of psychology, expressive arts therapy is the natural impulse to transform our suffering by turning it into art. I have witnessed this impulse in the work of famous artists, outsider artists, and children. For people who don’t discover this process on their own, there are expressive arts therapists, who are trained to help people to develop a new relationship to their troubles, and to make use of their inner resource of creativity for healing, transformation and growth.

In Freudian terms, this is the use of the mature psychological defense called sublimation. We sublimate or channel the sexual and aggressive drives of the id into something constructive. It is a positive use of psychic energy.

Jung thought Freud got it wrong, he saw sublimation as a mystical alchemical process of transformation: “Sublimation is part of the royal art where the true gold is made... This is just about the opposite of what Freud understands by sublimation. It is not a voluntary and forcible channeling of instinct into a spurious field of application, but an alchemical transformation for which fire and prima materia are needed. Sublimatio is a great mystery.”

Sanford Meisner, the great acting teacher, whose methods I studied for several years, put it this way: “All of us have two barrels inside us. The first barrel is the one that contains all of the juices which are exuded by our troubles. That’s the neurotic barrel. But right next to it stands the second barrel, and by a process of seepage like osmosis, some of the troubles in the first barrel get into the second, and by a miracle that nobody fully understands, those juices have been transformed into the ability to paint, to compose, to write, to play music and the ability to act. So essentially our talent is made up out of our transformed troubles…. I’d always thought that two of the luckiest, happiest people I could imagine were Shakespeare and Beethoven, but the doctor to whom I told this parable said, ‘No, no. Shakespeare had plenty of trouble—that is, neurosis—and so did Beethoven,’ and he pointed out some of their more obvious troubles. This proved to me that the osmosis between the barrels doesn’t work completely. There is always some juice in the trouble barrel, no matter how full the talent barrel is. The trouble cannot transpose itself into talent without leaving some residue behind, even in the most talented of human beings.”

This is how I would put it: the deepest wounds in us, the ones that show up for us in every day in a myriad of ways, leave a longing to be healed, and they can only be healed by us. We can have guidance and help, of course, from a counselor, friends, family, but only we can truly heal ourselves. This is why I teach the expressive arts. I teach people how to heal themselves, instead of thinking that I can heal them. And we heal ourselves through our creativity, through our interactions with our world, through being present, curious and compassionate. The arts lend themselves so beautifully to cultivating these very qualities, the conditions for healing. We have been created brilliantly, with the tools for healing built into us. When we use these inner resourses while engaging with the most elemental forms of human expression: dance, song, storytelling & drawing, we enter a new relationship with ourselves, where we allow ourselves to feel more, and see that we have choice in how we respond to our pain.

Why all of these arts and not just one?

Because each art form represents a certain part of us. Music calls in our sense of hearing. Dance tunes us into our body. Visual art awakens imagination and sight. Storytelling or writing creates meaning, illuminating our human purpose. Drama shows us new ways of being in the world, gives us access to our different selves.  We can also build on these basic art forms with digital arts, film and theater. There are also many other art forms that could be added to this list: gardening, martial arts, cooking, etc. The ones I work with are considered “the expressive arts,” which means they are designed for human expression. We can express ourselves in any art form, but the expressive arts are the most elemental, the most hard-wired into the human system. With the expressive arts, we need only a few external tools: a pencil and a piece of paper, or maybe a musical instrument, but most of all we are working with ourselves: our body, our soul, our mind and our heart. Through contacting our own humanity we magically remake our wounds into art.

To end this post, I want to share a list of my favorite films that illustrate the power of art to heal while at the same time transform suffering into something beautiful and true. If you have one to add to the list please add it in the comments section.

Inspiring Films about the Transformation of Suffering into Art

Rize

(about youth discovering dance (crumping and clowning)

to rise above social and economic oppression)

Born into Brothels

(about the children of Indian prostitutes

using photography to create beauty out of their lives.)

Frida

(about the power of painting to transform

a woman’s emotional and physical suffering)

American Splendor

(about the power of comic book making to

transform a man’s emotional and physical suffering)

Slam

(about the power of spoken word poetry to rise above

social and economic hardship)

Her Master's Voice

(about a female ventriloquist's journey towards her self)

Eleven Years

ZOELAB DAY 11

It was one of those days where you remember where you were, what you were doing, who you were with. Eleven years ago today: it was a few minutes after 9 AM, and I was coming out of the 2/3 Wall Street Subway stop and I looked up and noticed pieces of paper falling through the bright blue sky. It was a surprising sight. I continued to walk as I looked up. I thought maybe the paper was ticker tape, related to the mayoral democratic primary that was to happen that day. But somehow, I also knew that it wasn’t. That it meant something different. I thought to myself “I’ll always remember this moment,” not knowing what it could possibly mean. I arrived to my building, 120 Wall Street. The building was an anomaly, the non-profit building of Wall Street. I found out later by pure coincidence I had two friends who worked also at two different offices in that building. As I entered, it became clear that something was going on. Someone was crying in the elevator. Once I got to my office, the headquarters of the organization Jewish Child Care Association, I found out what had just happened. A plane had hit the World Trade Center. How could that be true? It seemed impossible. We turned on the television. It was true, and then another one hit. And then one collapsed. And then the other one collapsed. Each one was unbelievable all over again. Panic hit me. I got a few phone calls from friends and from my mom to check to see if I was okay. Looking out the windows, the streets were covered in gray ash. People ran into the lobby of our building to take refuge. No one knew where it was safe to be. Nowhere felt safe. I couldn’t decide what to do, where to go. Should I go downstairs? Should I go home? It seemed absolutely wrong to go outside, to walk over the bridge, back to Brooklyn. And yet, after hours of waiting, a small group of people from my office convinced me to walk over the bridge with them. It didn’t seem like a good idea, the bridge felt like a target, and yet, what else could I do? My cousin called, who was in Brooklyn, and he agreed to pick me up on his Vespa on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge. I walked in my small group, thousands of others were walking too, making our pilgrimage to the bridge. Everything was covered in the gray ash. We walked slowly. There were no cars. We made it to the other side. My cousin was there, and rode me home to my uncle’s house, where his wife was waiting with pasta and wine. We all drank and talked manically. I slept at their house that night, in the basement apartment. It was best not to be alone. When I woke up the next morning, the nightmare was still inside me. It was a collective nightmare. Some lived it much more closely and still do. Everyone looked for love wherever they could find it.

Several days later I wrote this:

Finally a place to rest my weary decade-ridden head. I rise and wait for further cities to burn. But we all hear the same song. I don’t mind if you sing, but please remember to drink clean water and not to blame time. Time is always the same. I thought I was born in the wrong time: time (who is older) has proven me wrong.

I am older this week. I am centuries old. Like the rabbi said, I see the face of god in the faces on the subway. The space around them shrinks and turns gray, towards history. But the faces have the colors that painters see. The faces show that our hearts have expanded to show how death has always been part of us. We are older now, but really, we have always been older. We just didn’t see a use for it. Now we have many uses: to walk, to light candles, to dig, to share our own blood, to sing old songs, to embrace ourselves by embracing others.

I am swollen with grief but I am alive. I burst daily in little ways. I try not to hide from the symbols that alienate me. I try to look beyond symbols,beyond unnatural boundaries, beyond fearful unity. I look instead for truth. Every symbol contains a lie. That is natural. But what is left that does not contain a lie? A tree. A dog. A sister. A dance. An office. Perhaps all things contain lies, but to see purely is to see myself in the face of the world. Whether it is ugly or beautiful. All things are both ugly and beautiful. That is truth. We knew this before and now we realize this. I realize this: to be useful takes me on a journey. At one time, I felt my life was stagnant and I was stuck under heavy fallen walls. Now I see that every moment can be a journey and those walls are fear of those journeys.

At a time like this people feel humble. They feel they have suffered less than others, they feel their words and actions are inadequate. People even feel guilty, ashamed of having any petty thoughts, any thoughts other than thoughts of victims. I say it is a time to be as big as possible. To appreciate the words and thoughts and art and breath and life we do have. To say I am not humble, I am human. Anything we do can be important, if we do it with care, thought, truth, strength, courage, love... there are so many people in this world, we all count for something. Unspeakable acts have happened before and they will happen again. It is time to start realizing how our actions affect others, even those who live in other countries who speak other languages who believe different ideologies. It is time not to shrink, but to expand. The more we expand as people, the more people will remember what is to be human. At a time like this, people feel sentimental, they generalize in order to feel better, in order make sense. People are ready to rush to judgement; they call others evil; I don't think I believe in evil. I think I'd rather believe in something a little more human. Evil relates to god, to the devil or god's enemy. It is hard for me to find solace in god at a time like this I know that others need that, and that is fine. But I hope that their connection with God eventually leads them to other beings here on earth. I hope religious leaders are able to help people with that connection. God is important in the way all things are important: plants, humans, dogs, houses, mountains, dirt. If we see god in these things that is fine. But if we see only evil in other human beings then we don't understand them. We have failed to try to educate ourselves. I hope that everyone feels the joy and beauty as well as responsibility of being a person born on earth. I hope everyone who is fortunate enough to have access to education and communication takes advantage of these blessings and passes them on in whatever way they can. The way in which they choose to pass on their humanity, that is the joy and beauty of life, the importance of this act, that is the responsibility of being human.