Nancy Lankston
“My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.
What are the words you do not yet have?
What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day
and attempt to make your own,
until you sicken and die of them,
still in silence?
… And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty
that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth.
And that is not speaking.”
~Audre Lorde
feminist poet
“The opposite of love is not hate,
it’s indifference.”
~Elie Wiesel
It can be difficult to follow the current political news, much less act on it. So much of what is happening now is crazy and scary. I try to hold this quote from Elie Wiesel (above) close to my heart.
Sometimes I have powerful negative feelings bubble up when I see what’s happening in America today. I feel deep fear and anger and even hate at times. That’s ok. Those too are normal human emotions. It’s all spiritual grist for the mill – even the crazy ugly stuff.
Denying or stuffing my negative reactions to the news doesn’t help anyone. Denial ties me up in knots. I lose my ability to act. But if I can allow myself the space to feel whatever I’m feeling about the chaos around me, no matter how uncomfortable, I come out the other side stronger and clearer and more capable of acting from a space of love and compassion.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
December 2016
Can you stand at the edge of fear and hold to the truth of who you are?
No matter how big the abyss of fear feels,
it is nothing in comparison to your truth.
When you truly know yourself, fear is merely a tool
that the Universe uses to get you to pay attention.
Stand strong.
~Robbie Warren, Otter Woman Standing
THIS. This is the antidote to all the bigotry, hatred and fear in America right now. Thank you Chameli. ❤️
The moment you take a stand for what really matters to you,
you step into Sankalpa Shakti, a current of infinite creativity and energy.
By committing to what matters to you and stepping two feet in,
you access the very power needed to live out your Sankalpa.
So what keeps us sitting on the fence?
I have witnessed in myself and in my practice sisters
how we minimize the value of our path and our wisdom
when we cannot find confirmation from the outside;
how we are still waiting for approval,
comparing the fresh kiss of spirit that we are offered
in the intimacy of our own practice with the outdated models of spirit
embodied by men only. We are still moving in circles, repeating the past.
We tend to avoid that one scary step outside the circle of the known,
into the rush of self-arising wisdom expressed through us.
Are we secretly hoping that someone else will do it for us?
~ Chameli Devi Ardagh
☾☽
Chameli’s recent TED Talk, The Fierce Face of the Feminine:
New Moon in Scorpio,
Transformative Ruler of Deep water and Deeper emotions.
As we head into the dark of winter, take time alone with yourself.
Take time to go Deep within.
Embrace your strengths and your flaws.
Embrace it all, light AND dark, pain and joy, confidence and fear.
Accept and Embrace it All.
☾☽
The Republican candidate for President is in trouble for his sexist behavior again. An old tape has surfaced. On the tape, Trump can be heard bragging about how he can grope any woman he wants. He boasts that he is rich, so he can simply grab women “by the pussy.”
When women across America express their disgust and outrage, Trump dismisses his comments as “locker room talk.” According to him, what he said was no big deal – “just words, people.” Trump claims lots of men talk like this. And the most bizarre part? Many men (and even some women) in this country agree with Trump and dismiss his vile comments as simply dirty talk.
1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. Assaulted… But grabbing women by the pussy is apparently no big deal to a lot of people. And if a woman objects to Trump’s comments? Well, she is simply “overreacting.”
Kelly Oxford knows better. She was quite disturbed by Trump’s comments. So she went on Twitter last Friday night and asked women to tweet to her about the first time they were assaulted. “They aren’t just stats. I’ll go first: Old man on city bus grabs my ‘pussy’ and smiles at me, I’m 12,” she wrote. By the next day, Oxford was receiving a flood of first-person accounts of sexual assaults. And by Monday afternoon, nearly 27 million people had responded or visited Oxford’s Twitter page.
(Source: NY Times article by Jonathan Mahler,
For Many Women, Trump’s ‘Locker Room Talk’ Brings Memories of Abuse)
✧
What is a woman to do in the face of this endless stream of sexist abuse? How will this ever stop? And what do I tell my daughter?
Anyone who reads my blog, knows that I am a big proponent of love. I write often about the healing power of love. But what can love do in the face of this aggressive sexist behavior? And what is the best response a woman like me can make in this situation? These are the questions I have been chewing on for the past few days.
Here is where I am at today: Yes, we absolutely need to come from a place of love — this world desperately needs more love. But we must love ourselves first.
We must love ourselves from a place of POWER — a place where we stop minimizing ourselves by apologizing for our own needs, feelings, and opinions. We must love ourselves deeply, and own our power. Then, and only then, will we stop allowing other people to trivialize us.
We matter. Our needs, feelings and opinions matter. It is time for us to embrace how wise and powerful and important we truly are to the world.
Our time has come. We must not be silent any longer. It is time for us to stand up and say NO MORE! This crap is NOT OK. It is time for us to stand in our power and say NO to this type of bullshit. And you know what else? This is exactly what will change the world – woman after woman standing in her power and speaking her truth.
Can we love ourselves enough to stand in our power and DEMAND honor and respect? It is time. We must do this, for ourselves, and for each other.