Perspective: Reproductive rights are central to women’s citizenship — and they always have been.https://t.co/pjjqiQy53H

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 26, 2022

A recent article in The New York Times listed heartbreaking statistics on the lack of support or understanding of the word feminism, for both men and women.

Some kind of cognitive dissonance has lodged in the collective psyche born, I believe, from the rise of identity politics that focus on shame and blame in those under 50, and fed largely by an obsession and reliance on social media.

Recent public court cases have proven how many young people are uneducated and self-alienated. But it is not their fault! It lies on all awake and aware women to support other women in the ways we know how. We are natural-born leaders, life-givers, teachers, nurturers, and carers. If society doesn’t have the patience for these qualities, we need to show them how.

As women, we embody an authority that we have allowed to weaken in the past two decades. Are we ready wake up and rise up? Creatively, non-violently, transformatively, transgressively, linguistically, holistically, intrinsically, naturally, effortlessly, expansively, kindly, wisely, while holding small children and animals in our arms, feeding plants and soil with nutrients, plowing and planting and nurturing our bodies with clean food, air, water, and love?

After the rage, pain, mourning, and sadness of the recent SCOTUS decision to reverse Roe v. Wade comes, a new day will come where we get on with the work of healing ourselves and this planet. In Tibetan Buddhism, wrathful demons frighten the vulnerable back onto the natural path. Are we embodied enough for this instinct to emerge at this moment so we can save ourselves, our inner children, and the future children of this planet?

How perverse are those who would risk killing the mother before the child has even come to exist independently? For these, the potential for harm is more attractive than the act of preventing harm. In other words, the threat to harm a woman who possesses the natural authority to bring her child to term is the only power they can exert—because they cannot create or control the life that she carries inside her, that is a part of her, that is Her as Mother.

It is this moment for which feminism was created. Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hahn said “this is like this because that is like that.” In other words, there is no single cause for the circumstances of a single moment. We are part of a collective moment that we are co-creating constantly. We are interconnected, whether we like it, understand it, or not.

Books I suggest: Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born, Merlin Stone’s When God Was a Woman, Riane Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade.

What books do you recommend?

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*The New York Times article mentioned at the beginning of this article is here.

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