My Feet Are Planted: Finding My Own Feminine Ground

The phrase “On Feminine Ground” stirs up thoughts from the very deep internal, personal to the big global picture. I have been attempting to find my own feminine ground for my whole life. It’s an ongoing practice in a world that seemingly does everything it can to take me up and away and knock me off center. My values are often at odds with the dominant culture. After two millennia of denigration of the feminine, our task in this time is to elevate and honor the feminine and nurture and witness the divine in each other and ourselves. The words “on feminine ground” stir up a sense of being in my body. Being grounded means drawing my energy down, from my head and into my heart, legs, feet and down into Mother Earth and then receiving earth’s energies up from my feet. Being grounded in the feminine for me, means being in my intuitive, nurturing, watery, emotional and relational energies What dreams would manifest if we were more solidly on feminine ground? There would be a personal and global shift. This is my dream and I am declaring it so. We would shift from ego to essence, competition to cooperation and community, from war and violence to peace and life-affirming ways from raping and pillaging the earth to honoring and protecting her and all of nature. In short, we shift from devolution to evolution and sustainability. I am married for 44 years to the same great guy. I enjoy our relationship for the most part but I need to spend a lot of time with women to balance this one relationship. When I’m with my women friends, in circle, or conference and grounded in the feminine, I come home to myself. One such event is my annual women’s writer’s retreat.

Woman AM I

Spirit AM I

I am the Infinite within my soul

I have no beginning and I have no end

O, this I am.

This is the song we sing around the campfire at the Pyramid Lake Women’s Writers Retreat. A group of 80+ wildly creative, feisty writers and storytellers converge on this rustic paradise for 5 days in 800 acres of wilderness in the Adirondack Mountains. We witness each other’s lives through our words during workshops and evening readings in the boathouse. The workshops are in all genres. I stick to memoir and poetry. One afternoon, I was sitting on the porch of the lodge in a forest green wicker rocker watching the dark clouds roll in as the sky turned gray. The air is soft as the wind rustles through the trees, leaving them quivering. Raindrops falling, first light then heavy on the roof, now coming through the screen making a big puddle. A hummingbird zips in and out of the feeder braving the rain. What astounds me is how this lake with its small island in the middle and the low green mountains was here millions of years before me and will continue on after I am gone. The women are in their cabins writing or napping until the rain stops. Here is a poem that I wrote on the porch during the rainstorm. I will call it, On Feminine Ground.

Be the spring swollen stream

Womb unfolding pink with passion

Touched by sparkling stars uncoiled

Be the dance to the drumbeat

Be in silence

Feeling waves of energy radiating into song

Be the conduit between heaven and earth

Be the day and the night

Amidst streets filled with noisy promises

Sometimes truth has sharp edges

Do you hunger for nirvana?

My feet are planted.