There’s this thing that happens to advocates when the world around us burns with injustice and fury and we shift into what we know, the holding-fighting, fierce-eyed, tender-hearted caring that pours out compassion and links lives with survivors, shedding trails of sweetness as it goes. It’s a professional skillset and […]
Feminism and Religion
20 posts
Over the summer, I started at a new job, which I’ve decided I can safely describe as a “dream job” – one to which I can bring my full self, and in which I can use all my gifts and strengths. Whereas my old job focused primarily on anti-sexual violence […]
Seventy-two hours out of every week, I carry a hotline phone. While calls come in waves and some shifts are silent, my everyday and professional lives are peppered with reminders that evil doesn’t just pierce reality through acts of power, control, and violence – it seeps through in discrediting voices […]
Last week, I attended a presentation by a local nonprofit providing batterer intervention programs, anger management, and other classes to help domestic abusers recognize and repair the impacts of their unhealthy patterns. “Before they can even begin to seek compassion for and address their own past traumas that led them […]
So, while I’m not yet an elder, I’m old enough to start thinking about the kind of elder I want to be, and about what it means to hold space as an elder. It means to hold memory, to preserve traditions, to remind us of those who came before, and […]
Sometimes life hurts. Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes we dive deeply into darkness. Sometimes we fall. Sometimes our lives line up so perfectly we can’t help but sense the hand of the divine helping us clear our paths and point us toward wonder. Other times we plan and work, make […]
The past few weeks, I’ve been sitting with the many layers held by the concept, and the manifest reality, of mother, mothering, and motherhood. Mother is seen in the divine feminine, in the cosmos, and in the sea and the glow of the moon. She is held in our genes […]
Last week, I had the incredible privilege of sitting vigil with a friend in hospice in her final hours on this earth. She slept for most of the time I was there, but her waking moments were lucid, if brief. She whispered how good the fresh juice tasted (it had […]
When the movement first picked up steam a few months ago, I found myself thrilled by the momentum. With each news report declaring a new power player whose reign of manipulation had fallen under the weight of multiple corroborating stories of abuse, I would cheer. “Let ‘em fall like dominoes,” […]
Some of the most brutal weapons ever used against me were crafted and wielded by my own hands, forged in grief and self-loathing out of the words of others. In my better moments, I recognize that while another’s frustration with me frequently may be justified, any cruel words towards me […]
Before moving to start a new life as a single mom a few states away with my infant son, I visited the convent. One of the sisters to whom I had become especially close was nearing the date when she’d take her final vow – that of poverty. She gave […]
Christmas morning. I don’t usually have Sundays free and our family holiday celebrations lean nontraditional, so I’d come to a special ecstatic dance celebration and brought my 9-year-old daughter with me. As the music started and people all around us began to flow and move, I reached out to touch […]