For years, I've been saying, "Oh My Goddess!!" I've said "Oh My Goddess!" in outrage and have said it in absolute despair. I've shouted it, when i'm completely overwhelmed. The phrase itself, has been a turning point that i reach for, when i feel i am at an edge of an abyss of overwhelm, or confusion, or any other form of separation. I shout or proclaim, "OH MY GODDESSSSS!!!!" This phrase has been my earth-caring-activist heart balm. Often the goddess responds, with a breath of wind, or a raindrop on my head, or a leaf falling.
The Goddess, the Divine Feminine is returning in a time after she has been oppressed, removed from sacred texts, murdered, raped, pillaged, demonized, humiliated, immoralized, etc. etc. I could go on and on, and there is no need to do that. Everyone can tell their own story of oppression as a woman, or as a human for that matter. In all beings, this beautiful, creative, sensual, fruitful, inescapably beautiful force of divine feminine has been dishonored by our historical culture. The opportunity this kind of oppression and denial provides, is fertile ground for an unprecedented unraveling, exposure, uplifting, providing for a new divine feminine that is what we create it to be, now. We are the ones who now get to "invite her back in" to ourselves, our cultures, our history books even, if we choose.
Oh Thank Goddess!! Oh Thank Goddess that we can now unravel the oppression, heal the murders of the hundreds of thousands of women priestesses and healers during the Eurpoean Inquisition, remember the lost lineages of divine feminine magical arts and practices, and create a kind of Goddess Revival!! I am so honored, humbled and awed that we now get to collaborate together on this beautiful Goddess Revival after "History" of the last few thousand years! Please join me here, in this movement, and in this celebration, with your own movement, your own unravelings, your own coming into your own Goddess Power!! These young girls are in Kenya, changing the destiny of young girls by going through a rite of passage that is free of Female Genital Mutilation. These women are the leaders of their time for women.
Oh Thank Goddess!!
A few years ago, at a Bioneers Conference, (2 or 3 years ago Tahra?) I met Tahra over lunch right before running to my afternoon workshops. I had just returned from Africa. I'm not sure if it was after my first or my second trip to Africa!! Anyway, Tahra says that i told him my story.
Here is the story i likely told him. Something like this . .
On New Year’s eve of 2007, I said a prayer "I want to be of service to the goddess. I'm willing to stretch and/or be uncomfortable to work for what is right and true to support the healing and empowerment of the feminine." "Please show me how to be of greatest service." A media reform conference in Memphis took me to the Civil Rights Museum and I became impassioned about civil rights. Within three weeks, I was on a plane to Africa. Conference For Grassroots Organizers to End FGM, Nairobi, Kenya: Each morning after a beautiful buffet breakfast, 80 of us women, primarily African,would all convene in a meeting room with two giant horse-shoe shaped tables with little microphones and little headsets. We would sit and listen to hours of stories. I was disturbed by the underlying truth beneath the stories—that FGM was a cultural practice—a tradition! At night my mind would run all over the world attempting to rectify why, how, and everything else about FGM. I awoke every morning at 4am… wide awake!... meditating on FGM!... meditating on a secret, a key or something.
I seemed to be searching for a solution. Winding up, then settling down, winding up again my mind would ask, “why? how? who? when? how did it spread all over? why through muslim religion? why? why? why?... No! No! No!”
Flash to day three of the conference…. and day three of a world where women are cut as a general practice, silently, in the dark, held down against their will…. a real nightmare in my imagination…and they are being so courageous coming here to tell their stories! Thousands and thousands of young vagina's - cut, violently, with a knife. This is really a challenge for my psyche to digest. even today, and I believe it always will be. Cecile's story of the Vagina Monologues at the end of these presentations, lightened all of the energy to high-pitched, winding bouts of laughter!! Sitting in a circle, we laughed all night long as each of us revealed our deepest conditionings and secrets about vaginas!
The next morning, rather than the winding angst, I awoke with this phrase "Clean Water, Clean Vaginas!! Clean Water, Clean Vaginas!" like a chant in my early morning mind. Many of the stories recited that day contained aspects of water, often woven into the women’s successes in changing the practice of FGM. A conversation with a young girl at Agnes' Safe House several days later…. "I am hated by my village,”she said. “My father hates me because he is hated. I cannot go there because when I go there, he hates me." I ask, "If you could bring clean water to your village, would it help?" "Yes", she said, "we do not have clean water." "Do you think they might stop hating you and listen to you if you could bring a well for clean water to your village?" "Yes, she exclaimed excitedly, they would respect me then if I brought water."
Washington DC airport on my way home:I am exhausted after no sleep for over 20 hours and the terminal is so surreal following my experience in Africa that it makes me slap-happy. I call my mom, raving about the amazing, beautiful, strong, courageous African women while ranting about the stiff white men in business suits. I am willing to do anything to help the women in their effort to stop FGM. Overhearing my passionate discourse, a gentlemen waiting for the same flight to NM introduces himself and offers his help. A few weeks later, back in Santa Fe, Bob Kline and I met again. Through a series of meetings and e-mail communications, he has gifted me the reigns of his dream-child organization, Global Relief Resources, including a starting donation to "get me going."
A team is forming, all of which are connected to the larger dream of empowering women and/or protecting or providing fresh water resources. Join us in this collaborative work.
The Women Water Stewards and Water Warriors Network, a project of Global Relief Resources focused on providing women with fresh water resources so they are empowered to more effectively end Female Genital Mutilation in their villages. Men can support women and water by protecting and healing natural water sources as Water Warriors.
With safe houses for girls to educate themselves and transition from being slaves in their culture to being providers, girls who run in desperation from a knife, are learning, gaining strength, courage and wisdom, shifting an old way of life to a new one. By bringing fresh water resources back to their villages, women are respected as providers and evolve beyond the old stigma that used to surround them when they left their villages because they did not want to be mutilated.
Through a series of syncronicities, i was led to two people who are experts in deep water well drilling and we began collaborating on a business plan for a deep water well drilling company in Nairobi, Kenya. This company will have an expertise and equipment that is needed in a situation like the high plains of Kenya where the Massai tribes live. Deep water wells will provide water for farming, for communities and also for girls from the Tasaru Safe House to bring a fresh deep water well back to their villages, bringing a gift, to a place where a deep separation of beliefs about Female Genital Mutilation has emerged.
I am now in my third year as Executive Director of Global Relief Resources, with the intention of building an organization that can support the women in Africa who are ending Female Genital Mutilation, with a focus on education and health, especially the health of water systems and fresh water resources which are the source of life, health and basic empowerment.
The Global Relief Resources scholarship fund currently supports girls leaving the Tasaru safe house who need a "next step."
Global Relief Resources' Main Fund supports the building of new safe houses, water systems on safe houses and filtration systems in Africa. The organization intends to continue building new infrastructures that support women's empowerment and safety on a local, national and global level as well as responding to the urgent call from water and nature herself, to protect fresh water resources. The combination of these two calls has formed the project: Women Water Stewards Network.
Tahra, gratefully, responded to my story and has since told me he is setting up this business, Thank Goddess.com, to support this work. My response, "Oh Thank Goddess!"
I am in service to the Goddess and have felt that i have not had the resources to provide the kind of support that was called for, that my heart wanted to provide, after listening to the stories of so many women in Africa who were so courageous. Isatou in the Gambia needs a safe house. The next $60,000 donation goes to build a safe house in the Gambia for a wise and heartful woman named Isatou, in her movement supporting girls and women with health and educational support to shift the practice of Female Genital Mutilation in the Gambia.
I am also in touch with other water and anti-violence activists and see that times are rough for truth, for water, for human rights and for environmental rights. I see that a tribe of Goddesses is needed!!!! Please join us in protecting fresh water resources for people and all of life.
As i have responded to all of the practical details of Global Relief Resources, a 501. C3 legal non-profit in the United States, State of New Mexico and City of Santa Fe, I have often felt alone in all of the responsibilities and decisions. When Tahra called me to tell me about his new Thank Goddess project, I was in one of my places wondering how to keep going.
Cecile from V-Day reminded me that it took V-Day, Vagina Monologues' emergent organization ten years to be financially balanced, so there was enough money to pay everyone-- Ten Years!!! So after three years i was not to worry!!! However i was tiring myself with some of this worry, so i am so grateful to feel there is more support out there! Tahra's invitation to be the "tithing manager" for the Thank Goddess Fund is welcome support to an organization that is ready for next steps and next steps and needs your support and participation to take those steps!!
Thank you in advance to all of you who join us in this project, idea, revolution which the Thank Goddess Fund will support, a revival of feminine wisdom and power in women and girls all across the globe, just in the nick of time!
Please Donate to the "Thank Goddess Fund" and see the blessings multiply!!
To donate go to www.globalreliefresources.org and donate. Please e-mail me at aw@globalreliefresources.org to let me know your name, the amount you donated and that it goes into the "Thank Goddess Fund!" Feel free to e-mail me with any questions as well about contributing or participating in the work of Global Relief Resources and the Thank Goddess Fund!! 505-920-0199 for more information by phone.
