On Mom Angst and WomenCircles

Celeste Davis is an ex-Mormon. In her substack called Matriarchal Blessing, her stark experience with gender oppression interweaves with her natural brilliance into a crystal-clear, urgent honesty about the evils of patriarchy that we don’t see too often (especially among white feminists whose thinking is often clouded by the mixed messages of millenia-long patriarchal wounding and recent oppression-complicity).

So, I’m a big fan of Celeste. And when I saw her tackling the elephant in the room—the abandonment of mothers in today’s culture—in her post “Why You Never Need to Feel Like a Shitty Mom Ever Again,” I was elated. Here’s part of the reply I dashed off, which I wanted to share here because it conveys my passion about one of the keystones of matriarchy.

Love,
Annie

NOTE TO CELESTE DAVIS RE “WHY YOU NEVER NEED TO FEEL LIKE A SHITTY MOM EVER AGAIN””

YES!!! You've nailed it again Celeste. For more jaw-dropping, check out Jean Liedloff's THE CONTINUUM CONCEPT about the most ancient indigenous childrearing practices (Main Takeway: society is supposed to be groups of adults at the center living life together, with kids watching from around the fringes---not groups of kids at the center with adults gathered around watching them!).  

Here's my thought: After a lifetime of contemplation of these horrors, and raising two children, I am sure that only one thing can heal this upside-down isolation and loneliness. It is women gathering together. I don’t feel anymore like blaming society (ie, the patriarchal system in power) for its abandonment of mothers. Instead I want to encourage women to heal and move beyond our widespread abandonment of each other! If we can come together in our full, true matriarchal power, nothing will stop us. I smiled ruefully at your point that forging a new society is another item on our to-do list. But truly—if we follow our joy, we will find that blissful item will cross off a myriad of other depressing and unnecessary items all at once!

Truly, we don't need to work alone to forge a new world as we have feared! We simply have to play together to weave a new world as we desire. And the beauty of women’s circles is that the gargantuan work we achieve there is so so easy and so so much fun.

What's needed is so simple it may seem incredible, but it’s true. As Jean Shinoda Bolen describes so well in her book THE MILLIONTH CIRCLE, once women are in regular circle with each other--with maybe a very simple ceremonial structure to keep things aligned--ALL THINGS ARE EASILY POSSIBLE. It is miraculous what a circle of women can achieve with our powers of consensus, wisdom, love, intuition, and unity. It only takes a weekend (I have facilitated such weekends, so I know from experience) and no matter how suspicious and untrusting of women we were going in, by the time we have spent that time together, our world is changed forever.

Based on my experience, I do believe that ideally a womencircle will happen in real time in three dimensions, not online, because that is the only way to guarantee the geographical proximity that will lead to practical daily results in the real world where moms need those results most. Anyone inspired by the idea of a kind of women's local-meetup-site?Maybe separate groups for moms , teens, elders, but the main group being one where all generations of women circle together?

Yes, patriarchy is responsible for the numbing separation, searing isolation, riveting grief, and sheer desperation that I feel almost daily and that I am beginning to suspect ALL women—not only moms but perhaps especially moms—feel, on some level, at the brutal loss of our Goddess-given matriarchal clansisterhoods! And I feel without a doubt that it's completey on women now to overcome our traumatized isolation and commit to connecting with each other in ongoing circles of chosen-clan-sisters,-daughters, -mothers, and -grandmothers-- thus healing ourselves and each other, regaining our full magical powers together as the central carriers of this blessed species, strengthened by our sisterhood to share our desires and needs to the men who love us, finally moving forward into the new world our hearts can already feel, sense and know. . .   

Love and Sisterhood,

Annie