Wild Free Woman Chapter 5: The Divine Feminine Wisdom of holding space for the dying, for change, for the future

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” ~Arundhati Roy

Feeling my emotions has not always been easy. In fact, I didn’t really start to have a relationship with my feelings and emotions until 2017. Prior to that, I minimized my fear, discredited my anger, and suppressed my sadness. My journey of feeling my feelings led me back into embodiment, back to my power, and helped me realize my freedom. Before I dive in, I’d like to note the difference between feelings and emotions. Feelings, for me, are the ways my body feels. Emotions are how I express my feelings. My mentor always said the message is in the feeling and I have learned again and again what that means for me. For me, my feelings give me information about me, my beliefs, my preferences and my boundaries. My feelings also give me information about my surroundings, informing my direction, where I place a certain plant or art piece in my home, and who I like being around. I always take a deeper look into my feelings when something arises in relationship to someone else or with work because I am constantly learning about my beliefs and curious about if this feeling is a story I’ve created or something deeper.

I’m no stranger to depth, and I enjoy going deep into my feelings to explore what is there. This, to me, is feminine wisdom. Embodiment is feminine wisdom. Co-creation with the world around me is feminine wisdom. Deeply listening to my feelings is radical because it empowers me to make decisions based on what feels true for me, and invites me into learning more deeply about beliefs that may be keeping me from greater freedom. Embodying divine feminine wisdom through simply being present has informed me greatly in my life.

Winter Dawn and the Crescent Moon

For the last 1.5 years I worked as a hospice chaplain. I sat with people as they were dying and hugged many family members who had just watched their loved one die. I could comfortably sit with Death because I have metaphorically died thousands of times and I no longer view death as an emergency or something wrong. Now I see it as freedom, as completing of one cycle and beginning another. I could sit with someone who was dying and be a calm presence as they took their final breath and journeyed from this world to another.  And I’ve come to learn that all healing work is simply being present with someone in the depths of their pain, fear, confusion and holding a calm, loving presence in that space. Not trying to change their pain, discredit their fear or alleviate their confusion, I could empathize with them in that depth, I could meet them there, heartful with acknowledgement that this is hard, and show them that they were not alone in this.

To be witnessed in your deepest shame, in the darkest place of the unknown, changes you. Like the double slit experiment: when something is observed, it is changed. And it’s very important to be observed without expectation, desire to change, or fix because that is when one can move from a place of freedom. I believe when one is witnessed in their depths of wisdom or vulnerability, without agenda, a cycle is completed. Just like in death. No longer are we alone in our wisdom or our vulnerability, and thus we can take this wisdom and apply it, or take our vulnerable heart into the world that is starving of vulnerability. This, to me, is what healing is on the deepest level. And this witnessing feels like Divine Feminine Wisdom.

I was lucky enough to work with a mentor who deeply embodies Divine Feminine Wisdom and who taught me to listen to my own Feminine Wisdom. I say it like this because I believe Feminine Wisdom is something that is in the body and is not so much taught like in modern day school, but more experienced and remembered and acknowledged. In this wisdom, something magical happens. The entire ecosystem thrives. I feel this energy in my home, where everything feels in the right place, my dog and cat are at peace, the light shines in through the window in the most magical way, and I can deeply rest. That is because I am attuned to my Feminine Wisdom and I adjust my house constantly to feel in harmony with the rhythms of the world around.

Candlelight reflections

Divine Feminine Wisdom is to hold space, to nourish, to love, to beautify, to create, to be deeply listening, to be wrathfully compassionate, to be fierce and decisive, to be slow and wise and calm and grounded, to be curious and playful, to be attuned to ones feelings.

Though I no longer work as a Hospice Chaplain, I am still embodying my Divine Feminine work in this world. I now work at a Tibetan Buddhist Foundation, the Namchak Foundation, as their Program Manager. My work is still about holding space, but has a bit more creation in it. I am holding space and creating a Youth & Families program as well as a Volunteer program. Tending to the health of the organization by including children in the community, supporting their parents and creating opportunities for greater service. Including children is a vital part of Divine Feminine Wisdom. Children are our future and the ways in which we support them can have such an impact on future generations. In these programs that I am creating, I find there is always space to hold. There is always a need for deep presence. There is always an opportunity to deeply accept what is arising. And to create from there.

Winter fog lifting in the Cottonwoods

What I love about listening to my feelings is that it invites in an opportunity to move beyond the delusions of my beliefs and into what is true on a deeper level. We all have programming’s and ideas about how the world works, and to challenge our own beliefs is powerful and freeing. To question our limited thinking is what creates freedom. I have learned to always look for the wisdom of opportunity rather than a closed door. So now I get to create programs that hold Divine Feminine Wisdom within the community of Buddhism.

Further, I continue to offer Rites of Passage work for women. The Wild Free Woman training has three Rites of Passages that move in a feminine fashion and work with a woman’s feminine wisdom to bring awareness of one’s deeper wisdom. I do not try to change the women I work with, I illuminate their innate feminine wisdom. The reason I do this is to help us each heal from the patriarchal framework that is crumbling beneath us. The patriarchy has celebrated only masculine wisdom for thousands of years, and it takes constant awareness to retrain ourselves to see that equally, we each have feminine wisdom that is asking for recognition and application. That is what will bring about a balanced and healthy world. This work requires a certain gentleness, accountability, and attunement that can only be taught through physical transmission and communication. I think about how challenged we are as a culture that historically hasn’t valued ageing and wisdom of the Crone, our grandmothers, of the earth. We have lost the value of Feminine Wisdom, but it is also being remembered by each person who chooses embodiment, a deep listening of their feelings, and the health of all.

Emma Jaqueth matching the Willow and the Dogwood

The final piece about feminine wisdom that I want to share about is our interconnectivity. What we do to someone else we do to ourselves. When we eat animals who have been caged and kept in the dark their entire lives we suffer. When we wear cloths made in sweat shops with child labor, we are not free. Our ability to feel this deep interconnection will heal the world and set us each free.

We are hungry for the feminine, for her wisdom, her compassion, creativity, rage, wrath, and calm. I know I was. And that is why I offer Rites of Passages for women to reclaim their feminine wisdom. Because the more women who act from their feminine wisdom, the more the world will learn about the balance point to the patriarchy. To show the value of this wisdom is my gentle form of activism. If you feel there is wisdom within you seeking to be recognized and if you are living a life that only honors half of your brilliance. If you feel called to peace activism that starts from within first, then I invite you to consider signing up for the Wild Free Woman training. This training is unlike any training that I’ve ever experienced or that any of the participants have experienced. It’s a training that was born out of my work with my mentor, who is one of the only women I’ve ever met to so deeply embody Feminine Wisdom. Feminine Wisdom is at the essence of this training, meaning it invites you into your wisdom through playful creative acts and activities in Nature. This training always excites children who are around it and includes the inner-child, in her delight.

The feminine will guide us through this time of challenge, death and destruction to a world full of diversity, interconnectedness, equality and peace. Each of us will play a vital role in tending to the world we want to see for our future generations, and it starts within. May we walk in beauty and love for the birthing of a new way. In humility, awe, and wonder, I bow to your wisdom.