Motherhood, Empowerment & A New Movement



“Surely the women of America could do better than the hyenas.”



Surely. But let’s put this in perspective. A mere forty years ago in the U.S., my mother’s generation put forth a novel notion- women could do what men could do, and we deserved the opportunity. A new concept in the collective mindset (just forty years ago)!



Yes, a woman deserves equal opportunity to do whatever a man can do. And here’s the question of my generation- What do we really want? What do we choose? Thanks to the Women’s Movement, we have all the options. The women of the 70’s had to first prove that we could go wherever men went. So now it's about where we want to go...



Before, the thought was that to be empowered we needed to be “out there” doing something, and now I see that being “in here” is doing something. I am a stay-at-home mom and I've learned after making what feels like a million peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, that what we are doing in our homes is powerful. I knew this, and yet, sometimes it felt so mundane, like there was just so much more life in me than what my life appeared to be on the outside. I lost my connection to my Self, and began to wonder- hadn’t I chosen to stay-at-home? Hadn’t I chosen PB& J’s over returning to teaching in the classroom? Oh yes, I’d actively participated in every decision, so where was I?



I re-membered my Self, like Humpty Dumpty put himself back together again. I don’t know how he did it, but I choose to slow down, to create a space where I could tend to my Self. This nurturing of Self led to a re-centering and a re-connection to my home, to the world- to seeing the whole world as my home. The more I showed up for myself, the more powerful I became, the more I could see our connectedness, the more I could see that I'm not just mothering my own child, but can also mother the world's children, I can be a sister to the world's women.



Which brings me back to the hyenas…
Adult female hyenas encircle their cubs while they're feeding, ensuring their babies get fed before the adult males get anywhere near the food. Bestselling author and acclaimed spiritual teacher, Marianne Williamson uses this example to show how advanced mammalian species protect their young. And wouldn’t you agree with her, that we can do better than the hyenas? We can do better than 17,000 children dying each day from hunger. We can do better than the women who die every minute in birthing their young.



We can begin by seeing the whole world as our home.



This is the new Movement! And it's happening in our own homes, in our conversations, in our present-ness to ourselves and to our children. We are shifting the world in a real way- we can even do it with peanut butter and jellies in our hands.

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