To the Awakening Woman

To the woman who is just starting to wake up, please understand that you can’t wish yourself back to sleep. Even if you could manage that kind of dissonance for a while, it would only lead to more sorrow upon your inevitable reawakening.

What you are starting to see right now is not new. It is just being exposed in such a way that your compliance is no longer going to be palatable to your body, your mind, and your soul.

This is not a threat but a gentle nudging, a reminder from other women who have already been through what you’re now facing, that the best thing for you to do right now is face it.

What you are beginning to see is what women of the past have already known and fought. Women who were painted as dragons for a world who sided with the “knight” just because they had the audacity to speak truth like fire. Women who refused to be compliant even in the face of their sisters who chose to be enablers rather than risk their own false sense of safety.

The truth has been out there, but it has been intentionally disguised and discredited by the powers that would crumble beneath the force of women who truly hold it. Now, those denials and tools to keep women locked in dissonance are fracturing, and truth like sunlight is seeping in through every crack in the facade.

You may begin to notice things with dizzying speed, but don’t allow it to destabilize you. These power plays and false dilemmas and coordinated psychological attacks have been around for generations before you and despite that women before you managed to stand up and hold their truth like a flaming sword – and you can too.

I won’t tell you to avoid anger, because anger is a natural and healthy part of the process. But I will tell you that it is not your home, so don’t settle in there. Let it pass through you as it must, but stay focused on what’s ahead rather than what’s behind us.

And what’s ahead is this, if you’re willing to stay awake and do the work:

The invisible social structures that have kept women in perpetual exhaustion will falter, and in their wake a new reality will emerge.

One that centers the innocent and vulnerable, shielding them and nurturing them with the colossal force of millions of mothers united.

The systems that have kept women silent will stutter like any machine that runs on something as fragile as ego, and from the rubble a new collective voice will rise.

The voice of the feminine, no longer vulnerable to mockery, or shame, or the fear of danger. The voice of children and families, of the earth, her waters and air, the voice of the mother, and the voice of men who have also been shamed and manipulated into serving a system that never served them.

This is not about men and women but about patriarchy as a system of power that hurts men as well. The damage may not be equal, but men have been lured by the illusion of authority into an unwitting life of servitude. It hurts them too.

The voice of the feminine is the voice that brings back balance and collective healing. But before that, it brings revelation.

And revelation is not gentle.

Revelation is destructive. Because once you see it, you can no longer serve it. And that’s how the systems break. One cog at a time, the machinations are built. One cog at a time, they come crashing down.

Maybe your awareness began with the news headlines that made seeing the ways that powerful people abuse women and children inevitable.

Maybe it’s starting with those same individuals blatantly belittling and dismissing the voices of women with whom you relate.

Perhaps it is in the earth’s waters that are being poisoned for profits, or in the faces of children in Gaza, or detention centers here at home.

Maybe your awareness is beginning in the home, with the perpetual exhaustion of carrying the burdens of many while others hold only their own.

Or maybe it’s beginning in the workplace, where you have worked twice as hard for half the reward.

Wherever your awareness has been born, please understand that there is more that will continue to be revealed – and right now your only job is to witness it. There is a reason that your body holds an emotional resiliency that is nearly unshakable. It is for a time such as this.

Do not try to quiet that tremble rising up within you, and don’t try to fill the cracks in your heart with more rationalizations and conformities. They will not save you. It will only make the process harder.

Admit that the world has been operating under a veil of false dilemmas and fabricated assumptions. The dilemma between the heart and the hands, between loving and building, between family and progress, between men and women. The assumption that some are meant to carry more while others profit off of them. The assumption that “the way things are” cannot be changed and so you must adapt. The assumption that acknowledging injustice equates to complaining, or that standing up equates to aggression.

Admit every little inconsistency, injustice, falsehood, and all of the ways you have served them.

See it.

Admit it.

Allow your heart to break for it.

You are the ocean and the skies and the fire from within the earth. Facing truth will not destroy you. It will forge you.

The rest will come, and you have brothers and sisters at the ready to guide you.

Healing is possible.

But first all must be revealed.

And revelation is not gentle.

You are water, and water cannot break.

You are fire, and fire cannot be burnt.

You are wind, and wind cannot be contained.

You are the earth, and earth will not ever be truly destroyed. 😘

With love,

~ Cristen Writes