Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Reclaiming Our Light

By

reclaiming-our-lightWhat does it mean to step into our light? To claim our light? To embrace our light?

It is about reclaiming our brilliance, our fire, our spark.

It is about embracing the truth that we women are forces of nature.

It is all about being an Unleashed Woman.

It means claiming authority over our own life and claims and confidently sharing our knowledge, education, and experience.

It means claiming space: physically by not trying to shrink our body; emotionally by allowing our emotions to be felt and processed; psychologically by speaking up when something doesn’t work for us; spiritually by having practices that feel right for us in connecting to the greater world, to nature, to the cosmic energy of the universe.

It means embracing and loving our Whole Self, unconditionally and unapologetically.

It means connecting deeply with others, especially other women.

It means being self-aware, trusting our intuition, feeling good in our own skin, and acknowledging and accepting the ebb and flow of life.

Stepping into our light, becoming the Unleashed Woman is about making and breaking our own rules.  It is about living life on our own terms and not compromising who we are to make others feel safe or comfortable.

Claiming our light, becoming our own Unleashed Woman is about taking up space in our homes, our work spaces, our entire world. It is about using our voice, daring to be heard and seen, embracing our power, all without apology.

Connecting to our light and the Unleashed Woman within us is about accepting our “flaws” and imperfections.  It is about not pretending to “know it all” or “have it all together.” It is about us making mistakes, but not beating ourselves up for it; instead apologizing and making amends when necessary and learning and then doing differently in the future.

Embracing our light, our power, our strength and daring is being an Unleashed Woman and seeing other women as comrades, as sisters.

It is about knowing who we are. Analyzing ourselves, our emotions, our actions and looking for deeper meaning for our reactions to things.  It is about trusting our intuition and listening to our body. It is about allowing ourselves to feel the bad times as well as the good, knowing that in time, regardless, this too shall pass.

And.

Reclaiming our light is also about stepping up and correcting the injustices we see in this world.  It is about standing beside those who have been wronged and fighting with them to bring about justice and equality.

It is speaking out against our culture, not only in our being – also in our doing.  This could look like going to protests or marches.  It could look like donating money and or time to causes that call to us.  It could look like raising our children to aware of the injustices in the world and showing the injustices in our history.  It could look like listening and hearing and believing someone when they tell you of their own lived experience.  It could look like voting from someone who you may not like, but know in the greater picture will be the better option for the oppressed, including you, in this country.  It could look like calling out and in family and friends when they make a racist or ablist or misogynist comment or joke.

It could look like a million different things.  And each of these things matter.  Each of these are ways that we both step into our own light and create the space for others to step into theirs.

Because while this work is about us, it is also about our greater world community.  It is about tearing down the oppressive systems we live under and building anew so everyone is free.  It is about not only surviving, but thriving, both individually and collectively.

Because the truth is we cannot do this work alone, in a vacuum.  The truth is not a one of us by ourselves can change the entire world.  The truth is we need to do this work in community.

Together.

You and me and our all our brothers and sisters.  Together.

Let’s do this thing.

(Below is a 20-minute video of me talking even more about this idea of reclaiming our light.  I hope you enjoy it.)

(Did you enjoy this? Then I invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter right over here.)

(Interested in reclaiming your own Light, your own Unleashed Woman who lives within you with a community of other women?  Then I invite you to join us for my next six-month circle, Exploring our Light::(Re)Connecting to our Strength, Power, and Daring, that begins November 1.  You can learn more and register right over here. )

This is the fourth in a four-part series of essays and videos.  Want to see the rest?  You can find them here:

Reclaiming our strength

Reclaiming our power

Reclaiming our daring

Reclaiming our light (this post)

Reclaiming Our Daring

By

reclaiming-our-daringIt is both an act of rebellion and an act of bravery to move against our (racist, misogynist, all the -ists) patriarchal culture.  It is an act of daring to show the world who we truly are, to break the rules of compliance and complicity, to speak and shout and scream out against injustice.

Our culture wants us quiet, or rather, silent.  Our culture wants us to look the way.  Our culture wants us to follow the rules (you know, the ones that are ever changing and are different rules than the men need to follow). To be nice girls. To be polite.

Our culture wants us pitted against other women.  Our culture wants us isolated, lonely.

Our culture wants us constantly striving. For better. For more.  To never be satisfied with who we are or what we have. And  in this striving we are to stomp on any other woman who gets in our way.

Our culture wants us buying into the stories of how we are too much and not enough. It wants us nearly immobilized by our shame.

Fuck our culture.

This is a culture that allows us to be raped, beaten and murdered.  For the perpetrators to either not be punished at all, or get such lenient sentences that it’s laughable. And at the same time, we –the actual victims– are blamed.  You know all the stories, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, well with what she was wearing what did she expect, she should have taken self-defense classes, she should have never talked to/dated/married him in the first place.  Maybe you have even told some of these stories yourself.

Because we think if we hold up the lies of our culture, that somehow we will be safe.

But see, that right there, that is another lie our culture tells us.

We are not safe.  We haven’t been for millennium.

Knowing this, it takes a great strength, it takes all our power, it requires every ounce of daring we have, to stand up against our culture.

To dare to speak out.

To dare to speak up.

To dare to speak at all.

It takes a great strength, it takes all our power, it requires every ounce of daring we have, to declare that we are perfectly fine as we are, that we do not need fixing, thank you very much, and by the way, neither do our sisters.

To dare letting go of the stories of how we are too much.

To dare letting go of the stories of how we are not enough.

To dare feeling comfortable in our own skin.

It takes a great strength, it takes all our power, it requires every ounce of daring we have, to find and connect to and embrace our sisters, both by blood and by community.

To dare to show ourselves to the world so our sisters can find us.

To dare being honest and vulnerable.

To dare to acknowledge when we make mistakes, when we unintentionally harm others and to make the repairs necessary and do different the next time.

And here’s a thing: We have daring in our very being as women.

We dare to get up each day and try again, no matter how many times we have been shoved down.

We dare to fight for our children, their rights and well-being.

We dare to do things differently from our mother’s generation.

We dare to find ways to connect to our Whole Self, and embrace her as she is.

We dare to say fuck you to a culture that says we don’t matter.

We dare to claim our worth.

We dare to claim our value.

We dare to claim our bodies.

We dare to claim our experience.

We dare to claim our existence.

And it’s not easy. It’s messy and hard and frustrating and sometimes lonely.  Particularly when we are in that in-between space of shifting from Leashed Woman to Unleashed Woman.

Daring to become the Unleashed Woman within requires fortitude, bravery, resilience.  It requires us to be deeply connected to our own individual strength and power and the strength and power of the collective.  It requires us to be able to sit in the discomfort of being rebellious, being a rule breaker.

I invite you to embrace your own daring, in all the big and small ways.  To step into the discomfort of doing and being different.  To join us in burning all this shit down and building up new.

Will you accept the invitation?

(Below is a 20-minute video of me talking even more about this idea of reclaiming our daring.  I hope you enjoy it.)

(Did you enjoy this? Then I invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter right over here.)

(Interested in deeply connecting to your own daring, your own Unleashed Woman who lives within you with a community of other women?  Then I invite you to join us for my next six-month circle, Exploring our Light::(Re)Connecting to our Strength, Power, and Daring, that begins November 1.  You can learn more and register right over here. )

This is the third in a four-part series of essays and videos.  Want to see the rest?  You can find them here:

Reclaiming our strength

Reclaiming our power

Reclaiming our daring (this post)

Reclaiming our light

 

Reclaiming Our Power

By

reclaiming-our-powerIf I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred million times:: We live in a culture that hates women.

Our culture hates white women.  It hates brown women.  It hates black women.  It hates trans women.

It hates women. Period.

And.

Our culture is smart, it’s learned through the years how to truly keep us leashed and under its thumb.

It pits us against each other.

It dangles carrots for us so that we think we will rise up to the top of the heap, but only if we betray all other women.

It tells us over and over again that the ideal female (who is still hated by the way) is white, young, and thin.

Our culture turns us against our grandmothers, disregarding their wisdom, mocking their age and “dementia,” and frailty.

Our culture turns us against our daughters, having us teach them to not be seen or heard, to be polite, to be nice, to not speak, to keep their emotions and opinions to themselves.

Our culture turns us against our mothers, these women on their way to becoming the grandmothers, these women who have done what they needed to do to survive and by extension for their daughters to survive.

Our culture turns us against our sisters, not trusting them, not believing them, gaslighting them, telling them their emotions and experiences aren’t valid, that they are to blame for all that has happened to them, including the things they actually didn’t have any control over.

Our culture lies to us, telling us how other women are the problem, how we ourselves are the problem.  It tells us we are worthless, weak, and powerless.

And perhaps that is the greatest lie.  Because love, we are powerful beyond measure.

We make up half of the world’s population.  We are the ones who birth babies.  We are the ones, despite how much our culture tries to hold us down, who rise up, again and again, demanding to be seen, to be heard, to be respected, to be treated as equals.

We are powerful forces of nature, us women.  Together we could move mountains.  Together we could burn all this shit down.  Together we could create a world where all are truly equal.

The thing is, we need to come together first.

We need to break the leash of our patriarchal training and culture.

We need to stop believing the lies that other women are the problem, that we ourselves are the problem.  We need to stop gaslighting each other, stop judging each other, stop shoving each other down so we ourselves can rise up.

We need to claim our power.  The power that lives within each of us and the power of our collective womanhood.  The power that is being deeply connected to our Whole Self: body, mind, spirit, soul, shadow, light, feminine, masculine. The power of being deeply connected to each other.

Until all of us are free and equal, none of us are free or equal.

It is time to rise up.  It is time to burn this all down.  It is time to embrace our world-wide sisterhood.  It is time to stop betraying our own.

They think they took away our power.  We think they took away our power.

They didn’t.

It is here living inside of us, waiting for us to allow it to rise up.

It is time to embrace the Unleashed Woman who lives within each of us, whether we think we are ready for her or not.

Join me?

(Below is a 20-minute video of me talking even more about this idea of reclaiming our strength.  I hope you enjoy it.)

(Did you enjoy this? Then I invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter right over here.)

(Interested in deeply connecting to your own power, your own Unleashed Woman who lives within you with a community of other women?  Then I invite you to join us for my next six-month circle, Exploring our Light::(Re)Connecting to our Strength, Power, and Daring, that begins November 1.  You can learn more and register right over here. )

 

This is the second in a four-part series of essays and videos.  Want to see the rest?  You can find them here:

Reclaiming our strength

Reclaiming our power (this post)

Reclaiming our daring

Reclaiming our light

Reclaiming Our Strength

By

reclaiming-our-strengthI’ve been writing about our patriarchal training for a while now, how it holds us down, keeps us small.  I gave names to the wounds our culture gives us as women (Leashed Woman) and to the feeling of freedom once we have begun our journey of healing and breaking the binds our of training (Unleashed Woman). The training that we receive is real, and the wounds we inherit and receive for this training are also real.  And the truth that we can break free, is absolutely real too.

We have been told as women we are the “weaker sex.”  We are, supposedly, weaker physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.  We are taught that our bodies are places of sin and evil, as are our minds and spirits and souls.  We are taught that we are unable to do for ourselves.  We are trained that we need others in authority, usually (white) men, to explain our bodies or our minds or our connection to the Divine to us.  We are feeble.  We are delicate flowers.  We need others to help us get through even the most basic of functions and duties.

Fuck that.

We are strong.  We women carry within us the strength to create life.  Just stop and think about that for one moment – whether you’ve actually had children or not isn’t relevant – we have in our very being, our DNA, our essence, the strength to not only carry and grow another living being within our womb, allowing it to expand us in all the ways possible, we also have the strength to PUSH THEM OUT a hole that is half the size of the head we are pushing through.

And yes, there are those of us who experience infertility.  And there are those of us who choose not to have children.  And yes, there are those who required emergency cesarean sections to birth your babes.

AND NONE of that changes the fact that your body contains the strength to do this thing of creating and birthing life.

That you are STRONG.  And that not only are we physically strong as women, we are emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually strong too.

Part of the strength of our body is all of the emotions it holds within it.  The bottled rage of generations.  The bottled grief.  A weak body, a weak person, could not hold these emotions within.  Nor could a weak person choose to connect with these emotions, to explore them, to embrace them, to process them, to heal them.  A weak person could not feel these emotions and survive.

It takes strength.  Of character, of stamina, of body to hold and connect and heal these emotions we carry, from our own lived experience and what has been passed down to us by our ancestors.

We are strong of mind and intellect.  Despite the fact that boys are favored in classrooms.  Despite the fact that we are talked over in meetings or at social gatherings.  Despite the fact that those of us with young children are so sleep deprived and just plain mentally exhausted from care taking that we can barely see straight.  Despite the fact that we have to punch and push and tear our way into male-dominated professions to be even invited to be in the room, let alone to a seat at the table. Despite the fact that we are physically and mentally drained from all our unpaid physical, psychological and emotional labor.

Despite all that, we are writers and scientists and entrepreneurs.  Despite all that we are activists, politicians, and professors.  Despite all that we are lawyers, speech writers, and Supreme Court judges.  Despite all that, one of us is about to become President of the United States.  Despite all that, several of us have been Prime Ministers throughout the world.

We have strong minds.  We must to be able to see and unravel the insidious training our culture gives us.  We must to be able to speak out, coherently, against this culture and its training, despite how it stacks the odds against us.  We must to be able to tear this shit down, brick by brick (ha! first typo started “prick by prick”!) and to create new spaces and a new world for ourselves, our daughters and nieces, and our grand-daughters and grand-nieces as well as our sons, grandsons, nephews and grand-nephews.

We are spiritually strong.  When we connect to our bodies, when we allow ourselves to be grounded and rooted in our physical self, we feel and see and know how deeply connected we are to all life and to all that is of us and beyond us.  Our monthly cycles connect us to the moon, to our planet, to the ebb and flow of life and death.  We know, in our bones and being, the truth of our greater connection to our planet and all the people and living beings on it. We hold ourselves, and others, accountable and we know that by connecting to Spirit (or the Divine or God or Goddess or the Unified Theory or whatever you personally call it) we are able to understand and feel deep compassion and unconditional love.

Women are beyond strong.  We are a force of nature. We are fierce.  We have within us all the strength we need to tear down these systems that oppress us, that try to keep us isolated and small.

Let’s take off the leashes and binds and chains that are keeping us small, that are convincing us we are weak and unimportant.  Let’s stop believing the lies.

Let’s become Unleashed Woman.

xoxo

(Below is an 17-minute video of me talking even more about this idea of reclaiming our strength.  I hope you enjoy it.)

(Did you enjoy this? Then I invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter right over here.)

(Interested in learning how to deeply connect to your own inner strength, your own Unleashed Woman who lives within you?  Then I invite you to join us for my next six-month circle, Exploring our Light::(Re)Connecting to our Strength, Power, and Daring, that begins November 1.  You can learn more and register right over here. )

This is the first in a four-part series of essays and videos.  Want to see the rest?  You can find them here:

Reclaiming our strength (this post)

Reclaiming our power

Reclaiming our daring

Reclaiming our light