As we continue in the cultural shift where women speak up and out against our abusers and oppressors, I believe it is vital that we do the deep inner work of healing the wounding we have all experienced due to generations of women complying and being complicit to a culture that hates us.
~Gwynn Raimondi, MA, LMFTA
We are on a precipice, I believe, culturally.
Women are speaking up and out more and more against the abuse we have endured. We are talking openly and publicly about sexual harassment, assault, and abuse. We are realizing we are not alone in our suffering. Socially we are realizing how wide spread and rampant these issues are and have been for generations.
We are coming together and supporting each other in ways not really seen publicly before.
And.
As all of this is happening. As we speak out, as we are believed, as we begin to band together, we are also, each and every one of us, still struggling to connect with other women, to trust them. And more importantly, we are still using the tools of domination, control, authoritarianism, and abuse to keep other women “in line.”
We are still competing with each other, over all the resources we have been told are so scarce.
We are still tearing each other down publicly and behind closed doors.
We still are making comments about “Well, what was she wearing?” or “She should have known better.” or “She was asking for it.”
Our internalized misogyny is running rampant. And we need to begin examining it, understanding it, and dislodging it from our bodies, minds, and being.
The Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny circle is a place for us to do just that.
We will look at our patriarchal wounding through both historical and lived experience lenses. We will connect to our own inner knowing, to the wise women who came before us and live with in us. We will come to know them and receive their gifts of strength, power, and daring to pass on to future generations.
We will also explore our inter-generational trauma and how our internalized misogyny was instilled in us by the ways our families talked about and treated women, the roles women were allowed to have, the division of labor within our family of origin, the ways men and women interacted with each other and the ways women interacted with other women.
We will examine the wounding passed on mother to daughter and begin to unearth the patterns and cycles that we are each ready to break.
Behind closed doors I sometimes call this circle “Our Mother Shit” circle. And while we will spend time exploring our relationships with our mothers (and their relationships with their mothers), we will go beyond those relationships and put them in social, cultural, and historical context.
This circle is also what others have called my most “Woo” circle. If you’ve been following me for any period of time, you know I’m not a particularly “woo” person. However, there is truth that our bodies store memories beyond our personal lived experience.
By finding our ways to connect to the women who came before, and yet who we never and could never have met, we begin to weave our way to healing the woundings they endured and passed on.
We will do this through guided meditations on our live calls, connecting to the women by journeying to them, learning about them as they live within, and receiving the great gifts they have to offer us to help bring about change within ourselves and within our world.
This is not a genealogy course. We will not be looking at dates or searching for facts or figures about these women. We will trust the way they present themselves to us, as part of our own psyche and cellular memory. We will begin to unravel the pain that was passed down as a way for them (and us) to survive.
We will re-member these women, while simultaneously learning to trust our own embodied wisdom.
We will work in past, present and future. Coming to understand what was, examining what is, and deciding how we want our lives and our world to be (and beginning the world to make that happen.)
I have limited this circle to only six women. The intimacy for this work is important. Part of the work is in the learning to build community with other women where domination, authoritarianism, judgement, and shame are not permitted. We will focus on consent, respect, empathy, and compassion – with ourselves and with each other.
I’d be thrilled if you decided to join us.
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If you’d like to learn more about the upcoming spring circle, Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny that begins April 1, you can click here.
Did you see the educational essay and video series I wrote introducing the ideas and concepts we’ll be exploring and examining in the spring circle? If so, you can find them at the links below:
Defining Ancestral, Inter-generational, & Cultural Relational Traumas and Internalized Misogyny
Connecting Individual & Collective Traumas
Ending Cycles: Processing the Past & Changing the Future
I also wrote these essay explaining why this work is so important:
The importance of processing ancestral trauma & dislodging internalized misogyny