Hubble Bubble: can we weave a brighter future by recognising the transformative magic of women?
The daily onslaught of dire and frightening statistics can make it almost impossible at times to imagine a brighter future for humankind on planet earth. But I detect a rising. A rising that is a weaving together of a multitude of qualities. Curation. Collaboration. Conversations conducted on difficult topics and amidst division. Cohesing communities around a vision that connects, smoothing a way forward.
It is a rising of the wisdom of wise women who are both generalists and specialists; emotionally intelligent polymaths who thrive on the laborious work of stitching together a regenerative future from the ashes of distrust and division.
I have never thought of myself as a feminist. If you had met me in my 20s or 30s, you might have described me as an alpha female. Someone who had settled well within the hierarchy of the male-dominated business world of boardroom battles. I encountered the odd unpleasant piece of behaviour, but in general, it would be true to say that men were my biggest supporters and promoters. The cynical might say — well there weren’t really any women in positions of power to support and promote you — and that would be true. But even so, my relationships with men in power, as long as I played them by their own competitive rules, worked pretty well.
So it’s with no small amount of surprise that in the last little while I have felt an enormous welling up inside me of a voice calling to be recognised, understood and acted upon that is undeniably both feminine — and even more surprisingly separatist. I feel a craving for the company of wild women who stand tall and easy, who carry their feminine power with grace as well as strength. Who hold the convening, curating and connecting space like a precious artefact; gently, reverently and with dignity.
I have seen these qualities shine out through women like the late Polly Higgins, gone all too soon before her quest to bring in the law of ecocide could be achieved. In women like Jane Davidson who brought the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act into being in Wales. In Koann Vikoren Skyziniarz who steadfastly convenes and encourages the sustainability community to step into ever more courageous space at Sustainable Brands. In Nicola Millson who founded She Leads Change. In Kate Raworth in the way in which she is challenging thinking in the male-dominated world of economics with articulate equanimity and grace under fire. In Sally Uren of Forum for the Future who is a tireless advocate for systems change. In Caroline Lucas, whose forthright challenges to government are always accompanied by reasoned intent and emotional intelligence.
I’ve just last week seen it shine in the community of women who both lead and study Mother Nature’s genius through the art of biomimicry — perfectly embodied in Janine Benyus, Dayna Baumeister and Toby Herzlich — but also in the glorious exuberence and quiet wisdom of our team of students. I see it in Gail Bradbrook, a fierce leader who has co-convened Extinction Rebellion with a non-violent, welcoming, accepting creed — able to hold the space when collective rage rises as it did at Oxford Circus and diffuse it elegantly so that the principles of non-violence are upheld, without compromising the psychological soundness of repressing that anger so that we do not feel. I see it in women like Mara Tolja who founded Connectle, a global platform for facilitating difficult conversations about issues that matter — from the future of work to regenerative systems change.
These are women who embody the new energy of a regenerative future. It’s emergent, fluid, buoyant. It lifts up and energises. I’ve argued for many years that womens groups which exclude men aren’t helping us forwards into a transformative future. It’s only really recently that I’ve begun to believe that there is a need for feminine voices to come together as a collective first and establish our own sovereignty before re-integrating with the other.
We need to find our own integrated sovereignty while facilitating integration
All life is interconnected. Almost all forms of science confirm this in some way. Whether it is our deep understanding of quantum physics, our increased understanding of evolutionary biology, the vast expansion of understanding of cogntive psychology — all coming together — or simply a recognition that cooperation and collaboration between all life forms including human males and females is optimum. Wholeness; oneness is what I aspire to.
But it’s both, and. We all need to be whole separately before we can be whole together. We need our own sense of sovereignty. Before we can join a sense of order and coherence, we women still need to be able to understand and describe together what we are, who we are, how we are — to connect ourselves to that voice that yearns to be expressed before we can move forward as co-creative collaboration. Michelle Holliday, another wise woman and author of The Age of Thrivability describes sovereignty well
Sovereign representing wholeness, order, coherence, shared vision and purpose. This is not about any one person being the sovereign. It is about the urge to gather around a compelling cause — to be part of an unfolding heroic narrative. This archetype calls for invitation, rather than persuasion or coercion, and for discernment”
This is not an article about establishing board quotas, or about diversity percentages in businesses. We just need to find our own state as whole and equal beings before we can re-merge into wholeness; the state that men have enjoyed in Western cultures and religions for almost 2000 years in various forms. That privilege of being sovereign.
The energy of grace, flow and connection
This energy is not angry or aggressive, thought it might have good reason to be that. It’s proud, independent, real and rooted. It stands in its own right. It doesn’t demand to be heard but it needs its own airtime. It’s subtle, erotic, primordial, sensory, slippery, slithery, earthy, magical, feline, robust, vibrant, wild and untame-able.
It’s about finding a language and skillset we’ve forgotten we had but which is innate and true to our wilder natures. It’s being able to slip between even the most sensitively spoken language in our conversations, and feel the wounds and the pain and the disconnects that the speakers don’t feel or recognise themselves. Like the source of a river that picks its way through rocky outcrops, carving ever deeper grooves until it pours out as a waterfall and carries on out to join with the sea, flowing as a river. It’s as primitive as the act of sex, yet not sexual at all in its energy. It holds the space for emergence, fiercely but without threat and with love.
It sees sensitively the connections between unrecognised relationships, it spots opportunities for conjoining that are overlooked, it facilitates difficult conversations, and weaves and knits communities together without them even realising there was a need. It’s somatic, like sliding effortlessly into collective being with other living beings and slips back into its own form again. It shares energy sinuously.
One woman described it to me like this: ‘I feel the pressure for this way of seeing and being as core and essential in every arena. This sense is very powerful. The womanly role needs to disrupt and not wait in the wings graciously anymore.’
No other writer describes this better than Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run With The Wolves. It was almost the first book after Joanna Macy’s Active Hope that I read as I emerged from a mental breakdown. When she speaks of the Wild Woman filled with passionate creativity and ageless knowing repressed by a system which trivialises emotional truth, intuitive wisdom and instinctual self-confidence, she guides women into how to reclaim and reignite our souls and that power that is both magic and medicine. I used the word magic in the title although I know it will still call forth derision and fear as unscientific and alien.
Yet none of the women I have highlighted above lack academic rigour. None lack structure and strategy.
I would like to be able to tell you where to find these women. They’re not rare but they’re not always visible either. Some have to play the game of book-speaker-authority, others serve quietly on the edges of change. If you find your organisation blocked or your cause foundering, you might want to look for one. You’ll probably find them wherever there is a need for curation, bringing together. You’ll find them in movements, consultancies, public service, creative industries and projects that pop out of nowhere.
If you feel this wild spirit welling up in you to want to serve, I’ld like to be able to tell you where to find others. They’ve popped into my life by seeking stories, more by accident than by design — although I like to think serendipity plays a part. But I can think of no one place to send you. Perhaps that means we need a gathering?
Perhaps above all we need to try to name it. Not feminism. Or even the feminine. It’s something deeper, hungrier, fiercer, more numinous. I feel we’ve buried it so deep to accommodate the Manthropocene we can’t even remember what it’s called.
As Clarissa says: “we must have psychological and spiritual strength to go forwards — in small ways, as well as against the considerable winds… Strengthening oneself is essential to the process of striving — especially before and during — as well as after…..this numen is entirely accessible, must be attended and nourished…..”
If you are a women working for change — or a wild woman archetype waiting in the wings to take flight — I hope just reading this will have lent you a little strength to carry on against the winds.
With thanks to Jodie Harburt for her insights which helped me start to think about this as a short story from the bigger chapter within my book Renewal. And to all the regenerative women I admire but haven’t mentioned: Donella Meadows, Joanna Macy, Brene Brown, Jacinda Ahern, Michelle Holliday, Solitaire Townsend, and thousands of other wild women — with love. Please add and recognise in the comments any wild woman acting for change you want to acknolwedge. :)
