Introduction: Becoming Guru Grrrl
Have you ever had the feeling you are capable of great things? Capable of actions or inventions or transformative wisdom that could have a profound effect on others? Do you sometimes sense that you have powers within you, if you only knew how to access them?
Each of us has a destiny, a reason for living this life. Yet it’s all too rare for women and girls to be encouraged and given the tools to discover their destiny and how it fits into the unfolding world. To recognize and achieve our destinies, we need to unapologetically claim our powers, and cultivate them with tenderness and ferocity.
Maybe you’ve been taught that women don’t have power. Maybe part of you believes this, even as another part of you rebels.
As you read the word “power,” what comes to mind? Is it wealth? Fame? Control? Force?
In patriarchal, capitalist culture, we tend to think of power in terms of power over another. Domination. Supremacy. Rule.
So we need to start with a redefinition of “power.” Let me propose that our powers are the inner resources and energies each of us needs to fulfill our purpose and amplify the work we have to do in the world.
As you read this, are you able to claim the words my power and my destiny without awkwardness or embarrassment or apology?
The book I’m serializing here, Guru Grrrl, is an invitation to consider your own power and the destiny that may still be hidden from you. These ideas are the result of a lifelong journey that led me thousands of miles from the city of my upbringing to find community among women, artists, activists and spiritual seekers. These companions on the journey have shared many strategies to access the powers we all possess. Through this book and the conversations I hope it will kindle, I want to break the taboo around women talking about our personal power and share those strategies with you.
It’s my hope that as you embark on this journey with me, you’ll connect with one or several powers that will help you move forward toward your destiny.
So, let me ask you: When you were a young girl, what did you learn about power?
Did you see it as a resource you could command or something that belonged exclusively to other people — men, adults, white people, rich people?
Did anyone teach you about your power, about how to cultivate or exercise it in your life? In the world? Or were you taught to submit to the power of others?
As a woman, how do you feel about power now? Is it a word you feel comfortable owning?
When I was a girl, no one ever talked to me about power. No one ever said to me, “You are composed of infinite energy, limitless power. How are you going to harness it, Terry, to shape your destiny?”
Did you laugh just then, trying to imagine someone saying that to the child you were? Did anyone talk to you about your destiny?
From a young age, maybe four or five, I felt a strong intuition that I had a mission, a message I’d come to deliver. I didn’t know the word destiny then, but now I recognize that feeling was a premonition of destiny. I might have saved myself a lot of time if someone had been able to validate that feeling and help me to direct it. On the other hand, the mistakes I made and lessons I learned along the way were likely an inseparable element of my destiny.
As a working-class white girl in Detroit, Michigan, growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, I couldn’t find anyone — not my parents or grandparents or teachers — who could help me identify or cultivate the resources I would need to fulfill that destiny. Not that I didn’t receive encouragement. My teachers told me I was smart. My mother wanted me to go to college; she had dropped out to get married. She told me she would “scrub floors if I have to, to get you there.” She wanted me to have economic security, something she — a child of the Great Depression — wanted for herself. She wouldn’t have imagined that either of us had a destiny.
No one at that time could imagine a path to power for someone like me.
It might be that your experience was different, that your upbringing provided more recognition of and support to cultivate your powers. Some families are more connected to the inner life of the spirit, where destiny resides. The lives of some accomplished mothers become maps of possibility for their daughters to follow.
But perhaps the only power that was validated for you was your sexual power. Most often that process is exploitative, for the benefit of someone else, rather than empowering for the the young woman herself.
Or perhaps you were actively discouraged from having a dream and pursuing it. Some families have surrendered any sense of hope and providence in the face of harsh and debilitating circumstances. Others still don’t value their girl children.
Whatever your family’s circumstances, if you grew up as a girl, I have little doubt that you experienced obstacles to fully owning your powers. Maybe it was encouraged in your family but squelched when you got to school. Or when you entered the work force. Or by the men you dated, who wanted you to be a little less than they were.
Obstacles to women’s power look different depending on our circumstances and are complicated by other social circumstances: race and class, gender identity and sexual preference, religious upbringing, physical and mental ability. But nearly all young women, even today, confront a society that neither expects nor wants us to be powerful, a culture that hinders us in ways both subtle and explicit.
Something else, though, is also true: Within you, there’s a living entity who is still aware of her powers and able to take intentional steps to cultivate them. Who knows she has a destiny to fulfill. Let’s think of her as an archetype, an alternative to the Virgin Mary or the Fairy Princess or the Evil Queen or the Wicked Witch or the Kardashians. An archetype is said to represent universal patterns of human nature, but as women we look at the options culture presents to us and find them distorted or limiting. So, let’s conjure this aspect of the self who is connected to her spirit and ready to resist the misinterpretations of patriarchy. Let’s call her Guru Grrrl.
“Guru” is often translated as “teacher” or “spiritual teacher,” but I like to think about “guru” as an energy that helps awaken us into consciousness. “Grrrl” is drawn from the riot grrrl movement of the 1990s, in which women challenged the male domination of culture. Though it began as women’s response to the punk rock scene in the Pacific Northwest, its ideology spread beyond the borders of the United States and throughout the world. It’s often considered the Third Wave of feminism[i].
I like to think of Guru Grrrl rebelling against patriarchal definitions, confinements, or limitations in order to expand her consciousness and pursue her destiny.
When you meet Guru Grrrl, or identify her within yourself, you will sense a radiant energy. She is strong and centered in her body, steady in her mind. You notice a brightness in her eyes, and that she really looks at you. She appears wholly herself. Instead of domination and control, she wields the powers of breath, of sovereignty, of beauty, of vision, of persistence, of change.
Have you ever taken a step toward your destiny and found yourself immersed in self-doubt?
Writing Guru Grrrl was that kind of experience for me. I would regularly question the value of what I was doing or whether I was the right woman to be doing it. To some, I might not appear to be a “powerful” woman. I don’t have a fortune or a media empire. I’ve never aspired to run for president or any elective office. I’m not the head of a corporation, a movie star, or an Olympic athlete. None of these roles are what I consider to be my destiny; none reflect the kinds of power that I want and have. It would be all too easy to judge myself “powerless” because I don’t fit the definitions of “power” and “success” that are promoted in our culture.
I grew up in a working-class family that struggled with substance abuse, mental health concerns, economic uncertainty, domestic violence, and incest. These are factors that both arise from and fuel dis-empowerment; they are often cyclical, repeating across generations.
It was in my unwillingness to succumb to these circumstances, my refusal to give up selfhood and destiny that I began my journey to power. Or perhaps my destiny would not allow me to surrender or give up on it. That journey has required a lifetime of work — still ongoing — to build the inner resources that have allowed me to overcome my own substance abuse patterns, author twelve books and edit fifteen others, build a consulting practice, found multiple community-based creative writing programs, write an opera, commit to and sustain a lesbian marriage, and cultivate a community of writers, artists, feminists, activists, healers, and seekers that nurtures and challenges me.
Whenever my doubt would surface, I would think, “What’s the matter with me?” What I realized is that there is still a potent taboo about women being powerful and defining for ourselves what power means. That taboo exists outside us in culture and society, legal and political systems, and the economy. But it can take root inside, and this was the source of the fear that threatened to paralyze me when I sat down to write these pages. Even after decades of feminism, that taboo is still lodged in my marrow, waiting to sabotage me. Parallel taboos exist for people who have been marginalized by race and class, by physical and mental ability, by sexual orientation and gender identity. Like me, you may be confronting more than one obstacle to power.
These taboos do not belong to us and do not arise organically in our being. They are “factory installed” by the messages we received in our upbringing, our navigation of the culture, designed to keep us from finding and claiming our power. In the messages passed down in the DNA of our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers. This recognition gave me the courage to continue. It’s my hope that by naming it here, you will recognize that nothing is the matter with you, that your own self-doubt is not a reflection of your worth or your abilities. It’s the product of systems and institutions that don’t have your best interests at heart.
In Guru Grrrl I’ll share with you the truths of power that I’ve learned from feminism, from being an activist artist and writer, and from being a student and teacher of Kundalini Yoga. I’ll explore aspects of power that are available to us as women, and convey some perspectives, tools and techniques that may help you with your own journey toward achieving your destiny.
The journey to becoming Guru Grrrl begins with our inner lives and builds outward. Each chapter explores a different “power” and examines the factors that may make it difficult for a woman to fully claim this power. The first installments of this book examine the powers associated with selfhood — presence, awareness, authenticity, responsibility. We’ll then move to caring for our physical bodies and from there, to cultivating our spirit. Once we have nurtured these powers, we’ll explore our connections to others, and all this work fuels the powers we exercise in the external world.
Our lives are not compartmentalized, and the journey is not sequential. We are often working on our sleep patterns, our relationships, our gainful employment, and trying to change the world all at the same time. But it’s useful to consider each aspect of our lives from the perspective of how we derive power. Although the pieces will appear in sequence, you might use the table of contents as a resource for jumping to the themes that are most resonant at this time — whether that’s taking responsibility, working with your emotions, or finding the courage to risk. The table of contents contains a link to each chapter.
Throughout Guru Grrrl I’ll share stories of my own journey, the places where I’ve struggled, and practices that were especially useful for me in the acquisition of that knowledge or wisdom. Your life is not exactly like mine; you may be of a different race, culture, and/or class background than I; you may have grown up in a different part of the country or elsewhere in the world. You might be rooted in a different religious tradition. You might be of a different generation. You might be heterosexual. You might identify as trans or nonbinary. You might be raising children. My story can only reflect my own experience, but I offer it because it can be helpful to learn how someone else has wrestled with a particular issue, to know it’s not something “the matter” with you.
Most chapters include one or more practices — yoga, meditation, or reflective exercises — to assist you in cultivating your powers. It might be helpful to keep a journal (whether you’re writing or making quick sketches) as you explore and reflect on the issues raised, or you might invite one or more friends to have a dialogue about each power.
The Medium.com platform offers the opportunity for you to leave comments, questions, and challenges, and I hope you will. I’m eager to hear about your perspectives on and experiences with these issues in your life.
The challenges that face us in this time — racism, sexism, income inequality, militarism, environmental degradation, and the myriad problems that cascade from these — make it clear that none of us can afford to squander our destinies. The world is in desperate need of women who are in touch with and effective at activating their own powers on behalf of a better future.
It needs a legion of Guru Grrrls, starting with you.
Practice: Find Your Inner Guru Grrrl
(If you want to listen to this practice, click here)
Take a moment to think or write about the ways in your life that you express your own power. You could also have a conversation with a friend about this. Do you find it easy to claim your power or do you have to work yourself up to it? Are some situations easier than others, and what makes that so? What’s the reaction of people in your life—supportive, hostile, or something else? Do you connect this power with being woman-identified?
[i] The First Wave was the movement for Women’s Suffrage. The Second Wave was the women’s liberations movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The Fourth Wave is considered to have begun in 2012 and is active as of 2023; it focuses on women’s empowerment, intersectionality, and the challenging of gender norms.
