Chapter 7: Seeking wise women
A few years ago, when I was going through a big transition in my life and work, in one of those mid-life existential moments, I made a request to the universe. I asked for guidance, preferably from some real-life wise women.
At the time, I was thinking about wisdom in the context of social change, and feeling discouraged by the lack of wisdom around me. What would it look like to have wise elders guiding our work? I was seeking a community that was practising with depth, love, and intentional spirituality to balance the grinding work of social change.
I brought this issue of spiritual guidance in systems change up at a meeting of predominantly male senior leaders. It didn’t fly. Who was I, a female social activist in mid-life, to suggest such a preposterous idea? I was told I didn’t have the credentials for this work.
The problem was that I was searching for real-life wise women. There were plenty of men in senior leadership positions, but where were the wise women? I wanted a model to inspire me, to learn from.
I was also alarmed by the idealization of certain male leaders in the systems change space. Why was it, I began to ask, that only older white men seemed capable of sitting in the wisdom seat? It was frustrating to sit in rooms where older men were guides to reawaken the feminine and also determined how money was being allocated for this work. Or where younger men were favoured with money and opportunities to teach people who, in fact, had deeper and wider experience than they had. Why was this happening?
As a feminist mom, I was seeking role models, mentors and guidance about how to move forward into the next phase of life. I wanted to break the constricting mould. Where were the embodied wise women?
We live in a youth-obsessed culture where older women are targeted by ageism and misogyny; where women are either being erased, or are obsessed with staying young. I saw clearly how women were either hyper competitive or invisible. I knew in my bones that we needed women’s wisdom to guide the world at this time and, honestly, I couldn’t find them anywhere.
I was asking lots of questions about power and wisdom. I had spent a few decades working with young women, and meditating on what it means to support girls so they can discover and express their gifts, but now I was in transition. I was entering a new path in systems change. And I needed wise women.
I met Susan Spakowski, a long systems change leader from Nova Scotia, at a convening hosted by CKX, an organization dedicated to learning and exchange across communities.
Susan was part of the Shambala Buddhist community, which had recently experienced sexual violence scandals. She sent me a note after our meetings telling me that she resonated with feminist systems change work I had talked about at the meeting, and that she was practising with an inspiring Tibetan Buddhist teacher named Lama Tsultrim Allione. This teacher was, apparently bringing a much needed feminist lens to the fractured Buddhist Community.
Synchronicity! I happened to be out east when Lama Tsultrim was there giving a workshop and a book launch event. I registered in a workshop which began my path as a student of Vajrayana Buddhism.
That first workshop was life-changing. I loved the practice and it filled a deep need.
I remember the moment Lama Tsultrim walked into the workshop. I was sitting in a room filled with strangers, all of whom were locals in the Buddhist community. I was nervous, feeling like a true beginner in completely unfamiliar territory.
I smiled to myself. Here she was, Lama Tsultrim, a powerful and wise woman. I felt her presence deeply. This was not performance or status or a timid older women trying to fit into a role not made for her. Her energy filled the room, her grace was visible, her depth and wisdom radiated.
That was five years ago. Since then, I have been practising and a student in the lineage of Machig Labdron at Tara Mandala.
Our inquiry
Today, through the Sanctuary Series, we are curating a dialogue that recognizes wise women in all their power. They are sharing their experiences and perspective as we walk into an inquiry about cultures of care. Magyu Lopön Charlotte Z. Rotterdam, who has studied Tibetan Buddhism for the last 20 years, was our guest for session 3. She is my mentor and a teacher.
The care series has offered a platform to women leading in systems change, women with the deep knowledge, experience and wisdom we need for this inquiry. What a gift to have them as guides.
Terrellyn McFearn joined me in this inquiry into care and systems change. We both feel humble and full of wonder as we explore the roles and responsibilities at this stage in life. Terrellyn is a fellow traveller, a fierce force in the world. We have been meeting for a few years now exploring healing, collective care and systems change. She has been a wise friend on this journey and holds this thread of rematriation that she weaves through all our conversations.
When we were planning the care series together, she suggested we invite Grandmother Kahontakwas, Diane Longboat, to accompany us. Kahontakwas is a member of the Turtle Clan and Mohawk Nation at Six Nations Grand River Territory, Canada. She is a ceremonial leader, and a traditional teacher and healer. She opens every one of our meetings with a prayer and invocation, and weaves her teachings throughout each session.
In session 5, our guest, Miigam’agan, who is a Wabanaki/Mi’kmaw grandmother of the Fish Clan, joined Terrellyn in a dialogue and sharing about their work in rematriation. We caught this remarkable teaching on video for you. The care series is a wide-ranging journey that will stir you and call to you, pulling on your threads and inviting you to follow. Here is an invitation to listen to your own sense of knowing.
Miigam’agan began by talking about rematriation and how she is reclaiming the sacred feminine in and through her language. Colonization and patriarchy have erased the feminine in her language.
She shared how language is instructive. Through language, the sacred life and the sacred role of women are expressed. Language is a living energy that grows like waves in the water, connecting us to our inner wisdom and our collective knowing. Our speech contributes to the collective. It was a gift and honor to share with and to listen to her. Her words are like a doorway into another realm where women are sacred.
“The deeper we go towards our ancestral roots, the more likely we are to find each other, because we are returning to our mother.” —
Growing up in the dominant culture in the West, it is hard to imagine what Miigam’agan sees and holds. Her sharing is a lifeline and a branch into possibility.
It conjures a vision of the sacred that transcends the ways in which our corporate, consumer culture has presented the concept of mother and of goddess. The goddesses of corporate North America have been hollowed out and turned into merchandise.
Miigam’agan’s vision also transcends the ways in which New Age practices fall so quickly into spiritual bypassing, consumerism and individualism. It transcends the superficial. For the first time in systems change work, I could see something I had not imagined before.
I left the session wondering how I might touch a similar spirit in my ancestral languages. I was also grateful for her teachings and the communal power of being together with Miigam’agan and the other women.
I sometimes feel that we women who are on the verge of creating a different world are in a hallway of mirrors that only reinforce the old power dynamics. We are so distracted, we don’t even see how we solidify, over and over again, the status quo. Becoming aware of the ways in which we have been conditioned to think, to see the world and our place in it is hard, slow work. Sometimes the movements that claim to liberate us from oppression shapeshift into the morality squad, and policing systems that keep us stuck in business as usual. With the best of intentions, women frequently collude with the harmful systems we are trying to shift.
Nevertheless, I am grateful to and inspired by the women who are appearing in my world to point out different pathways. They are pointing in unexpected directions, uncovering depths that are alive, connected and aligned in ways that expand what is possible.
There is a doorway. After we walk through it, there is an expansion. The awareness of the sacred invites us to expand beyond the limitations of any binary, beyond the limits of the domestic and private space and dichotomy and to resonate with the mother.
We decolonize when we acknowledge our complexity, because we enter a different paradigm. We decolonize when we come together and share the cracks and interstices where we live, whether they are feminist, Indigenist, or the many diverse perspectives at the edges of mainstream life. We decolonize when we listen to wise women who hold the knowledge and power of wisdom traditions, whether these are in healing, from matriarchal systems, or from old, traditional lineages.
Regina asks,
“What is it to see the divine in ourselves?”
Charlotte invites us to fall into the refuge of the mother. And to bathe in the unconditional love that is always present.
Grandmother Diane says,
“You know, the great wisdom teachers never give you all the answers. They make you think about deep questions. And they give you the fullness of your own authority to examine those questions and to come up with the answers.”
Miigam’agan adds,
“When we look at our sacred mother through an Indigenous lens, we recognize the mutlifactedness of her.”
Listen to more of our Sanctuary Series: Episode 4 with Miigam’agan ad Terrellyn in dialogue about rematration.
