We step up. Shaking.

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I realise that each time I shake with fear, each time I feel the constriction of deep anxiety, it is because I am coming into direct contact with the invisible structure of patriarchy – the power matrix – that which keeps us in place, keeps us small and scared and silent. The invisible dome, like one of those pest guard things you plug in which emit a high frequency that only rodents can hear. That. And when we feel it, and hear it we are called mad. The dog whistle at the pitch that only we can hear. Go home. Back in your box.

I see again, I feel for a moment how deeply threatening my work, my message is for our culture, our status quo – the message that says women have been actively oppressed for millennia. Women have a right to their power. Women’s voices matter. Womens voices speaking that truths that have been belittled, kept silent, ignored. I am giving permission for, making space for, supporting, fomenting, that which has been actively, viciously, surreptitiously denied and controlled for generations. I am doing it without any authority or permission but my own, without an organisation or spiritual tradition at my back. No wonder I feel vulnerable, shaky and doubtful as to whether I can do it.

It is madness.

Or rather it is a break for freedom and sanity in a world gone mad. A world of double think that brands me the crazy for saying that the emperor has no clothes and that my body has no shame.

I realise that the time where my body starts to shake, and I feel like I need to puke is when I touch these invisible walls of power – the tax man, the immigration man, standing to speak out loud, to be seen. I walk in to fear, and do my best to meet it with love. It makes me shake, makes me sick, but ultimately makes me stronger, confronting, consciously, time and again the invisible power structure whilst standing in my own, the invisible barrier of silence whilst finding the courage to speak my truth.

I must do my work – the work of paradigm-shifting – within the old paradigm, within the structures I am trying to transform. I must follow their rules and at the same time follow and be guided by the new ways of working, the new structures that are unfolding.

It makes me shake.

But now I know, now I know why I am doing it.

It is easy to forget. To doubt. To get smaller and safer. This shaking is like an earthquake, the fracture lines open, reawakening trauma – old scars and fears – from this life time, from other lifetimes – of the costs of this work. The deaths and punishments – literal and metaphorical, which are the price for confronting power. No wonder I shake. We have been told we shake because we are wrong, we are crazy, that we shake in fear of a greater power.

This is a lie.

We shake because our bodies sense the destructive power held within the patriarchal matrix. It is not superior, but dark, shadowy and distorted. But it is not bigger than life, bigger than us.

And so we step up. Again and again. We build our courage every time. We learn more about that destructive power – and our creative power, every time. We learn more about our destructive power too. And we step up. Again and again. Some days we can push through the fear and shame, other days we cannot. But we step up, again and again. And speak truth. And show the power of life. Of creativity. Of togetherness. Of vulnerability.

We step up. Shaking.

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2 comments

  1. Emily Dickinson said ‘Much Madness is divinest Sense – / To a discerning eye – / Much sense – the starkest Madness –’ … Yes, they will call us mad, but our sense is divine, our intuition knows the true way. Their sense is the true madness, and we must work until their madness is gone.

    Keep speaking, Lucy, keep writing. You are doing the work of life. Thank you. x

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