From childhood through to my mid-thirties I was a utopian dreamer. I truly believed that we could co-create a bright new world, that we could transform and heal. And then the last few years happened. Breakdown on a personal level, at the same time as historic breakdown on a global level. I remember one day I was curled up on the path outside my home in one of the worst autistic meltdowns of my life. Every step I tried to walk to get inside, my nervous system would collapse in another wave. I felt something inside me break. The hope that I had been holding onto for years that things would get better in our personal circumstances had gone. It seemed so naïve. On a global scale the complete disruption of normality has led to a subsequent loss of hope for liberals and progressives, left-leaners, alternatives and New Agers. There is a sense of things being totally out of our control on a global scale: Brexit, Trump, Johnson, the pandemic, waves of cancellations and the culture wars, the total lack of action on the climate crisis, the wars in Ukraine and Palestine… A sense which has led many of us to retreat entirely from trying to make a difference, feeling powerless in the face of so much hostility and conflict.
Feeling powerless is psychologically dangerous for humans.
It is a dynamic that patriarchy has exploited again and again throughout history. Keeping people apart through shame and fear is a tool of oppression and control which ensures the continuity of the status quo.
Women’s voices are still being left out of important global conversations. Last week it was revealed that on the COP29 committee spearheading the next round of climate talks there was not a single woman. Out of 28 people. (Read HERE) To face the biggest crisis our species has ever had. Not one. And whilst we’re at it, there has still never been a female US president, or leader of most major religions. Women’s voices – ideas, insights, needs – are still missing on every level.
But the status quo is breaking down. As my friend Tracy says, “these are the death throes of the patriarchy, love, this is what it looks like.”
Alone we might feel powerless, hopeless…but together…
We have seen what happens when women stand together and speak out – think the Suffragettes, #MeToo, Pussy March, Black Lives Matter, the women in Mexico, India and Canada who have stood together and said enough to the disappearance, murder and rape of women and girls in their communities. Something powerful is unleashed when women raise their voices together, awareness comes to what has seemed intractable, the status quo begins to shift…
I want to put our brains, hearts, lived experience, ideas, dreams, insights together to create a document of hope and power that will carry us through psychologically, energetically and spiritually. Which will reassure and support us. And provide us with practical tools and ideas. I would like to partner with you to co-create a vision of what comes next. Of how we might travel these tumultuous times with hope in our hearts. How we can cultivate the seeds of the new, growing them up strong under our stewardship. I want to hear your dreams or visions of what might come next. I want to hear about working models for creating a culture that honours, respects and supports the female and feminine alongside all others. I want us to learn how we build strong communities that can hold us all.
About the Book
We are bringing together the whole of the Womancraft community – authors and readers – to collaborate in creating a diverse and inclusive compendium of contemporary women’s wisdom, one which will carry us forward through these strange and uncertain times. One that our community can turn to as a handbook, words to inspire, that we can share with our sisters, daughters, granddaughters, with our women’s circles and friends.
Each time we open submissions we are sad to have to say no to so many talented women. This is a way that we can publish more creative and powerful women’s voices, alongside our existing authors.
The book will open with an Introduction by Lucy H. Pearce, founder of Womancraft Publishing.
Title
Weaving Our Way: Beyond Patriarchy – A Womancraft Compendium
Themes
- What needs healing/transforming…and how we can: practically, energetically, linguistically, psychologically, systemically, politically.
- How we can each divest ourselves from patriarchy.
- What you long for, what do we need: visions and dreams for what comes next, how do we cultivate this in ourselves and others…and how might we get there collectively?
- Community and belonging beyond patriarchy: what does it look like – examples of folks who are doing this now.
- Evolving our relationship with nature and our embodied selves.
- Beyond the binary of patriarchal thought and language.
- Evolving beyond war, fear, shame and the -isms as tools of control and oppression.
- Practices, Tools, Prayers, Blessings, Rituals, Ceremonies.
FOR FULL SUBMISSIONS DETAILS PLEASE CLICK HERE
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