Month: August 2021

Walking Through the Storm

“Strong women aren’t simply born. They are made by the storms they walk through.”

Understanding Compassion

Goddess Inspired

August 27, 2021

Tagged darkness, Depression, Joy, storm, Strength

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Walking Through the Storm

“Strong women aren’t simply born. They are made by the storms they walk through.” Understanding Compassion.

As I read this quote on my Facebook feed this week, I was struck by how many women I know who have experienced great turmoil in their lives or who are currently facing storms not of their own making. Many are dealing with serious illness, with loss of loved ones, or with deteriorating relationships. They are carrying heavy burdens of grief and loss, and many times they feel that they cannot carry the load. It feels too much; it feels impossible; it is numbing and/or excruciatingly painful; it is unbearable; it feels like they can’t go on. And yet they do. They rise like a Phoenix from the ashes stronger, more compassionate, more loving, and more beautiful because of the terrible storms they have survived.

I have written before about welcoming the dark, but in the midst of these kinds of storms, it seems small comfort to know that transformation must take place in the dark. The gut-wrenching pain is there. It is real, and it seems as though we can’t breathe. It is in these crucibles of pain and suffering, however, that we find our greatest strengths.

I remember going through an ugly divorce and subsequent custody battle many years ago. Everything felt dark and hopeless. I felt worthless and heartless for hurting my children and disappointing my conservative family. I went through my days in a dark haze of fear and pain. But one day, in my imagination, I deliberately jumped into the dark abyss. In that moment I felt my angels catch me and lift me up. I knew then that I would be okay.

The pain didn’t end that day, but I knew that I would survive. That day, I began to heal. That day I felt supported by something greater than myself. I began to look for the small things that brought me joy. I began to empathize with the pain of others. I began to accept that my wounds were the keys to transformation. Without those wounds, I wouldn’t have changed. The storm gave me strength and resilience. It tempered me and changed me.

I don’t know if you have had such a defining revelation. I don’t know if you can hear the still, small voice inside of you amid the raging storms of grief and loss. If not, I do know that there is still something to cling to. That something is your own inner strength. You may think you don’t have any strength, that you can’t hold on a minute longer. But the push for survival is stronger than you know. There is something inside of you that pushes you beyond what you think you can endure. It is survival one minute at a time, five minutes at a time, one day at a time. It is that small, flickering flame of hope that can help you endure, that can help you rise out of the muck and become stronger and stronger.

Practically speaking, when I am in those dark places, what helps me most is to look for tiny sparks of joy. It can be the smile on a grandchild’s face, the sound of the rain on the roof, the flash of a cardinal flying by the window, a beautiful sunrise or sunset, a quote in a book, or the voice of a friend calling to check in on me.

Eckhart Tolle said, “For most people, their spiritual teacher is their suffering. Because eventually the suffering brings about awakening.” Transformation or awakening usually occurs in the dark storms of life. While the darkness is not something any of us wants to face, it gives me hope that allowing the dark to flow through me will eventually make me into the person I was meant to be. Allowing the dark to work in me and through me, rather than fighting it, was what was key for me. In that allowing, I was able to transform into a new, more loving and compassionate self. I have scars. You have scars. These are the wounds that have opened us up into a new way of being. These are battle scars that I am proud of because they are the tangible evidence that I have faced the storm and awakened into being more of my true self.

For everyone in the middle of the storm, be still and allow the storm to rage around you. Take joy in the small things. Live one moment at a time. And rise like the Phoenix from the ashes of the old you, as a strong and fierce warrior.

Barbara Garland
August 2021

When Does the Spiritual Become Political?

Patriarchy Must End

But we must remain vigilant. Everything can change in a heartbeat. All the progress that has been made can be lost in an instant.

Goddess Inspired

August 20, 2021

Tagged Grief, Male, Oppression, Patriarchy, Power

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Patriarchy Must End

This week I am still feeling deep grief for the world. As I watched the scenes unfold in Afghanistan this week, my heart felt like it was literally breaking. That country is falling back into the clutches of toxic patriarchy, and I can literally feel the fear of the women and girls as they are forced back into the dark ages of Sharia law. I also realize how thin a line there is between our modern world and the stifling rule of the patriarchal male god.

It is time for patriarchy to end. It must die, in order for our world to survive, but it won’t go quietly. Power is highly addictive, and those in power won’t give it up easily. We only have to look at our own legislators as they try to control women’s bodies, at law enforcement as it wages war on bodies of color, at the inequities in health care during a pandemic. Patriarchy won’t go quietly or easily.

Patriarchy is broadly defined (Merriam Webster) as “control by men of a disproportionately large share of power.” In Sociology it is commonly described as a “system of social structures and practices in which men [white men generally] govern, oppress, and exploit women.” In my view it is not just women who are oppressed by patriarchy. It is anything or anyone that is viewed as the “other” – people of color, gays, transgenders, even the earth herself.

Patriarchy, as a system, uses “power over” to control, exploit, and to subjugate those which are not at the top of the power structure, namely high-status men (usually white men). These men control the laws, both secular and religious. They control the money. They control anyone and anything that they perceive as lower status. They are addicted to power and status and terrified that they will lose that power.

To keep the “other” in line, laws are codified into religion and culture. These control every aspect of someone’s life – marriage, education, property rights, bodily autonomy. We only have to look at the culture wars over abortion and gay marriage to see patriarchy in action.

There is general presumption in most world religions that God is male. Within that presumption are the seeds of patriarchy. If God is male, then it follows that everything that is not male is less than. It sets up a hierarchy in the family and in society. There is also a presumption that man is above nature and rules nature, which leads to the using up of our earth.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Genesis 1:26

As I look at Afghanistan and as I see our own country caught on the throes of racism and sexism, ancient memories awaken in my very DNA. On some deep level I remember the witch burnings, torture, slavery, and rape. I remember being treated as property. I remember the hopelessness of not being able to use my mind and the powerlessness of being a woman or of being in a lower caste. And once again I grieve. I grieve for the world because more than one half of us have been unable to use our talents and gifts to make the world a better place. I grieve because the patriarchy still has an iron grip, wielded by old white men who do not want to share power. I grieve for all the women and children and men who have died because in the mind of the patriarchy their lives were worthless.

But there is hope. In the throes of the patriarchal backlash, we see women and people of color being elected to high office. We see climate change being taken seriously. We see movements across the world calling attention to inequities of all kinds. We see small groups working diligently to combat racism and exploitation.

But we must remain vigilant. Everything can change in a heartbeat. All the progress that has been made can be lost in an instant. We must continue to root out patriarchy in our own lives. We must continue to reject power over and replace it with power within. We must stand in the truth that we are all connected, that we are all one and that no race or sex is better than another. We must integrate and balance masculine and feminine, and we must soundly reject that patriarchy is the natural order of things.

Barbara Garland
August, 2021

Transmuting Grief

I take it all in.
I sit with this grief
And in the sitting, it transmutes into the jewel of great price –
The diamond born of pressure and heat,
Forgiveness and love pouring out into my small corner of the world.

Goddess Inspired

August 13, 2021
2 Comments on Transmuting Grief

Tagged Grief, Sadness, Sitting with Grief, Transmutation

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Transmuting Grief

“I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.” Obi Wan Kenobi, Star Wars

I woke up suddenly on Monday night filled with a deep feeling of grief. I was almost overcome by that feeling, and yet it wasn’t a personal grief. I have learned over the years, that feelings like this are usually Goddess trying to get my attention. After tossing and turning for a bit, I got up, determined to explore and to write about these intense feelings.

Obviously, the past several months have been ones of great loss for many people. I have come through this time relatively unscathed. Although my husband and I have lost several friends to age and disease, we lost no one to Covid. The grief that we have felt has been real, but it wasn’t of the intensity that I was feeling during the night.

In fact, as a retiree, I am privileged enough to take advantage of the isolation of the past year to use it for a time of reflection and personal growth. So my thought was, “Who am I to feel grief for something I have not personally experienced?”

Yet the grief is there, it is real, it is heavy. There is so much death in the world, not just from Covid, but from fires and floods, heat waves, and deep freezes. There are wars on women, people of color, gays and transgenders, on truth – wars on everything that is deemed “other” by the patriarchy. It feels as if the world as we know it is crumbling beneath our feet, and there is nowhere safe to stand.

I am somewhat of an empath, and I can feel these deaths in the depths of my soul, in my very bones. I feel the deep grief, and yet it is not a personal grief, but a universal grief for the threat to our very existence as a planet. I am feeling overcome with grief for all the myriad losses in this world – whales, rainforests, butterflies, honeybees, glaciers, polar bears, people, truth. The list is infinite. The world is in upheaval and there seems to be little political or collective will to take steps to mitigate the damage. Will our planet burn up because of our foolishness?

I am tempted to push this grief away. After all, I am one person with little influence. The problem is too big, and I am too small. And yet, I feel this grief for a reason. I feel that I must sit with it, not block it or deny it. In sitting with it, in allowing it to flow through me, I am a vessel for transformation. I become the crucible for transmuting this grief into hope, wisdom, love, and deep connection with all things. I am called to live fully in my corner of the world, to make a small difference where I am by radiating love and by acknowledging that we are in essence all one. In the grieving, I am called to find hope in the fluttering wings of a butterfly or the cry of a newborn baby.

I believe that, to some extent, everyone on the planet is feeling this grief. They may not recognize it as grief. It may come out as anger, depression, anxiety, or physical illness, but in reality, it is grief for the death of the old world, when the new world has not yet been born. I choose to sit with this grief in the hope of transmuting it into something that can contribute to making the new world a better place.

Barbara Garland
August, 2021

Sitting in the Dark

Dark stabbing grief
A darkness so deep as to be impenetrable
No glimmer of light, no glimmer of hope

“But it isn’t even my grief”, I whisper in the dark.
It has nothing to do with me.
It has everything to do with me.

It is overwhelming loss -Loss of lifetimes, loss of the present
Grief for the world
For the downtrodden, for people of color, for women, for children, for animals, for plants, for the other, for Mother Earth herself.

I take it all in.
I sit with this grief
And in the sitting, it transmutes into the jewel of great price –
The diamond born of pressure and heat
Forgiveness and love pouring out into my small corner of the world.

But first I must sit in this dark place,
Allowing the wisdom of the dark to heal my broken heart.

We Are the Spark of the Divine

If I see the spark of divinity in my own eyes, then I see it in the eyes of everyone, for we are all made of the same stuff.

Goddess Inspired

August 6, 2021

Tagged divinity, Hierarchy, Nature, Other

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We Are the Spark of the Divine

Seeing divinity in nature and in everyone can be a way of being connected to the divine, and it is the way that the divine connects with us. If I see divinity in the lowliest ant or the tallest mountain, it is the same divinity. If I see the spark of divinity in my own eyes, then I see it in the eyes of everyone, for we are all made of the same stuff.

As humans, we are accustomed to seeing through the eyes of the patriarchal hierarchy. We name this one thing more valuable than another thing, this one person more valuable than another. However, if we can let go of the ego and begin to see divinity in nature and in humanity, we can let go of judgment and open our hearts with empathy and compassion. Every person is equally valuable; every plant and animal is worthy of existence.

The trouble comes, I think, when we cannot see divinity in our own selves. Then it is easy to denigrate and make ourselves less than. We perpetuate the hierarchical system in which we find ourselves to day. We project our own shadow self, that which we do not see as divine, onto others. We judge and destroy. We do not see kinship, but rather otherness. That goes for other humans as well as the natural world. Whatever is “other” is not divine; therefore, we can conquer the other, destroy it, judge it as less than, or kill it. Because the “other” is an “it,” it is not divine. It is not worthy of existence.

If I truly begin to see myself as a divine being, I look at the world with different eyes. I begin to see the spark of divinity in everything. I begin to look at the world with love and compassion because I am filled with love and compassion for my own self. I begin to see that everything and everyone is connected by that divine spark of love. I begin to understand that truly, we are all one, we are all connected, and we are all divine.

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New blogs will be added to this post every Friday.

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About Me

I am a seeker of truth, a truth teller, a lover of the Divine Feminine, an aspiring writer, a mystery, an open book, a work in progress. I have lived a long and varied life, and now in my seventies, I am being called to share some of what I have learned over the years. I hope to share the wisdom of the deep Feminine that is being channeled through me.

If the Goddess has ever whispered to you, I invite you to join me on an incredible journey of love and discovery. May you hear Her wisdom through these words.

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