MOUNTAIN WOMAN: RESHAPING THE MAP OF THE WORLD
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” ― Arundhati Roy.
The world is falling apart. Old systems are breaking up. Climate disruption has become the norm. Institutions are failing us.
We may long to hold things together, to plaster over the cracks, to mend what is broken. But if we do, are we only prolonging the inevitable? Even worse, are we helping to keep alive the systems that need to be allowed to fall apart?
In these seismic times, down in the ache of all the broken and wounded aspects of our Self and world, something new is bubbling up. We sense it as a psychic tremor, a thundering in our hearts, the shaking of the earth beneath our feet. We feel it as our inner Mountain Woman rises and demands to be heard.
The greatest mountains constantly erode. Everything that lives carries some affliction, is broken in some way. Only when you enter the breaks can you glimpse the world that Arundhati Roy speaks of––and, if you listen carefully, you can hear breathing.
Awakening to your inner Mountain Woman calls for a counter-intuitive approach. As women, we are used to holding it all together. Everything in our being says, “Don’t let things fall apart.” But Mountain Woman knows that it is in the very depth of brokenness that the treasure resides.
“Vunja is a Swahili word that marks the site of strange ruptures but then invites celebration and dance with/in those cracks,” writes professor and Nigerian activist Bayo Akomolafe. It is time for you to dance with those breakages in ways that open you to “new forms of becoming-together.”
In looking for new ways of being, other places of power, you are challenged as a Mountain Woman to enter the shadowy world of fissures and rifts that are part of our world, both inner and outer.
Just as a mantle plume under a fault line, or a fracture zone, can result in eruptions of huge volumes of lava, so the cracks in our systems and psyches can allow for new forms of organization and ways being to emerge. When, eventually, we put the pieces back together, nothing is the same. The story has changed. The map of the world is different.
If you want to explore how your inner Mountain Woman can help you to contribute to this new world we will create together, please join me for “Awakening to the Mountain Woman Archetype: A Five-Part Online Writing Workshop” starting soon.
