I Am Woman
What a journey the ‘I Am Woman’ art project has been. Back in Spring 2022 when the initial idea rose in harmony with the Spring energies of new growth, I had no idea where it would lead or the journey to would take me on.
Who would have thought that stating ‘I Am Woman’ could be so controversial. I generally work only with women. My work is aimed and geared towards women, women’s creativity, spirituality, and her connection to the Feminine. Why? – because I am a woman. And I know womanhood is sacred, her way of Being, her intuitive nature, her gifts, are needed more than ever in our modern day culture. I knew the subject was going to be tough – not only are we looking at our bodies as women and how we feel about them - but the art project was my response and way to voice how I felt about the rising of gender ideology in our culture as being reality and the impact that I was witnessing on women and women’s rights.
Lost from our societies and culture is the profound knowledge that a woman’s body is a formed reflection of the attributes of the Sacred Feminine. Just like a man’s body is a formed reflection of the attributes of the Sacred Masculine. You only have to look at the shape of the bodies to know this. They are totally different. They embody different frequencies and powers. Woman’s body is receptive, nurturing and is built to gestate, grow new life, and birth it. These attributes are also the power of her spiritual nature. Man’s body is directive, it has direction encoded in its shape and when a man is aligned with his Masculine nature, he is an embodiment of presence, stillness, and the pure direction of consciousness. Of course, both bodies are formed by the Great Mother – these two distinct frequencies of the Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine, these two distinct ways of Being are formed here by Her. The body is a formed living, reflection of reality.
The intelligence of the body doesn’t require your mind to do its job. You don’t have to work at your heart pumping blood around your body, or cell regeneration or waste removal – the system of intelligence that is your body is tirelessly functioning without your involvement. Apart from you needing to care for it, feed it, tend it. To look after it as the sacred gift it is. So, I am passionate about woman and womanhood and the need to claim back from our mind made worlds of modern-day life the essence of woman and womanhood. There is a Divine Intelligence at work in our bodies. One that is not honoured in our societies, one that is lost from our earth, from life. And that is the Feminine, the Goddess, the Great Mother.
I work with women from all walks of life. From women who are at the most vulnerable in our society to women who are change makers and business leaders. I work with women who have never heard anything around woman’s spirituality and the Feminine, only patriarchal religion. To women who have and are journeying deep as they embrace and embody the nature of Feminine practice and devotion to that place behind what you see, behind the mind and into the nature of reality. And no matter what walk of life you are from – as women – we have a shared reality of the nature of our bodies.
What I see is that woman is cut off from her body. Living in the mind. That is the nature of the world and of the modern-day culture. Throughout the ages are different phases and epochs of life on earth - and here we are in the epoch and dominance of mind. Mind is overlayed over life. That is one of the reasons why connecting with nature and the seasons is so important so that we re-orientate our awareness of the natural earth cycles and extract out of the linear progression of mind.
We have to learn to get into our bodies. As women we MUST get into our bodies. As painful as that is. And it can be. Inside our beautiful bodies are stored every hurt, every unsaid word, every wound, every unspoken experience and all the unresolved that has been pushed down. Pushed down to fit in, to be a good girl, a quiet girl, to not be heard or seen. Running the I Am Woman art project showed just how hard it was to feel what was in the body, what was stored in there and what was released through the process. It was powerful. Transformative. And incredibly heart breaking.
One of the main themes was FEAR. So much fear about being a woman, from walking down the street at night to speaking – about anything. Women who had pushed down male violence, abuse, rape and not even told one soul. To women who carried the scars of the unresolved, the unexpressed, the unacknowledged. And now the fear of saying what a woman is. We all know what a woman is. Without one – your mother – you wouldn’t be here. The fear to speak it was so deep. The fear to say ‘no that’s not real’, the fear to speak up for their children in their school, the fear of speaking when a man in a dress is using the women’s public toilets, the fear of saying a man who says he is a woman isn’t allowed in a vulnerable woman’s group run by an organisation, the fear of speaking about the impact of gender ideology and opening the possibility of more abuse – from other women too.
The ‘I Am Woman’ art project was a powerful catalyst to look and feel what was contained in the body and how a woman felt about her body. As the holder of the art project I was saddened to have to cancel three scheduled events through lack of commitment to attend. I knew the subject of being a woman and embracing the body could be challenging. Creating a life size artwork of your own body is quite a big thing to do. To feel what you feel in your body and how you feel about your body can be raw and vulnerable. Yet I celebrated those that did come and was grateful for all that I learned through holding the space for this powerful possibility.
Then my next journey began. Initially the vison was to hold an in-person art exhibition in the different locations. Then the logistics of organising that and getting venues to support with a space soon showed me that wasn’t going to happen. Then I looked at finding one venue and having one big exhibition – again I couldn’t see how I could make it work without considerable finance. So here we are now… a sister said to me ‘you could do it online’ and here it is. YES! All that took was my time to organise it and build it on my website, so I was super excited to have a way forward. Then I had to face that having an exhibition required those that took part to submit their artwork. And what surprised me was that most did not answer my emails, did not communicate, and did not connect.
My heart broke. It broke for the depths I held for the project and the amount of healing that did take place on the individual days. It broke at the lack of support for the next stage of the project. It just broke. I couldn’t believe that out of nearly 30 women that took part across North Wales that only one submitted her artwork. One. I did have 10 other submissions plus my own from the only event in England in my hometown so at least I could bring the art project to completion and celebrate those that had submitted.
I have looked at this a lot. Why was I being ignored by those that took part. By those that received a lot on the actual day and voiced that. And as I have been building this online exhibition leaked documents and news came out that the Welsh Parliament is redefining what a woman is in its own parliamentary structure, Senedd Cymru. The democratically elected body that represents Wales and its people. A woman will no longer be a biological born woman within the parliament that governs all the people…. I can’t help but wonder if the fear and lack of woman standing up for her rights and reality of womanhood is allowing this to creep in, steadily and surely bit by bit, woman will no longer have sex-based rights in Wales.
I don’t have any answers. Just questions. Yet one thing I do know is womanhood is sacred with distinct rites of passage, with distinct attributes, qualities, and ways of Being associated with our biological sex that is an actual manifest form of the Feminine. The wounds of oppression and suppression run deep through thousands of years of patriarchy and the denial of the Feminine and woman, to the wounds of the witch hunts, to the wounds of modern day living and the dominance of mind over matter, illusion over reality, the having, getting, taking and sexualisation of life, of woman, over the natural order of the earth, the cycles of life and the seasons of womanhood.
It is important to not give way the language that describes the facts and nuances of womanhood. It important to not giveaway the reality of being a woman. To deny our own sex, our own way of being, our own beautiful body as having any importance or value. That is what the patriarchy living inside and outside of you wants you to think. It is okay to say ‘I Am Woman.’ To claim who you are. It is real and true.
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