Go forth and march!!!

Who can concentrate in an atmosphere like this? I mean, really? With all this political bullshit, crazy-muggy air, a Cat 3 aimed to take out Galveston, and a hedgehog acclimating himself to a new home.

I have to admit, I've been avoiding my blog. It just doesn't seem to make sense to me anymore. I haven't been checking on other blogs as I normally do, thus not leaving messages and encouraging all those other bloggers out there. Life just feels out of sync.

But I keep on reading, and it's "Dissident Daughter" with which I march on. I continue to be filled with gratitude and hope, fear and uncertainty as I follow Kidd on her journey from the mainstream, patriarchal rule of Christianity to the self-discovery of the Sacred Feminine. I feel so aware, right now, of the Feminine Wound, this ageless piece of our souls that contains all the shutup voices, the kept down spirits, the women who went before us and were trampled by the patriarchy of this planet.

And Kidd's tale is reminding me of the power of coincidence. Make no mistake, there is purpose behind every happening, which is why I was so moved when Wooly Daisy emailed me the following:

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-Grandmothers; they lived over 90 years ago.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the right to vote.

In June 1917, after months of picketing the White House for President Woodrow Wilson's support of their movement, arrests began to occur. The usual charge: obstructing sidewalk traffic. But they kept picketing and marching until finally on Nov. 15, 1917, 40 prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

By the end of the night, they were barely alive.

(Lucy Burns)

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

(Dora Lewis)

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror,' when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia (already under investigation for reports of inhumane conditions for and treatment of the female prisoners) ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks following Nov. 15, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

(Alice Paul)

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

At a point in the HBO movie, "Iron Jawed Angles," Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. The doctor refuses. "Alice Paul was strong," he said, "and brave. That didn't make her crazy." The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."

This message came as a reminder to hold close this dearly-fought for right to vote, but there is so much more to it. I think to myself, how friggin' lucky am I?!

I pull a Munch and let loose a silent scream over all that has been done in an effort to be equal. My throat squeezes shut and my palms begin to sweat and I get fidgety and angry over past harms done. And then there are the current issues of inequality. I voice this and am labeled 'one of those.' I speak of the Sacred Feminine and many, even women, shuffle away or roll their eyes. Is the receiving of this message on suffragists linked to my spiritual journey? I have never been more sure that this was no coincidence. Not only am I responsible to continue scratching away at the patriarchal surface, but I have a duty to continue what was started by those who came before me.

And this is no male vs. female battle, it is a quest for both sexes to throw off those old beliefs and causes and to "trust the gut" and go forth.

Fear will only keep us paralyzed and immobile. Now go forth, my loved ones, and do good work and make yourselves proud and march!!!!