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For International Women’s Day 2025: Women, Water, Numinosity, and the Transformation of the World

As climate, social, and political crises escalate, one source of guidance becomes essential to our continued optimism and activism: a Numinous Story. Numinosity describes the direct experience of a spiritual dimension that is sparked by an apparently ordinary place, person, idea, song, or any work of art. A Numinous Story weaves its readers and listeners into a coherent whole that heals, temporarily, the brokenness pressing in on us when we are aware of more than our own small concerns. The more Numinous Stories we read and hear, the more optimistic, engaged, and committed to creating positive change we become.

Numinosity is not a universal experience. Some visitors to the Holy Wells of the world feel nothing remarkable and come away disappointed. Others find this holiness on a hike through a forest or in a photograph of a Redwood tree. Some feel this Grace in every bath and sip of water. Numinosity infuses ordinary life with the mystical dimension that makes all of life sacred and every place on this Earth a Homecoming.

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Nightbitch, the Wildness Archetype, and Rewriting the Doom Stories

In 1989, Clarissa Pinkola Estes gave us Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. In 2021, Rachel Yoder gave us Nightbitch, a novel about one woman’s personal transformation into wholeness through her instinctual nature. I’m compelled to write this blog post because of a brief description of Marielle Heller’s film version of Rachel Yoder’s novel. The reviewer said only that the film Nightbitch is about how motherhood turns a woman into a dog.

As true as it is on the surface, to leave potential viewers and readers with this reductionist assessment is failing to understand both the novel’s and the film’s value. It is too easy to look away from Amy Adams as she morphs into this strange creature because the enchantment glamour creating our attraction to artificial beauty robs us of our experience of wildness. This glamour – more active in our culture since the spread of TV and all the screens to follow – also creates the illusion that we have no need for wildness, that it is gross and unnecessary.

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EFT: Empowerment or Codependence

Sometimes, we must grieve and heal alone.

After the death of a beloved pet, I found myself mute and self-isolating for a good part of this past summer. Because of my daily journal and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) practices, I moved through my grief with slow and steady progress. I ached, I wept, and I mourned, but I didn’t slip into despair or form a codependent relationship with any number of well-meaning people who were uncomfortable with my grief and wanted me to ‘get over’ it. After years of healing with EFT, a set of body-inclusive healing tools, I knew I could trust myself to navigate this highly significant loss without the support of others.

My relationship with EFT now seems inevitable, the final leg of a journey that began when I was two. Although I had no cognitive awareness of my body’s healing wisdom, as a toddler I knew through pleasurable physical sensations that being outdoors made me feel good. Indoors, tensions among adults triggered feelings of fear and isolation. Outdoors, I was at peace with the scents, sounds, textures, and surprise four-legged visits I experienced in my grandmother’s garden. This first non-verbal, physical, emotional, and spiritual healing experience has shaped my adult understanding of the body’s vital contributions to healing early trauma.

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Grieving the Passing of a Prince

Like welcomed and celebrated children, beloved pets have many names. My most recent furry, four-legged gift from the Universe arrived some twenty years ago singing his kitty song as he emerged from the long grasses of a nearby meadow. On a break from writing, I sat on the front stoop of this woodsy home eating lunch. I couldn’t quite believe my ears when I heard him. As he rounded the corner of the cabin, I felt he knew exactly where to find me.

No feral cat this. I knew the signs because I’d tried to tame several of his wild relatives before our meeting on this summer day. Ever since I discovered that living in a woodsy cabin meant sharing space with all manner of insects, mice, voles, and squirrels, I’d been longing for a cat companion.  In those days, I couldn’t remember a time when I’d lived without one. My longing was huge.

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To Lie Fallow

Farmers know the importance of letting fields rest. It is a restorative process in agriculture, one that allows soil to regenerate and so be ready to support the next crop. In our busy, twenty-first century lives, we often forget to permit ourselves to lie fallow, to die to the ego-driven energies that prevent wool gathering and dreaming into stories other than our own.

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Celebrating Eleanor Rosalynn Carter

On November 19, 2023, at the age of ninety-six, Rosalynn Carter, nee Eleanor Rosalynn Smith, died. As a Canadian, I first heard of Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalyn during his bid for the American presidency.  CTV’s then lead anchor, Harvey Kirk surprised viewers when he abandoned his usual Walter Cronkite seriousness to inform us that we would have to learn to “talk south” once Mr. Carter took office as America’s thirty-nineth president.  Kirk could barely hold it together as he tried out his southern accent, his rendering of “tahking sahth” an unforgettable moment for the usually straight-laced newsman.  Back then, lots of people in Canada and the US made fun the the Carters’ soft southern speech patterns, but no one is making fun of them now.  After more than forty years of service in their post-presidential lives, we are much better able to see the true stature of the Carters because they stand in such sharp contrast to the current power hungry people fighting to hold office while apparently forgetting the real purpose of such elected-official positions: to serve the highest good for people and our planet.

Embedded in an article posted about Mrs. Carter on CBC’s website is a photograph of Rosalynn Carter with one of Canada’s former first ladies, Margaret Trudeau, wife of former Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and mother of Canada’s current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. The year that photo was taken, nineteen seventy-seven, would prove to be momentous for Ms Trudeau and for Canada when she left her husband to pursue life on her own terms.  No one understood at the time that the former wife of Pierre Trudeau suffered from Bipolar Disorder, an especially poignant circumstance given Rosalynn Carter’s adult-life commitment to end mental illness stigma and champion mental health services.

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Aging, Confidence, and Beliefs

Bette Davis said it best:  Old Age is not for sissies. As if Alzheimer’s , diabetes, and cancer were not three of the worst specters of elderhood, it turns out aging human beings lose confidence in their abilities to perform tasks they are actually good at.  This last aging challenge deserves time and attention, because a lack of confidence can limit our joy in life.  Once we’re aware of confidence erosion, however, we can reframe this issue as an invitation to explore how negative beliefs may be impacting our view of who we are and what we can do.

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Tina Turner is Dead. Long Live Tina Turner.

This morning after my usual writing meditations by the fire, I turned on my computer to resume reviewing a novel I’m preparing for publication.  Before I could click on my word doc, I caught the headline, “Tina Turner Dies.”  Reading that headline, I felt the familiar stirrings of grief and gratitude.

Tina.

The woman who taught us how to heal and how to thrive against all odds.

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On the Importance of Storytelling in a STEM-Centric World

This blog is the public place where I explore relationships between my feelings and my thoughts and between others and myself/Self.  My last blog was about the relationship between my husband, and, by extension, many other enthusiasts, and the game of American football.  Why I feel the need to discover the relationships between my feelings and thoughts is directly related to one of this website’s purposes: Inviting visitors to learn about how including the body in our storytelling supports our healing desires and intentions.

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Sacred Time, Sacred Space, and Football

Recently, I’ve been researching what makes folks happy in the midst of life’s challenges.  Because my husband, Lynn, is in his eighties and still working as a maker of beautiful objects, he became my perfect case study.  His creative work makes him happy, but some days are tough because he must invent new ways of accomplishing what seems to be the impossible.  During football season, he finds a restorative source of happiness sitting on the sofa watching the skill, teamwork, and fan frenzy that is American football. This past season was no exception, and because of his interest in the games and final 2023 Super Bowl contest, I had an in-depth experience of the value of this sport to a person who never played the game but still appreciates its artfulness.

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