Women are beginning to speak up and the power structure is beginning to crack. I’m thinking of this as I read the latest news of the latest men who harassed women because they could. Because they had the power. The list keeps growing. Politicians, priests, teachers, presidents, movie moguls, rock stars, spiritual teachers. And women are speaking up.
It may not be so obvious now because the power structure is still very much in place, but it’s an ancient edifice and it’s crumbling, brick by brick, wall by wall. Woman by woman.
Now is the time to stand in our own two shoes. Now is the time for women to come forward and to speak up — not for what we are against but what we are for. Meeting hatred or misogyny with more hatred and fury is more of the same. It’s meeting war with more war. And although I understand that fury is part of the package here — and totally understandable — it won’t lead to change. We’ve already tried that. It hasn’t worked.
Real change, and I know I’ve said this a hundred thousand times, happens from the inside out. When you know your value like you know your name and you refuse to be silenced. When you know that the size of your body has nothing to do with the size of your life. When speaking the truth and being authentic is more important to you than anything else. Anything else.
How do you do this? By remembering your body. By coming back to it, over and over again, many times a day. By checking in with it—what am I sensing? Do I have a queasy feeling in my stomach when I listen to this person? Do I feel a big NO even though I am saying yes? By listening to what you find out.
And you do it by disengaging from what my friend Catherine Ingram calls The Crazy Aunt in the Attic. The voice that never shuts up about what will happen and who you will lose if you tell the truth.
By remembering what you know that you don’t want to know. And then, by saying it out loud.
We’ve been silent for decades, centuries, eons. It’s time for a change—and it’s already happening. We thought that the babies in charge knew what they were doing and that somehow, we were going to be saved. But no one is coming. We’re it. And, in a line from my new book, This Messy Magnificent Life: “When we realize we’ve had duct tape over our mouths for decades, there is only one thing to do: tear it off.”
