What  women need to heal is not for anyone else to tell them what to do or how to feel. They’ve had enough of those messages all of their lives. And they don’t need to follow someone else’s wisdom. What they yearn for is a radically empathic container of safety and support that allows them to access the deep wells of their own wisdom.

 

Women need to listen to themselves.

 

What women need to heal is dedicated time away from their multitudinous duties, obligations and responsibilities. They need to lay down the burden of needing to be all things to all people. They long to play. And have fun. To be giddy and silly and collapse into gigglefests. To laugh and laugh until they roll on the floor and snort through their noses and pee in their pants.

 

Women need glitter.

 

What women need to heal is permission to go into the wilderness of their internal world. To explore and embrace everything that they find there. They need to know that all of their feelings and emotions will be honored and respected.

Including their rage.

Their shame.

Their grief.

Their hunger.

Their desires.

They need a place where they can feel free to howl and moan and wail. 

Stomp and bellow.

Shiver and shake.

 

Women need lots and lots of chocolate.

 

Women need a place where they can be authentic. And real. They don’t need to be told that they are too much, too sensitive, too emotional or crazy.

They need a place where they can be unabashedly too anything and then encouraged to be even more than that. To express themselves with gorgeous abandon without holding anything back. 

 

Women need art supplies.

 

Women need to remember. And to tell the truth. To reveal the secrets and stop the lies.

 They need to bring out of the darkness and into the light the reality of the burning times. The nighttime violations. The betrayals. The rapes. The discriminations. The lost innocence.The times when they were afraid. And alone. And made to feel invisible. 

They need to tell their stories.

Shout their stories.

 Dance their stories. 

 Sing their stories.

 Paint their stories.

Over and over and over again.

Until they know in their bones and in their cells that they have been heard. Witnessed. Seen.

 

Women need their voices.

 

Women need circles of other women. Bosom buddies. A tribe. Companions on the journey. They need the sisterhood of knowing that they are not alone on this path. That they are part of a lineage of feminine connection and shared history.  They need to know that their experiences are universal. And because of that they can be understood. Respected. Valued. Cherished.

 

Women need community.

 

Women need to reclaim the miracle of female embodiment. To bask in the luscious feminine sensuality that belongs only to them. To ecstatically re-inhabit bellies and breasts, hips and thighs. To wriggle and jiggle their sacred flesh. They need to embrace their own pleasure. Their own sexuality. Their own orgasms. To know that these things exist primarily for their OWN delight and are not dependent on anyone else. 

 

Women need to dance their bliss.

 

Women need a place to be vulnerable. And needy. A place where they can fall apart. To be messy, snotty and rumpled. To not have to be perfect. They need to cry with each other. To be tender. And soft. They need to know that they don’t have to do anything to be loved. That simply who they are is enough.

 

Women need to be held by a compassionate heart.

 

Women need deep, deep rest. Sacred solitude. And silence. They need to be alone with themselves. To taste the deliciousness of their own being. They need time and space away from hustle and bustle and busyness in order to hear their own thoughts, feel their own feelings, know and identify their own needs.

 

Women need boundaries.

 

Women need to go to their edges. To take up space. Spread their wings. Daring to be big. Brazen. Practicing audacious expansion. To stand boldly in their triumphant female warrior fierceness. To confidently know the bottomless potency of their unflinching strength, plucky determination and dauntless courage.  

 

Women need their power.

 

Women need to give birth over and over and over again.  To babies of ALL kinds that include projects, plans, paintings, songs, blog posts, books, poems, businesses, visions for the future and genius ideas that will nurture and transform themselves and the world.

 

Women need to create.

 

Women need ritual and ceremony. Magic and mystery. Prayer and meditation. Soulful journeys. Heartfelt presence. Surrendering to the velvet inner darkness of their intuitive knowing.  Opening to cosmic inspiration. Inhabiting the enchanted realms of their own imagination. They need to be broken open by awe. To dream themselves awake.  To step into the holy of holies of wholeness and see their own true face  reflected there.

 

Women need communion with spirit.

 

Women need independence. And liberation from oppression, both inside and out. The intoxicatingly sweet taste of self-determination. Living on their own terms. Radiant sovereignty. To be queens of their domains. To know that they can joyfully choose and choose and choose again a life of their own making .

 

Women need wild freedom.

 

Women need to remember their ancient earthy roots. To dig into the soil, dive into the ocean, wander in the the desert and open themselves in rapture to the star studded sky.

 

Women need to come home to the mother of us all.

 

 

Everything I know about women and healing comes from my many years facilitating women’s expressive arts workshops and intuitive painting retreats. And I can say from long experience that being part of a community of women while they laugh and cry and dance and make art is one of the most powerful healing environments you will ever encounter. If you want to find out what it means to heal your woman’s soul through the power of creativity and play and radical acceptance I have two Painting From The Wild Heart workshops coming up in the next couple of months in Northern California in Oakland and Calistoga that can give you powerful taste of this kind of transformational experience.