Suffragettes Marching for Women’s Right to Vote
Oh Yeah!
History is replete with myths and historical events detailing both the honoring and persecution of women and girls. There is a collective women’s wisdom that has been fought for and won by women who’ve taken a stand, using their bodies as well as their pens to raise their voices against injustices. As a result of their bravery and sacrifices, we women of today enjoy many rights that our mothers & grandmothers didn’t have. As writers, we choose to carry on this tradition of speaking out and RAISING OUR VOICES. The focus of this newsletter is on the variety of voices in the chorus of women writers whom I’ve had the honor to work with whose commitment to becoming better writers and sharing their experiences, their wildness as well as their wisdom, is invigorating and re-imagining our contemporary world.
ANDI PENNER
In My Own Ink
At a beach café
on the sandy curve
of a Basque bay,
a steaming platter
of chipirones en su tinta
a local delicacy.
Squid in its own ink
lies in blue-black liquid
on a bed of white rice.
I, too, am prepared
and served
in my own ink—
clouded
by memory,
inscribed
by the past.
I write,
floating
on white sheets.
© Andrea M. Penner, Rabbit Sun Lotus Moon, Silver City, New Mexico: Mercury Heartlink, 2017, p. 5.
A Note from the Author I received a gift that day in Spain—a momentary epiphany about writing, about my own writing and about owning my writing—the pen, the ink, the play of language—all of it. What began as a simple observation in my travel journal became a postcard souvenir, a note-to-self reminder that I am a writer. Publishing the poem a full ten few years later was a satisfying declaration—Hey, world, this is my ink and these are my words.
Now I see possibilities for extending the moment into a leisurely meal with sunset revelry, curling words like calamari instead of allowing my own editor brain to cut the food into bite-sized pieces. My inner calligrapher now plays with the line, the curve. She changes the nib and the cartridge. She invites me to have some bread and wine with that plate of ocean-fresh squid and stay long enough to discover what would happen if.
YVONNE SCOTT
On Dying Wild!
I refuse to die alone in a tidy dusted house with all the family photos clearly marked with dates and names on the back and the laundry done up and my hair clean and combed. I shall die in the untidy heap of my journals and yellowed newspaper clippings, my hair pulled back in ribbons from my favorite Christmas packages, the second grade paintings of my children and grandchildren stuck on the walls with Scotch tape and my grandmother’s fading quilt across my legs as I sip café con leche that I learned to love when I walked the Camino of Santiago de Compostela across Spain at 63 and share chocolate chip oatmeal cookies with whatever friends and family are left to laugh and remember. Or simply make up stories about ourselves.
I might even go skinny dipping one last time, as we did long years ago, the Lithuanian woman and myself diving into the Black Sea screeching with horror and delight at the crashing cold waves against our nakedness. I will offer my middle finger to the visiting nurse at her shock, admonishing me that I might catch my death of cold or even pneumonia. Well good on me! Then I will die amid the collected detritus of a wild life mostly misunderstood but also good on me.
If those who knew me best or witnessed me most, really understood me, my motives, my instincts, my passions, and my grief, what would have been left just for me? What private sanctuary would remain to sit within and gather my personal Universe about me, cashmere shawl from an old lover? But for those who arrive to spread themselves across the faded chairs or plunk the untuned piano and make coffee in a French press without a handle, I’ll throw out my life stories like starfish on a beach at dawn and we’ll pick them up and one by one, we’ll smile across the decades, as if we do remember, and toss them back into my eternal sea.
YVONNE
Whether by car, ship, plane or on foot, YVONNE enjoys a good ramble about the globe…as a pilgrim on the Camino or an accidental tourist teaching English in Eastern Europe, a VISTA in Appalachia or photographing termite mounds in Costa Rica. She now spends her time contemplating where best to plant fruit trees on her small enclave in southern Illinois, raiding the farmer’s market every Saturday and supporting causes that nourish Gaia. And being Nana to her grandkids whenever their parents are brave enough to let her play with them. You can find her on Instagram @oddgardens & soon on Substack.
KRISTINA DANIELS
Finding Gratitude in Difficult Times
I sit with a cup of tea, staring at a computer screen waiting for inspiration. A cat brushes against my leg and my focus breaks as I drop my gaze and hand to feel a soft familiar head. After providing an adequate ear and chin massage, my cat begins rubbing her face against my sock. What follows is a fast pang in my stomach that rises through my solar plexus, followed by anger in my chest and with a deep inhale, I acknowledge the fucking socks.
The socks wrapped around my feet are warm, and for someone who can feel chilly in southern Arizona, they are a small miracle. I don’t know if it’s the brand or the style, I was told they are Smartwool, made for camping/hiking. They were a gift from my ex-boyfriend, a man who at one time I thought I would marry.
Alas, I’m not really the traditional type, which may be a reason why the ex and I didn’t make it. That and he couldn’t tolerate cats. He also likes the cold and I don’t, but for a time we bridged the gaps. The socks were a bridge, allowing me to travel and camp where before my journeys were limited by weather and season.
The season of fall, especially November, offers opportunity for reflection and gratitude. It is a season where the mana from plants and agriculture have been reaped, and we celebrate by sharing the abundance with family and friends. Gratitude, according to the Oxford dictionary, is defined as the quality of being thankful. It seems to be a thing these days as podcasters market gratitude as a tool for self-care or spiritual awakening. Since I like this sort of thing, I keep a notebook of gratitude lists. I enjoy the practice of training my brain to identify the daily positives
This is a tough undertaking if you live and participate in western culture. If you are active in the practice of consumerism and want to practice gratitude, I highly recommend disconnecting from media, the internet, social networks, TV, radio- pretty much anything that is a platform to sell some-thing. Because the psychology of sales and the practice of capitalism is based on lack (what you don’t have). It is extra work trying be grateful (thankful for what you do have) while plugged into a system that actively brainwashes us to believe our worth increases when we look a certain way, achieve a certain status, etc. However, a discussion on capitalism is not where I am heading. (I digress)
Back to the practice of gratitude. I had lists reciting gratitude for friends, experiences and things. In time and outside my lists, I began noticing small daily events like a green light when I was late, the satisfaction of being able to pay my bills, having extra time to sit in the garden, receiving Smartwool socks from a thoughtful boyfriend. Once I began noticing the small things (by tracking gratitude), it became easier to be grateful for the bigger picture (accepting the good and the bad).
And then there are moments when the big picture gets knocked down. My plan for a small business failed…twice, my relationship with a man I thought would be my forever companion ended, my financial ability to support myself dwindled once the pandemic government benefits ended. As a middle aged adult, I moved back into my elderly parent’s house. I no longer bask in the warmth of the Arizona desert. This November, I am living in an area where there are four seasons and it was 22 degrees this morning! I am wearing the warmest socks I have.
My cup of tea has cooled since my hands have been occupied with the keyboard. The cat now sleeps atop of pile of blankets. I understand my heart carries memories and bruises, but it has healed enough for me to know it will expand again when the time is right. Looking back down at these socks hugging my feet, I exhale the initial anger from old stories. I am deeply grateful for the mind that came up with the concept and design for this type of footwear. I am grateful for the hands that made them, shipped them, drove them and packaged them. And, while anger may still be around, I know how to exhale and lean into what I have, rather than what I have not. I am grateful for experiencing the altruism from a person who at one time, valued my comfort enough to gift me with warmth. I am wearing my Smartwool socks honestly grateful for every opportunity this life brings, and for the opportunity to share with you.
A WORD ABOUT KRISTINA DANIELS: As a wandering Sagittarius, she has traveled and lived in many places, pursued the quest for truth and knowledge in areas as diverse as death midwifery, animism, aromatherapy, skincare, psychology, and floral design. Her cusp with Scorpio leads her to quiet places so she may express and move emotion through the practices of writing, photography and dance. Kristina wrote three children’s stories about a cat named Avery Finn, his adventures outdoors, saying goodbye to a friend, and making a new friend. Links can be found at YouTube.
You can find her through her website, KristinaLDaniels.com or on Instagram @five28_hz
REBECCA LEEMAN
What is Ineffable?
I am sitting around the kitchen table in Norwich, Vermont with my granny and her friend Barbara from Quaker meeting. Most Sundays, Barbara gives Elizabeth a ride to Meeting and back, and I am curious enough about their conversations that I make myself at home in their presence, slicing bread and stirring soup, and helping with the dishes, with my ears wide open. Barbara is a life reader and my granny delights in her company. She is a rare gem of a friend and very much like granny, childlike and prone to laughter. My grandpa comes in to the kitchen for a moment looking for the Sunday NY Times, and with a serious scowl, retrieves the paper and walks out. I wonder what that is all about. Granny whispers to me that Grandpa doesn’t believe in the ineffable. He knows what she and Barbara talk about and can’t be in the same room when the conversation turns to fairies. Barbara smiles and the two of them get back to their review of the social scene at Meeting today.
Barbara turns to me, and says,” I hear that you are a nurse druid.”
I blush. No one has ever identified me as a magical earth priestess before. I think granny has been talking to her about my stories from the neurosurgery unit where I work, the crazy experiences I have been having with people in and out of coma, my fascination with the liminal spaces between unconscious and conscious states.
Or maybe, granny has shared with Barbara the special talks we have had about seeing or feeling the presence of little people. Maybe Barbara thinks I bring all that sensitivity into my work as a nurse. I am not convinced that I am that kind of hero but am willing to see if I could grow into wearing such an honorary title. Nurse Druid. I imagine my request for such a name tag. It is my Saturn Return this year at 27 and I am thrilled to come into something so completely different.
Barbara holds her gaze with me as I ponder what it means to be a druid. I seem to have lost my words.
I drift and float into another dimension momentarily. Daydreaming, I find myself deep in the woods, and the kitchen table conversation fades away until it is only a soft muffle of voices. The sounds above me in the trees of birds and squirrels are muffled too. I experience the coolness and grit of being buried in decaying leaves and drink deeply the aroma of humus, the soft mat of layers upon layers of leaves and pine needles from many seasons gone by. I do try to avoid thinking about the grubs and the white fungus crawling and spreading. I have dug in and have myself covered completely except for my nose taking in clear air. How did I arrive here specifically? There must be a purpose here in being sunk down in the forest floor like this. Feeling into it, it becomes clear that this forest floor bed I have crawled into is a bed of rejuvenation and remembrance of where we have come from and where we will all return. The enveloping aroma and the cool temperature of the humus has called me in and I notice a temporary stasis of captive stillness. I don’t want to throw off the covers quite yet. Let me stay a little longer to deepen my sense of Earth as home so that I may return to the ordinary world with a little more respect for nature’s rhythms and cycles. This is the message: Gratitude for decay and recycling is due and has arrived in your wild imaginings.
I drift back to the smell of granny’s homemade bread turning into toast in the Aga stove, ready for butter and apple spread. “I think I know what you mean Barbara, but I don’t know that I am anywhere close to bringing Earth wisdom into my nursing care. I might need to be a little more of a seasoned witch to pull that off in the hospital.”
Barbara cocks her head and widens her gaze. “Well, there is no better time than when the window opens, for you to bring something through when it’s needed, now is there? Too much of the time we sell ourselves short and others miss out on what we can offer.”
Elizabeth shifts her glasses and studies my face for a minute. I think she has lost her words as well. She and I have a way of acknowledging mystery and the ineffable by a knowing look and a smile. Whether she is conscious of it or not, she usually finishes these moments with me by a clicking in the back of her throat, although this may just be her tick. It’s a punctuation point and I like it.
Barbara and Elizabeth take up talking again as I butter the toast and lay out apple spread and cheeses, carefully scraping off the moldy parts that nobody here seems to mind being part of the wedges.
I drift back to the idea of Earth wisdom and the responsibility of bringing it through when needed. I touch the pendulum that feels comfortable in my pocket. My mother tells me that she joined in a few times with her Balivet cousins in the act of dowsing. One of my heroes of that side of family, Jennifer Balivet, is president of the Vermont Dowsers association. I remember witnessing a Dowser’s convention she led at the house in Danville in the late 60’s. In time, I came to think, What a curious family I come from! but presently, I’m seeing the link between dowsing for well water and an ancient calling to consciously tap into the ley lines of the Earth.
It was this connection that brought me to carrying the pendulum. Adele Dawson, my herbalist mentor and elder friend in Marshfield, up the river road and below the waterfall, showed me the pocket pendulum. She advised me to ask the pendulum the deep questions, the ones I truly needed guidance on. “Not silly stuff,” she said, “because we show it respect. Other than that, keep your pendulum warmed up by asking it to show you Yes and to show you No … clockwise for yes, counter for no.” I watched Adele plant her garden this way, when she wasn’t sure where the tansy should go. I want to honor our family talent for calling in Earth energies, but am feeling as if I might be bumbling around trying to do that. I don’t really know much about the magic of Earth but I’m open and easily led by things I don’t quite understand as long as I trust the pull. And recently, I have been feeling the pull. There’s the magic; it’s in the mystery.
Just out the back door of this meandering old house I’ve been living in with granny and grandpa, there are woods sloping steeply up the Barrett hill with crisscrossing stone walls. The stone walls of Vermont are known for being reminiscent in pattern to the stone walls of old Celtic northern Europe. I ponder this as I begin to focus on our ancestors and their Earth wisdom. What do these stone walls have to say? I remember my relationship to these woods out back from early on. Grandpa had walked with me in these woods over the course of my childhood, gathering Christmas trees and garland from the forest floor, and looking for flowers. He asked that I respect the stone walls and not do my balance beam gymnastics atop them because, he said, “You could disturb and knock the stones out of place.” When I later explored the woods alone, I would follow the lines of the stone walls and never got lost trying to come home. The problem with stone walls is that, like meandering footpaths, they invite you ever onwards until you snap out of the trance.
Older generation farmers around here will tell you that the stone walls are the result of the happy clearing of stones from the planting fields and that it is still a work in progress. I am open to sensing the magic of how the stones got laid down in certain directional patterns originally. Maybe the Earth moves through us and asks for a certain architecture. Maybe we don’t know why we do things a specific way and we just follow a universal knowledge. As my granny might say, “the fairies made me do it!”
I am still dreamy at the kitchen table, sitting at my place setting. I have lost my appetite for toast. Granny is showing signs of weary and Barbara picks up on this and starts to gather up her cloak and hat. Before she is out the door, I stop her. “When can we meet for a life reading? I think I’m ready and would love to see what comes,” I say.
She laughs, as if she can see that my barrier has finally fallen away and can no longer get the better of me. “Be ready,” she tells me,” and bring a notebook for our session because things barrel out of me quickly, and it can be quite a marathon to keep up.”
“I’ll be ready with my elfin scribe,” I tell her as I help her out the door.
Rebecca Leeman is a nurse-midwife who calls New Mexico, between the Rio Grande and the Sandia Mountain range, her home. As soon as she could walk on uneven surfaces, her parents gave her a backpack and she became friendly with the woods and nature has been a reliable teacher for her ever since. In her work as a midwife for over 30 years, she is comfortable in liminal spaces and in navigating with others in times of great change and uncertainty. Writing has been a healing pursuit and a tool for managing grief and loss. She leads song circles and delights in free form dance for fun and inner medicine. Two grown sons bring her much joy.
Marjorie’s new memoir A Southern Belle in Paris is now published and available from Amazon as an E-Book or in Paperback—Order your copy today by clicking on the image below!
ALOHA,
Marjorie
