Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes

It’s about doing power differently.

Remember that many of the creation myths from our earlier ancestors—the indigenous, pre-colonized peoples from cultures around the world—painted a different picture of the origin of women and men, and their worth and roles. In many of those stories, neither sex was created to dominate the other. Both men and women shared the responsibility to help

Stop whining. Are you going to be a doomed prophetess, or are you going to find a different voice and save your city?”

The summer that author Toni Morrison died, I went on a binge-read of her majestic novels and essays. For years, she had been a beacon for me: a truth teller, a way finder, a culture changer. A woman who bore witness to her own experience and courageously told her story.

Perfection or damnation.

That one really gets me—how menstruation and childbirth and parenting are all seen as burdens as opposed to examples of strength, worthiness, and power, whereas the physicality and roles granted to men are vaulted into god-like attributes.

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think. There’s a lot packed into that one line. Every time I read it, I hear Toni Morrison’s voice. I hear her telling me to respect my own dreams and to trust my instincts before I allow self-doubt and overthinking to highjack my vision.

All I know is that in my early thirties I became acutely aware of the feelings of constriction, heartache, and anger that had been brewing in me since I was a girl. Slowly, the desire to do something to change the story became stronger than my fear of speaking up.

I know, in my bones, that we can break Cassandra’s curse, that we can dispel our culture’s enduring mistrust and devaluing of women. And when we do, all of humanity will benefit.