If Women Rose Rooted: A Journey to Authenticity and Belonging

It is true that we have to do a good deal of inner work before we have anything meaningful to offer to the outer world; it is true too that we must recognise our wounds and incorporate them into the ground of our becoming.

Above all songs, she’ll love to hear ‘The Sealwoman’s Sea-Joy’, written to express the delight of the Selkie who finds her lost skin.

That is why we must look for help along the way. The most valuable allies are those who teach us that we cannot succeed alone – and more, that it is meaningless to succeed alone, for an essential feature of the Heroine’s Journey is uncovering the power of community.

women have a deep, intuitive understanding that we too are animals, belonging to a world filled with other living things which are like us in more ways than they are different from us.

And so there are many wells which, like Madron, are named now for the saints – but under their shallow surface ripples lie the deep, clear traces of far older stories.

It’s an idea that has come of age. A growing number of contemporary women’s movements are focusing on a new and strongly felt desire to actively re-root ourselves in the land and in our communities, to take responsibility for shaping the future, to bring back awareness of and respect for deep feminine values in a world dominated by the masculine. I

Then I would begin to understand exactly what it was that I had abandoned when I abandoned that well at the bottom of the hill – but it was going to be another couple of decades, and a long and winding journey, before I would find it again.

The Eagle and the Raven, and it was a historical novel by a writer called Pauline Gedge.

That idea of soft power means that you don’t necessarily have to sit in a parliament and dictate and put lots of laws in place – we have far too many laws, and most of them are born out of fear and control, rather than trusting communities to choose how they are governed – or how they might govern themselves.