birthing feminine leadership

I'm in the midst of getting trained as a doula. I've spent the past two days learning about child birth and the role of the doula -- the one who mothers the mother, who offers labor support -- and tomorrow I'll go back for a final day. It's been beautiful and is happening amidst, or perhaps also provoking, a couple of important realizations.

The first realization is about the similarities between my work as a doula and my work as an advocate for and with women environmental justice leaders. The doula is spoken and written about universally as an advocate for the mother in an often-rushed and confusing birth environment; the teacher of the workshop, Felicia, also emphasizes the element of collaboration. It is not the doula making choices or speaking for the mother; the doula ensures that the choices and the voice of the mother are elevated above the din, to guide the birth process.

Same with environmental justice lawyering. Luke Cole wrote frequently about the role of the environmental justice lawyer as an advocate who is not out in front, but instead occupies a "tech support" position, making sure that grassroots leaders occupy a place at the table that is equal to all the other players, and making sure the community's agenda drives the process.

Felicia spoke about the doula's crucial service of ensuring that the mother always has the opportunity to provide her informed consent to the doctor's decisions about what should come next. One of the major items on the advocacy agenda of indigenous environmental justice leaders is the principle of free, prior informed consent -- no industrial project or mining operation will take place on indigenous lands without the rightful occupants of the land understanding and freely consenting to that endeavor.

The laboring mother, the Mother Earth -- whether subject to rushed, clinical interventions during the most intimate moments of birth, or plundered for minerals or fossil fuels, the feminine body in our culture is disregarded and desecrated. Her power, her choice, her wholeness, her agency -- all are undermined by invasive procedures performed on the hospital bed or at the strip mine site.

Again and again, as I access these stark and painful understandings I am nonetheless confirmed in my purpose in the world. First in Israel in 1999, then in the Inyo Mountains in 2007, I heard it clearly: healing the feminine principle, at every level. My body, the bodies and lives of women, the earth's body. Big task, for one kind of lazy, sort of naive only-child, isn't it? Yeah. But what else do I have to do?

The second realization is about my work in the world. Everything I am called to do, from coordinating advocacy for women environmental justice leaders, to holding space for laboring women, to dreaming up an activist women's health collective, is about supporting women to heal and to rise. And when I see it laid out so clearly, I finally start to make some sense to myself. In truth I can't separate the healing of my ancestry from my forward-moving participation in the earth's healing. All this work, I will be the first to admit, is deeply rooted in my lineage: my mother's mother was such a broken woman, whose brokenness damaged my own mother. But that brokenness stops with me. I am here to restore wholeness. That's my commitment to myself, to this world, to my future children.

Eve Ensler says: "when we give in the world what we want the most, we heal the broken part inside each of us . . . happiness exists in action, in telling the truth and saying what your truth is, and in giving away what you want the most." With all my various and seemingly incongruous work, I suppose I am giving what I want the most -- healing for the Mother. Wholeness, balance, respect, love. For my mother who did not have these, but who managed to survive and even thrive, nonetheless. When I see women who need support I go towards them with my light and strength, so as to buttress their own power and magnify their own radiance, so that beauty can live.

Last weekend at the Bioneers conference, women's leadership in the environmental movement was the concept on everyone's lips (along with the imminent urgency of fixing the climate). A diverse chorus of voices spoke to the redemptive power of women's collective, collaborative, inclusive orientation in decision-making and problem-solving. Nina Simons, who graced our WEA event earlier in the week, opened the conference on Friday morning with her wisdom on the essential qualities of women's leadership. I'll try to paraphrase them here, as best I can.

After telling us that the Dalai Lama in September said that "the world will be saved by Western women" (it's true, you can Google it), Nina shared with us the following principles:

• Women are learning that we already are and know enough.
• Strength comes from within, informed by the power of our love and service.
• Cultivating self-awareness is essential to grow beyond wounds.
• Power comes from purpose and inner authority, not credentials or permission.
• There is a dance between leading and following, speaking and listening.
• Every system has limits, and an ebb and flow.
• Reciprocity and synchronicity are essential.
• Flexibility counts: leadership can come from any position.
• Power is something sacred from within us all -- not power over, but power with and through.
• Vulnerability can inform our strength.
• We cannot do this alone -- our flourishing requires relationships of rigorous love and challenging support.
• We are learning to listen to land/ people/ intuition/ sacred spiritual traditions.
• We are learning to share authority and cultivate rotating leadership.
• Diversity is our strength.
• We are connecting and collaborating across boundaries despite our fear.

Reflecting on these, I feel relieved, buoyed and powerful. I am -- we are -- valid and valuable. Perhaps most significantly, I remember that there is something larger than me, larger than all of us individually, at work here, something to which I can and must give my life over.

Just recently a new bloom opened on my orchid plant, shining its long-awaited loveliness into the room. It was in bud for weeks and weeks. I wasn't sure if it was even going to open -- a similar bud had just shriveled and fallen off without ever blooming. But this one persisted, growing and changing from within until it was ready to reveal itself. And now it's here, and the world is a more beautiful place for it.

That's the other thing I'm learning: everything in time. All I can do is create the conditions that support life, and then allow life to do what it knows, by nature, how to do.