Nine months ago, I was told that I had to choose: between being in a marriage and having a child, or continuing to create the work of my life— Rites of Passage. I was given an ultimatum to either serve a man, or continue serving the liberation of the Feminine in the form of dozens of Women of Color artists, healers, doulas, grandmothers, mothers and daughters - sisters and siblings who were becoming family to me. Faced with a dichotomy that had been living inside me for years— one that throughout patriarchy has been thrust onto women devoted to missions other than child-rearing - priestesses, witches, and community servants - I was ultimately forced to choose between being in my own integrity, and being compromised.

I think you know which one I chose.
I chose myself.

A woman ought to bring a child into this world out of her own wholeness, her Yes. Instead of being split in half by what should never have to be a choice. There are many ways to be a woman. And many ways to mother.
​
So here I am again: the solo witch. Mothering a vision. In many ways alone. In many ways held. I have often wondered in these last months— whether I had made the right decision. These last few years, it seems that almost every woman around me is having a baby. I’ve been pregnant too, but with a vision— the twin of my first child. This kind of mothering is not really recognized, appreciated or understood by the world. It takes as much mineral out of my bones, and nights of not sleeping. I am birthing a whole house— a commitment I had made to the Ancestors.

A close sister & collaborator reminded me last fall that Rites of Passage had already been my baby— to which my partner could have been a step-father. Instead he wanted me to give up my first born, for him. But I couldn’t do that; couldn’t give up the child I had birthed, had labored so hard for. Meanwhile, he chose to have an affair with a much younger (white) woman, and get her pregnant. A familiar story taken out of the 4,000 year-old book of patriarchy, but one that still stings deep.

Throughout these months, I’ve been confronted over and over again with the places of my deepest wounding around mothering and partnership. So much of why I had not wanted to bring a child into the world had to do with my fear of abandoning my own child, in the sense of not being fully present for her. As well as the fear of re-creating the traumatic childhood I grew up in with a man who was much like my own father. My mother chose that relationship - an arranged marriage - out of her desperation to have a child and avert spinsterhood. I had unwittingly been playing out a similar karma in my own (self-arranged) marriage. But this time, unlike my mother, I chose differently.

I have wanted to be a mother to another for so long now. But for me it’s not simply a matter of making a new life, but of offering up the conditions for a life of belonging, safety, beauty and joy that I never experienced. My dedication is to pass on a whole transmission, which requires that I do as much clearing of the inherited wounds of un-love as possible— before passing on my DNA to the future generations. Part of how I do this is by creating things that live like Rites of Passage. It isn’t merely a project, it's my spiritual path, my journey as a creator in this life.

I’ve been realizing lately what a tremendous sacrifice my mother had made by bringing me into this world knowing full well that she would have to leave me. There is a way she loves me, that no one else in the world ever will; that’s why they call it a mother’s love. There is a way I love my future daughter - my mother’s granddaughter - who has been carried as a seed within my ovaries since I was an infant in my mother’s womb 38 years ago. My sacrifice has been to wait. To wait for my own ripening.
This child who I call my spirit daughter— I have known for a long time now. 20 years of holding an energetic possibility, a dream seed, a prayer. Of longing for her. Of speaking with her. Of saying no, it is not yet time. She is in no rush. This child is also a gift of the Ancestors. And I do not take that gift for granted. She is everything I am here for. But she is not all.

In this House of the Collective Feminine Soul, there is one room – the final room – that is dedicated to my future daughter. Up until now this has been a secret. Somehow, this room, as well as this whole house— is my own rite of passage before I have her in the flesh. Temporarily sacrificing the dream of being a mother to her has been an unrelenting heartbreak this past year. How fitting then that the “Rooms of Cure” I am cure-ating (or co-cure-ating) for Rites of Passage are: The Grief Room, Divorce, Re-Membering My Father, The Apothecary, Sustenance, and the final room - V is for Victory. A total of 5 rooms; 5 being the number of Change. Changing the story, changing the inheritance. Each of the rooms, created in relationship with multiple other artists, is a testament to the journey I have been on for 3 years now, and particularly within these last 9 months.

This house is an offering for the world I long for— where women who love as big as I do are not forced to choose within patriarchal structures which attempt to own and misuse our fertile power. Are not trapped in relationships with wounded men who demand our mothering to quell their own insecurities. A world where we don’t have to choose anymore between being a mother and being a leader. Between having a child and nurturing our work in the world. Between being all of who we are, versus a portion.
I want the whole thing. For all of us.

I want a partner who will be in reverence of me as I unravel centuries of patriarchal conditioning, and as I grieve what needs to be grieved— for long enough without ever needing to be the center of my attention. Who will earn my trust, not demand it. Who will wait patiently for as long as needed for this child to come forth into the world – the way I have – because she really is ALL THAT. Who will never diminish me. Never make me choose between my sacred service in the world, and being a mother to another. After all, I want to be a mother who can show her daughter strength, integrity and wholeness embodied. A daughter with dozens of beloved aunties, brought up in a new matrilineal lineage, a partnership culture.

If I had to choose again, I would still choose my soul over what tried to hold it ransom. My mother did not birth me, and leave me, in order for me to leave my own creations. I hold claim to all that I am and all I desire as a creative womb-man, a mother on this Earth, through each breathtaking and sometimes devastating cycle of creation & loss in the garden that is being here.

Gratitude in this Mother’s Day portal to all those who mother others & their creations. May we recognize the fertile power we hold in its many womanifestations.

And, if you would like to support the birthing of this current child - Rites of Passage: 20/20 Vision - please do: https://chuffed.org/project/ritesofpassage-2020vision

​This Fall Equinox, I'm reflecting on the balance of fire & water — the Masculine & Feminine — that has been disrupted by way of our patriarchal history over the last 4,000 years. While the West Coast has literally been burning from an excess of heat, an excess of masculine energy, we can recognize these unbridled fires as one of the long-term consequences of settler colonial culture. Our collective rite of passage at this time then, asks for a radical re-balancing of Masculine & Feminine energies — of fire & water — within us and on our planet.

The effects of climate change are the earth's efforts to re-balance extremes that are the result of the man-ipulation of fire & water through fossil-fuel based industry, petro-chemical production, and damming & irrigation that maintains land-degrading mono-agriculture.  Now, we are being asked to honor and restore water, the Feminine, as a vital source of healing and knowledge that has been devalued, reduced to mere commodity in our era of "progress". We are asked to tame fire which has been hyper-monetized and harnessed for its destructive power through reactors, bombs, and industrial capitalism.

As humans, we are water beings, composed mostly of water. Indigenous cultures on the landmass we now call America — or Turtle Island — revere water as Feminine or female; a teacher who shows us the ways of dissolution, forgiveness, and surrender. She also guides us in the ways of power through persistence, patience, resilience and trust in the possibilities of renewal.

If we see fire & water as metaphors of our human experience, as the forces that fuel Life on planet earth, how then might we reframe our living? How would we reshape the foundational principles of our society? Can we recognize women + femme leaders who are rooted in the Feminine, as key to re-orienting society toward a paradigm of power-with & for all people. So it is that month we celebrate one of our Greats, as well as some of the core women at the helm of Rites of Passage 20/20 Vision.

This Equinox, with so much at stake now than ever before, let us remember that water is our lifeline, the connector between all things —past, present and future. May we have clear sight to see and honor the mysteries of water & fire, to choose another way forward that is not our colonial history of power-over, but power-with, a path guided by the wisdom of the Feminine. Without water, we cannot live. May the waters come where they are most needed. May the fires within us and this world be quelled by the remembrance of balance— our true nature.

2020 is the YEAR of WOMANIFESTATION.

This photo was taken sometime back when my dear friend Heather Fisch asked me to be The High Priestess, an archetype close to my soul. To me The High Priestess, along with The Empress, are the archetypes of womanifestation. They create/ birth as extensions of the fecund earth, dancing in the non-dual union of dark + light - tending the compost and the garden, alive in the underworld womb as well as the topside world where we eventually (sometimes after years) harvest the flowers + fruits of our labors. Its good magic, whole magic, humble magic.

As i came upon this photo today, I remembered the long-ago story of the necklace I'm wearing in it. Its made of typewriter keys, and was given to me, wrapped in newspaper - by a grunge girl wearing all black, on a bus in Seattle around midnight when I was alone and lost; she had placed the bundle quickly into my hands before rushing out the door. She was my angel-witch; who'd been wearing it earlier when I had stepped onto the bus without enough money, feeling shakey and scared as I asked how to get where I needed to go and whether she and her friend could give me some change (they did). I had told her how beautiful the necklace was and did she make it (yes she had). The typewriter keys are metaphors of the Word, and of speaking one's truth. That gift gave me all the hope i needed, that I wasn't lost after all out in a big city alone at night. I found my way to where i needed to go. It remains with me as a symbol of Feminine power + resilience, crafted by the hands of an unknown woman.

THIS is womanifestation. Other women + femmes + people holding space for, cheering on, lifting each other up. It exists in contrast to the obsession that New Age white-washed culture has with "manifestation" - one that reeks of privilege, light-polarization and isolation: the idea that if we as individuals just think good thoughts, all will go our way. Womanifestaton is rather about honoring the mystery of life, of the Divine Feminine and inter-connectedness. Its being a conduit of sustenance and reciprocity. Because when she gave me the necklace, it was healing for me. But it was also healing for her to give it. It was an honorable giving and receiving.

As we approach the New Moon in Aquarius, its time to clear my desk, my mind, and set new intentions for this next cycle. The High Priestess has all she needs, not just within herself, but with the fruit and seeds of the Earth (held in the pomegranate), and with the Great Book of the World/ Her Life in her left arm. Wearing good witch magic around her neck.

There is a lot to become womanifest for me, for Rites of Passage in the coming months. For some folks, it seems like an impossible task. That's because it is. Its impossible for me to "make it all happen". The only way it can happen is through the union of sincere effort/ intention, magic + surrender, with a little (or a lot of) help from my friends (and kind strangers)! Reminding myself of this now as i prepare to step through the next portal.
​
Thank you Lisa Vollmer for this photo, to Heather for the invitation, and to Kifu Faruq for introducing me to womanifestation! Its an honor to womanifest with you, and with all the other incredible women, femmes + people in my life right now.
#womanifestation #2020vision #faith #resilience #sustenance

This is the time that they'll speak of us in the future, saying:
"They Remembered".

We Re-member Ourselves Now
as whole-bodied, soft-fleshed water people.
We reclaim our hearts,
and our tender, round infant-faced memories,
from empty pre-packaged promises,
from the ache of isolation.
We steal back our freedom and our future from the numbed fists of black-oil gods,
from the digitized world we mistook for reality.

We breathe new life into the places we've ravaged in our relentless quest,
in our rest-less-ness.
We come Home, finally to Rest.
Right where we are
with the great weight of the Grief of the World.

We save the seeds that have been passed on to us for thousands of years,
And plant them, water them with our tears,
seeds that have kept their own wisdom of how to grow in places that've become thirsty.

We learn to speak again words of Beauty and of Kindness,
To value what's alive over what's dead,
in a world that's far slower,
where joy is commonplace,
and each of us is sovereign.
Where the land remembers itself green,
and our multiplicity begins to mend its way back from the edge of extinction.
​
Let these be our teachers now:
Flowers. Mycelium. the Forest underground + canopy.
The infinite family of our extended relations.
We are not alone.
We are the Once and Future Vision
Of Our Ancestors

https://www.ritesofpassageproject.org/2020vision
thank you to Janine Strong for this photo:)

​

It’s with a big deep breath, that I announce at long-last: RITES OF PASSAGE: 20/20 VISION!!!!!!
This project is an offering of clear sight into our Collective past, our present and our potential future,
Revolutionary Art, Activism + Initiation for the New Century by Women + Femmes of Color
Live: August 14- 23, 2020
ritesofpassageproject.org/2020vision

For those of you who experienced the first Rites of Passage in 2013, this is the next evolution. 20/20 Vision was born out of my need to speak to a broader scope of the feminine experience in America, with a focus on the voices of WOC, with all NEW "Rooms of Cure".

Now is Our Time.

Creating this project involves learning how tp embody the radically beautiful values of this Project. How do we truly CO-CREATE a living village - to sew together our losses and our triumphs, our tender broken places with the bright red threads of healing that we each are carrying: You are my teacher. I am your teacher. Together, we are learning. And THIS is Rites of Passage 20/20 Vision: 80 women of color + allies from around the US. Creating a potent space for the stories that have gone unheard, and for the Medicine WE ALL NEED.

In the words of one of my personal heroines - with whom I share the same ancestral homeland, and love of eloquence + rebellion:

         “Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To               shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance,              our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the                ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.....Remember this: We be many and they be few. They     
            need  us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
            On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”                                                                                     
                                                                                                                                                            - Arundhati Roy

Ultimately Rites of Passage is meant to speak to all of us, regardless of our background or gender. We all need to nurture new cultures of remembrance on the Earth, and community containers for initiation.
This website is a work of art itself that I'm so excited to share with you. My hope is that it, and this project, can be space for us all to remember the Resilience we each carry.

Please feel free to share the project in your circles. We welcome all kinds of support: a HOUSE, artists, production folks, volunteers, MONEY, artist housing. It takes many webs of support to build this:)
Thank you for reading, for sharing, for breathing in this new world together.
#ritesofpassage #2020vision
#wearetheonceandfuturevisionofourancestors

​This photo’s caption should read: “woman with her hair on fire.” I have a big reveal coming…Its kind of like being pregnant (note kind-of, hence I am NOT pregnant) when you don’t tell anyone until the 2nd trimester, because you don’t want to jinx it. Can a woman be pregnant with something other than a child? Yes: alternate fertilities. Right around the time I finally felt ready to become a Mom to a person, the Universe said “no, we’ve got other plans for you kiddo, you know just what they are – so get to work.” I guess I’m pretty fertile, (though right now I feel unfit for either task). I haven’t been ready to share, or known how to, and so have been in a very prolonged early gestation. We say this is Leo rising: its never been done before in this way, she doesn't know how to do it, and doesn’t even try to obtain permission to do it. Add to this, she’s actually pretty shy and self-conscious about doing it at all. She just does it because she must and because she wants to. At best: trail-blazing. At worst: trial by fire. In Shamanic Astrology, we say that the true nature of Leo rising is “the playful 2-year old” – creating anything she desires because she can. A friend once wrote of me that I am “sort of like a woman with her hair on fire. She has no choice but to do what she does with her whole heart and as fast as she can. She is her work, and her work is her growth.” (I think this is part of the answer as to why my hair is so white! (maybe you were wondering;) But the REAL question for any such person as myself is: how do i be a channel that is continually nourished? How can I “do” while “be-ing”?

I can't afford to be so fast anymore. I need to learn to slow down, put out the fire out in my hair, but somehow keep it alive in my heart. Nature creates, and we are part of nature, and so must create. Yet that drive to create can suck the very life out of us, if its not also flowing back into us. Much like a woman making a baby, and then feeding that baby, its easy to become depleted. And being alive and creating life is a kind of long-term lease we have with the Universe. As a wise woman recently shared with me - we pay a price for wisdom, of which white hair and wrinkles are outward metaphors. We pay some of our youth, our innocence, so that we might know eternity and grace. Aging is a blessing. But what these last years have taught me, are teaching me - is that without my own sanity and well-being, without my own continuous prayer which is pleasure, which is rest, then the reason for "making" becomes obsolete. And without nurturing my own healing, what can I offer others? This beauty created outside of me, doesn't need to be. In all honesty, I haven’t mastered how to create my work and feed myself adequately in the process. The way I used to create wasn’t sustainable. I know I can’t do things the old way, but I don’t yet know the new way. Its too easy for me to stay up till 3am writing. And rest is foundational; I’m working on my foundation. My journey to Peru was one in search of soul-body-mind replenishment. As a pre-requisite, I had to relinquish my notions of a “self”, including as a maker, and just be in a long rite of passage. Much of that time wasn’t peaceful; it was often lonely and difficult, but immeasurably precious. Yet while it’s a blessing to have a moment of peace in a remote cave, one has eventually to enter fully back into the world of Samsara and remember what it is to be inside that cave in the middle of the crazyiness.​

So, its been nearly 7 years since I decided I would make ritual + theatre my primary avenues of service and craft. I've broken through, broken-down, burned bright, burnt-out and journied far beyond the edges of my “self”. I used up all the golden fuel of my 20s on a dozen different lifetimes lived in that decade alone, as an anti-establishment rebel with a cause: i.e. lover of Life, Beauty + Resurrection of the human heart, at-tempting solo bicycle tours and generally getting myself in a bunch of unwanted trouble. I don't have any money, awards or fame to show for all this. But I do have some beautiful memories of crafting Beauty out of my own and our shared grief. If so much is dying that’s worth grieving, then I needed to grieve it and create ways for us all to, as well as somehow lift up our hearts in a world that’s often times rather dissapointing and cruel. If we are so separated in this modern compartmentalized world, I needed to feel intimacy with others in that “village” way that only ritual + theatre provide me. If my heart could give birth, it would create art in adoration of the Erotic that refuses to die by capitalism, convention or fear (my own and that of the world.)
 
Now, I'm called once again to create; this time something more size-able than what I've attempted before. And even my Leo Rising is terrified at the thought of it; meaning I don't know if I have what it takes to do this. I seem to have lost the blessing of the care-free-ness of youth and a certain un-daunted-ness by what most people regard as “impossible” or at best “un-realistic”. I've always set out to create something, and trusted (more or less) that somehow it would happen, and it always has. So this must be another test of faith. In moments I doubt my capacity to be a channel for pure magic: like pulling rabbits out of hats and pushing babies out of vaginas. (Because we are talking about metaphoric babies really, not just rabbits.) I mean something that could possibly LAST beyond “me” or my lifetime. For this i will need abundant universal energies made manifest into 3D: i.e. grand hither-to unimagined sums of money + un-paralleled real-time support (and a lot of generous people have helped me over the years, I don’t forget you. And here it is, all over again: hit the refresh button.) I ask myself “Will I listen to the voices of fear and doubt, or will I go the way of faith again, because it’s the only real thing? Do I believe I’m worthy of abundance? Do I believe this creation is worthy of support? Do I believe its simply the future memory of my ancestors coming into form, and therefore, its fruition inevitable?”
 
I don’t feel ready, but like they say, you’re never fully prepared to have a baby. And its been calling me a while now, and I don't want to ignore it or postpone it forever until the moment years from now when I may actually be ready (because in that sense, tomorrow never comes, tomorrow is never promised.) Is this because I'm stubborn or because of destiny + dharma? The more I am alive, the more I get hip to the fact that I’m just an instrument through which my ancestors breath desires to flow. A good instrument though, requires care and re-tuning. My creations are best when I am in full communion. I become me. And who is me? But the ensemble, or the river, or the wind, or the full and empty rooms of a house overflowing with eloquence? 

​photo credit: Janine Strong