Summary: “We’ve all been given a gift, the gift of life. What we do with our lives is our gift back.” —Edo<br> It’s been said that the Earth has existed for more than 4.5 billion years. In this unfathomable time frame, human beings, in their modern form, have been in existence a mere 200,000 years. The patriarchal civilization that we’re familiar with has been around for 6,000 years. And the industrialization of the world commenced in the 19th Century.<br> Historical authorities tell us that the beginning of industrialization, along with the domestication of animals and agriculture, was the pivotal time period that set humanity on a course of self-destruction.<br> In the relatively short history of our species, we’ve now arrived at a critical juncture where the separation-based mindset of humanity from the natural world poses an alarming threat to continued life on this planet. The wounds of this conflict run deep and are a reflection of our individual and collective disconnect from the very source of all life—Gaia—Mother Earth…home.<br> After thousands of years of patriarchal rule, our selfish, abusive, destructive, and consumptive ways are now deeply entrenched in the human psyche. According to Carol P. Christ, “Patriarchy is a system of male dominance, rooted in the ethos of war which legitimates violence, sanctified by religious symbols, in which men dominate women through the control of female sexuality, with the intent of passing property to male heirs, and in which men who are heroes of war are told to kill men, and are permitted to rape women, to seize land and treasures, to exploit resources, and to own or otherwise dominate conquered people.”<br> Is it any wonder why we stand where we do today?<br> Integral to our collective healing is the remembrance of our sacred feminine essence. This has nothing to do with woman/man gender, and everything to do with energy and principle. The sacred feminine principle is the source of our connection to love, life, truth, and creation. It is the embodiment of our deep unity with Gaia—the very force of love, life, truth, and creation.<br> Gaia is who we are in our deepest core essence. We are not separate. And yet we’ve been living a collective illusion where we believe that we are. What we do to the Earth, we do to ourselves. What we do to ourselves, we do to the Earth. By silencing our sacred feminine essence, we’ve forgotten who we are and have thus forgotten our connection to life…to Gaia.<br> Patriarchy is a system of belief created by man, for man. It is steeped in fear and separation and is therefore not aligned with life. Any living force existing in a polarized, imbalanced state, ultimately becomes a force of destruction. The greatest destruction of the patriarchal mindset is the destruction of the true Self through the ongoing perpetuation of fear.<br> The effects of patriarchy have hurt us all. However women have been particularly impacted by being stripped of all value and significance. We have been censored, ridiculed, silenced, mocked and judged for our emotional intelligence, intuition, and feminine wisdom. We’ve been raped, tortured, abused, sexualized, objectified, diminished, and discarded. We’ve been subjected to genital mutilation, child marriage, enslavement, sex-trafficking, female infanticide, stoning, burning at the stake, and drowned as witches.<br> The consequences of this deeply entrenched collective experience over thousands of years is encoded in the psyche of women worldwide. As a result, we’ve forgotten who we are, and patriarchy wants to keep it that way.<br> But what if we break free from the cultural enslavement of patriarchy? What if we, as women, choose to remember who and what we are. What if we direct our own healing toward the healing of the Earth?<br> This is the work of Clare Dakin, passionate Earth warrior and founder of TreeSisters, a campaign created to build a global network of women to help...
