Woman, what if I told you, you are so powerful you could - from the ferocity of your own enraged, grieving heart - stop ice from melting

Women, we are surrounded by egregious betrayal…so we imagine, so we are told. Betrayal by men, men who we thought were good men, even great men, who turn out to be violators. Yet, if the #metoo movement is to be a true revolution, an evolution of justice, fomented by true change-agents and cultural revolutionaries, if we women who are saying, “STOP, NO MORE!” imagine we are exercising our full power in service of true change, we will eventually, sooner than later, need to turn our wise accusatory vision toward the well-domesticated, fast-asleep violator in ourselves. 

With every breath, we violate…on a global scale that is nearly impossible to grasp. There is no hierarchy of violations here. If we were to attempt to impose one it would not put the individual violations (of female bodies within boardrooms, locker rooms or examining rooms) at the top of the list in terms of the damage they cause to overall Life and our survival. Women, it is impossible to live in Western Culture and not be violators of first-class order. On a chilly day, we cannot turn our thermostats up without violating. And we certainly cannot get in our cars and turn on the engine without violating other humans and the Earth upon which we rely for our survival, for our children’s bright future. Every time we do any of these daily, necessary activities we are saying to the others, the wild others and to our human sisters and their children, “my right, and my children’s right, to live in comfort is more important than your survival.” And this vein of violation is the same one that would have a male coach, or teacher or boss or doctor imagining it is his right to take what is not his to take. To touch what is not, and never will be, his to touch. This is not hyperbole. It is devastating. 

I do not believe that what is happening now – individual men being arrested, charged and, in some cases, imprisoned for violating individual women while in a position of power – is necessarily a sign that things are getting better; that we’re headed in the right direction. If that were true Donald Trump would not have been elected. If the #metoo movement were a sign that women are finally being honored, a man who is a known perpetrator, a boastful violator of women’s sovereign bodies, would never have been elected let alone allowed to represent and guide the United States of America. If the political and legal systems’ responses to the #metoo movement were actually about righting unspoken, long-standing beliefs about what is man’s to touch and what is not, *so vastly much more* would be happening than what is happening now. What is happening now is more of an ‘Okay women, okay….keep your claws in…simmer down over there. We’ll let you have this one…’ accompanied by just the right outrage within the system. It is a placation. But it is also an unspoken acknowledgement of the power we women have in a system that cannot afford for us to wake up and truly recognize, let alone exercise, that power. Yet, as long as we continue to live in a bubble where perpetration is an individual act in which (mostly) men violate (mostly) women, the #metoo movement will also stand for the fact that #wetoo are perpetrators, using the power and ignorance of our status to touch and take what is not ours to touch or take, because we can. 

Let me be ever so clear here. There is NO excuse for perpetrating another body and spirit’s sovereignty. There is NO excuse. Ever. Whether it is another individual human, a River body, or the Salmon people who call the River their home. Whether it is the Polar Bear people or the frozen Water People that allow them to hunt and feed their offspring. Whether it is the fertile Mato Grasso jungle and the human Warrior people who call it their Mother. Violation of wellness, of capacity to be well, of another’s right to become, to unfold gloriously and participate magnificently, each according to their own path, is egregious. Women, how do we awaken to this fact, recognizing our formidable power to take benevolent, wild and wise action as if all Life depending upon our doing so?

The Verdant Collective is one way. The Collective is about remembering to whom we are related, to whom we are betrothed, and the necessary responsibility that comes with this betrothal. Women, there is no time to wait. Whether you join us or create your own revolution…just do it. This morning. Right now.

More information about the The Verdant Collective is available here.