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A few years back, as I was birthing a project that has, since, been named The Global Culture of Women, I stumbled across the poem 'Kathe Kollwitz' by Muriel Rukeyser. There is a line in this poem that changed my life, much the way Margaret Atwood did when I was just 13. The line reads: "What if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open."This became my love affair. I fell in love with the simple beauty and profound medicine of female truth. All truth really, but for some reason it felt more within my purview to cultivate safe landscapes within which women would sing their truths to the world, as if all life depended upon it, because it most assuredly does. This was five years ago now, and I had forgotten this powerful quote that had been the impetus for what is now a glorious organization.

by Christiane Pelmas This morning it is cold frigid air has cast a spell and from where I stand in my parka and boots warm on the inside of the door nothing moves out there

by Christiane Pelmas My wild predator Cat companion Jet-black Artemis on four legs Comes racing home Up and over the patio fence

This morning, January 1st, 2011, I sit in the warm and beautiful home of my husband and his two children. Actually, this home is now our home as well. But this will take some getting used to. Miraculously, this sweet dwelling is slowly accommodating our belongings and the bigness of our lives. This has been a big year.

Christiane Pelmas I favor the scorpions and the mid-depth fish Those translucent, dark-loving creatures Whose bodies leave nothing to the imagination I think they would recognize my longing For the dark dismembering moments when I am reduced To nothing more than the most transparent of filaments Subject to the subtlest of breezes Breezes which cause me to twist and turn The beautiful roots of me Disconnected from everything known Swirling in a seductive and inviting way Over the great black abyss below As if the dismantling that has just occurred Isn’t quite enough and we - those aspects of me still on board - Are now calling for more As if there were anything left to be given away

What does it mean to be educated? What is the purpose of education? When does it begin and are we ever done? We imagine that our children are being educating when we send them off to an institution where they learn (first and foremost) how to behave, where they are told what is important to know (and by this, what is not relevant or worthy). In this process they are not asked what they think about what is important to know or what it is they already know; what they came into the world knowing. Of course there is a need for a common language, common practices and shared wisdom which allow culture to be a container within which we are held accountable for the vitality of all life.

Being a teen age boy must be a whole lot like being the universe as it was creating itself, one galaxy, one beautiful planet, one scary, sucking, deep black hole, one brilliantly exploding super nova at a time. Cataclysmic implodings, neural rewiring, oceans of chemical-flooding, pulsing and ebbing, the somatic, non-verbal knowing that everything is possible, beyond imagination, within this one body. And of course, the natural assumption then, that the world is colluding with this process making everything outside the body possible as well; an hypothesis he is eager to (and must) test, over and over and over again. I am raising two young men - one 13 and one 15 - and I have watched as they discover, sometimes painfully, that the culture around them does not welcome the power coming online within them.

By Jim Wayne Miller

Writing you this, I can feel a dewclaw

pushing through the skin an inch above my thumb.

I’ll sign this letter with a muddy paw.

By Neil Gaiman Shedding my shirt, my book, my coat, my life Leaving them, empty husks and fallen leaves Going in search of food and for a spring Of sweet water.

The last 10 years of my almost 20-year journey as a therapist have found me slowly peeling away the jargon and rules, looking carefully at what serves the process of our human ReWilding and what most certainly does not. I've looked at who I am to be doing this work and how my unique vision necessitates that I claim an individual form and style. I've done this while prioritizing my clients' optimum health and wholeness, all while honoring what Jung called the Soul of The World, which remains my ultimate devotion.