Tender Warriors
A friend sent me a beautiful essay by Maria Shriver written for her weekly Sunday Paper. Maria was reflecting on a piece she wrote several weeks ago about her relationship with her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who was a tough, formidable matriarch. At the end of Eunice’s life, Maria was able to muster up tenderness towards her mother, an approach that had not felt reciprocal growing up. It was a breakthrough moment in their relationship.
The reaction from readers was amazing and this week’s edition is about what feminine divinity knows is true.
Here is an excerpt:
I want to focus on the description of the hero or heroine’s journey at this moment in our collective journey. It is, in its own way, the realization of the divine feminine. Women of my mother’s generation were not seen or valued, much less understood …They had to bury their tenderness and femininity and show they could out-men the men.
Women today, like the men of today, have the opportunity to lead in a more evolved and humanistic manner.... I believe that our collective humanity is on the line right now, and that it will take tenderness and courage, coupled with the divine feminine to resurrect us all.
I couldn’t agree more. Two weeks ago, I had the honor, along with my friend Lynne Twist, to hold the space for a 2 day virtual retreat for women with Arkan Lushwala, a Peruvian medicine man and ceremonialist on the topic of the divine feminine. He explained that the world lost its ability to honor the values and authority of feminine wisdom. The future of our world depends on recovering the celebration, practice and deep understanding that is embodied in feminine wisdom.
According to Arkan’s interpretation of the messages coming through him, sacred masculine energy is fire that purifies, not destroys. Sacred feminine energy is light and love, reflected in the water that is kissed by the stars. It is a completely different energy. When feminine energy tries to be equal to masculine energy, it creates the power of only 1. When they are seen as totally different, yet complementary, a third energy is created – and that is called the future.
I loved Maria’s description of “a tender warrior”.
The tender warrior is vulnerable in action. Compassionate in speech. Fully alive and fully realized. The tender warrior uses their eyes to see what is, not what the deluded mind says what is. The stories we tell ourselves and others are critical to moving forward in a realistic way. They are critical to know what needs reframing and reforming.
The tender warrior is an empathetic storyteller, one who is courageous enough to tell the story of where we are with honesty. Their mission is not to scare us, but to reassure us that the future we imagine is, in fact, possible for all of us They use a new language. They use words that we can collectively embrace, not hurriedly shove down our throats.
It brings to mind a deep message that came to me towards the beginning of this Decade Game I am in. I was 61 and had already set my decade destination “to be known as an organizational shaman and beloved global village elder”. I knew that I wanted to use the decade to transition from “warrior” to “elder” as well as shift my relationship with ambition from “Rockstar” to “servant”. I also knew that I needed to stop worrying about my adult children as it did them a psychic disservice – as if they didn’t have all that they needed to manage their own journey.
I knew all these things in my head but didn’t know how to embody it. In a deep meditation the universe came to me in the form of a cheetah. I felt her to be the “ur-cheetah”, the first one. In my mind I saw her – from a picture that I had actually taken to one in Africa who was protecting her cubs. She had a message for me. A message of the future.
“Tender in your strength, and strong in your tenderness”
Love,
Carolyn