GODDESS BLOG
Finding Home, a Journey Back to Myself 🌻
Finding Home, a Journey Back to Myself 🌻
One year ago today, my Godmother left her body and went home. When I got the call from her caregivers, it occurred to me that I wanted to honor her transition from life to life-after-death with a ritual. Immediately, I had the idea to decorate her body with flowers.
But, which flowers would she want me to use for this ritual? Believing that she could hear me across the veil, I asked her, “What color flower would you like me to use?” “Yellow!” I heard her exclaim with glee. Her answer caught me by surprise; I thought for certain my Godmother would have preferred purple flowers—after all, historically, purple is the color of royalty— and she was nothing less than royalty!
As it turns out, I’m glad I followed this instinct . . .
JOURNEY TO THE GODDESS
Finding Home, a Journey Back to Myself 🌻
One year ago today, my Godmother left her body and went home. When I got the call from her caregivers, it occurred to me that I wanted to honor her transition from life to life-after-death with a ritual. Immediately, I had the idea to decorate her body with flowers.
But, which flowers would she want me to use for this ritual? Believing that she could hear me across the veil, I asked her, “What color flower would you like me to use?” “Yellow!” I heard her exclaim with glee. Her answer caught me by surprise; I thought for certain my Godmother would have preferred purple flowers—after all, historically, purple is the color of royalty— and she was nothing less than royalty!
As it turns out, I’m glad I followed this instinct. Several days after my Godmother’s passing, I shared with my mother the story of how I came to choose yellow flowers for the ritual. She gasped and looked at me, surprised, before saying, “Yellow was Michele’s favorite color.”
Shortly after gathering every yellow flower I could find in the store’s paltry flower section, I arrived at my Godmother’s adult family home. For nearly an hour I decorated her head and torso with luminous, scented yellow flowers. Sweet daisies, regal roses, and gargantuan sunflowers embraced the contours of her head and shoulders, emanating a golden glow. When I placed the last rose over her heart, I stepped back and realized I had encapsulated her head in a golden flower crowned halo.
In the stillness of this moment, I was taken aback by the serene glow that was spread across her face. I knew in my heart that she had finally found peace in her final moments. I also knew that she had made it home.
🌻
Throughout much of my adult life, I have been preoccupied with finding my home, primarily driven by geographical location. While finding one’s “home” in a physical space IS important, for many wanderers and seekers such as myself, I’ve discovered that the search for “home” is actually much more complex. “Home” has deep psychological, symbolic, and spiritual meanings equally worthy of exploration. After all, “home is where the heart is.”
Several years ago, seeking advice, I shared a story with my godmother about a man in my life. With rapt attention, she waited until I was finished, pointed to my womb, and told me that the interaction occurred in that way because deep down “he recognized home.” That was the first time I truly understood that home was not just a building with four walls and a roof.
Home is relational.
Home is embodied.
Home is within me because I have a womb. Now, as I recount this story, I realize what a great honor—but also what a great responsibility—it is to have a womb, to embody “home” in such a literal and symbolic way.
Of course, the womb is not the only meaning of home.
In fact, you may have other interpretations. For example, home might be another person. It could even be a beloved pet, or perhaps a favorite tree, lake, or mountain.
For others, home is the location from which their ancestors originated.
Still, I’ve discovered that home can demarcate different life stages. For example, Seattle is my original home, the place where I was born and raised, whereas I consider New York City to be my artistic home. Pacifica Graduate Institute, the place where I received my Masters and PhD, is the home that helped me deepen into my womanhood.
These days I am completely enthralled with exploring what it means to be a woman, especially outside of enculturation. How do we, as women, find our inner home and sense of self as embodied females when society has given us inadequate definitions of “woman”?
Thus, with all of its potential meanings, the quest to find “home” may just be the most meaningful journey of a person’s life. The spiritual teacher Ram Dass was right when he said, “We’re all just walking each other home.” That is, the quest for home is the journey, the only journey each any of us is actually on.
Now it’s your turn. Search within yourself, search your heart, and let me know what home means to you.
🌻 Annalisa, PhD
In Loving Memory of Michele Chelenza
IN THIS NEWSLETTER:
Current Journey to the Goddess TV Episodes
Goddess News
What I’m Reading
Feature: In Memoriam
Upcoming Interviews
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Latest Episodes:
“Each of us longs for home. More than a physical space, we each desire the sense of feeling at home. But where do we find that? Why do some places feel more like home than others? How do we create home when we live far away from what feels familiar?” — Jan Peppler, PhD
Check out my conversation with Jan Peppler, PhD to learn about the psychological and archetypal underpinnings of “home” and how to feel at home wherever your are.
It’s easy for creative people to get stuck and bogged down in perfectionism and never quite get their creative visions off the ground. So how exactly can you materialize your creativity? Join me in conversation with Maia Wilde as she offers radically honest advice to those wanting to get out of their own way and take action on their creative visions!
How do myth and eco-consciousness intersect? Find out in this conversation with Fates and Graces cofounders, Dr. Stephanie Zajchowski and Dr. Joanna Gardner.
Goddess News
Featured Speaker at the Mary Magdalene Studies Association annual event. Free of charge!
When: Mary Magdalene’s Feast Day, July 22nd. 8:30am - 5:30 pm Eastern Time Zone.
Where: Live On Zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87530708993
Title of Presentation: “Finding Mary Magdalene: Pilgrimage as Homecoming for the Soul” (Scheduled for 1:15pm Eastern)
Featured Speaker at Fates and Graces Mythologium
When: July 29-31st 2022.
Title: “Ecological Empathy: Grief in the Age of the Anthropocene”
Registration is open through July 25th!
In May, I was invited to speak on Maia Wilde’s podcast, “Dirt Road Less Travelled,” to discuss abortion and the recent decision by SCOTUS (draft opinion at the time) to overturn Roe v. Wade. Drawing on my doctoral research, we did a deep dive into the historicity of male-centered societies and their control of women’s reproductive bodies and how this has continued into present-day America. LISTEN to our conversation.
What I’m Reading:
“Goddess Durgā and Sacred Female Power”
This book is a great beginners guide to the history and beliefs of Shakta Tantra. Laura Amazzone combines personal narrative of her first hand account of goddess pilgrimage in Nepal with a deeply researched history of goddess worship in the Hindu and Buddhist Shakta Tantra traditions.
I was excited to learn that this tradition focuses on achieving enlightenment or liberation through the body. More specifically, in this tradition, the female body is the vehicle toward enlightenment! Needless to say, sacralizing the female body is key.
I can’t recommend this book enough to those (especially women) who want to feel empowered in their body.
Feature: In Memoriam
Pearl Means & Rosemary Ruether
Pearl Means
was a film maker, Indigenous Diné activist, and author. (Photo Credit: Mark Gerke. Posted on Native News Online).
Rosemary Ruether
was a feminist theologian, scholar, and eco-feminist. She was a prolific writer, authoring several influential books including, “Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing.”
This book was pivotal to my understanding of how the Christian religion has justified the domination of women and nature (both codified “feminine”) through mythologies that exalt male divine power while suppressing feminine divine power.
(Photo from: Feminismandreligion.com)
Upcoming Interviews:
Dr. Joanna Kujawa
Scholar. Spiritual Detective. Author of:
“The Other Goddess: Mary Magdalene and the Goddess of Eros and Secret Knowledge”
Dr. Megan Rose
Transformational Psychologist. Pagan Scholar. Ecospiritual Priestess. Holistic Healer. Author of:
“Normalizing the Paranormal: Helping Highly Sensitive People to validate, ground & cultivate their extraordinary gifts & experiences”
Krishna Rose
Oracle of the Grail. Prophetess. Priestess of the Magdalene. Author of:
“Woman in Red: Magdalene Speaks”
“The Other Goddess: Mary Magdalene and the Goddess of Eros and Secret Knowledge”
What you seek is seeking you 🌺 April 2022
🌺 My Journey to the Goddess began as a young teenage girl, years before I ever knew who or what the Goddess is. She first appeared to me as a ritual agreement with Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess; an agreement which I fulfilled over twenty years later in graduate school.
She remained with me throughout my teenage years as a passion for the red hibiscus flower. In fact, the moment I turned 18, I felt the utmost urgency to get an image of the red hibiscus tattooed on my back. It wasn’t until many years later when I realized that the Goddess was speaking to me through my love for this flower. . .
“What You Seek is Seeking You”
My Journey to the Goddess began as a young teenage girl, years before I ever knew who or what the Goddess is. She first appeared to me as a ritual agreement with Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess; an agreement which I fulfilled over twenty years later in graduate school.
🌺
She remained with me throughout my teenage years as a passion for the red hibiscus flower. In fact, the moment I turned 18, I felt the utmost urgency to get an image of the red hibiscus tattooed on my back. It wasn’t until many years later when I realized that the Goddess was speaking to me through my love for this flower.
🌺
Reading “Awakening Shakti” by Sally Kempton nearly 15 years later, I learned that the red hibiscus flower is the symbol for the primordial Indic (Hindu) goddess, Shakti. I recognized then that, in a very real sense, my body had been marked by the Goddess. Though my Journey to the Goddess had begun a few years prior, She had actually been with me all along. Rumi’s famous words “What you seek is seeking you” couldn’t have been more true!
🌺
As I was searching my heart for the right words to say in this newsletter today, I couldn’t help but reflect back on my journey that began all those years ago. The past few weeks have brought me closer to my vision of what it means to be in service to the Goddess. For me, it is not a journey to claim some sort of elusive “feminine energy.” Though, this is a totally legitimate path for those who want it!
🌺
Instead, my Journey to the Goddess is actually a quest to discover what it means to be a woman, outside of any patriarchal fantasy, and to share this discovery with others who seek the same. Of course, the Goddess is leading the way. The fruits of the quest have led me to the profoundity of embodied feminine power. Thus, my path to female empowerment is crystalizing in my desire to Resacralize the Female Body.
🌺
But the simple truth is, all Life is sacred. So much of the world is currently dominated by staunch materialistic and anthropocentric paradigms. As a result, the sacrality of Life—and the beauty of our interconnectivity with plant, animal, mineral life, and one another—has increasingly become diminished and distorted for centuries, if not millennia. To truly recognize Life’s sacrality, it will take a reevaluation of many of our inherited beliefs.
🌺
One of which is our notion of power and how we wield it. I believe that the power humans need to cultivate is one that is in alignment with the cyclic powers of Life—think birth, growth, decay, death, and rebirth. And it is time for more women to remember that we embody this cyclic power, as it is so profoundly made manifest, throughout our lives, in our wombs.
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It is a unique and primal power that is simultaneously biological, spiritual, and archetypal. And, I believe, this power—and ALL that it implies—is the feminine power that women, and the world, have been seeking.
🌺
Perhaps Rumi’s visionary words are the antidote for our time.
🌺Annalisa, PhD
IN THIS NEWSLETTER:
Current Journey to the Goddess TV Episodes
Goddess News
What I’m Reading
Feature: Women to Follow
Upcoming Interviews
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DON’T FORGET . . .
SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel! It’s Free!!
LATEST EPISODES
🩸Why is is that Menstruation is still such a taboo topic around the world? What is it that makes this particular form of bleeding dangerous enough to largely remain hidden behind the cultural curtain? Why do so many women feel period shame
🩸Six years ago, I began to ask myself why I was so ashamed of my menstruation and menstruous body. This has led me down a deep and often dark path filled with anger, rage, and grief, but, ultimately, has given me the opportunity to heal my shame.
🩸This is an EXPANDED presentation of my doctoral work to resacralize menstruation--but with a twist! I asked two colleagues to join me for a post-presentation "Red Roundtable" discussion. In the Q&A section, we deep dive into our blood stories, internalized sexism, the sacred power of menses & so much more!
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Is menstruation 🩸 sacred or a curse? What would you think if I said menstruation is one of the most sacred of human acts? I believe that it IS sacred and I have created a Menstrual Art Performance series to honor the sacredness of menstrual blood.
This is a Period Performance called "A Ritual Puja for Menstruation" and is followed by my commentary on the inspiration for the piece, the bleeding goddess of Assam, Kamakhya.
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After an extraordinary experience with a dying cat, I decided to bring on my dear friend, podcaster, and self realization expert, Maia Wilde to discuss how connecting with my feelings of grief actually healed my body.
This conversation is lively and dives deep into the intelligence of our bodies. Maia also gives several simple and effective techniques to anyone who would like to learn how to safely tap into and experience their feelings. She also shares how to use such techniques as a vehicle for creative expression and emotional healing.
GODDESS NEWS
New!
I am happy to share the publication of “Spirit Marriage” by Dr. Megan Rose! “Spirit Marriage” is an in-depth exploration of the practice, relevance, and purpose of spirit marriage around the world. You may remember Dr. Rose from her great talk on Sacred Sexuality and Mary Magdalene for Journey to the Goddess TV. Find her book, here on Amazon today!
Sunday!
APRIL 10th! The Association for the Study of Women and Mythology will be holding their 2022 Symposium, “Hearing the Invisible: Lessons from the Sentient Beings & Inter-Relational Ecosystems.” For Registration, click here: ASWM SYMPOSIUM
Modern Matriarchy
“Portraits of Matriarchy: Where Grandmothers are Still in Charge.” A portrait series by KAROLIN KLÜPPEL. Featured in Yes! Magazine.
Enlightenments
Dr. Thomas Daffern (founder of the Mary Magdalene Studies Association) & Satyen Raja will be teaching: “A Course On Enlightenments, East And West:
Examples From The Past And Present, For The Future.” This course will consist of 12 online tutorials, in which they will take turns presenting role models of enlightenments. This will include sections featuring Mary Magdalene and the work of Marija Gimbutas. For more info, click here.
WHAT I’M (RE)-READING
“Awakening Shakti: The Transformative Power of the Goddesses of Yoga”
by Sally Kempton
Shakti
If you’ve ever wondered what the Goddess is, then this is the book for you! Beginning with her personal narrative and an introduction to the meaning of the Goddess from the perspective of Shaiva Tantrism, Kempton takes us on a journey through the many facets of cosmic, deity, symbolic, and energetic feminine powers. Then, chapter by chapter, we learn about 11 goddesses, how to identify their archetypes, and practical how-to methods to access the goddesses’ power for our own empowerment. “Awakening Shakti” is truly one of the most thorough introductions to the
FEATURE: WOMEN TO FOLLOW
Ana Mendieta
was a Cuban-American painter, performance artist, and sculptor.
(Image: Women’n Art)
The more I learn about Ana Mendieta, the more I fall deeply in love with her unapologetic artistic vision and commitment to laying bare the profundity of embodied female power and its interwoven connection with the Earth and other spiritual elements.
Ana used her body as a vehicle of art and often in site-specific, natural settings. For example, in her Esculturas Rupestres series, including works such as Guacar or “Our Menstruation,” Ana carves locally worshipped goddesses into caves outside Havana. These carvings evoke symbolic and existential meanings about female power and embodiment.
In a way, I see myself and my own work with embodied menstrual rituals and retellings of goddess myths, within the artistic lineage so fully explored by Ana as well as other artists like Judy Chicago.
In 1985, Ana died in a tragic incident, that, some say, exemplifies the themes she so powerfully evoked in her art. Ana lives on through her art, which continues to inspire many artists and non-artists alike.
Learn more about Ana Mendieta here.
UPCOMING INTERVIEWS
April 2022
Co-founders of Fates and Graces Mythologium, Dr. Stephanie Zajchowski & Dr. Joanna Gardner, will join me for a special Earth Day discussion on the intersection of myth and ecological consciousness.