On SheWolfing
Re-humanizing our lives, the Social Nervous System, and Feminine Mycelial Networking
Oh yes, I am one in a pack. A SheWolf.
My life so is much fuller with a pack to belong with.
My circle of SheWolves help me celebrate, by showing up at my door a day early for a party, to help me cook and decorate and laugh.
My circle of SheWolves help me grieve, by holding me and making sure I’m never alone in my pain.
My circle of SheWolves help me know who I am, by tracking my transformation and letting me know I’m brave, and seen for it.
My SheWolves help me give my gifts to the world, by championing my endeavors, liking my posts, and showing up for my creations with feisty hearts ablaze!
I would not stand here were it not for the circle of women near and far whom I call my SheWolf Pack. My soul sisters, and actual sisters.
I may not have had the strength to overcome the last 2 years of my life.
I most certainly would not be the happiest I’ve ever been, the most resourced, the most grounded, or the most wealthy in love.
Two years ago I was the most depressed, dimmed version of myself I’ve ever been. I felt the most isolated, confused, abandoned I had ever felt in my whole life.
I was sick, in a soul way. Deep down I knew I had become too isolated, and that I needed a pack. I didn’t need to go on a diet, or vacation, or to work harder. I needed women. I got humble…
Today, I am awed by this devoted circle of women who would lay down their lives for me, and I them.
This is how it should be. We should never feel desperately alone. I want this for everyone, all genders.
I spoke with a dear friend recently who doesn’t feel she has a soulful ShePack nearby, and she was in deep lament over it. It’s like she forgot that it was important, forgot to nurture her soul-friend relationships, until it became too late.
Our response to the pandemic has cracked our hearts in half, and we need to ACT to repair them. We need to reach out, across borders, despite differences, because we DO need each other.
Not only have out hearts been effected by all this isolation, so has our biology. The conflict in the world right now threatens the intactness of our social structures, which we depend on for our survival. Literally, as we register this in our nervous systems, we register one of the deepest human threats, losing connection.
When our systems are under threat, our responses are not always voluntary. We become quick to anger, anxiety, reactiveness, defensiveness, worry, stress… We have trouble thinking rationally, and our lower brain functions of fight, flight, freeze, or collapse are engaged, based on how we have been conditioned by past experiences.
Women are more susceptible to the stresses of isolation. We suffer the most when the cohesion of the family unit, the community, the tribe has been ruptured. And we also have some really painful ancestral trauma that taught us that we were not worth it.
I see many women who are feeling stuck in unhealthy connection, in deep threat of loosing all connection if they leave. I also see many women stuck in situations that keep them alone, in deep threat of experiencing more violence and trauma. Two sides of a patriarchal coin that has done harm.
But we can soothe this with sisterhood. We can co-regulate together, in these times of high threat. We can imprint soulfully with one another, as I have done, and build resilience to face this tipping point we are at globally.
Women, we must lead. When women rise, men will also.
We must lead this flawed industrial, greedy, uncivilized culture back to nature, back to connection. One by one, one at a time, one step in front of the other. However we must. We must NOT become small and meek, and let this happen to us.
Women are the gender best wired for rebuilding connection. This is in part because we have far more of the bonding hormone Estrogen, which primes us to be perceptive and attuned to other’s experiences. As givers of life, we are innately more capable of nurturing, biologically wired by the social nervous system to tune into social cues in the environment, especially from the people in it. This is how evolution guaranteed we would take care of our young children, and it’s also how the cohesion in a tribe or group of people has been ensured.
Our superpower is building the social mycelium network of our communities. We are the tuning forks of the collective social nervous system. We can sense disruption early, and we are also best suited and most skilled to do something about it.
I know you sense it. You probably, like me, sensed it coming before the pandemic even began, didn’t you?
This is why I started writing. I had to. I have to stand.
I’m here for this. I will show up for you, what do you need? I’ll be your SheWolf.
Rebuilding culture can start slow, and maybe it must, just like soil takes time to build potency when you stop tilling it. Yes, there are some things that need to stop.
I am asking women to lead the way, to stop tilling the soil with dehumanizing language and rhetoric. Media and especially social media are profuse with hateful sentiments about how the (*others) deserve to die, should be denied medical care, are immoral, ignorant, narcissistic, sociopathic, and so on.
There is no right way to make decisions, and so we must respect one another, and lift ourselves out of the mire of ‘us versus them’ - and take our hearts into our lives with our words, actions, and promises.
I read a powerful essay by Charles Eisenstein recently where he says:
The trick depends on a lie, the mother of all lies: that some of us are less valid, less human, and less sacred than others.
Tyrannical institutions hold dominion only through social agreement—their leaders don’t have personal superpowers like some movie villain. Real power is with the people. Therefore, tyrants can have their way only by setting the people against one another.
From appearances, they have been successful, but appearances can be deceiving. The most hateful tend also to be the loudest. A quiet majority wants peace.
I look to nature for inspiration and relief, for imprints of peace. I look to the flocks of starlings in the field, rising is a sea of black flapping wings, undulating to some inaudible-to-me music. I look to the soft scurriers who leave tiny little toe prints on the railing, on their way to the pine tree. I find my belonging with them, and with my pack of sisters near and far.
Actions I take to nurture the social soil and build SOUL family:
Picking up the phone
Sending voice memos
Writing love notes
Especially to the older ones and the aloner ones
Introductions when I notice two friends have a similar passion
Hosting gatherings for soul lifting purposes
Engaging in social media in ways that lift my heart
Getting the fuck off social media
Shopping local, grow food, drink spring water
Going to nature to build bonds with (and listen to) the land, the lake, the non-human beings
Creating seasonal rituals with the land, like harvesting leeks and boiling sap in the spring, swimming in the lake everyday during summer, watching the mushrooms dance in the fall, looking for paw prints in winter.
What do you do? What are your ideas of rebuilding the dignity in your community? I’d love to hear your ideas and thoughts, because I want to do more.