The Call to Eldership

The Story of Feminine Eldership Rising...

We are three women, who each in our own way have heard a call to support the rise of feminine power and eldership. We are each doing our own work in the world, but we are delighted to be in co-creation together to make an online "campfire" space where women around the world can meet. Feminine Eldership Rising is a 12 month online adventure and a platform for us to share our explorations. It is our intention to call a circle that supports deep dialogue, reflection, and learning. We want to create a place where women from everywhere can learn, grow, support each other and step into their wise woman power.

Here are our stories.

From Mary Alice

The most important things in life often don't arrive in a clap of thunder. They come as the still small voice within. They come when you least expect them. At least that's what happened to me.

STORY #1: I am turning 50 and living in New Zealand when I realise I have spent exactly half my lifetime in the Northern Hemisphere and half in the Southern Hemisphere. These two fundamental ways of looking at the planet were sitting like a yin/yang within me. I knew in that moment I was facing the third chapter of my life. What would I choose to do with it? That's when I packed my suitcase and became an intentional nomad.

STORY #2: I am siting in a retreat circle in Greece when I understand suddenly the grandmother energy had come for me. That felt very strange, since I don't have children. I check with the other two women who felt like the eldership circle within the circle and found out we were all around 52. I realise being a grandmother is not a matter of family status, but an archetypal energy that is claiming me. It seems the world wants grandmothers and is asking me to step up. From that moment, younger people started asking me to walk alongside them. 

STORY #3: I keep learning from indigenous friends that eldership is not something you seek, but something you become. It seems there are "olders" and there are "elders" and everyone knows the difference. I find the more I trust and stay still, the more wisdom is flowing. Where once I was searching, the weaving I have made of my life suddenly becomes a solid fabric, a ground to stand on. I want to continue my weaving in circle around the fire of compassion, commitment, creativity and service to life. Who are the others around this circle?

STORY #4: I'm staying with a friend and colleague and she tells me at breakfast she dreamed of me working with women. I receive this news with curiosity, not knowing what to do with it. This is something that has been on the back burner, little sparks of illumination, but firmly in the "coming someday" bucket. Months later my own deep inner dive confirms this direction. And then in a call together, Chalotte makes a surprising invitation... Now I am at the fire, waiting for others to join us.

From Chalotte

As a daughter, granddaughter, mother, sister, widow and now grandmother, I have been around. Since I was a child –- I was looking at life like looking from the outside into a mirror. I felt like an observer to life. Often I thought there must be more to it.

One thing that I heard from my father’s family was “It’s only a girl”. That sentence got burned into me. Well that girl became a wife, mother and a business woman, serving life. I have always had a passion for women living their true essence and I was doing my best to do it myself.

On my spiritual search I discovered the divine feminine in me – the mother – the source of everything (not very compatible to the picture of “it is only a girl”) –- I gave her the space she claimed and I saw the beauty of every woman carrying the “secret” of immense power and beauty.

I got inspired by Erwin Laszlo and Barbara Marx Hubbard one day in 2013 as I attended a conference where they both were key note speakers. Both talked about the coming time is the time of the women, especially women in and after menopause. We have the empathic skills, the intuition, the healing power. We are no longer caretakers, but we still have the creative power in our ovaries, and another 30 - 40 years to live!

An idea was born, It stayed with me for some years, I had to go through loss and grief before I was ready. In a vision I saw women from all over the world, alive, wounded, strong, and weak, powerful and ordinary -– joining in a big circle drawing on the feminine wisdom -- creating for the future. A call was made to Mary Alice and here we are ... I am very honoured to be in this circle with you.

From Amy

I’ve always thought that what I do in the online sphere and the way I choose to do it is a particularly feminine way of approaching what is -- let’s face it -- a pretty male-dominated field.

The desire to connect women all over the world; to reach those who couldn’t ordinarily be part of a global gathering like Feminine Eldership Rising, is thrilling to me. It speaks to something I have felt since I was a girl -- that on one level we are all deeply connected and part of something greater than any of us. 

I know that the work of producing such a gathering requires a fundamental orientation towards relationship. It asks me -- and all of us -- to use our imagination, our intuition. To “feel into” who we are now, as women of a certain age. To appreciate who we are with, as we gather together for this journey. And to lean into the mystery, as the way forward is revealed.

Just to be in this inquiry is a living example of the power of feminine eldership, and it is particularly meaningful to me now as I stand -- at 66 years of age -- on the threshold of fully inhabiting my own feminine power and authority in a new way.

I’ve always loved collaboration -- some of my best work happens when I am plugged into the co-creative field where new ideas are born. Mary Alice has been one of my most delightful collaborators for many years now. When she came to me with the idea of Feminine Eldership Rising and introduced Chalotte & I, I realized that I have a “stake” in this story. That the part I have to play is not just one of hosting the technology, but also one of stepping in and co-creating a space where we can bring a remarkable circle of women together. I don’t yet know the details of “who” we will be, but somehow (call it feminine intuition!) I do know that the women who join us will be remarkable.