Category Archives: herstory

Passages: Patricia Monaghan

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The goddess has never been lost. It is just that some of us have forgotten how to find her. (The Goddess Path, 4)

Another of our feminist foremothers has passed from this world. Patricia Monaghan, academic and poet, was one of many women whose words I treasured on my path (back) to knowing the Goddess. Even today, when I need the name of a Goddess or an aspect to invoke, her works are among the first I turn to. We have lost so much of our past. I honour those who have dedicated their time to reconnecting us with our herstory, and I am comforted as they in turn have comforted us:

The most important fact about goddesses, it seems to me, is that they are invariably connected to polytheism. Put another way: there is no monotheistic religion based on a goddess. Not a single goddess appears without friends, companions, lovers, children. The presence of the goddess demands the presence of other goddesses, and gods as well. This is comforting for me, for in my vision of the world redeemed, the world made whole, I yearn for connection, not for separation. (The New Book of Goddesses & Heroines, xiii)

Blessed Be.

Feminist Foremother: Ada Lovelace

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“The Origins of Lovelace” – http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/lovelace-the-origin-2/

If you’re reading this, thank Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer.

As a feminist fore-mother, she’s an inspiration to many women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. So much so that there’s a whole site dedicated to telling these women’s stories – Finding Ada – especially on Ada Lovelace Day (aka today).

As a self-professed geeker girl, and someone who can’t go more than 2 minutes without checking Twitter, I also owe so much to Ada and every other women working in these fields. (Awesome woman like Tara Brown, my best friend of 25+ years, who teaches at Red River Community College and get rave reviews from her students. There’s a good chance Tara’s going to kill me for posting this, but what are BFFs for if not to brag incessantly about each other?)

So join me in raising a (virtual) glass to Tara, Ada and every other woman in the STEM fields, and may you have a Happy Ada Lovelace Day wherever you are!

The Head, The Heart

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And her life in beauty, by my faith, shows that she is in God’s grace, and therefore one accords more faith to her deeds. For whatever she does, she always has God before her eyes, whom she calls to, serves and prays to in deed and word; nowhere does she let her faith decrease. ~ Christine de Pizan

Joan of Arc was born 600 years ago today – January 6, 1412. Peasant, mystic, warrior, saint – she was not a feminist, not a witch, not a pacifist, but certainly a woman who embodied courage as telling the story of who you are with your whole heart.

I’ve not been good at embodying my own courage of late. Instead I’ve struggled to hold the vision in the midst of unsuccessful activism, unsupportive dichotomies and unconnected communities. I don’t know how to engage people with a vision they don’t want, and I don’t know how to create success with a less encompassing worldview in mind. I feel imposed, uninspired and defeated on a community that has been fraying decades longer than I have been alive.

I came home for two weeks of healing and soul repair, but worry that it wasn’t enough to make me want to don my armour come Monday morning. Where’s the courage in that?

My tarot reading for the evening ended in The Star, reversed, which speaks of healing energies that cannot be felt and being afraid to open to love. The courage I need to continue holding the vision, even as it continues to wound me, needs to come from that place of healing. It’s also where others need to find the courage to hold the vision with me. If it’s the community’s vision – and I’m not sure it is – then others need to hold it with me. My whole heart needs it to be so.