Hello and Welcome!
Hello beloved reader and welcome new subscribers!
This Substack community is for readers who are interested in the Rising and Re-claiming of the Divine Feminine energies so that we can bring back a harmonious balance:
by honoring both the Sacred Masculine in addition to the Divine Feminine, we honor Mother Earth and offer a spiritual response to our ecological crisis.
About This Community:
The Divine Feminine is not about the gender of physical form.
"Divine" of course points to spirituality, derived from the Latin spiritus — soul, vigor, breath, life force.
And drawing from Dr. Carl Jung's concepts of anima and animus; the feminine and masculine energies—akin to Yin and Yang—exist within every human being.
The writing in this Substack shines the light on the rising and re-claiming of the divine feminine energies that have been suppressed in cultures dominated by patriarchal hierarchies. It honors the balance of Yin/Feminine/Being, and Yang/Masculine/Doing, and emphasizes the importance of harmonic balance.
Our planet is at a pivot point. Endless consumerism has failed our human species and Mother Earth.
Of course there is nothing wrong with money itself. Money is just another form of energy.
However, this new era calls for a shift from unbalanced materialistic pursuits and greed, toward deepening spiritual growth, enabling us to recognize the ecological crisis as a spiritual challenge.
By reading and engaging with this community, you get the opportunity to:
Support writing that advocates a spiritual response to our ecological crisis.
Investigate your conditioning and beliefs to align with your authentic self.
Cultivate a space to observe your humanity from your divinity.
Thank you for choosing to be here. Your presence is deeply valued.
Supporting This Work:
Thank you for inviting into your inbox writing that serves The Rising and Reclaiming of the Divine Feminine. It’s very meaningful to me that you make this choice.
And if you choose to offer financial support, thank you! You have my deepest gratitude for choosing to be generous in a way that is also in support of your own spiritual nature. Your financial support sustains this platform.
May your choices bring you many great blessings.
Central Questions explored in this Substack:
How does a woman in a patriarchal culture claim her own spirituality in the world?
How does a man cultivate the courage and humility to listen to a woman and be guided by her, and to acknowledge and validate the female experience?
How do we stay connected to our inner-divinity, inner-authority, and stand strong in our sovereignty and integrity?
How do we blossom like the Lotus flower, because of, not in spite of our “muck”?
How do we “live our dharma” as described in the ancient, Hindu sacred text, the Bhagavad Gita?
We don’t have an exact equivalent English word for the Hindu word “dharma”, but its meaning centers around the idea of our “sacred duty,” our life purpose, or in Mary Oliver’s words, What is it you will do with your one wild and precious life? i.e. How will we learn, love, play, create, enjoy, and give in this human experience we’re having as spiritual beings?
BOOKS:
The Rising of the Divine Feminine and the Buddhist Monks Across the Road: A Memoir blends personal narrative with spiritual exploration. Most of this book is serialized here on this Substack and can be accessed with a paid subscription.
This spiritual literary memoir, about a Manhattan couple who disappears into the nether regions of New Hampshire, and learns about life and love from a group of Thai Forest Buddhist monks, is perhaps where WINTERING: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May (Riverhead Books/Random House in 2020) meets THE ACCIDENTAL BUDDHIST: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still by Dinty Moore (Algonquin Books, 1997) with a little of THE ROAD FROM COORAIN by Jill Ker Conway (Knopf/Random House in 1989.)
Jamie was the Executive Director of systems architecture at JP Morgan, I was V.P. of subsidiary rights at Penguin Young Readers, and when hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc—a 100 mile walk around the massif that straddles parts of France, Italy and Switzerland—Jamie experienced his first symptoms of a debilitating illness.
In the wake of his diagnosis and treatment of a malignant tumor above his heart, we escaped our high-stress New York City lives to take a sabbatical in TreeTops, a decades-old log-cabin in the woods of Southern New Hampshire.
Serendipitously, I was led to study world religions in a local interfaith seminary program. Then, just as we considered moving back to city-living, a group of Thai Forest Buddhist monks moved in across the road.
I grew up in a counter-culture family in Australia, in a home built by my parents that was only accessible by water. Jamie’s American upbringing had been more conventional. But developing friendships with the Buddhist monks across the road, made us reckon with the cost of buying into the overarching culture’s demand for high productivity and endless consumerism.
The memoir is a counter-narrative to the dominant patriarchal culture, for readers who are longing for a more balanced harmony between being and doing; yin and yang; feminine and masculine; all of which are simply energies that exist within us all. More and more people are waking up to the fact that when we do not live our lives in balance with these energies, energies that indigenous faith traditions have honored since time immemorial — Mother Earth and Father Sky, Brother Sun and Sister Moon — we pay the price of stress, so often leading to illness in body, mind, emotions, and spirit.
Through re-claiming the Divine Feminine, we bring back equanimity; offering a spiritual response to our present ecological crisis.
I also wrote The Mini Book of Mindfulness — literally 3” x 3.5” — which was published by Running Press/Hachette in 2016 and is available for purchase here.
If you’re interested in reading articles published earlier than September 2022, you may click here.
Who Am I?
Besides the spiritual aspect of this question, Who Am I?😉 in the here and now in our material realm, this is the story: Born and raised in Australia, moved to New York City in 1990 with my darling love and partner-in-life, Jamie; then after working for 20 years in the publishing industry in Manhattan, in 2011, this human experience I’m having as a spiritual being, pivoted. Instead of what is traditionally looked at as a “real job,” now I am living my dharma — which includes writing this Substack, which I began in September 2022, and where I have serialized my memoir.
After studying world religions for two years in a local interfaith seminary program, in 2014 I was ordained an Interfaith Minister. I like to think of myself as an irreverent-reverend, embracing the paradoxes in the human experience we’re having as spiritual beings. I also cherish when people — especially women — claim the right to be “unapologetically lazy.” To find peace in simply “being” versus the state of continual “doing,” which has been glorified by the patriarchy, and is perhaps one of the reasons why our planet is in such a mess.
In 2017, I earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, during which I wrote the above memoir which tells the story of Jamie’s health crisis, the pivot it inspired in our lives, and the spiritual growth and principles we discovered along the way. This memoir is a testament to the journey of healing, transformation, and reclaiming balance.
I write to explore the Central Questions as outlined above. Not necessarily to provide answers, but to investigate the questions in depth. And to offer spiritual principles that may help us to surrender into our hearts and to living in the mystery.
One of the ways I claim my own spirituality in the world is by transforming my experiences into art through creative non-fiction writing. My experience of art is that it turns up the brightness on the connections between us. We get to recognize we’re all spiritual beings having this human experience, including all the joy and the pain, and including our capacity to learn, to offer our gifts, and with an intention to also have some fun.
Why pay to subscribe?
A writer's work deserves financial compensation. This is a value I want to uphold for myself and other artists.
I publish content here on Substack that is available for free for one month after its publication. After a month, most content moves behind the paywall.
Substack provides a beautiful space where readers and writers can connect: to find the right match. As a writer, Substack allows me to create a space where the art of writing may brighten the connections between us. I fully encourage and welcome you to be part of the community here.
If you’d like to take a deep dive into my work, and to be able to read the serialized parts of the book online, I encourage you to buy a paid subscription, and you will have my deepest gratitude for your financial support.
Stay up-to-date
Should you choose to support my work with a paid subscription you may go to the Table of Contents to read from the beginning, The Rising of the Divine Feminine and the Buddhist Monks Across the Road: A Memoir.
In 2023 and 2024, I posted once or twice a week. Although for 2025 I may be scaling back the frequency of Substack posting to focus on writing a new book. Please also be aware, sometimes life happens, and Substack posting doesn’t✨🌟💖🙏🕊️
