This is why I am here.
A softly rebellious manifesto about my decision to join substack - sit with me as I say yes to a new way of sharing my writing, ideas, visions, dreams, joys, pain and love. Welcome.
Thursday, 8 am. I am sitting on the sofa, my legs wrapped into an old sheep skin, and I am covered with my favourite piece of cashmere, whilst a new influx of parakeets transforms our garden into an exotic too-early-to-be-summer world. I feel warm - just warm enough, this sweet spot on the edge of feeling hot. A feeling of sweet safety surrounds me as I catch myself humming along with the birds whilst writing my first substack post. I am writing … for the sake of writing. And I feel so damn happy about this fact. Let me share with you what brought me here.
Longing for a space to be myself
Towards the end of 2024 I heard a strong inner, Softly Rebellious, call to rest, to take a break and to winter. And so I allowed myself to drop my bundle for the whole of November and December - it was glorious. And deeply insightful as I realised what I was truly tired of: Social media. Or at least that part of social media which seems never enough - not enough content, not often enough, ot regular enough, not compelling enough, not catchy enough hooks, not enough followers, NOT ENOUGH … the list is endless. I was tired of finding myself in a competitive mode, rushing into creating, feeling pushed to have to produce … ever more. And I suddenly had a sense of strong, harsh, capitalistic and patriarchal forces (often unconsciously!) ruling me and ruling my body through social media. My situation felt totally self-inflicted, as I wasn`t forced to join any social media channel and any moment (was I though!?), and simultaneously I felt like I had become a victim of this craziness called social media.
I thought of the feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz and her insightful book “Volatile bodies”. In this piece she explains a concept called “introjected patriarchalism” (Grosz 1994), the process in which women become their own oppressors in order to survive in a patriarchal society. It seemed like that was what had happened to me to some extent: Driven and pushed by what the world seemed to tell me to be good and bad, right and wrong about social media, I oppressed my desire, my longings, my feminine as I tried to deliver, ever more and ever enough.
I started wondering to what extent can social media reflect or reinforce patriarchy? And what is called out of us and asked from us to engage in it differently? And what other ways and platforms are there where I am invited to be as fast as slow, as goal oriented as process-loving? Yes, I wondered where is the soft, the cyclical, the slow, where is the process? To be clear, I am not talking about gender here but the archetypical masculine and feminine!
And as I pondered about all those deeply complex concepts, pains and issues (by no means do I know the answer of all the questions which opened up to me!), I felt blessed to find myself at my parent`s place in Switzerland for my yearly Christmas holidays, where mother nature winter gifted us with lots of snow, ever deeper rest, more slowing down and emergent knowing:
I was longing for a space to write for the sake of writing, to write in abundance and joy, with no flipping so bloody limiting word limit! A space which is not about promotion, nor advertisement, nor showing off or being the best - but a place where I can learn about my calling with and through the creative act of writing. I was longing for a space to meet myself - whilst I meet community - in a very intimate way. Because when I write, I write to call out of me and reach deeper into myself. I was longing to be in touch with my community, to share authentically and raw about my experiences and ideas and to observe how stories of “my innerness” land with others.
Writing as a healing practice
Divine synchrony and my growing hunger for this other kind of space let me to a webinar with
and about Substack and this … finally brought me to Substack! And I am so happy to be here. Thank you to the two of you for having held that space and I invite you, dear reader, to head over to their pages and follow those incredible beings and vessels of creativity!And so today, I just start it and I see where this path - The path of the Softy Rebellious writer on Substack - leads me. I love the idea of this being a therapeutic space too, as writing definitively has been and so can be a healing practice for me. A way of unravelling, revealing, meeting the vulnerable yet so powerful parts of me. The me who has been waiting to meet me. And you!
I feel that this is the path of the medicine woman within too, she who yields into all those space where she can express herself freely, abundantly, slowly and playfully explore - for the sake of exploring and to learn about herself - shamelessly. She who, through word and text meets those parts of her innerness she otherwise wouldn’t. She who gives a voice to the unspoken, gives an image to the unfelt and walks the landscapes she didn’t know existed. And all of this because she writes, shows up, with who she is and what she has on any given day. And when she writes she feels so deeply alive! Do you know that wonderful quote from Howard Thurman which says “Don't ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive!"
By the way, this is menstrual cycle awareness too. I write shamelessly. And so I bleed. And so I listen to my body, shamelessly. But more about the wonders of our menstrual cycle in the next post!
Be the woman the earth needs
And so as a woman, inhabiting a bleeding, cyclical body I write from the depth of my heart and my womb and as I write and share I no longer abandon myself - thank you dear Amy Wilding, for this wisdom, yes healing happens the moment we no longe abandon ourselves.
With this manifesto about why I join substack and why I say yes to the Softly Rebellious writer, I take a further step to being and becoming the woman the earth needs (I am quoting all those wonderful beings today, this one is from Jane Hardwicke Collings). I notice, sense and feel that the earth needs for all of us to remember the cyclical, the soft, the generous and the unconditionally loved. Unconditionally. Mother earth needs us to care for ourselves, for you and for her.
And this I deeply know for and from myself, starts and ends with our body. And this is activism - the act of no longer fragmenting ourselves, and therefore the world, to begin to hear our desires and respond to them.
I call you to take your seat
I so warmly welcome you to join my Substack! I can`t wait to share this space with you. I want to nurture a growing community of women softly rebelling. I feel that we don`t need more rugged individualism but co-creative emergence to find our way through the mess we find ourselves in! Your words are as important as mine, I am offering a space for exploration and I always look forward hearing from you. I welcome you to come and claim your seat in this growing circle of the Soft Rebellion!
References:
Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile bodies. Routledge, 2020.