Island Women

I have just enjoyed a magical sojourn on North Stradbroke Island in Queensland. It's a fascinating island, made of sand and teeming with wild life. Fresh water lakes, sand dunes, bluffs, wild beaches and gorges excite the senses and re-ignite the ancient need to connect with Nature.

The spiritual home to its original people, it's easy to imagine what a paradise they enjoyed before being "visited" by white men. Abundant in food from the sea and land and with endless supplies of fresh water, this huge sand island was enjoyed by a number of tribes.

Today the presence of the indigenous peoples is still strong.  With some success to land claims, there is a sense of pride and the promise of a continuing future. I had the pleasure to meet some women actively involved in Indigenous art, culture and education programs: Island women.

I can't wait to go back next year and take some mainland women with me, on retreat. Together we will experience the magic of this island and the women who live there. Until then...

Angelina Jolie undergoes double mastectomy

Is this the latest form of public female mutilation? 

Do you think that if the genetic odds were the same for other forms of cancer: liver, brain etc, those organs would be amputated?

Could this public mutilation of the symbols of womanhood be a further act of the masculinisation of women by popular American media and by Western science. 

What was she thinking...really? (and yes I do know her aunt died of breast cancer shortly after.)

May 16, 2013 -- Updated 1209 GMT (2009 HKT)

Kids and body image

I sooooo enjoyed speaking with these primary school kids about body image. They called me from Melbourne when I first arrived in Alice this month. Check out the interview it starts at 23:49. : ) Click on this link...

http://sbnonline.org/2013/05/02/1369/

The interview was made even more interesting by the questions from the boy in the group about boys' body image issues.

Women are their own worse critics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XpaOjMXyJGk#!

The video above is a great example of how women perceive themselves compared to the way others see them.
In my consultations, husbands and partners of women always describe the women in a much more positive light than the women do themselves.
Women are in fact their own worse critics.
That's why I am a persistent campaigner against body image damage.
Why don't you join me at my image free website www.denisegreenaway.com  

Ageless beauty

Beauty is ageless.
As I embrace my dear friends I celebrate it.
The shy girl, yet to be initiated into womanhood, a young maiden beside her, two mothers and a grandmother.
All doing "women's business" : eating, laughing, sharing stories and love for one another.
(True) "...beauty is a joy forever. 

International Women's Day

Women of the world unite for International Women's Day.

             You have nothing to lose but the false images that have been manufactured for you.  

Imagine whom you might have been had you been born into an image free world. 

I have been to such a women's world and tasted its freedom. I write about it in my book Finding Artemisia: A Journey into Ancient Women’s Business, a cross-cultural journey into the female mind and spirit.

It was in the central desert of Australia where I had the privilege of meeting  a community of women who did not define themselves by their physical appearances but rather by their valued roles as the guardians of children, the earth and each other.

These women knew their business. Do you know yours?

OR

Have you lost the core of what it means to be a woman, free from society’s definitions?

Don't you want to get back your roots, away from the images society has made?

Come celebrate your essential self at my image-free website

 www.denisegreenaway.com 

                                     where what counts is on the inside.

AND come on my desert retreats. 

An Ode to Marilyn

In my book Finding Artemisia, Artemisia is a 14 year old girl with anorexia. She calls her collection of thoughts, drawings and poetry The Oracle. One of the most touching poems in The Oracle is her ODE TO MARILYN

If I were Marilyn Monroe, the famous beauty queen,

And you, the wise professor, with thoughts and words to preen,

I’d prance about and whimper and wait impatiently

For your wise and golden knowledge to graciously encompass me.

And when you finally would appear, with thoughts and words in hand,

I’d toss my hair and bare my breasts and bleat of the love you’d fanned.

You’d smile perhaps a little, but seriousness soon would grow,

As you carefully consider how I fit with what you know.

“The pleasures of the flesh I have chosen to ignore,

I seek the greater things in life, the sea, not just the shore.”

And I would smile as teardrops fell on beauty spots that cried,

“I’ll know that all too soon, my friend, for I’m about to die.

You’ve failed to see my beauty; you’ve been blinded by your eye.

Your mind is crammed with things you know,

And your heart’s afraid to fly.”

So now the world does mourn me, and all the ghosts do sigh.

But you once had your chance, and you sooner had me die.

Finding Artemisia: a journey into ancient women's business. p36 www.findingartemisia.com

After the election.. the anxiety continues

The American elections took up a lot of air space in Australia as well other countries concerned about  the effects on Wall St and the international monetary systems. Anxiety about money seems to be the order of the day. And anxiety belongs to situations that are out of one's control. (I know, I see a lot of anxious people. Im a psychologist.) Sometimes such anxious people are known as the worried well, because they're not really unwell, they just don't feel safe about the future or even the present.  Even after the election they still have the jitters as does Wall St. And why wouldn't they? Their money, their future is the hands of people who are proving themselves to be incompetent, amoral and driven by self interest. So what about taking our power back. One country has shed its national debt. Iceland. But maybe America/ Europe/Australia are more complicated. So what can we do as individuals?
1 stop repeating the same mistakes
2 stop investing in systems that rob the poor to pay the rich
3 stop expecting governments to bail out failing systems
4 start acting locally in our community
5 rely less on money, begin to trade, exchange and recycle
6 build community networks that are supportive and sustainable
7 get creative about ways to obtain income

BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY STOP EXPECTING GOVERNMENTS TO SAVE US. THEY CAN'T. THEY KNOW IT. AND IT'S ABOUT TIME WE DID TOO

After the storm

Storms are a natural part of the growling, tempestuous earth on which we live. Perhaps global warming has contributed to their intensity, but many ancient peoples have recorded big winds and high waters. The Australian Aboriginal people lived through over 40,000 years of climactic changes and in their wisdom often moved out of harm's way, at the first signs of trouble to come. Their adjustment to Mother Nature's moods was not hampered by the sort of infra structures that industrial nations have since built. Aboriginal people had no sky scrapers, undergrounds or cities balancing on reclaimed lands.  They lived with the Earth, feeling her movement, reading her signs. When the big flood hit Brisbane not long ago, the waters reached right through the centre  of Australia as they had done before, many times. And so as we watch tsunamis sweep into Japan destabilising nuclear reactors, and cities like New York being washed by the sea, we realise how much faith man has in his own creations and yet how little connection to the seasons of the earth.  The earth is ancient and modern man, but a pup. Perhaps the engineers need to have a longer conversation with the people who have walked upon the Earth for eons.  Perhaps we need to remind them.

Lady Gaga’s Image Free Zone

Lady Gaga has a broad fan base and is encouraging them to bare their bodies as a way of uniting them against the constant onslaught of the media and the image makers. Supported by her mother, she invites her fans to bare all.

She announced her new campaign with this thought-provoking announcement on her website:

What a good idea! It’s only when women and girls get to see each other’s bodies do they realize the variety of body types that exist. And why wouldn’t there be? Why do we think we have to aspire to one particular body type, one definition of beauty per se. Because the image makers have very little imagination. The same old stereotypes glare at us from magazines and television shows. And then we, alone, and often in isolation, compare ourselves to these images and of course we are nothing like them. We are round, short, small, tall, big, freckled, hairy, bumpy, smooth, black, white, etc etc AND we don’t get to see each other’s bits.

When I was visiting the Aboriginal women in the centre of Australia, I was amazed to see soooooo many different breast shapes for a start compared to the standard tennis ball look being sold by plastic surgeons. Of course the Aboriginal women didn’t have mirrors, magazines or TV so they have never been told that they are not good looking enough, or that their looks could be improved. Imagine that. Just taste the freedom in that!   That’s what I want women to imagine…how free they could be, if they could just get out of the body image/ beauty trap.

In the words of Naomi Wolf: “'Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West it is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact.”

The tragic thing is that women are allowing it and modeling it for the girls that grow up in their care and company. So come women: Let’s unite against the BODY IMAGE trap.

The road to “Finding Artemisia”

After my first visit to a community of traditional Aboriginal women in the middle of the Australian desert, I couldn’t stop thinking about how different the women were to modern women.

I’m a psychologist, specializing in anorexia and it occurred to me that these Aboriginal women had never heard of eating disorders, or psychology for that matter. 

At the time I was also facilitating workshops in New York State and people were asking me about the Aboriginal culture and as I began talking about how different it was, I thought I should write about my time there, as well as my professional experiences with eating disorders.

Because they were such extreme opposites I wanted to put them together somehow, and that’s how “Finding Artemisia: A Journey into Ancient Women’s Business” began.

It’s an inspirational book, in that takes the reader into an image free world where women value each other for who they are and not what they look like. Not like the modern world of women: booby-trapped by the dieting, plastic surgery and body shaping industries.

It’s not an academic book, (there are already many on the subject of eating disorders), but it is an experience, a transformational and nourishing journey for women and their families, because its about its about matters that deeply affect them: food, sexuality, body image, and relationships. It’s a journey book that takes readers into a world they would otherwise not experience, that of ancient women’s culture. It also takes them into the hidden world of anorexia. 

AND it honors the special relationship between mother and daughter. No matter how difficult that relationship might be, all women have mothers, and if they can’t be at peace with that relationship, they will rarely find peace within themselves. 

Welcome to an IMAGE FREE ZONE

I am an Australian psychologist, mother and educator and I am so excited to be able blog and start a conversation about some of the issues that fire me up: women’s bodies, minds and relationships.  What is great about a cyber blog is that it can reach women all over the world. And I have had many wonderful opportunities to talk with women from many different cultures and in many different places, in jails, refuges, board meetings, schools, universities and remote indigenous communities. And whether it be on an indigenous reserve in Arizona, a New York prison, an Australian Aboriginal community or a suburban neighborhood,  I have found that women talk about the same things: their rights, their body and self image, their food and weight issues, their kids and families, their relationships, their futures and that of the planet.

And what I sense in all of them is a frustration that they are not being seen and heard for who they are. And that they are tired of being objects of desire, second class citizens, victims of violence and subjugation.  So I would like to start a conversation with women about these things so that we can find another way of seeing each other, so that we stop competing with each other and judging ourselves and each other by criteria set by those who do not have our best interests at heart.

As a psychologist, I see many girls and women whose lives are destroyed by their negative self beliefs, their hateful self images and their fears of not being good enough. But psychology happens in a closed room, in isolation. And if there is no change outside the room then there is no support for the healing process.

And if women do not begin to change the way they see and think about themselves then it is almost impossible for girls to grow into their full potential. So it is my wish to create a better world for girls that drives me to appeal to all women, to start to change the way we see ourselves.

When I traveled to the Australian desert to stay with a community of Aboriginal women and met women who did not define themselves by their physical appearances, I realized I was in an image free zone for the first time in my life.  It was liberating to be with women who were not at all conscious of how they looked, because it began to rub off on me. After days without make-up and mirrors I let myself be seen by these women whom I knew were not judging me by my looks but by a very different set of criteria. And these women had a wisdom and connection to with each other that is rarely found in modern women’s relationships.  They are so inspiring, I want to share their wisdom, their networking and connection. And I can’t think of a better launching pad than cyber space to propel modern women into an IMAGE FREE ZONE.