Good girls need to speak up

It's time for good girls to speak up. Too many women don't say 'no' often enough and far too many say 'yes' when they mean 'no.' 

That's the good girl syndrome. But it's time for good girls to GROW UP, to be REAL women, to say what they mean and do what they love. 

Laurie Penny's article is insightful and timely.





"Most of us grew up learning that being a good girl was all about putting other people’s feelings ahead of our own. We aren’t supposed to say what we think if there’s a chance it might upset somebody else or, worse, make them angry. So we stifle our speech with apologies, caveats and soothing sounds..."  Laurie Penny. New statesman
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/08/laurie-penny/men-sexism/

Return to goddess fashion?

A young fashion commentator in Milan tells me the next fashion "trend" will be "A Blast from the Past." And she wonders if women consumers have had anything to do with the return to the "full figured" woman.  

It's an  important issue:  the power of women as consumers in an industry that ‘owns’ them, so to speak. 

Women wear fashion. It’s unavoidable. Every choice they make is fashion conscious. At the same time their choices are image driven, more specifically, body image driven. 

“Does my bum look big in this?” became the catch cry for the way women make a choice within the limits of what is made available to them by the fashion gods.

 So when the gods switch from heroin chic, to granny comfortable, or fifties retro etc, it begs the question: Are the gods influenced by the consumers, who have been struggling to fit into skinny legged jeans,  g-strings, pointed boots and strapless bras etc or is the switch just another whim.

Certainly the return to the more curvaceous, goddess-like women, such as Marilyn Monroe, Esther Williams, Rita Hayworth etc will be welcomed by the majority of women because the majority of women have hips, breasts and thighs. That’s what makes them women.   But will the designers allow curvaceous women to model for them? Will cat walk models ever be less leggy and more fleshy.

As a psychologist working with girls and women with eating disorders, I can vouch for the effect fashion has. While fashion may not create eating disorders per say, it does have a negative impact on ‘recovery.’ Many girls are asked if they are models. Receiving positive praise for thinness discourages them from gaining weight. And for obese patients, their depression is exacerbated by fashion which extols thinness as a virtue.

So while I would like to think that the retro fashion has resulted from consumer pressure, I am also aware that a lot has to change in the fashion psyche before women can be celebrated for what they are: diverse. A one size fits all approach does not serve them, especially when that one size suits only the smallest fraction of the minority.

Afterglow of MOTHER's RETREAT

What joy to re-unite with the wonderful women from the May Mother's retreat. And how exquisite to be honoured by them (WE LOVE DENISE) and to enjoy their honouring of each other.

It's one thing to take time out from one's life to retreat but it's profound when the benefits of that experience spill into life.

All the women from my May retreat continue to meet, support and lovingly care each other.

You can see how proud I am of them.

Love you all, for your courage, tenacity, generosity and warm abundance. BLESSINGS!

Indigenous elder Uncle Bob Randall

These beautiful people hosted our ULURU women's retreaters last week. Such good fortune for us. 

Thank you Uncle Bob and Barbara

http://portraitsinfaith.org/uncle-bob-randall/

Uncle Bob Randall | Portraits in Faith

portraitsinfaith.org

Uncle Bob Randall - Mutitjulu, Australia“Sometimes when we were beaten…we’d just lie on the earth and say “I’ve had it, I need you to hold me. And then she would. The mother would hold you.”Uncle Bob Randall was taken from his mother at seven and sent to a mission a thousand miles away.266102www.sim...

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.

Touching THE MOTHER

Here I am in Alice Springs for my Ancient Women's Business Retreat.

Just outside the township in a sacred place I re-connect with the Mother....Earth

Join me on the link below


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=aLgSlEIr09o

The WILD WOMAN connection

This wonderful photograph captures the Wild Feminine of a fabulous dancer, inscribed by the
marvellous Isadora.              

Doesn't it touch you...deeply?

Somewhere below your "good girl,” serving self. 

Somewhere where you can have your cake and eat it too.

Somewhere where your passion lies.  

Somewhere where your own Wild Woman resides. 

Or have you lost your connection to your WILD WOMAN?

Aboriginal women have always been in touch with theirs, because of their connection to nature, the earth, the  moon, the stars and each other. Never alone, they dance, hunt, sing and dance together - authentically wild.

 

But for European women their connection to the wild woman had to go underground when the Goddess cultures declined. To be ‘wild’ was considered dangerous and ‘out of control.’

But fortunately for us she has never died. She appears when women give birth, protect their young or  live in a household together, all bleeding at the same time. Totally alive, the wild woman is powerful, strong, and revered by ancient women’s business. 

RE-DISCOVER her, RE-CONNECT with her and INTEGRATE her into your daily life, at my desert retreats.

Supported by the ancient witness of Uluru she will return to you and put a spring in your step, a sparkle in your eye and a song in your heart.

Join me this Sept 9-13 at ULURU in the heart of Australia. 

Meanwhile try chanting this to the first star you see tonight

                       "I wish I may, I wish I might,

                         make a wish on you this night.

                         I call upon your eyes to see

                         the wild woman who lives in me.

                         I promise you with all my might

                         That I will set her free this night."    

                                                                                  p149 FINDING ARTEMISIA: 

                                                            A JOURNEY INTO ANCIENT WOMEN'S BUSINESS

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. 

Initiated into the ancient women's world of dance

Imagine baring your breasts and dancing with traditional women who welcome you into their image free world.

Imagine being totally accepted for who you are and not what you look like.

Imagine being a woman among women who have been initiated into womanhood by women before them.

To find out more, read my book "Finding Artemisia: a journey into ancient women's business" from Amazon

or come out on my desert women's retreats.

Your uninitiated girl

What would your life be like had you been initiated into woman hood?

Who would you be today if you had been welcomed by women who were already there?

Imagine your life without that lost girl that has led you into unsupportive relationships, subservient marriages, pleaser occupations?

Australian Aboriginal tradition mid-wifed girls into the sisterhood, the aunty hood, woman hood.

My desert retreats invite women to ask these questions and to move forward from the uninitiated girl state into the full wisdom of womanhood.

Join me www.denisegreenaway.com

or read my "Finding Artemisia: a journey into ancient women's business" on amazon

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.

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.