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Grief is a universal human condition, frequently dismissed or avoided in modern culture. Yet, when confronted, grief can lead to wisdom and strength. In the spirit of shamanic scholarship, this panel explores the passage through sacred suffering, a shared human and divine experience that fosters intimate compassion and hope as safe harbor in turbulent waters. From the wellspring of emotion where mothers’ tears gather, wisdom is drawn. The rapture of an embodied, wholehearted encounter with grief is captured in ritual, re-imagination, and remembering.

Stephanie Zajchowski:

Birthing my sons was the beginning and end of me. As I poured all that I was into the child within my arms, the light of new life intertwined with the darkness of postpartum depression. Maternity, for me, was an erasure, the shattering of an empty vessel, an utter loss of self. In my search for understanding, mythology allowed me to integrate these experiences, ultimately containing the “mother” without letting her consume me.

Jaffa Frank:

For me, motherhood and loss are as inextricably linked as motherhood and joy. My first pregnancy ended in the stillbirths of my twin sons and my own near death due to complications of endometriosis. My life—the mothering of my living children, service to the dying and bereaved through hospice, therapeutic work, and doctoral work—are dedicated to making space for the truth of loss as inherent to and formative of a life of joy.

Angelina Avedano:

Mothering three sons for thirty years, I’ve learned that grieving is natural and necessary. The cycles of loss associated with my son’s schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have become a part of the rhythm of my life. As I tread the path of the grieving mother, I am not defined by grief; I am however, forever changed. This ongoing spiral brings unexpected connections, deeper wisdom, and an awareness that I can truly embrace joy and sorrow.

Kayden Baker-McInnis:

After losing my toddler in a car accident, I still grieve thirty years later. That tragedy continues to mold me. The thawing of my grief brings me to a fierce compassion and curiosity for how sorrow informs the soul. I find engaging mythic story a way through these dark passages. When I finally brought my grief to the Utah desert canyons, nature responded. Today, mothering the soul is at the heart of everything I do.

Betsy Crane

Betsy Crane leads workshops that are interactive and enlightening.  She is Professor, Center for Human Sexuality Studies, Widener University, Chester, PA. She was Director of Graduate Programs in Human Sexuality at Widener from 2007-2012.  Previously she worked for 17 years as a sexuality educator, first as a public health family planning outreach worker, then as Education Director and later Executive Director for Planned Parenthood in Ithaca, NY. She is co-editor of Sexual Lives: A Reader on the Theories and Realities of Human Sexualities (Heasley & Crane, McGraw-Hill, 2003). Her research interests include history of gendered sexuality and shifting gender and sexual identities.

Designated as Distinguished University Professor, 2014-17 by Widener University for outstanding teaching, scholarship, and service, she is past president of the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality and of the Eastern Region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.

Today’s gender norms emerged from the last 7,000 to 10,000 years of patriarchal social arrangements that legitimated sexual and physical violence against women and subverted women’s ability to support themselves without men. But what about the time before gender relations pivoted so heavily toward male dominance? Based on the work of goddess history scholars, e.g. Eisler & Gimbutas, participants in this workshop will experience a trip to a “pre-history” where our ancestors conceptualized the supreme power in the universe as a female.

During this time girls would have seen their bodies and social roles in relation to a creative, powerful, and deeply mystical feminine creator. Boys saw themselves in terms of the ‘horned god,’ a passionate and embodied force of nature who was lover and ally to the goddess. What might all this mean for us today? Join the conversation.

Betsy’s 2016 conference workshop is Implications of the Goddess for Gendered Sexuality: Then and Now

 

Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum

Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum, Professor Emerita, Women’s Spirituality, CIIS, joins ASWM’s 2016 conference to deliver Saturday’s keynote address, “Women as Visionaries and Healers.”

Known to her students as LuLu Nanna (grandma) and Strega Nonna (witch grandmother), Lucia’s groundbreaking research in Black Madonnas: Feminism, Religion, and Politics in Italy was followed by She is Everywhere: Anthology of Writings in Womanist/Feminist Spirituality, edited with Annette Williams, Karen Villanueva, and The Future has an Ancient Heart: Caring, Sharing, Healing from the African Mediterranean to Occupy Everywhere.

“In a time of unprecedented peril (global heating, perpetual war, nuclear danger, moral disarray) I am a great grandmother who can not afford to be hopeless.”

“ My research, books, and life suggest that even when there is no evidence for hope, there may be possibilities we can not see. These possibilities are related to every human’s origin in Africa—we are all ultimately sisters and brothers, a legacy of human migrations after 60,000 BCE to all continents out of Africa—caring, sharing, healing—otherwise we would not have survived to now. A kaleidoscopic dance of our genes in loving encounters creating a highly multicultural world in an open-ended universe.”

Lucia is dedicating her offerings this year to ASWM sister scholar, artist, and dear friend, Lydia Ruyle, who is, today, critically ill.

Citing Lydia’s inspiration, Lucia explains, “Lydia has been significant in my life, personally and professionally. She helped me through the searing time when I was unable to present to the ASWM 2012 conference because my husband Wally was dying. In my conflict with my publisher over the cover of The Future Has an Ancient Heart, Lydia saved the book with her banner of Cybele, African and West Asian dark mother for the front cover. Recently she honored me by dedicating her banner, La Befana, to me, depicting me as witch grandmother (strega nonna) who brings gifts to all children, whether they’re naughty or nice. She called her banners, “my girls,” suggesting the reflexive nurturing she conveyed in the banners she painted and sewed. And showed all over the world, touching thousands, if not millions of women while conveying her early aphorism, “Better Homes and Goddesses”. . . in all the wonderful diversity of the world’s women and their homes.”

All of us in ASWM share in Lucia’s love and concern for Lydia, who is a dear mentor and friend to many of us on the board.

The Friday networking luncheon features an opportunity for conversation with Lucia at her table: “Strega Nonna – Witch Grandmother.”

Additionally, Lucia will present at our sister gathering, the Matriarchal Studies Day, on Thursday night, March 31: Modern Matriarchies, where she is the keynote and closing speaker, discussing her newest manuscript, “Black Bird and a Pear Tree.”

The Story of Niibish with Ann Megisikwe Filemyr and Tahnahga Yako Myers

 

The Story of Niibish will be told, an ancestral tale of the long-ago handed down through the Oral Tradition of the Anishinaabeg peoples. Ann Megisikwe and Tahnahga both carry this story as part of their role as lineage carriers of the late Keewydinoquay, an Anishinaabe mashkikikwe (Ojibwe herbal medicine woman).

This traditional story carries medicine to help wound the ruptures that can befall families, communities, and nations when division is based on difference and a lack of understanding ensues. It is a sacred story that reminds us of our fundamental interconnection and interdependence on each other and on water and all that lives, grows and flourishes in the waters, fresh or saltwater.

This story helps us recall our fundamental kinship with the other-than-human realms and reminds us that we are all related despite the appearance of surface differences. It helps us reach back into our own ancestral memories to recall the stories in most coastal cultures regarding the finned people. Perhaps they are half human and half fish, but weren’t we all underwater beings conceived in the watery womb of our mother’s bodies? Are Mer stories also tales of our earliest form of becoming? Are they persistent memories that continue to fascinate and intrigue us?

In this time of large scale environmental and social destruction, how do we reclaim the knowledge contained in these ancient tales in order to re-imagine our relationships and re-structure our lives to include the magical?

Join us for this exploration.