“For Women’s History Month, invest in yourself. Just do it. ~ Stephanie Mines”
In honor of Women’s History Month, explore your own history and invest in yourself, your potential, your gifts and your story. You are the keeper of the archives of your own history. Women’s histories have been minimized and secreted away to kitchen table sharing and women’s circles. They belong front and center.
Women around the world yearn to find themselves reflected in the histories of their sisters and elders. This is what I have seen these last months as I have absorbed the histories of the staunch Kuia of Aotearoa, and particularly Rangatira Maata Wharehoka, whose biography I am privileged to write.
These stories are largely unknown and when I share them, I receive a rousing chorus of appreciation. Every moment I have spent refining these messages is worth it when I hear from people that they are more able to invest in themselves because they recognize their struggles in the lives of people like them.
You will be hearing much more about Maata Wharehoka from me. She is a powerhouse of unstoppable commitment to the lineage from which she springs. She is rooted in the soil of Aotearoa. The peace-making mantle she wears as the spokeswoman of Parihaka* reverberates with its mission of unification, perhaps the most important message we must heed in these times of violent, genocidal polarization, which Māori know first-hand, all too well. That Maata and her people have triumphed over this and that she sustains the transmission of peace from Parihaka is a teaching to us all. Let her steadfast confidence infuse you so you find your own.
Maata’s clear message to me and to all women is: invest in yourself. Just do it. Just keep moving forward with your destiny, your projects, your delivery, your purpose. Don’t let anything stop you. In May 2000, Maata was in a brutal car accident. She had broken ribs, punctured lungs, a fractured leg, and a head injury. She was in rehab for weeks to regain normal function of everything from speech to eating, from walking to even breathing. As soon as she recovered, Maata returned to her dedicated focus on revitalizing Māori cultural practices as an affirmation of sovereignty.
Everything in Maata’s history propelled her to this destiny. Where does your history point you? For me, this is what Women’s History Month is all about. Claiming our histories, seeing where they direct us, and just doing it. Use your writing to gain this guidance for yourself. Line up the patterns and the themes, name what magnetizes you and what repels you. Then the way will become evident, and no matter what, you will follow it.
When your vision is clear, decision making is easy and fluid. I learned this when I was earning my doctorate and I had to decide how to organize my life so that I could support my daughter and myself. So, I gave up romantic relationships. They were expendable, and very little else in my life was. From this I learned to invest in my own potential rather than everyone else’s. I had to do this crisply, cleanly, decisively, and without looking back. It worked.
From this choice I came to respect and prioritize my own giftedness and to be vocal about it. The desperation to be partnered disappeared and in its place was enormous efficiency and spaciousness, beyond anything I knew was possible, even as a single, working mother in a doctoral program. To this day, I seize the moments that are available for my determined selfhood, my education, my writing, my research, my own growth. I do not give these moments away to others without careful consideration. I am living out this woman’s history, and that is what I see Maata Wharehoka doing.
I believe that women can change the course of the world right now and avert the disaster we are heading toward. I am speaking of women at the grassroots, women like you and me. If we are going to make a powerful noise, the time is now. This noise will come from assessing our own histories and seeing how they are, all of them, pointing in this direction of declaring the feminine perspective, the consciousness of motherhood, integrity, sovereignty and respect for the preciousness of human life, all human life, and the more than human as well.
Women are the leaders of a regenerative humanity. I can’t wait to hear how your history points you in the same direction as mine and Maata’s, towards unswerving, practical direct action for human rights, social justice, respect for all life, for creativity, for children, unity, and, most of all, for peace.
*Parihaka is the marae in Taranaki, on the north island of Aotearoa New Zealand, that is the site of a powerful nonviolent stand by Māori in response to the genocidal actions of the British colonizers.
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REGENERATIVE HUMANITY
What links us together
Is greater than what keeps us apart.
Like the gold that fills the cracks in broken pottery in Japan,
We solder our fragmented human family
With the undying truth of connection.
This is what will alchemize despair.
It is a matter of choosing unity
And then doing the work that makes it
Real, as the people, like the Māori, who
Endure the worst evil, even genocide,
And rebound/
They know the secret of resilience.
As the desert in the Sahel blossoms with fruit trees
When people from both Senegal and Mauritania,
Previously at war with each other,
Join forces to feed their families by feeding the earth,
So are we all capable of
Regenerative humanity.
Look for the unifiers in your world.
Find the unifier within yourself.
Become the voice of unification.
Proliferate unification.
This is the way forward so that we reclaim
Regenerative Humanity.
"Where does my history point me to?" This question invokes chaos...a swirling mass of sorrow, confusion, rage, pain, worry and listlessness...but as i list these things a glimmer of clarity appears then dissapears and just as it does a shard of sunlight illuminates the train carriage, it dissapears and returns, dissapears and returns.
When that feeling of chaos arises, I close off, too much sensory confusion but I feel like your prompts to "line up the patterns and themes...see what magnatises, what repels..." will be an anchor for me helping me to face the chaos that causes me to close off.
Thank you Stephanie. I really feel and value your support. I've ordered your book, to acompany this journey from personal history to shared destiny.