The Indomitable Crone

“Each person needs to raise their consciousness to a certain level so that they will not give up or succumb. If your consciousness is at such a level, you are willing to do what you believe is the right thing, popular opinion notwithstanding.” ~ Wangari Maathai

Maata Wharehoka and Wangari Maathai embody the dedication, ferocity and indestructibility of the Indomitable Crone. This is the necessary spirit for these oppressive and cruelty infested times.

The colonizers appear to have the upper hand, but the Indomitable Crone knows that they will never triumph. We know this not theoretically, but on the basis of our direct, lived experience.

“I have always seen failure as a challenge to pull myself up and keep going.” ~Wangari Maathai

© Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai, the creator of the Green Belt Movement, was defeated many times. She was defeated by tribalism, by a vengeful husband, by people jealous of her education and intelligence, by politicians threatened by an independent woman, and by all those who oppose the leadership of women.

Wangari Maathai never caved to the unjust and cruel actions from small-minded, power hungry people who wanted to silence her. Over and over, she found her resilience, her creativity, her intelligence and her love. With these she defeated every obstacle.

In the end, she won the Nobel Prize for the founding of the Green Belt Movement, a poor people’s environmental effort, led by women, made possible by the hard work of rural women, and that inspired the world.

“When pressure is applied to me unfairly, I dig in my heels and stand my ground. This is precisely the opposite of what those applying the pressure hope or expect.” ~Wangari Maathai

Like Maata Wharehoka, Wangari Maathai’s beginnings were humble. Like Maata Wharehoka, she was schooled in the ways of the Western world. And, like Maata Wharehoka, Wangari Maathai returned to the support of her people as her most passionate legacy, restoring both forests and democracy.

If these women, after being insulted, punished, beaten down, defeated, and oppressed by colonization and patriarchy, could rise repeatedly, what could possibly stop us now?

The Indomitable Crone is an elevated state of motherhood. Our age, our experience, our decades of study, integration and the somatic cultivation of consciousness, allows us to feel, at every level of existence, our motherhood of the world.

“Every person who has ever achieved anything has been knocked down many times. But all of us picked ourselves up and kept going.” ~Wangari Maathai

The suffering of innocent children everywhere becomes our suffering, and as in the path of the Bodhisattva, we are empowered by this compassion to act fearlessly.

The nature of our embrace of the suffering of the world is, paradoxically, regenerative. We are infused with an endurance that defies even our nights of sleepless searching through the dimensions for how to proceed most effectively in the cause of humanity.

We do not need electronics or devices to travel with our inner vision to the heart of perception where we see, illuminated, our individuated path.

This is the way of the Indomitable Crone. We live in the field of unified consciousness. Forgiveness is our nature and all our actions penetrate the darkness, resistance and ignorance to awaken Original Brilliance. This is why we are the Mothers of Medicine, the forces of alchemy and transmutation.

“The Crone is exactly who we need now. She is a tidal wave ushering in the ancient healing waters of the Great Mother, as she crashes through the destructive layers of patriarchy.” ~ Trista Hendren, founder of Girl God Books

Stephanie is launching her book tour in New Zealand! Join her for the official launch of THE SPIRIT OF MANAAKI, February 26th, in Taranaki.