"Womb Wisdom": 14 Women Who Promote Sexual, Spiritual, and Creative Health

Dear Women:

Most of us were taught to hate our periods...period.

It doesn't matter whether you call us "women" or "womyn." If we are still as angry about our sacred cycles as the men or systems we feel oppress us, then we are still not free.

I think our work is to first love ourselves. To really be so holy as to consecrate ourselves and love every bodily fluid that comes from our bodies, including our urine, our mucus; our pus, our blood.

Please don't cringe. But if you do, see that as a sign that there is still more healing to be done.

I learned from the modern women with old souls who taught me what has been forgotten.

I learned from them that the relationship has to be a beautiful one between your Holy Spirit who knows all and who takes a back seat to the ego who told us that the Holy Spirit needed to be forgotten, that the relationship must be and loving and unbreakable like the bond between mother and child before ANY healing is going to take place.

Allow me to name names:

1. Queen Afua whose living legend and impact on womb health speaks for itself
2. Hakashamut Kenya K Stevens of Jujumama LLC, founder of the Blue Butterfly Group, an online support group for women 
3. Jessica McMorris  of  The Allergy Friendly Vegetarian who built it up with her.
4. Graceful Empowerment of her company of the same name,  and the Pussy Empowerment Group (discussion and co-ed support group) on Facebook
5. Tiffany Janay, raw foods and yoni (vagina) health educator and founder of Organic Bloodline
6. India Ame’ye, writer, artist and "expressionist" who I met on Facebook. (She totally makes love to like, the Earth everyday and has wonderful wisdom to share.)
7. Akalatunde from YouTube who told us that the menstrual blood was the “first wonder working blood.”
8. Nubia Sutton the Womb Priestess who often teaches on self love
9. Makeda Voletta the Body Scientist, who first educated me on yoni eggs.
10. Angelique Shofar the Ecogoddess, who wrote blog posts that I used to print out to read while flying across the world. I can remember she taught us that most processed chocolate has so many chemicals that are bad for you and your womb. That's the number one tip that still stands out to me. But anyway, I must name names. These women have reached as deep into the wisdom of mother earth, connected with her to dig up the that were buried on purpose. Not to get political. But they gave me back the knowledge and power of my womb.
11. The women who started the Occupy Menstruation page on Facebook. There is so much comprehensive info posted there daily that I don't even know what to tell you. Just go.
12. Marianne Williamson, a Course in Miracles teacher whose womb affirming affirmation that plays as a daily reminder in my phone. (That I actually "stole" from the Occupy Menstruation page! See above.)
13. Joan Morgan, the Hip Hop Feminist and author of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip Hop Feminist Breaks it Down, for being a pleasure advocate.
14. Louise Hay for telling me to repeat these words, "I approve of myself. I loooooove myself."

Each and every one of these women has touched me and some of them I have had the pleasure of hugging and feeling them in the physical.

I need more. And I'm a youngin', a newbie to the Goddess Movement, but I am no accident and I revere it now in a way that no one outside of me could have ever taught me to.

When you have a fibroid that's half the size of your uterus and spend countless hours up at night, researching remedies, never taking the first one that comes, knowing you must forge your own path taking a little from here, and there, you learn. When I was in “7th circle of hell” pain and I bled so much that I birth fist sized clots and got up and woke up on the ground again...THAT'S when I finally heeded the call to heal.

So women, that's all I'm saying. The women's empowerment movement or the feminist movement, means NOTHING if we still choose to hate the very process and parts  that makes us female. The Goddess movement is about knowing we have the power to transform our physical experience through our spiritual power. Let’s live it now.

Loving, living and ever learning,

Helese

[IMAGE: Author at the "African Burial Ground" in New York City. This Adinkra symbol represents the Divinity of Mother Earth. A version of this article originally titled "Open Letter to Women Everywhere was published at www.helesetalks.com.]