September 21 marked the International Day of Peace, and now here we are shining a light on how to empower girls. How do these two topics relate? Closely and powerfully. Educated, empowered women bring peace to their communities in countless important ways, including reducing violence, poverty and sickness.
Personal empowerment, like world peace, doesn’t spring fully formed. It begins in the most intimate surroundings of the home and family. It begins in the inner sense of security, safety and rightness that a child develops from the earliest moments of existence. It begins as womb peace and birth peace, then Mommy-and-Daddy peace, teacher peace and so on, rippling outward.
And for girls, one of the dimensions of selfhood that is particularly vulnerable to feelings of less-than, shame, and disempowerment has to do with her… well, yes… “that.” {Read more about “that”… and about empowering our daughters… at Family Guiding}
The very word itself… yogini …sounds like the image of Jeannine Parvati Baker in full-flowering asana mastery: lithe stems curling around o-so-full center of heartful breath. At once elfin and elegant. A bold design, a weaver of words. Alive forever in our memory.
The spring season is all about ripeness, fertility and the regeneration of life. These are also the qualities of a woman’s menstrual cycle, and yet we’re not quite as breathlessly delighted for the arrival of our flow as we are for springtime!
