118_Patricia_Lynn_Reilly
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Monica: Imagine a woman until we imagined something, it remains an impossibility once imagined it becomes our experience. Imagine a woman who loves herself, a woman who gazes with loving kindness upon her past and present body and needs ideas and emotions whose capacity to love others deepens. As she extends loving kindness to herself.

Imagine a woman who accepts herself, a woman who turns a merciful eye toward her own secrets, successes, and shortcomings, whose capacity to live. Non-judgmentally deepens as she is merciful towards her. Imagine a woman who participates in her own life with interest and attention, a woman who turns inward to listen, remember, and replenish whose capacity to be available, deepens as she has available to herself.

Imagine a woman who remains faithful to herself through the seasons of life, a woman who preserves allegiance to herself, even when a post whose capacity to sustain interest in others, deepens as she is loyal to herself. Imagine a woman who bites into her own life and the fullness of its possibility, a woman who has opened to the depths of goodness within her who affirms the original goodness of her children until the stories of old hold, no sway in their hearts.

Imagine a community of women who rock the world by giving birth to images of inclusion. Poems of truth, rituals of healing, experiences of transformation, relationships of equality, strategies of peace, institutions of justice and households of compassion for the sake of our children's future. Imagine a world where the question what's wrong with me has been exercised from the bodies and lives of her daughters, a world where they cultivate their amazing capacities as children of life, where they travel a less turbulent path than we did toward self-love self-acceptance.

And self-trust. Imagine yourself as this woman and together, let us imagine such a community and world into being for the sake of our daughters and sons and our beloved planet. Patricia Lynn Reilley, Imagine a Woman.

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Welcome to The Revelation Project Podcast. I'm Monica Rogers. And this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women, to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a revelation project and what gets revealed gets healed. Hello? Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of the revelation project podcast.

Feeling such tenderness this morning, as I introduce you to my very special esteemed and honored guest, Patricia Lynn. Patricia has been inspiring women for over 30 years. Her books have always conveyed powerful women affirming processes with heartfelt intelligence, inviting each woman to author her own life, body image, and self understanding.

Patricia weds, that strong body of work with the absolute necessity of living mindfully in this challenging age, partnering with women's spirit reclamation@jointhereclamation.com. Patricia is facilitating zoom courses based on her classic books and they are a revelation. And I'm so, so happy to welcome you today.

Hello Patrica, 

Patricia: Hello Monica. 

Monica: That was really tender to read this morning. Uh, I often get tender when I'm reading your work and it really resonates. From this place of truth inside of me, as well as this grief, you know, that is sometimes so present to me when I read your work. And I was having an experience yesterday, where I was feeling joy and grief simultaneously.

I was, I was witnessing my 19 year old daughter and recognizing how different her life is because of the woman I chose to be at one point to kind of break those generational chains that really did change everything. Yes. And just really recognizing that we are doing that work right now. So many of us.

And doing that work of what I call the unbecoming. And of course your work is so powerfully about that in so many ways. And I just wanted to first just give our listeners a little bit more background about you. And so I wondered if you could maybe just start by giving us a little bit of background because I find your own upbringing actually fascinating and I'd love. Yeah. I'd love for our listeners to hear a little bit about that. 

Patricia: Well, we're in the same flow, which is not surprising to me. I, since. Made the decision to do this. I've been pondering your questionnaire, which was quite revelatory. You are so consistent throughout your mind, heart and body, with your commitment to revelation that I've had constant revelations as I've been preparing and the tears that you felt I've felt as well.

And I've already, the flow has already begun. I know this will be a deeply revelatory time that we share. And the question you asked was perfect because that's what I was thinking about this morning, that if you listen deeply to any authors' work, you're going to find their story. And it's not surprising to me that when you read my words, you sense the grief, because my whole story, right out of such an existential grief, that if I, if I were to summarize the transformational quality of my words, which I accepted long ago, that if I was faithful to the writing task, that the words.

Took on deeper transformational presence and women's lives as they read them and them. And that was my calling, but that deep transform transformative depth rises out of that history. I was born into a violent alcoholic home. My father was n't a happy drunk. He was a violent drunk when I do my sort of patriarchal trickle down inventory

in terms of the body of my family. There was so much violence, so much pain, so much brokenness. I, it wasn't unusual as a little girl, I would say daddy. Put down the gun do not hurt mommy. So the way my life began from birth to age five, protecting thinking, I could protect my mother. We would receive phone calls in the evening.

If you're there, when I get home, your mother's going to be dead. We had violent escapades every night. And, but at the same time, I had to protect my little sister and protect my mother And so I survived those years. We were eventually taken from.

Not that at home, but at another home that we lived in with another man who was violent and taken to a children's shelter and then to a Catholic orphanage, the Catholic orphanage was a gift. And because it was a gift, I buried the pain of that separation from my mother. And in order to survive, I had to be the best little girl, but kind of just the most helpful, the most intelligence.

So I would get perks that I could use to support me and my sister there. And the way I know I touched the grief. Is this my sister and I went to visit St. Joseph's village, which had become something else. By the time we went to the nuns had shut down St Joseph's, but other facilities were using its space.

And on our way home, I started sounding unbelievable. It's like, groanings, that could not be uttered, could not be placed in words, this is from this deep place inside me. My sister said it went on for 40 minutes an hour. It was the non-verbal grief and pain that was triggered being in a place. And that's when I knew there was so much that had happened, that was still within me in, and it was the being cycled through.

So sounds that send me into a trance that was remarkable. I'll never forget it. But when I realized it was the little Patty, she had a response to being there. The grownup knew she was going to write a book about those experiences, but the child was still a thing with all that grief, all that pain of being separated from her mother and placed in a strange setting once again, having to use her resiliency to survive.

So I touched that grief that you touched when that day I realized how deeply embedded and I made peace with it. I said, precious one, any time you need to circulate in whatever way you need to search. What happened, bring it on. I will be there for you. And that was felt to my body. And it sounds so the beginning in the very beginning life was challenged.

And there's one more memory. They came, I spoke at a penitentiary and high was a women's penitentiary and I was invited by precious man. Facilitated the recovery circles in that prison for women. And somehow he got ahold of a God who looks like me and he read it from cover to cover. And he said the stories in that book that you tell he typed back then we were typing.

So he typed a letter, the stories back. You tell it in that book that she will highlight of women going through this journey. They're the same stories I hear in my recovery circle at the prison. Can you comment visit us? Can you talk with us? And I said, well, call the publisher and we'll work it out because they knew what was going to be at a bookstore in Dayton, Ohio.

So I thought we might be able to work it out and we did, and I went, and it was the most remarkable book of events I've ever had. We had like 50 women primarily African-American in my, that's a whole other story. And I began to talk about returning to the mother and the mother saw firsthand. Y my God is male, and I'm fine with that.

What is this that you're talking about? A mother, God, what's that all about? Why do, why are you looking for the mother? Got, does it have something to do with your past? And I realized that was the most insightful question. Right? I had got a whole book tour. It was in the prison and I started to cry right there in that room with these precious women on their own life journey.

And I said, you know, you're right. I lost my mother. They took us away from my mother. So you're right. I've been searching throughout history for the last mother because I lost my mother at a very point in time. And a little girl slide. So thank you for asking that question. I thanked her and I thank you for being so present with your own grief.

And in this moment we have revealed any authors work and you will find their own story. My is my earliest story is found most quickly by those who read my words with their whole body and heart and mind. That makes a big difference. And that's the way you read it. That's the way you've lived. So you touch the grief of paddock mixed with the brilliance of Patricia, the resilient one all together.

One thing to reclaim the mother, to grab her out of the clause of patriarchy to grab my own mother out outputs, the violence of her daily life. 

Monica: Yeah, I just was, I'm just going to say for our listeners, you know, in between sniffles and you know, just, just a lot of tears over here, I'm having a revelation, Patricia, as you're talking about this woman who spoke up with this question, you know, is this about your past?

Is this about? And you were like, yes, it's about losing my mother at an early age. And I had this revelation, as you were saying that, that I was like, me too. Me too. My mother didn't die. You know, my mother is still living. And I think so many of us can relate to having lost a mother. And when I say that, what I mean is the mother, the cherishing mother.

I think that we, that wasn't somehow compromised or fractured by a patriarchal world that had the ability to pursue her own dreams and was full of herself was whole and able to model what that was. And I also recognize, as I say that, that there's also a way that I'm coming into this. True appreciation for, I had exactly the mother I needed, you know, to become who I've become.

And so it all gets to be here, if that makes sense, you know, and, and it all gets to be true. And that my mother herself is a remarkable woman regardless. 

Patricia: So my mother had to sort of finish the story with my mother. Yeah. She's showed to me both sides. She, when we were taken from her by division of youth and family services made a vow that she would retreat her children from St.

Joseph's to told me that. Later. And she kept that vow. She entered into one of the oldest detox facilities in New Jersey, and she worked two ways through their program. There was sort of hardcore recovery. She walked through it step by step by step, as in she paid for it, but being the nurse, she was an exquisite nurse and one of her sobriety was at a certain level.

She came, she took a bus to, to the orphanage and she told us that we would on my eighth grade graduation, she would come for me and she would take this home and she kept that fat. She got sober. She took that bus for several hours to get to St. Joseph's village. And she retrieved to us and she had created a new life for herself in New Jersey.

She'd already gotten a job as a nurse. She, she showed tremendous courage to do that. She died early of complications related to the hurts of alcoholism and drugs, but I will always be grateful that my mother, vow, of vow, of faithfulness to her daughters, and I wrote a book on, on the out of Saint Philips.

We. vow hatefulness to our own lives in that moment, she vowed faithfulness to her daughters in order to fulfill that felt she needed to turn toward herself with struggle and commitment and get into recovery and clear that up so that she could be a mother. We were returned to her at adolescence. So it was a challenging time to, you know, be reunited, reunited, but we did it with the help of her program and a Protestant fundamental church that she brought friends.

So that's the whole story I caught glimpses. The deep woundedness of my mother and I experienced the consequences of that in my own body and life. And at the same time, I honor her courage. Yeah. Find her way out. That patriarchal mess she was in. Yeah. And Liz Freet. 

Monica: I, I think you know that this is such a story that is so I'm sure as mirrored in many relationships, when I talk about kind of the breaking of these generational chains, and I'm wondering, you know, as my daughter grows and tells her story, I have no doubt that she won't remember the time.

Or the turn, the turning of events, because there was a vowel for me to, you know, where I really vowed to. To dare to know what I know about, even though I didn't know what yet were the answers, I knew what they weren't, you know? And so when you break that cycle, as, you know, everything kind of shatters and has to kind of fragment until it can kind of come back and be remembered and, you know, and she was in so many ways, a catalyst for me to see, and for me to take a stand for my own life.

And it was through my love for my children, that I was able to be strong enough to pull myself out of what I was in. And so I wonder how many, you know, women can relate to what we're talking about. Cause I think it's, it's a. It's a story and it's also our mythology like it really, and where I feel we're at this really important time right now, where myth and storytelling are coming back together.

As women are starting to emerge from this trance of unworthiness and break, and even in, in re with renewed effort, kind of break open and step up and into their full inhabitants, you know, their full residency of their own bodies, their own lives. And it's such a beautiful thing to see, which of course brings us to the reclamation.

Patricia: We tell the whole story together, you know, my mother. Her wound. Is mine. My healing is hers. And how important it is that we reclaim the mother who gave birth to us. I spoke, uh, an interface. I'm a humanist chaplain. That's a whole other story. But as a chaplain, I'm invited to speak at interfaith panels.

This. Topic was the big questions, like where do we come from and how different religious traditions answered those big questions? So the first question is where do we come from? So each of them is giving this theological description of where we come from and the garden of Eden or what ever the religious mythologies were that were represented by ADA, other religious folks on this panel.

And when it got to me, I said, I came from my mother and this is what it was like during the first nine months of my life with her. And I'd written a piece honoring my mother and went through every four weeks of the pregnancy process. The time she told me that she held. Well, I was in her because my father was battering her and she was protecting my life within her.

So it was powerful at the end. They didn't know what to say, what to do. It was such a different response, but I am a humanist. I live without superstition. And the stories that was told in patriarchal religion have no sway in my heart. Where do we come from? We come from our mothers come from, 

Monica: from our mothers.

I love that. And that's a great segue into how you express yourself as an atheist. Right. And I wondered if you could say more about that, because I think, I think that, that there's something more to be revealed to about that as a, as a very beautiful place to, to reside, to visit to. Allow to, so what comes up for me as I say this, and I, and I want to hear what you have to say about why you chose to express yourself that way.

Because when I realized that I didn't belong in the Catholic church, that I, that there was a way that it was like continuing to visit a very abusive, toxic that it's, it's a really fraught, it was a really fraught relationship for me. It was a really, it was a, it was a self-abandonment over and over and over again to sit through and sit there.

And it was kind of like being in a relationship with an abuser in which. You never knew when you were going to be affirmed and validated and treated well, but most of the time you were kind of hen backed to death with these messages that were so upsetting and so filled with blame. And so I think I really, really, really knew that already at age eight.

And so in our household, it was just, you had to go like, no matter what, every, you know, religious holiday, every Sunday, and there was no freedom to really try, or I remember at one point even wanting to go to different churches to understand more. And, and that was just not something like spiritual autonomy and having that kind of freedom was not allowed.

So I just really, once I finally. As an adult, just, you know, it was like, there was this long period of time where I just, and of course I live right next door to a Unitarian or at like, uh, sorry, a congregational church. And so hearing the bells ring and seeing all the people go into the church, it was such a perfect place for me to be for a period of time when I was really in the reclamation process of my own life and trying to figure out where was I going to quote unquote, practice what I believed and what did I believe by the way?

So it brought up all of this stuff for me. So I had tried on. Atheism. Right. I had tried out and, and just looking from these different perspectives without judgment was a revelation in itself. So anyway, I would love to hear, 

Patricia: oh, sovereignty. Yeah. It's a beautiful story. In terms of my own journey. I think I was always kind of classed.

I was kitten at an orphanage in order to survive. So I accepted the party line about Catholicism. That was what was there had to be our experience. Cause that's where we planted. And they drove us to this Catholic church, which I'd never been in in my life. But I had questions even as a young girl, it was like, why can't I be in an alter boy?

Well, Only the points can be altar boys. So I'm like, I look better in a dress than the boys. So I think I should be an alter boy. Why do we have to tell the priest our sentence? Can we go right? There were all kinds of questions I had occasionally squeak out, but in actuality, the thing that was the most injury in that Catholic period was that Protestants were going to hell Catholics were saved.

Protestants were going to hell. And even though I didn't know many Protestants, or if I did, we didn't name ourselves that way, you know what? We were young, um, that didn't sit well with me. And then my mother started life out for again in Newark teachers, see in a Protestant fundamentalist church, I would just database great that summer between eighth and ninth grade was my entry back into life.

After being institutionalized, since I was six, the minister was talking about having to say this prayer in order to know that you're a Christian. And I said, well, my grandmother's. She takes Jesus into her. Every day. She goes to church, she takes communion. She's not a Christian Catholics are not Christians.

And it was at my grandmother's funeral. That summer, when I was 13, we drove to Connecticut. She was, she was the goddess to me. She was the first member of the family to find us like mother bear, her. She wanted to know where her grandchildren were and she stormed from Connecticut to New Jersey. Caught a glimpse of where we might be and she just let her rage.

And she, she loved us well, that grandmother died. And I was inconsolable at the funeral because I kept hearing that Catholics are telling me the Protestants are going to hell. And I'm now going to a Protestant church. And the Protestants are telling me the Catholics are going to hell. And my grandmother with my God cheat.

And I told the minister, no, that's not true. My grandmother is in heaven now. So that story, I believe was the beginning of my move away from theistic religion, that posits a male God, all of the work that I have done over the years to extricate the remnants that trickle down of patriarchy, they were all delivered to me by the church.

My God, the father, every exclusion I experienced in my life. And I'm so grateful. The revelation in this moment, it's that I feel anger. Every single exclusion was related to God. The father, I couldn't be an alter boy because I didn't look like God, I couldn't go into ministry. In either the Catholic or the Protestant conservative Protestant churches, because I didn't look like God.

I was limited in my vocational options by two institutions that had groomed me to be a leader, had groomed me to be articulate about what I believed, but I was denied a leadership. Well, the non-leadership completely, they used my gifts in other spheres in service of what needed to be done because I was articulate letter.

And because my words were transformative, but I could never be a minister or a priest. I could never be a world changer or God maker as there to learn it. You know, it requires us to be in our exorcism of that socialization. So I could no longer hurt in any way. Pretend that patriarchy has deliberately to me by religion was okay.

So I think it was at my grandmother's funeral when I was 13, that I began that active for way from these churches that were so confusing and dividing all of us, having a hella somehow come it. And by the time it got to Princeton attended Princeton seminary, still not thinking I would be a minister thinking I would be a director of religious education, which was an okay sphere for a woman to work.

And while I was there, I had a deeper awakening to the trickle-down effect of patriarchy and the idolatry of God, the father. And I basically dethrone him the end of my Princeton. Education. And then I've worked with women and as I began to work with women, we began to dismantle the patriarchy within us.

And that was very powerful work. So when I was endorsed as a humanist chaplain itself, so right, that I was stepping into my rightful place as intellectually arrogant and humanism, I can be intellectually hard as challenges. 

Monica: Well, bragged. I love that 

Patricia: Chris, with. Learner challenges us to be. I can be so solid friend as Elizabeth Cady, Stanton and challenge all of us to be that's right.

So underneath my words, deep grief, but also a holy anger that at a certain point just said no more. So I expose the ideology of God, that father and I realized at 17 that I needed to be present again in society. As we see a breast surgeon. Oh, God, the father in many ways would in our culture, a longing for the good old days when God, the father rain undisturbed.

And so it's that grief and that anger that I bring in this Crohn's season of my life, I have a 20 15, 20 years left and he's still on the throne. He's still idolize you still, the trickle down of idolatry harms it privileges men, and it deeply continues to ensure. Women femicide rates are off the charts.

Domestic violence are girl, children were being afraid at the edge of adolescence. They get into their first relationship. Let's say with the guy, with the young guy, the most dangerous point at her life is if she chooses to break up with that boy child. Our girl, children are being murdered because that boy Chuck considers her property because of the way he was socialized in the privileges he was given.

And those haven't, 

Monica: Those haven't changed much. There's yeah, the rage, right? Like the sacred rage also rises in me because there's a way that the trance numbs us to this truth. The trans will tell us it's gotten better. The trans will tell us women have it so much better. And therefore right. All these ways that we are taught to keep a lid on it, which just keeps the status quo in place.

And one of the things that I want to point out to my listeners is that also what you are embodying right now is what I call. Being full of yourself, full of your own sufficiency, full of your own sovereignty. And with that comes a holy reckoning energy. That's willing to reckon with the truth because, you know, there's this way that I envisioned that as women come into this reckoning with the truth, like the truth, like the no pretty pleasing and polite around it, that it's actually like raw.

That it really, what raw also stands for to me is ready, able, and willing to really like say and be enough like enough of this. We have had enough, we are enough and this is where I. That we are now that we are coming into this, we are in the reckoning and we are in this revelatory time where women are in different stages of their, what I call kind of seven steps to feminine freedom, which is this process that we have to go through as we reinhabited ourselves.

That in order to kind of come back into our full sovereignty, we first have to say, it's enough out there, like that's enough. And it forces us in so many ways to create. Now come in to being in right relationship with ourselves, learning how to truly embrace ourselves, cherish ourselves, love ourselves, re mother ourselves reparent ourselves.

So all of these rewords start to come into our awareness as we go through this process. And I love something that you shared with me, which was this exorcism and looking, looking at some of your writing and seeing kind of this theme. And so many of your themes are so parallel to some of what I've kind of come to understand about this process.

And so, again, I'm always so. I'm always so deeply supported when I read other women's work, especially wise women like you, who are in your crone years. And really this is where so many women I think are feeling so nurtured is because we're opening our awareness and our arms and our circles to understand that it's through the inclusion of all of our stories that we are remembering collectively.

Patricia: Yes, that's powerful. I think resocialization is absolutely essential and I made a conscious decision when I was younger to re socialize. I had it easier in a sense because the biological. What I received, there was a travesty, so re socializing with reading Elizabeth Cady Stanton was reading the creation of patriarchy.

All of those foundational books that touched all of us began to re socialize. And I began to look at the qualities that the Catholic church was cultivating in girls and the conservative Protestant church was cultivating, were secondary we're supportive words, speak quiet. I remember that. The reason I wear dangly earrings is because we were told that God, we didn't want him to look.

Pretty enough that somebody would give us a compliment. So at church, when somebody would say, I like those earrings, I take them off right away because girl children weren't to receive attention. They were to use their gifts in service of boys and men. And so resocialization socialization, and the girl child to this day.

Th all the search that I've read, because I wondered if during that pause things had magically or the girl child, and it hadn't happened. The girl children all over, the only thing that's happened is we've exported because we're in a technological age where the, the old socialization of girls versus boys and how different they are, boys are strong and girls need help their little princesses.

The reason the father doesn't help the boy shut his son out is because his son needs to learn to take care of themselves. The reason the father will rescue. His daughter is because she'll always be a little princess. That's still in all the research to this day that kids come out of their home experiencing recognizing that boys and girls are totally different and that they're to be treated differently and different qualities are to be socialized.

They are to be socialized into different qualities. And that is powerful. And that socialization is deep. It's an ID inserted birth that tells us who went what and how we're to be as female all held together by the question what's wrong with me because there was something wrong with eating. A bit into the apple.

And so we are her daughters and we are to carry her shame throughout our lives. So as a result of that root socialization is powerful. And that's why reading books of reclamation that are books that take you on the whole journey from the very beginning, when God was imagined as the goddess, we're not, we're reclaiming things, we're not making them up out of thin air.

In the very beginning of human history, the divine was mentioned, just woman. 

Monica: Of course she was 

Patricia: yeah. 

Was imagined it being there was the woman. So that fact, that historical fact in itself to me is transformative. And that's why I always bring up in the very beginning. The divine wants to imagine. As woman Eve was a goddess before she was confiscated into the key permits, she was the mother of all living.

She gave birth to all that is that's right. And they needed to twist her out of shape in the Genesis mythology. So that over six centuries, they could completely dismantle goddess goddess worship. That's right. That's why Genesis was written. It was written to take apart the power of the gut from the goddess herself who now is taken from the rim of the male, a reversal of biological process, but they got away with it, you know, and every single aspect she's susceptible to the devil, she is immoral, you know, Wonton.

Yeah. Wants all those stories. We were told in the very beginning, she was the goddess and intentionally twisted out of shape so that she would be the author of sin. She did author something, she authored sin into the world and she was, she was born secondarily to Adam. They needed both of those Eve. Sort of queen pins of their dismantling of the goddess.

They need to demote her to a mere woman who was the first to sit and they needed to take the capacity to Bert out of the women and give it to Adam in the creation story. \

Monica: Right. And now you live in the upside down. 

Patricia: It's just amazing to me that they've got all these generations. Um, 

Monica: yeah. And that's that part that's always so fascinating to me because once you do really unpack it and start to see it and not have it live inside, as we exercise as you so beautifully point out like the exorcism is actually all of the false beliefs in stories and myths and stories, you know, biblical and otherwise that we've been sold and given and projected upon.

I mean it's, I S I always call it like death by a thousand tiny paper cuts. You're calling it an IV, right. That literally gets implanted. The moment that we're born as a girl child, like growing up girl is to be synonymous with really being. Possessed. When we look at your term of exorcism, it's to be possessed with this misinformation of who we are.

And so the exorcism is what I call the unbecoming, and this is this really messy. Glorious magnificent where the sacred end comes in. Like I always talk about the sacred and because as women start to unravel, the end comes to join us in the, I am so messy right now. And I'm magnifying. You know, I'm, it's all of these ways that we now get to remember ourselves with all of these sacred ends that help us to see our way out of this brokenness.

I call it like, fracturedness where we really start to reclaim and, and, and right. Like all of these ways that, yes, this is a messy process right now. I'm emotional. I'm coming back into my body. I have all of these sensations and feelings. I feel like I'm going crazy. This is all good news, by the way, like, this is what I want to kind of point to in your work, because I think it's so powerful.

And as I feel like so much of your work really is about identifying this unbecoming. Going really InDEEP about not only have you. And I'm just for my listeners reaching out to grab some of the books I have with me, but Patricia wrote a body called Love Your Body, Regardless, which is all about from body judgment to body acceptance and the, and what I really see at.

The process of reinhabiting ourselves and what it takes to disrupt the cycle that keeps us in the trance. And then I love that you even went and wrote something called a deeper wisdom because the 12 step program for alcoholic and addiction is from a man's perspective yet again, and it's like same thing with Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey.

All of our history was written by men and what we want to be doing as you so beautifully pointed out is reading and accessing history. And we do have it. It's just been co-opted, it's been manipulated. It's been turned upside down, but. And I want to give a shout out here to Amy Allah, best who has a beautiful podcast called breaking down patriarchy, which actually does the work.

If you don't have the time in your life to do the readings, then she has what's called essential feminist book club, where she takes the works of Katie Stanton and she takes the works of Gerda Lerner, and she takes the works of all of it. Right? All of these incredible writers over from as early back as possible, and really summarizes them and talks about these books.

So I want to offer that to our listeners as they're listening here. And then of course you have a God that Looks Like Me, and there's so many just gifts in your books and you're writing. And I'm wondering if you could tell us more about when you started. The, you were telling me a story recently when we were on with Monette and you were sharing about when you started teaching and talking about your work out in the public, and this was, this was radical because I think it was in the sixties. Correct? 

Patricia: No, it was in the eighties and nineties. 

Monica: It was okay. So even more recent, the eighties and nineties and it was radical, correct? Oh yeah. 

Patricia: Yeah. I took on God, the father on my book tours. So I was the most popular radio speaker back in the day because the board would light up when I would say, you know, talk about the idolatry of God, the father, how would their earliest lessons of even religion itself tell us that God is a spirit and can, you know, can be embodied.

And yet you went ahead and gave him a male body, which has had tragic consequences. So I did a performance piece at every book event, every retreat, every lecture, once a performance piece and inviting folks to answer the question, what's the big deal. About the gender of God. And one of the New York performances, two things happened in New York.

The New York daily news showed up at one of the services at a Unitarian church where I always had an apple on the podium. And they took a picture of me that was in the New York daily news back then of standing at the podium with Eve's apples and a male reporter wrote the most amazing piece. He didn't get it all right, but he, he caught glimpses of it, which was very powerful.

But also on that trip, I was at a bookstore, a big bookstore event, and I did a performance piece and asked for questions to the man rates to sand. I did the big mom performance, please sit. And he raised his hand and said, I want, I want the big mom, men, the big mama, I am exhausted from being caught. The other side of the story is that I was socialized to carry it.

All my wife goes off to drum circles so she can, you know, find herself. And it was just a very deeply human moment where a man had seen the other side of patriarchy. He saw that the privilege that came out of cost for him too. And so it's just a powerful work. I don't know if that's what you were referring to, but that's, 

Monica: it is, it is.

Patricia: So is that comes out of those that it's all of our journeys to. The patriarchal construct within which we were shaped have been shaped for generations in our blood lines. And it's just as essential for men look at what's happening in Ukraine. 

Monica: I th it's, it is, it's just as essential for men, which is something that I just talk about all the time.

And you are in partnership with a man, right? Like you are correct. Right. So there's also as am I, and I, you know, it's like, cause I, I really, I want to reiterate for our listeners maybe who are coming to us and I have not heard my definition of patriarchy, but certainly it's not about hating men. It's in my understanding of the true integrated masculine energy and the true integrated feminine energy is that there is.

In order to really embody both of those energies as human beings for a woman, you know, at least in, in my process, it's been about going through that process of reclamation and kind of facing all of the shadows of the masculine within me that I've learned through the patriarchy, my own toxic kind of patterns and habits coming into my own body, becoming my own best friend, my own.

Freeing myself, my own sovereign liberator and in doing so also kind of facing all of those shadows that I was taught about what it was to be feminine in the world. And to have those two energies kind of remember each other within me. And now I've, I'm really feeling this, this harmony within myself that feels, you know, so aligned.

And, and when I look at my partner in my life, Austin, that is the work that he's done as well, is just that unbecoming process where we're raised to kind of really abandon ourselves to seek, you know, that God out there to not see ourselves. You know, I mean, it's different for a man in the world, but to not see ourselves as a woman, as anything special, in fact, as having.

Redeem myself throughout my life. Like all of that kind of deep possession, that exorcism that has to happen before we finally kind of start to come back into this embrace of understanding and revelation and love. It's just like, oh my gosh, thank you. Like hell was before this feels like heaven to me, you know, like in that, in that way where, you know, it's so funny that we think it's, it's out there, it's out there, like to behave in this certain way throughout this lifetime in order to receive it.

You know, when I leave this body versus doing the work right here right now and understanding that it's through that alignment that I come into my true divinity and my true humanity. 

Patricia: So what that brings up for me is. How important it is for us to see. Cause we had to dismantle psychology too, because psychology was a system created by men based on men's experience of themselves.

And so the whole idea of male and female qualities and the assignment of those qualities was done by patriarchy. So what I did in my books, I just felt that needed to be blown right. Open. Because men have strength and women are weak. They're princesses. They need to be protected, but who gives birth? 

Monica: Yes.

Patricia: Different definition of strength. So I no longer saw it as having to, you know, embrace the masculine within many. No, no, no, no. I have to completely come with beginner's mind to this whole range of qualities that were assigned to male and female and assigned by a patriarchal structure that created the little princesses and strong men.

And so I made sure that Lilith was in a God who looks like me. She resisted. You know, sleeping with, to Adam, Adam on the top a little bit, the other Bible, she said, no, she resisted. So a strong woman resists from what's in her own experience. Not because she's embraced the male within her, a man opens to his tenderness.

Not because he's embracing the feminine within him because. The mail is tender. We're part of it, species that we've been given these amazing qualities to support us to survive. And one of those is compassion and it's given to men and women in the species so that we can survive this, like those little ants in the Amazon, the fire ants, when a flood comes, they link their little legs.

And create a living raft on which the queen and her babies reside safely until the floods are no longer. And then they, their legs separate the queen of the babies go onto the land. That's a quality that their species has in order to survive. Interesting. They recognize the queen and the babies are important to the continuation of life and its species.

We haven't learned that yet. We're doing all kinds of other things with birth in this day and age. So the woman has a particular function that is different than the function of the man, but the quality, I feel like it's been a misogynistic assignment of qualities and that's put pressure on women and men, men are like, see, I haven't embraced you.

I've got flowers. And I'm like, no, no, no, that's not what it's all about. Right. So they are whole perfect and complete art. And that's one of the problems of what we look at it as a human is like, you know, um, we see for me, I began to see clearly that I was not to embrace the male was to be fully female.

And a lot of those characteristics we share, because I think it's one 10th of 1%. Is this difference in all, all of us and all the rest is sameness. So one 10th of 1%. Yeah. We've got to live that that's our task as part of the species that that's an important one 10th of 1%, without which the species wouldn't continue.

Monica: That's right. 

Patricia: We're the same. So have warrior women and where you're mad, you know, so that whole assignment of qualities I believe was influenced by that idea and sort of birds. And we have to be careful with that third daughter so that they see it as fully their strength, not claiming something that the guy, my partner believes in fairness, he has a very challenging time with the complicated.

Uh, understandings sociological or, or historical understandings of male and female, but he talks about fairness. So when I, I share with them something that happened in women, women's worlds and I'm linking it to patriarchy, misogyny, you know, all of that self sovereignty it's like that, that wasn't fair.

And initially I would get so angry and I it's like, what do you mean? That's like so simplistic. This is I'll show you a chart about how that happened as a result of patriarchy held in place by a belief and a male. God. No, no, no, that, that wasn't fair. That shouldn't have happened. Just, it was a human beautiful human response and the L I thank him, you know?

This is how I explain it. How much did you see it? That was totally unfair. Patricia 

Monica: just much worse, right? Like to the point we have a 

Patricia: task to unpack it, but that's not his pat is his, his task is to walk through life with his wisdom and his lets him know when something's unfair. And that's why when he worked in, before he retired early, he was invited to be one of the mediators at his workplace because he was the most perfect person he could say to management.

Do you, I'm going to lay out a scenario for you. Tell me if you think this is fair to the so-called misbehavior, we're exploring, you know, we have ups. They've been, I see the ways he's been insured. And I see how those injuries have trickled down to me and the relationship. And I see the ways that I was insured and how those injuries have trickled down and touched him.

But in our relationships have a lot more compassion today and just feel very grateful because within the cycle of our own relationships, we move closer and closer to compassion for our shared injury, an organization society that ultimately doesn't serve either male nor female. 

Monica: That's right. I love that.

And I love what you just pointed to, you know, about even that. Masculine feminine assignment being patriarchal is which is, is such a great thing for me to just continue to explore. There's also, I want to bring our listeners in touch with your work recently because. I find it to be super exciting. As I understand it, you had kind of taken a break from being online.

I don't know if I have that. Right. And recently you've re partnered you're publishing again. Re-publishing and starting to teach. Is that correct? Yeah, 

Patricia: I think menopause was a big part of it. I think that we as women and I've been exploring that some there'll be a book about it at some point during the next years, because I had a legacy project, which is to get out all of, to, to honor all that.

I've done the wisdom of the crone. So to honor it and offer it in service of the women's community of today, if I find out it's not a service, if they've been there done that, that I will work on my new projects, you know, which should include an exploration of menopause and condom. So I got a little lost in, in menopause.

I think it was. A result of depression, which I've been able to manage most of my life, but I had the first ever couldn't get out of bed experience that I knew it's depressive. So I was managing hormonal shifts and I never gave birth at my biological. Whoops. So I always tell people, my reproductive organs were probably hard time because they never used them, but I just was in there.

And my sister who's had a very different experience than life needed me. And so I moved from California to Colorado to partner in her mental and physical health challenges. So I was, it was a caretaker to my mom. Um, and. And I have been called to service and in service of my sister periodically. And during that time of menopause, it was a gift to me because I could rise out of the depression only in relationship to my precious sister.

Nothing else would lift me. Wow. And when I knew she needed a partner in her healing, I said, I need healing too. And so I rose out of the depression and went to be with her in Colorado. And, uh, so that had happens to women. As we get older, there are others who need us equipped in the family system and we have to navigate that.

So combination of men or pots. My partnership with my sister, I had carved out a period of dormancy, and I think there are other women who will identify with this, the call of family, the call of caretaking again, primarily our assignment to care for the family. And along with the depression, what's a time as it's set up dormancy that all of a sudden I woke up and there was, you know, a group of women saying, we read your books in graduate school distress.

I, you know, they were so important to us. I remember this that you wrote or that, that you wrote. And I realized. I had to be loyal to my daughters because they're my daughters, the books, oh, I love that. And I had to be willing to come out, you know, because they were written from Greeks and power and truth, them intellect and heart.

And, you know, during menopause, I couldn't handle them. Yeah. But I, you know, my body's calmed down. It's forgiving me for whatever I did or didn't do and said, you know, I am healthy and strong intellectually present and still have that deep grief. So all of that is mixed together in this next season. To be used.

And I want to honor Monette because Monette chills has been a big part of that. You know, she did remind me in graduate school and it was so cool. And she, she loves, you know, she wrote, she's written about lit lit and women's spirit. She's done remarkable work and she's just launched a platform, a join the reclamation.com.

So your work very interesting, your super collation, hers and reclamation. And when I found out you were close sisters on the journey, I understood, you know, you've been called to offer your gifts since service of different pieces of that amazing journey we're on his women. That's right. And she has been such a.

Integral part of this and I'm teaching the course it's on the woman's spirit reclamation platform rather than spending time, money, creating another platform of having years of the class for I'd rather support her platform

We've. committed that her platform will be at home for my daughters when I'm no longer here and the process fees will be available for however she wants to use them. So I'm grateful for wonderful sisters on the journey and including you, Monica. Thank you. 

Monica: Me too. I mean, it's been such an honor and I want to say too, that I discovered your work through another sister, Trista Hendron who of course is the publisher of girl, God books, whom I know you also adore along with me and that yes, through Trista, beautiful Trista and her work, I have met so many phenomenal women.

Monette being one of them. And then you being one of them and so many others. And then being able to just really start to see so many women who have come to the table to do this work and then gone out in the world to share it with other women. It is just the most beautiful thing to me. I'm so moved by it.

I am so completely moved by it. And for our listeners, what Patricia was just talking about was that yes, monad Chilson and Patricia has partnered with Patricia on some of the courses that are@jointhereclamation.com. And of course I'm joined the revelation.com. And so that is what that's all about. And so you have an opportunity to actually do this dismantling of the patriarchy within us, through working with them and their various course offerings, which is just incredible because to be able to work with the author herself of some of these great works is quite a treat.

I will say, Patricia. So thank you. 

Patricia: Well, it's been a blessing. We're gonna do the one that I just want to mention to everybody is Eve re socialized me and I, I focus on religious. Myths and mothers, because I was so nurtured in those traditions, many of us have moved away from those traditions, but we all began there and those images linger within us.

So Trista has moved to just a universal. Reclamation of the goddess, which is so powerful. She began as send mentioned a woman coach and just watched her sore in her life and her commitment to reclaim the goddess in the wider culture, which includes religious women as well. But for me, that childhood was so potent with Protestant and Catholic dogma imagery, rituals, ceremony, that it will take me a lifetime to exercise and reshape and reform and offer resonances of the old and brand new container.

So our mythic mothers evil at that. All three of them gave me gifts and it may I'll be offering the historical reclamation class on our mythic mothers, focusing on Eve with a deep, respectful Bouche, Lilith, and Mary whose stories intersect with the particular moments of history. So we'll honor them, but Eve is the mother of all living and I'm so excited to over and over again where he claim it and tell her true story, because until we know her true story, we don't know where her own.

Monica: That's so true. And 

Patricia: we're telling ourselves, 

Monica: yes. 

Patricia: Can I just read a few lines, 

Monica: Please, please do 

Patricia: this very short. Um, I am Eve the mother of all living. A combination of creation. I hold and nurture life in me. And in the fullness of time, I thrust life from me and all that I have given birth to it is good. It is very good.

Honor all that has been to me and receive all that has been cast aside. The mother is good. She is very good. So 

Monica: I love that 

Patricia: Blessed be

Monica: Blessed be and for our listeners, I'll be sure to have all of Patricia's links and everything we referred to in this episode, in the show notes. And until next time more to be revealed, we hope you enjoyed this episode.

For more information, please visit us@jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift subscribed to our mailing list or leave us a review on iTunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always more to be revealed.