We rise when we are wild & true
Last week an essay popped into my inbox titled The Crone is Encircling the Patriarchy, written by a woman named Ayana Madrone. Ayana has a masters degree in food systems, a bachelors in soil science, is autistic and has ADHD and is a mother. She started her Substack, Root & Ritual, “to help us compost the bullshit of the systems that have kept us sleeping for way too long.”
What will rise from the compost of the old systems?
I found the “crone” subject line irresistible, so of course immediately clicked on it; gobbled up the essay; felt my entire spirit tingle; and then forwarded it to a dozen women, most of whom immediately wrote back to say some version of, “HOLY SHIT.”
One of these women was in the middle of trying to write a tribute to Gloria Steinem, and told me that reading this essay helped her get unstuck. MORE TINGLES.
I hope you’ll read the essay in its entirety, and subscribe to Root & Ritual, but for now, here’s the morsel to which I’d most like to call your attention:
“I have walked a bare patch of ground at dusk and found it crowded with mushrooms by morning.
Nothing about those mushrooms is sudden. Each one was assembled underground years ago: complete, compressed, waiting. When the rain finally came, they did not grow.
They rose.”
Think of how Mamdani “came out of nowhere” in NYC. He didn’t. Nothing comes out of nowhere. This is a huge theme in Rebecca Solnit’s book, Hope in the Dark - Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, which I just read. Mainstream news media has us believing that the narrative it perpetuates is The Only Narrative, when in fact there is progress happening in nooks and crannies and even arenas (cough, Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain) all over this world.
Photo that a member of Mighty Forces texted me after reading Ayana’s essay: RAIN.
I shared Ayana’s essay with a member of Mighty Forces; she immediately texted me back to say that she’d been living through a long, hot, drought in her area, and as soon as she read this essay, it started to rain.
We are all part of a metaphorical network of mycelium, a power unseen and underground, just waiting for the right conditions to express ourselves — to manifest.
Let this blog post, and Ayana’s essay, be the rain that spurs what is true in you to rise.
Don’t just keep doing the “good” thing, the “practical” thing, the “responsible” thing, and bemoaning that the world at large is terrible. Create that which you have a vision for, inside of you, that needs to exist in the world, but cannot, unless you give birth to it.
We do not rise by prioritizing everyone else’s needs over our own, by being the most reasonable or the most productive or the most virtuous.
We rise when we are wild and true.
I want you to imagine that it’s December, and you did the thing.
You rose.
You wrote the book, created the website, made the plan for your next chapter, launched the new business or program or ... (fill in the blank).
Imagine how proud and relieved and accomplished you will feel. How much trust you feel in yourself and your own power, at a moment where society makes us feel so powerless.
I want that feeling for you.
And also, I want that thing that’s inside of you to get expressed, because I believe the world needs it.
Plus, selfishly, I really, really want to spend my fall helping more people do something that truly, deeply matters to them. Not checking items off a to-do list, not weed-whacking your way through the minutia, not thinking and spinning…. DOING THE THING THAT MATTERS.
For one of the women enrolled in the Mighty Forces fall cohort, doing the thing that matters means finishing a draft of her novel. She takes care of so many other people, so capably, without fail. She brings home the bacon. Now it’s time to prioritize the thing that she suspects may be her legacy. The thing that lights up her soul.
Come December, she’ll be holding a completed draft in her hands.
Imagine, just imagine, how good that will feel.
For another participant, the cohort is a space to invent her next job, in a way that synthesizes insights, approaches, and relationships she’s built over a long career advocating for Mother Earth. Right now she works for a bureaucrat with limited imagination who undermines her authority. She knows there's a better way to get to the root of the problems she sees, a more inclusive way, a way that will make much more of a difference. She’s ready to step out of the endless busy-ness of her current, limited situation and commit to bringing her vision to life.
“They came out of nowhere” — nope.
Yet another member of the Mighty Forces cohort has spent her life advancing an impressive and meaningful career while doing a series of truly phenomenal art projects “on the side.” As she contemplates her legacy she realizes there’s virtually no record of her art, no way for it to travel and spark further transformation. She will use the structured creative space my cohort provides to imagine what a kind of living archive of her art might look like, a “website plus”… and I am POSITIVE that having this in the world will not only create deep satisfaction and peace inside of her, but also, will inspire so many other people.
Her art is about creating playful practices that shift our fundamental relationship with daily life. Would you rather live in a world where you have access to those practices, or one where you don’t?
What is the mushroom trapped within you, underground?
Please, allow it to emerge.
Let us see it.
Let us see you.
P.S. Last week, a complete stranger signed up for my cohort and paid a $1,000+ deposit without ever meeting me, based solely on seeing this LinkedIn post and the fact that my former boss (her current client) “liked” it. We traded emails, then met, and my soul is doing a happy dance, because she is brilliant and awesome and is going to add so much to this group. This is your reminder to write the post.
“For centuries, the empire told nervous stories about rings of mushrooms. Fairy rings. Witch rings. Places where the wild ones danced while decent people slept.
Underneath the folklore is a body. A ring of mushrooms is one organism, fruiting at her widening edge. She does not fruit alone. The rain raises the whole ring at once.
We were never afraid of being seen. We were afraid of being seen alone.”
- Ayana Madrone
