4 Comments

So good to see what looks to me like real understanding here...it's always a bit of a gut punch for me when I see men completely miss the feminine story (like when Jonathan Pageau seemed to count Moana as a feminist/subversion story - are women allowed to have a hero's journey? because if we are - then Moana is it...or when everyone bashed the Barbie movie when it was actually pretty beautiful that she went through all that to finally make it back into her body (which it seems like she must have had a memory/instinct about since she wanted it so badly even though she never knew it - similar to how most of us modern women feel). Ugh. If I was writing formulas in Excel I would be wondering right now if my parenthesis are balanced or not - but anyway.

I'll just say I spend a good amount of time online snooping on what people write and feeling mostly aggravated whenever I read someone's take on feminine things...but your take always calms me down.

Thank you for sharing your insight. God bless you.

- D. Emry

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Diana, I'm so grateful for your response and glad to serve you well. I'd be really interested to hear what you thought of Jasmyne Theodora's channel! I hope you check it out and get back to me. I value your perspective very much.

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Ok. I have to say I was really pleasantly surprised by the quality of her YouTube videos - not quality like "how good they were" but quality like...the substance of what she is doing which to me was very personal, sharing, intimate and grounded. Actually useful. Honestly when you were like "I hope you check it out" my initial internal response was *cringe Nah* because of other weird "traditional women" things I've briefly seen on the internet that have toxic undertones (if they're not bashing you over the head with outright toxicity). This was definitely humbling and hopeful for me! I have found my path after conversion to Orthodoxy has led me to things like enrolling in an herbalism program, engaging in relationships with the earth, garden, moon...things that I was close to before I became a Christian and now I find the fulness of these in the love of God (as well as a safe path to explore these things without falling off the deep end because of my faith and the safe/upright masculine structure/guardrails that I have found there). But my heart is often really torn because...I feel like I am bringing up my daughter to be a woman and there is something about our life in the church that is just "cut out" like there is a gap...in the sense that our church world is missing the "kitchen-witch" type women that we need. When I say kitchen-witch what I really mean is spiritually sensitive/mystically inclined.

I've had some really deep and insightful conversations with my husband based on this piece you've written as well. Good fruit!

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I'm so glad to hear it's been a fruitful experience, and love what you wrote about your renewed closeness to nature with the layer of security provided by the Church. My late godmother was what I think you might call a "kitchen-witch", very into alternative medicines and forgotten earthy knowledge. That wildness has always been part of my Church experience, and I hope you can find it too. I suppose I've never seen it online, not the feminine version, but the internet is hardly its natural habitat. I recommend looking in women's monasteries if your parish is dry.

Thank you so much for your response. I would've gotten back sooner but I've been sick and have had a hard time thinking. You, your daughter, and Tikhon are in my daily prayers.

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