Under Heat and Pressure

The name of this blog is inspired by the hidden pain in women. Under heat and pressure is how precious minerals are formed. There are all sort of changes in the structure of matter at high temperatures, accelerated when there are forces that push in from all the sides. This is exactly what women have been exposed to during the history of humanity. And they have become the gem they have been for the past twenty thousand years. When you see a smiley woman young or old, can you see the pain in her? She might have lived a very happy, almost perfect, life yet she carries the sorrows of her female grandmothers. Somewhere in her lineage, there was a woman under heat and pressure.  In whichever society you live, any country, any culture, it is women who have maintained the family structure. For every mother who abandons a child, there is a foster mother who takes care of another. Beware of the impression that the men in a certain family are truly committed to their family. Their...

Ancient wisdom, as stated by Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her treaty-book "Women who run with the wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Women Archetype" determined that a first-time mother would receive support from a network of other women in the community. Today, she is supposed to be supported enthusiastically by her spouse. In a heterosexual couple, we have a father who has not been trained historically to perform as a hands-on baby/child caretaker. For the last 5000 years, since men discovered their sperm was necessary for the woman to bear a child, they have been doing everything they can to make women forget they once were worshipped as goddesses for precisely giving life to baby humans. The feminine and the masculine paradoxes  Women, as a female collective, have been so dominated by the traditionally man-managed institutions that control Estate, Religion, Education and everything else, that today we have abandoned the essence of the goddess, the giver of life,...

Tens of thousands of years ago, there was a world where culture flourished in peace and harmony with nature. Anthropologists, like Marija Gimbutas , found evidence of a female centred culture in what she called the Old Europe. This Lithuanian American archaeologist found evidence of a world supervised by women, with thousands of figurines representing female fertility and control of agriculture and harvesting to maintain life. Female figurine from Cyprus13th century BC The female figurines that have been found date from as early as 29000 BC, in the old stone age. They represent birth, growth, regeneration after death, in an organic cycle. Marija Gimbutas was inspired by the women of the villages in Lithuania. She knew how to appreciate the richness of her culture. Se believed folk tales and songs carried ancient wisdom and she connected them with the language and beliefs. Steatopygus Goddess, Crete, 5300-3000 BC Marija Gimbutas introduced the concept of the goddess associ...