We Cannot Heal What We Continue to Exploit
In honor of International Women's Day. Rights, Justice, Action, Reciprocity... No woman 'Waulks' alone
Welcome to this edition of Walking the Liminal!
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International Women’s Day
Deep in my bones, I want every day to be International Women’s Day (IWD), not just the one square on my calendar. scheduled for March 8th.
And I don’t mean this in a way that makes it only about women. By tending to the fractured feminine in our world, we participate in the healing for all. Everyone suffers when the feminine is diminished: when care is devalued, bodies are controlled, and the Earth is treated as a commodity. With restoration… her wisdom is honored. Power is shared. Balance returns.
This isn’t for one day; it’s meant to be practiced. Lived. Repeated.
The other day I went for a walk to contemplate the intention of this day and how I wanted to write about that…
Several themes for International Women’s Day have been offered:
⇨ The UN’s theme: “Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls.”
⇨ The IWD organization’s campaign: “Give to Gain.”
⇨ A group of women here on Substack brought forward the act of waulking/weaving.
Waulking is the traditional Scottish practice of women gathering in circle to strengthen wool cloth. More than preparation, it was ritual. Rhythm. Song. With no song repeated, many composed spontaneously within the tending.
With these themes in my heart, this accompanied me on my walk…
Birds calling to one another. Layered voices. Not competing, harmonizing.
Distinct, yet woven together.
It sounded like women’s voices…
rising in song, in spirit, in prayer, in defense, in solidarity.
Why we need International Women’s Day
At its core, the feminine energy carries tremendous power.
Intuitive. Instinctual.
Wild and cyclical, ever-changing with and as the seasons.
She spirals through dreamtime and unseen worlds.
Poetically fluent in symbol, story, and spell.
She’s doula of birth and death.
Mother to both future generations and ancient lineages.
She’s feared by the patriarchy, loathed by misogynists and why the feminine is often hunted like prey.
Violence used to tame her.
Erasure used to silence her.
Subordination assigned to contain her.
The feminine isn’t gender specific, moving through all bodies. Yet, in our present world, it’s women and girls who most visibly bear its vulnerability. This is also carried by non-alpha men, indigenous communities, and anyone marked as “other.”
After My Walk…
what emerged wasn’t a single message, but a weaving of these themes. Asking…
How do these threads of rights, justice, action, reciprocity, and waulking weave together?
How are they strengthened by the rhythm of our shared voices?
IWD is a recognition of who we are, what we bring and what we carry.
Of how we gather and circle.
How we meet one another with song and voice.
Collaborating around waulking tables.
Strengthening the fabric of our lives.
The Blending and the Mixing…
I admit, I struggle with the phrase “Give to Gain.” It sounds transactional.
But perhaps we’re being invited into something older, an ancient knowing that life multiplies through circulation. Giving and receiving as one movement. Where hoarded power decays, and shared power strengthens our weave.
Reciprocity grows from seeing our interconnection and interdependence.
Reciprocity circulating love, care, creativity, and responsibly as a way of life.
What the Well Maidens Teach Us…
Long ago in Celtic lands, sacred wells were tended by guardians known as the Well Maidens. They knew the water songs, melodious sounds of flow. They sang of reverence as reciprocity!
They upheld the sacred contract of only taking what is needed by honoring its source. They taught this to all who visited the well.
Yet from the old poem, Elucidation, it tells of a king that ignored this sacred contract of hospitality. He took more than what was offered, even violating the maidens. His men and other men followed his example. The Well Maidens have long since disappeared.
“The dishonorable harvest has become a way of life; we take what doesn’t belong to us and destroy it beyond repair.” -Robin Wall Kimmerer
Reciprocity can feel elusive in a culture shaped by competition, accumulation, and domination. Where the Earth, its resources, and even one another are treated as commodities.
We have much to learn from the Well Maidens and Indigenous cultures that remind us that reciprocity means right relationship.
Individuation and empowerment matter, but not when they sever us from the interwoven fabric that holds us together. Healing unfolds when we share responsibility for one another’s well-being. When we tend the divide instead of widening it.
We waulk together.
What Goddess Maat Teaches Us…
From ancient Egypt, Maat is the goddess of truth, justice and love. She holds the scale of divine balance. The harmony that keeps the world from unraveling. She’s our inner compass, the unseen order beneath existence, the feather against which every heart is weighed.
Maat isn’t punishment. She’s restoration.
Clarifying what is murky.
Straightening what has been skewed.
Returning what has been forgotten to its rightful place.
In the mythic Hall of Truth, justice isn’t rigid law.
It’s alignment,
rooted in truth,
guided by compassion,
accountable to the whole.
When women’s bodies are controlled, justice is out of balance.
When girls are denied education, justice is out of balance.
When violence is normalized, justice is out of balance.
Like waulking, justice is communal work. It requires rhythm. Persistence. Many hands strengthening the cloth.
And when the feminine is devalued, the scales tip.
When she’s respected and honored, something in the fabric steadies again.
In a world thick with hypocrisy and power struggles, justice can feel abstract, even impossible. Yet often, it’s the stark visibility of injustice that clarifies what true justice must be: integrity embodied, truth spoken, balance restored.
Justice is waulked into being.
Once Blended
Justice and reciprocity are ongoing creations.
Softened, strengthened, shaped by many hands.
RIGHTS as the Thread
This raw fiber as the inherent dignity and potential that already exists.
JUSTICE as the Weaving
The loom of interdependence. The web of life made visible.
ACTION as the Waulking
The rhythmic labor, the singing into being, the communal strengthening of what has been woven.
RECIPROCITY as the Singing
The shared breath. The call and response. The honoring of each voice as essential to the whole.
Rights aren’t gifts bestowed; they’re inherent, inalienable.
Justice isn’t charity, it’s restoration.
Action isn’t fixing, it’s participation.
Reciprocity isn’t transactional, it’s relational.
What we strengthen in one another strengthens the whole fabric.
No woman waulks alone.
In Gratitude
To the women who inspired this IWD of waulking…
Claire Venus ✨ , Lauren Barber, Laura Durban, Georgia, Laurita Gorman & Lyndsay Kaldor
Also to the many women I love here on susbstack. Please forgive me if I missed any of you…
Allysha Lavino, Prajna O'Hara, Lila Sterling, Sam Corrie, Jenna Newell Hiott, Linnea Butler ✨, Stephanie Raffelock, Erica Phillips Graves, Alysia Moonrise, Cara Bradley, Jeannie Ewing, Wendi Gordon, Maya Luna, Kristen Warms, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Susan Kacvinsky, Camilla Sanderson, Sandrine Booth, Becca Pronchick, Louise Hallam, Nancy Hendrickson, Lyns McCracken
Thanks for reading!
I’m grateful you’re here! If this spoke to you, please click the heart, write a comment, restack or subscribe. It helps extend the conversation beyond this space. 💜
This is phenomenal, Julie! Thank you for all this goodness! One of my very favorite scenes in the Outlander show was the waulking circle. Even though it's a fictional show, while watching them, I could feel myself with the ancestors engaged in that rhythmic wonder. And what struck me most was the connection among the women. Women really do know how to be in circle and encircled. It's our natural state, but we'd tried to conform to the straight line for a while. I'm so grateful to be in circle with you and so many of those you named here. Much, much love to you! 💖💖💖
Loved this. And particularly the Well Maidens. In The Last Priestess, Merlin takes Anwen to the Chalice Well and several wells on their way to the west coast of Wales. She has always seen the water nymphs at the streams, but these were her first holy wells. He talks of how the Priestess guardian of the well was no longer there because of violations from the new trader arrivals on the coastline and those abandoning the Druid ways. They do some healing ceremonies because when the Priestesses left, so did the water elementals. I was able to see some wells on my trip to Wales and I always love a visit to Chalice Well. This one has the White Lady energy and holds its magic. Also the Guardains are there and a dedicated group who do the seasonal ceremonies that you can find on Facebook live (or recording). A wonderful gift of being the writer of Awen's tale was spending so much time in a culture where men and wome were equals. And seeing examples of the divine masculine in relationships, too. Happy Intertaional Women's Day...and thank you for being here as one of the many female voices rising up now through Substack and other platforms, to restore our divine feminine nature.