The Sororal Order of Feral Domesticity and Habitual Femininity 001
Bringing back the communal spirit of collective interests
I was driving my children to the park this morning and found myself considering the building across the street, The Fraternal Order of Eagles lodge, more than I normally do. I actually very much notice places like this and always have. The American Legion hall. The Elks lodge. The Knights of Columbus. The local Grange. They are like post offices or liquor stores in the small Midwest towns I’m accustomed to. There’s always at least one, they’re an old standby. That’s where bingo happens, where fish fries are held, where the Christmas cookie walk goes down, where I am assigned to go vote at should I feel compelled to. They all have a bar inside with wood paneling and beer signs from 1985 on the walls. Sometimes people even still smoke inside. I find them comforting. I notice places like this because they leave me with both a sense of unexplained nostalgia and a strange sort of yearning for a similar kind of meeting place or institution for women, for myself.
I especially noticed it today though, because I had just listened to
and discussing Marylou’s recent piece Do You Need Professional Help? on their ongoing (very enjoyable) YouTube series Where Are All the Women.
Marylou makes a comment about how she doesn’t know what goes on at the local American Legion but that it’s good that there is a place for men to go and be social. This was a small example of the antithesis of the phenomenon she discusses in her article-how modernity has led us to outsource the things we used to just ask of from our friends. Places like this always captured my heart and imagination because they represent a common gathering space, a watering hole, where the happenings are discussed and plans are made and where people just generally go to relate to one another and also organize for the good of the community. This thought got my wheels spinning on some sort of imaginary fantastical women’s meeting space….
Something like part community cannery…
part Scottish waulking tradition….
And perhaps part OG Ina May Gaskin and The Farm…
In my daydreaming, I realized I need to organize for the good of my family. I don’t necessarily have it in me (yet) to form some sort of localized women’s association, I figure if I continue to have fantasies about a meeting space for women to hold potlucks and knitting circles and mother-to-mother breastfeeding groups and communal canning of the season’s harvest and a whole slew of other things that make my heart sing-I will get there one day. I first have to make a honest assessment of my inner life and of my home. I currently have little left to give to the community but the desire is there and I think that desire is enough to birth something really speial as time moves forth. I could prattle on all day about the need for community, the way so many of us do without actually taking any action. Instead, I am choosing to prioritize the inner workings of my day-to-day so that they may be more in order so that I may feel more capable of turning to the women and family in my local community with open arms.
What on Earth do these two things really have to do with one another? Well, I suppose it is a bit of the classic “you can’t pour from an empty cup” concept. I have realized that my lifelong patterns of distraction and procrastination and disorganization are coping mechanisms that I have used to acclimate to a societal environment I am more and more convinced just isn’t appropriate for me-or for most women. And yet here we are. The set up of today’s world often feels like an assault to me, and this is also why I chose the ultimate act of distraction and procrastination time and time again in the past-addiction. And what is disorganization but an addiction to chaos?
I must consciously subvert my unhealthy acclimations in order to transform the creative energy underneath them into true beauty. For myself and my family, and then for other women-so that we may all reap the benefits of the communion of women with common goals and varied skills and stories. Those unhealthy acclimations really have no place in motherhood anyhow, and I’m ready to let them loose. Perhaps you feel the same pull?
I propose an idea- a virtual sort of communal turning-inward so that we as women may be better resourced to eventually turn outward for our local communities. A “She-Woman Societal Haters Club” perhaps? The name is a joke but it is certainly the pressures and disjointed nature of our current patterns of living that are viciously enforced by varying aspects of society that are making our priorities so woefully out of order. These things are also the reason why so many of us (especially mothers) feel unequipped to do our most aligned work. We were not taught how. Not because our own mothers were overall neglectful or careless, but because due to a plethora of societal events and shifts, many of them were never taught either. We have to reshape our smallest societies (the society of the home and family) in order to help reshape the larger ones. This is because home and the family are microcosms of society at large, and instead of allowing society at large to fully and blatantly influence us, we must make an active choice to exert influence outward instead. Subvert at all costs, ladies.
And thus, here we are. We are in it and we must choose. Be complacent with being scattered and pulled in every direction and consistently unsure of what we are doing OR be purposefully disobedient to the status quo in service of what is truly good and right. I have this inherent knowing that beauty is the expression of rightness and therefore honing my habits in the direction of beauty in all of the most significant areas of life feels expedient and worth my efforts.
The question then becomes how? Feminine ingenuity is how.
Moving forward, I plan to do a written check-in with myself, and you all, about the things that I am doing that are allowing me the space-emotionally, mentally, physically, financially, spiritually-to access my true feminine nature. I have written in detail in the past about what I understand femininity to mean, but to summarize-I conceive of this concept based on physiology, not stereotypes. So when I speak of “accessing my true feminine nature”, this means engaging in practices that are in alignment with my female reality. Read more on this here:
Some of the things I want to work on and therefore will be writing about may seem, on the surface, to be stereotypical in nature. Things ike “homemaking”-an idea that oft gets scoffed at and inspires eye rolling by other women it seems. But homemaking is the reality of women. Female reality. Typically if you are a woman who inhabits a space, you are-whether you consider it this way or not-curating that space for yourself. This curation is homemaking. When this role expands to include others as the family begins and grows, you are cultivating a space for everyone, and this is the landscape of your familial culture. The heritage you are gifting your children happens here. Homemaking is a sacred transmission of values, memories, traditions-which is why I am turning some of my written attention to the practice and the practices that inform it and make it possible.
Habits. Making femininity habitual. A physiological tuning in in order to calibrate and turn outward accordingly. Keeping of home and hearth based on our most inner female instincts we have been socialized to ignore or downplay in order to bring about inner and outer societal flourishing. Feral domesticity.
What are my priorities?
•Self Provision- a sense of providence. Divine providing for my family in anticipation of eventualities based on a certain measure of frugality and good sense. Providing of an existence that aligns with an overall sense of calm and orderliness for my children. Providing true emotional and actual nutrition. Providing sound advice. Providing the self that is healthy and tapped in to who I really am to tohers.
•Beauty- I want my life to be beautiful aesthetically because I think beauty matters. I think it sets our souls at peace and I want a peaceful home and mind. I also think beauty is part of our purpose. Making beautiful things feels truly magical and important to me and I want to make more time for these things. If we look through history, people and women especially have always made time to create beauty in their lives.
And to marry the two…
•Temperance- a sense of balance. Tempering the excess that can come with prioritizing beauty with a healthy dose of frugalness for example.
How will I be doing this?
Lists, elaboration on those lists, reciprocal sharing of experiences and advice and feedback, and updates. And to start, here is the first list. A list of the “significant areas of life” that I referenced earlier that I plan to turn my attention to here potentially weekly, and at least every two weeks at the minimum. These along with some examples…
Our Animal Bodies (heart opening movement, walks in nature, heart math and my own relationship with my medically flawed heart and the plants that healed it, the supplementation question, my relationship with substances and substance abuse, diastasis recti healing, sexual integrity, playfulness and dance parties with children, food that is both life sustaining and peace-encouraging), castor oil packs and cycle balancing.
Home and Hearth and Heart (decluttering and providing a home with less chaos, cleaning on a schedule and the products used, using flowers and candles, making do, decorating authentically, meal planning, gardening and animal husbandry)
Mothering and Family Heritage (reading to children-both big and little-dailyand the beauty of story, homeschooling versus private institutions, mealtimes, tea times, crafts with kids, the screen time problem in my house, how building my own basic habits creates healthy basic habits for my children by default)
The Honing of the Mind (books, how I read them, how I choose them, why writing matters, skill building through literature, nervous system attunement)
Wealth $$$ (learning to make a budget, paying off my mortgage in the next 2-3 years, savings updates, how I pay for more “luxurious” purchases like natural fiber clothing and children’s birthday)
The Female Birthright that is Creation ( what I want to make this year, what making skills I want to cultivate, ruminations on creation itself and what women’s work has been historically)
Cultivating Convivial Female Friendship ( coming together to learn to do all of the above more effectively from one another, laughter, tears……)
All of this from a working understanding of femaleness and in service of building my own feminine framework so that I may help do the same for others.
Comment below your own “areas of significance”!
I just want to craft in a circle!!!!!
I feel this so much. Just opened a cookbook of my mom’s from the 70s and it was from a women’s group they all made and contributed to a cookbook every year, but they would meet and do service things and just potluck and support each other... I was sad there wasn’t something like this now