By Elizabeth Gilbert

When I told a neighbor this morning that I'd been at the Women's March in Washington over the weekend, and he said, "Wow - was it totally crazy?"

"No," I said. "It was totally SANE."

Because this is what sanity looks like right now: Hundreds of thousands of women saying NO to Donald Trump.

Please believe me when I tell you that there are very few forces on earth more powerful than a woman who finally starts saying NO to an overly-entitled man. But when millions of women gather to say NO at the same time? That's true might.

In fact, I believe that this word (NO) is the very definition of the "Divine Feminine".

See, it's like this....

Men will find their spiritual evolution in a different way than women. Men can only step into the "Divine Masculine" by learning how to be softer - by learning how to be humble, how to feel empathy, how to be self-sacrificing, how to put the needs of others before the raging demands of their own egos, how to share, how to forgive, how to be tender toward the vulnerable and suffering, and how to turn the other cheek instead of reacting with rage and violence.

It is essential that men learn to do this - how to SOFTEN. This is what every great spiritual teacher on earth has ever taught. It is absolutely true that - for the world to change - we need men to say, "Let us lay down our arms and live in peace."

But women - for the most part - don't need to learn this.

Women don't need to learn how to soften any more. (Trust me, most of us have got that "soft" part down already.) For the most part, the women of this world already KNOW how to be humble, empathic, self-sacrificing, sharing, forgiving, and tender. All that stuff is what we friggin DO - instinctively. So don't preach softness to us, dudes: We friggin INVENTED softness. Women have been putting the needs of others first forever. And heaven knows - women have been turning the other cheek since the beginning of time.

So when you try to teach peacefulness to women the same way you would teach peacefulness to men (by telling us to be more soft) you run the risk of teaching women how to be only MORE meek, MORE subservient, MORE compliant, MORE self-sacrificing, MORE humble, MORE accepting of abuses, MORE susceptible to exploitation and predation, and MORE enabling and forgiving of outrageously bad behavior from men.

Peace will not come to the world this way, people. What you end up with, in that situation, is extraordinary injustice, rampantly abusive patriarchy, and 12-year-old brides. 

Peace will come to the world only when women say to men, "NO, you don't get to do this shit anymore. NO, you don't get to take everything you want, just because you want it. NO, you don't get to exclude, degrade, or disenfranchise any of us anymore, just because you have the power to do so. NO, you don't get to exploit the poor and the vulnerable, just because you can profit from it. NO, you don't get to live above the law. NO, you don't get to grab at money, land, power, or my body - just because you want it. NO, you don't get to teach bigotry, or encourage hatred and division. NO, you don't get to trample over justice. NO, you don't get to hurt my children - or anyone's children. NO, you don't get to violate my sisters. NO, you don't get to make up your own truth, just because you don't like the real truth. NO, you don't get to be greedy and inhumane anymore. NO, you don't get to incite violence anymore. NO, you don't get to mock minorities, the disabled, or the poor anymore. NO, you don't get to take advantage of women's kindness and forgiveness and softness anymore, by expecting us to forgive all your ugliest behaviors just because you're a man. NO, you don't get everything you want, just because you want it. No, No, NO. It all ends today, BECAUSE I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT."

Honestly? I think the sentence, " I've had enough of this shit" is the last thing every woman on earth has ever said, right before she finally liberated herself from stupidity, violence, and oppression. You KNOW it was the last thing Rosa Parks said, right before she sat down on that bus and refused to move. And this is true on the personal level just as much as on the global level. " I've had enough of this shit" is the last thing every abused woman has ever said, right before she finally walked away from her abuser. Until we women say in holy unison, " WE'VE ALL HAD ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT", nothing will ever change.

In other words: It is not enough to ask men to become more peaceful; women must become MORE FIRM.

Men have to find their hearts, yes - but women have to find their SPINES.

This is not about men becoming emasculated, or women becoming shrill; it's about rebalancing a poisoned world through a combination of men's righteous peace and women's righteous anger...such that we can all meet in the middle, on the common ground of basic decency and grace for all.

What I saw in Washington this weekend was exactly that rebalancing in action - with hundreds of thousands of women saying, " WE'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT!", while tens of thousands of men in the crowd said, "WE ARE WITH YOU, WOMEN."

That's what sanity looks like. And it's divine.  

 

There are millions more just like these crowds right now - millions more of US - and all of us are saying NO.

 

So...if you're wondering what good might come of the Trump administration, I say it is this: The mass awakening of the Divine Feminine.  

 

  It's high time, too. Because
WE'VE ALL HAD ENOUGH OF THIS SHIT.  

 

Watch us rise.

 

ONWARD!  

A Queen has got to say what She has got to say!      

Hats off to to these courageous Queens who dared to speak out against the vile abuses of power attempted by the Trump administration:

First, of course, was the herstoric Women's March on Washington and around the world, which sent millions of women and our allies into the streets to totally dwarf the pitiful turnout for the man with little hands.

it was four women judges - Anne Donnelly in New York; Leonie Brinkema in Virginia; Allison Burroughs and Judith Dein in Boston who first ruled against the Muslim Ban. Sally Yates, the acting attorney general refused to support the president and was immediately fired. But then she was nominated for the Profile in Courage Award!

It was reported that 70 percent of lawyers volunteering to help immigrants and refugees at airports were young women. It is interesting and encouraging to note that more than 60 percent of public interest lawyers are women.

New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand emerged as the only senator to so far vote NO on all but one of Trump's picks (she voted for Nikki Haley for U.N. ambassador). And the only two Republicans who voted against Betsy DeVos' appointment as Secretary of Education were Susan Collins, Maine, and Lisa Murkowsi, Alaska.

Elizabeth Warren, senator from Massachusetts, always outspoken is support of righteousness, has earned the rare distinction of being officially silenced on the floor of the senate for daring to read the words of Coretta Scott King (which four male senators then read without a problem). Hmmm. The woman doth protest too much. Damned right! She persisted! 

And although women remain minorities in the institutions where they are leading the fight against Trump - we make up less than 20 percent of Congress and 33 percent of state and federal judges - we will keep on persisting and protesting.

So, my dear sisters, Let us keep up the pressure. Let us protest and vote and run for office and write and teach and work together to whip this sad world back into shape. Let us persist.

If anyone can do it, WE CAN!

The Queen's Chronicles!