Sacred Feminine Leadership
Humanity, the planet, and our communities need sacred feminine leadership now more than ever. War and climate collapse are ravaging our planet. Species are falling away day after day, and it’s only a matter of time before humankind follows suit. The atrocities and violence we face are in direct proportion to the type of leadership that has dominated our society in the past two thousand years. It’s important to remember that for thousands (some say 30,000) of years preceding, our ancestors lived communally and in connection to the sacred feminine. When our ancestors lived in greater alignment with the earth, with the seasons and cycles, and with each other - they were worshiping goddesses and sharing the wisdom of plant medicine, birth and death, and the mysteries of the body. When these practices were intentionally wiped out by Christianity, the patriarchy, and colonialism, we lost our connection to the sacred feminine. She was forcibly removed, buried, and lost across our human lineages, and it is time to restore her. It is essential to embody her as individuals and in community. A more sacred feminine society will help correct the patriarchal harm that has been done, including violence, domination, the othering of gender and other forms of diversity, the silencing of indigenous voices, and resource extraction just to name a few. We can think of a sacred feminine vision for humanity as egalitarian, healing, restful, creative, nourishing, collaborative, fiercely protective and gentle. We need leaders who are willing to risk their belonging to a patriarchal society. First, let’s explore and define what is meant by feminine energy, leadership, archetypes, and the heroine’s journey. Then we will dive deep into each of the nine qualities of sacred feminine leadership. It’s important to note that sacred feminine leaders come in all bodies and gender expressions. These leaders are intentionally embodying the nine qualities in their work and in their lives, and so can you!
Feminine Energy
We all have feminine energy within us, just as we all have masculine energy, regardless of our biological sex or gender identity. While these energies have been constructed and reproduced based on societal gender roles historically, we can also understand them as separate from these roles. While some might feel comfortable categorizing feminine energy as receptive, nurturing, and spacious, others might categorize it as fierce, creative and destructive, as well as completely embodied. The dichotomies between masculine and feminine energies are endless and can be traced across all cultures and traditions. From a mystic perspective, I believe we all get to define them for ourselves and utilize them in a way that is meaningful for us. For me, feminine energy is the darkness, night, winter time, the bleed, rest, healing, inwardness, introspection, self-knowing, wisdom, sensuality, the body, lineage and mystery. For me, masculine energy is the light, the sun, daytime, summer, ovulation, high energy, extroversion, expression, play, work, and the mind. What are they for you?
Sacred feminine and sacred masculine are the feminine and masculine energies contained within the Divine (god, goddess, goddex). These energies are completely accessible to us as humans, since we each contain a divine spark. They are the highest evolved qualities of the feminine and masculine archetypes. They are typically represented as the Great Goddess and the Great God, as well as a smattering of gods and goddesses across cultures and lineages. The word “sacred” means “set apart” - holy, in a sense. It is whatever we elevate in our imagination to protect it from our egos. I like to think of the sacred feminine as the best parts of the goddess that I get to access and embody, especially when I’m feeling sexy, nurturing, creative, or mysterious. The sacred masculine energy I might embody includes clarity, decisiveness, structure, and organization. They are helpful metaphors when we need to bring ourselves and the world into greater balance.
Leadership
What is a leader? Raised in patriarchy, a lot of us might think of old white male Presidents, the faces printed on our money, the man preaching in the pulpit, the male soldier who we practically worship for defending our freedoms in an America-centric classroom. We have a lot to unpack as we choose to embark on our own journey of becoming a leader. If we see it, we can be it, so if we haven’t seen examples of women leaders, let alone nonbinary leaders, trans leaders, or feminine leaders of color, we are going to wonder where we each fit into the great human story. At this moment in our history, we are seeing more leaders of all types, but we are also seeing the backlash non-traditional leaders face. You might be asking yourself if it’s worth it to risk so much just to lead. That is completely valid, and I believe we all have to ask ourselves how much risk we are willing to take each time we put ourselves out there and decide for ourselves where our boundaries lie.
Leadership to me is modeling our vision for humanity by embodying it in our lives. It’s about being an example for the way we believe humanity should live. It’s not about being perfect or making no mistakes, but it is about having the courage to try to lead by example. Throwing off the weighted blanket of other people’s judgment is essential here. The ultimate form of leadership is living sovereign lives - free from the expectations of others. We all came here to live our best lives, not someone else’s! Designing and stepping into your most sovereign life is the most impactful leadership you can have on others. You’re not telling them to copy your life, you’re inviting them to dig deep and design their own from a place of authenticity and intention. And when we make mistakes, true leadership is making it right and admitting fault, then striving to do better in the future. Leadership is also about helping others along their leadership journey, and being open to the elders and teachers ahead of us on our own. We are in desperate need of leaders right now, as we have been cut off from our wisdom traditions, severed from the earth’s wisdom, our body’s wisdom, from our elders and teachers and wise women. If we are the ones we’ve been waiting for, there is a gap between our recognition of this and the actual wisdom gaining experiences that will reweave what has been severed. Luckily we have archetypes and the shamanic journey to help us on our quest.
Archetypes according to Carl Jung are universal metaphors that are found across cultures in a myriad of representations, symbols, and expressions. Describe a human experience to me with words and I will only grasp 1 meaning of it. But show me a picture, tell me a metaphorical story, or sing me a song, and it will evoke an infinite number of meanings for my soul. As a mystic, I believe we all carry within us human seeds of divine knowing, and we all can access universal consciousness. As a humanist and pagan, I believe it’s not in spite of our human embodiment, but rather because of it. We are all caught up in a great epic story of the human family, and we all have our role to play. Archetypes can help us remember the roles in the story and to find our own again.
Some of the sacred feminine archetypes I love to work with are the Maiden, Mother, Wild Woman, and Crone. Splitting our lives into 4 distinct seasons creates a wheel to journey around, and also applies to the seasons of the earth and helps us understand the life/death/rebirth cycle as a whole. There are also many archetypes to represent the Goddess, for example the 13 Moon Mystery School: The Great Mother, The Goddess of Compassion, The Priestess, The Creator-Destroyer-Preserver, The Lady of Communion, The Muse, The Goddess of Love, The Primal Goddess, The Initiator, The Wise Woman, The Weaver Dreamer, The Queen of Death, and the Alchemical Goddess of Ecstasy. Archetypes can be found across cultures and lineages, just look at the overlaps at play between different forms of folklore, astrology, and pantheons. The most important thing is to tune into which archetypes resonate most for you. Every autumn, I notice a massive resurgence in my witch archetype - a desire to commune with the ancestors, to make magic, to brew big pots of soup, and to worship mushrooms and other symbols of death and rebirth. Every summer, I feel a big pull toward mermaid medicine, the flow of water, the creative and emotional journeys of expression. Every spring, I feel a rebirth in my inner child archetype - a real desire to play, to move, to feel free and be curious. And every winter, I feel a resurgence of my wise woman archetype - my inner crone comes out, I love holding and tending space for others, and experiencing the laughter that comes with wisdom.
The journey itself is also an archetype, and its one shamans across cultures and lineages have studied as the spiral path for millions of years. The Heroine’s Journey specifically is important to understand as you delve into your own sacred feminine leadership journey, because it illustrates the path of a leader throwing off the oppressive mantle of patriarchy and embracing the nourishing mantle of the feminine. Our heroine begins with the severing from the feminine. In my view, this was done to all of us through the capitalist patriarchal colonial extraction of our sacred feminine lineage. We came into this world severed already from our bodies, from the land, from our community, and from elders. Our first step (and only recourse) then was to identify with the masculine and gather patriarchal allies. We took on a patriarchal worldview because we had no other one to turn to. We sought our belonging, our purpose, and our power in the artificial electric light of our patriarchal society - maybe a steady job, 2.5 kids and a white picket fence will completely fulfill me. Maybe the only form of leadership that is possible is male domination, extraction, and control.
Next, we moved on to the road of trials, we may have found some success in the patriarchal leadership blueprint, and we inevitably experienced some losses and doubt. Something happened on our journey that led to a massive descent, a dark night of the soul, and a meeting of the goddess. This is our initiation - the low point on our attempt at patriarchal success, pleasing others, and forsaking our wild feminine nature. At this point we realize what was lost - our initiation is the spark that lights the blaze within us to recover our life/death/life cycles, our connection to our bodies, healing our trauma, recovering our lineages, discovering our ancestry, and starting new sacred practices to reconnect us to nature and spirit. The most essential step will be healing the mother/daughter split - seeing our own mothers through the lens of their patriarchal conditioning and having compassion and forgiveness for her journey. Revisiting our adolescent selves at the point of separation from our mother, and remothering her from a more mature and whole standpoint as our present adult selves. Only then will we be able to begin to heal the wounded masculine within - the part of ourselves that always thought it would get validation and recognition from the patriarchy, but still feels lost, malnourished, and lonely. Then we can finally reintegrate the masculine and feminine within.
From a sacred feminine leadership perspective, I see it as Athena who was Zeus’ favorite daughter, embodying masculine qualities to get belonging and safety and validation from the patriarchy. Perhaps you started down a traditional education or career path early in your life - you thought that a steady 9 to 5 with retirement benefits held the keys to your soul’s fulfillment in this lifetime. But then something happened and you realized it did not!
For me, it was having a very toxic and controlling boss who shamed me when I got sick and ridiculed my every idea and never let me take on more leadership and responsibility. Her critical voice became the voice of my inner critic, and I spent 2 years in my dark night of the soul, completely paralyzed by the dissolution of my career, my master’s degree, everything I had worked so hard for. I had to take Inana’s hand and descend into the underworld - I quit my job, moved to New Mexico, and became a women’s coach. I fell in love with my menstrual cycle, started a moon circle, and held women through their inner journeys of self-love and reconnecting with the divine feminine. I found a massive wound within myself along the way and began to do intense shadow work around my lineage, my parents, and my sexuality. I had to let the world see me in my fullness - as a pagan Priestess who shows her menstrual blood on the internet and talks about pleasure, death, birth, and the Goddess. I have been through so many initiations in the 6 years since I left my conventional career, it’s wild! And they just keep coming. I believe I am personally at the stage of healing the wounded masculine, because a lot is coming up for me currently around security, stability, and money. I always viewed the masculine as in service of the feminine. But if the feminine gets healed first, then I think the feminine gets to be of service to the masculine as it heals. So the question up for me right now is - how can I simplify my life as much as possible, how can I nourish myself deeply, how can I become a master of rest, how can I help my roots grow way down and become strong here? Locate yourself on this heroine’s journey, and feel into which sacred feminine leadership qualities you might draw on in this current season of your life.
The 9 Qualities of Sacred Feminine Leadership
The 9 qualities of sacred feminine leadership can help guide you on your own heroine’s journey, and they are the aspects of leadership our world needs now more than ever. This is how we nurture feminine leadership and it’s how we restore the sacred feminine to her rightful place. This is how we heal from and smash the patriarchy. Feel into each quality and discover which ones resonate most with you as the medicine you are needing, and needing to embrace in your own soul’s work.
1. Communal
Sacred feminine leadership is communal. We know that our personal individual healing journey doesn’t happen in a vacuum. We are here to grow together, which requires sharing our gifts with one another. In order to be in healthy community, we must cultivate relational skills such as communication, sovereignty, boundaries, and facilitation. A sacred feminine form of leadership is one that is inclusive and accessible for all. It doesn’t other or discriminate certain groups, it doesn’t place people on a hierarchy. Rather, everyone is equal and everything is equitable. We embrace interdependence over codependence or independence. Interdependence is the quality of a shared vision where everyone’s needs are met. It requires some sacrifice and some hard work, it requires honesty and vigilance. Interdependence means we take care of one another, but we must also take care of ourselves.
2. Nourishing
Sacred feminine leadership is nourishing. It nourishes those whom it leads, and it also assures the nourishment for the leader. In fact, it is impossible to lead from a sacred feminine energy if one is not completely nourished or in the process of self-nourishment. The patriarchal leadership paradigm for women is all about burning out, hustling, and powering through. This doesn’t work for the sacred feminine. She serves from the overflow. Her basic needs are met. She is conscious to and healing of her past traumas. She is in an ever-present relationship to her unmet needs and how to nourish and meet them. All of her leadership comes from the overflow of having her needs abundantly met. She is well watered and fully nourished.
3. Healing
Sacred feminine leadership is healing. In order to be ever-nourishing herself, she is in a constant relationship to her shadow, her longing, and her grief. She is willing to see and hold space for her traumas and history. She uses her longing as a compass to point her towards her greatest leadership potential. She doesn’t turn away from her grief, but rather embraces it as one of the many faces of love. Sacred feminine leadership doesn’t just heal the leader, but heals all of the followers and recipients of the leadership as well. To find a sacred feminine elder or teacher is to find healing. It instantly heals our patriarchal scarcity and brainwashing that we are alone on our journey, that we have to do it all ourselves, and that we are forever broken or tainted. A sacred feminine healer holds space for our grief so we can work through it without numbing or escaping, thereby extracting the potent medicine found within it. It is necessary on the path to uncovering our soul’s purpose.
4. Re-enchanting
Sacred feminine leadership is re-enchanting. It awakens the relationality to the earth, the animals, the plants, the cosmos, and all beings everywhere. When indigenous traditions embrace the earth as the Great Mother, they inherently treat her with respect and love, and honor her as wise and abundant. We can understand how the loss of our connection to the land and to sacred feminine ways has directly led to the extraction of her resources and to global warming and climate collapse. Our planet desperately needs sacred feminine leadership, which includes indigenous traditions, to re-enchant our view of the living world. We must remember we are part of nature, and without the planet, we don’t exist! This kind of leadership must acknowledge the animism of all things with a deep love and reverence and protection for our lands, our more than human kin, and humanity as a whole.
5. Spacious
Sacred feminine leadership is spacious. It creates and holds a lot of space for the work to take place. This kind of leadership is slow, it’s not in a hurry. It’s not trying to “crush it” or “slay”. Rather, it is relaxed, restful, and gentle. Patriarchal leadership looks like climbing the corporate ladder. Sacred feminine leadership looks like weaving a web or casting a net. It’s circular, not linear and not hierarchical. This kind of work takes its time, it is confident and self-assured that the work will happen in the world because it’s bigger than one individual. This sacred feminine leadership quality means that we can take rest days, take sabbaths, climb into our period caves once a month, and honor the winter seasons of our life.
6. Creative
Sacred feminine leadership is creative, meaning it expresses itself through making things. The old patriarchal paradigm must be destroyed, and in that holy void, the spider goddess can weave the new world into being. Our nature is to create, but its playfulness and chaos terrifies the current patriarchal way of being. Creative power is the power of wild chaos, it is the unbridled feminine energy. And it is so needed in a way that doesn’t edit itself, critique itself, or take failure as a sign of unworthiness. Creative leadership is open to all possibilities, not attached to one set outcome. It asks for input from all, and creates work that encourages the expression of all it touches. Getting each of us fully expressed is the work of this quality of leadership.
7. Sovereign
Sacred feminine leadership is sovereign. She trusts herself completely, lets her drive carry her forward, and makes clear, firm decisions with ease. Sovereign leadership looks like being led by desire, trusting our wants and needs, and cultivating a strong personal vision - for our lives and for humanity. Sovereignty means everyone gets to ask for what they need, and everyone gets to say no. No is a complete sentence. Although it’s wonderful when our needs can be met in community interdependence, being able to rely on our own self-responsibility, capacity, and care is an important back-up plan.
8. Embodied
Sovereign feminine leadership is embodied. It comes up rooted from the earth, moving up through our chakras, connecting us to our human family and ancestors. Embodied leadership is sensual and pleasure-driven. To lead in this way is to magnetize the resources, opportunities, and people to you that will help you on your path. Just by being in your body, in your joy, in your pleasure - you draw others toward you and your cause. Channeling excitement is channeling the audience, the message, the strategy you need to lead. To find an embodied leader feels like such a relief, for you have found a rooted leader with a lineage, a practice, and/or a deep connection to their nervous system and how it impacts them.
9. Dynamic
Finally, sovereign feminine leadership is dynamic. It is not afraid to pivot, change course, or remake itself at any point on the journey. This type of leadership is always taking in new information from the divine, from the body, from the earth - and using that information to redirect itself. It’s highly intuitive and intelligent. It never stays the same, but is always evolving toward its highest potential. Unlike patriarchal leadership which grips tightly to its old ideas, feminine leadership shifts like water and the flow will never cease.
These 9 qualities of the sacred feminine can be applied to any form of leadership - from the CEO in the boardroom, to the solopreneur with her laptop at the cafe, to the artist whittling wooden animals in her studio. We all have leadership potential, because we all are human with a capacity for longing and vision. The mamas, the farmers, the engineers, the doctors, the activists and community organizers - we can all apply sacred feminine leadership to our work. It makes our work holy because it rightfully places us in the great human story to restore the sacred feminine that was lost. It qualifies our work as sustainable, communal, pro-social, restorative, regenerative, and healing to humanity. It sits in stark contrast to the extractive, violent, cold, unfeeling leadership of the capitalist patriarchy.
We can also apply these principles to our life more broadly for greater peace and connection. After all, we have all taken patriarchal capitalist colonial principles into our own bodies and psyches just as a result of swimming in their waters our entire lives. The next time you’re beating yourself up about getting sick or needing rest, remember the quality of spaciousness. The next time you are gripping to your plan turning out exactly as you imagined, remember the quality of dynamism. The next time you want to share something with others because you feel the longing and grief so strongly, first check in and see if you’ve healed it within yourself first - this is the quality of healing. And always remember to balance personal sovereignty with communal interdependence - ensuring that we aren’t taking on more than we can handle or bypassing our own needs.
Are you willing to embody these 9 qualities in your life and leadership? What will you risk within our current society to lead in this way? How can you find community and nourishment as you take on this sacred feminine work? Patriarchy is isolating and wants us to believe we’re all alone on our quest. But it’s not true - join the millions of sacred feminine leaders who are awakening on the planet right now! One small step is to join our Facebook group, Nourished Leaders Collective, where we are stepping into our next level of leadership in a sacred & sovereign way within community. Reweave what was lost, find your elders and teachers, and root yourself deeply in the earth. Trust your intuition, make clear decisions, and follow-through with your soul’s work. We believe in you! I’m always in your corner. Reach out if you’d like to explore coaching with me for your sacred feminine leadership journey.