I begin this new chapter of my life standing at the threshold of a demanding role—a role that summons every fiber of my being: care, meditation, organization, imagination, love, and an exceptional responsibility for the lives entrusted to me. A quiet internal storm of fear and wonder swirling within—Can I live up to this? Will I be devoured by the intensity or will I emerge transformed? In the relentless flow of duties and expectations, where success is often measured by statistics and swift results, a fragile truth reveals itself: presence is more than doing. Is it really?
Presence is not an achievement but a sacred space, a holding, a breath that does not rush, but simply is. And for all women, this presence calls us not to be performers on a stage of endless demands, but to be space-givers—keepers of the silent, vast room where life can unfold.
This is no modern insight alone but an echo of ancient rhythms, a pulse from the depths of ritual and ancestral wisdom—the wisdom I have sought and gathered in the book I just enclose and wrote over the last 9 months going through a painful transformational journey almost as a testament to the reclamation of embodiment and the honoring of ritual as a bridge to the archaic. In pages and research i encountered, I found refuge from the hollow race toward perfection measured by cold numbers and performance for women in midlife but the memory to reconnect to the archaic and wild and instinctual and inherent. I was reminded that the path forward for women does not lie in wages or justice alone, but in reowning our deep cultural role as elders, wisdom keepers, daughters, mothers, and guardians of memory. Our power flows from being the living archive of origin and primordial trust, standing firm in the complexity of caring for rising children, farewelling elders, and holding the liminal space between life and death, past and future.
Motherhood is never truly complete. Even as our children grow into their own lives, within us remains the impulse to hold, to protect, to nurture. And yet we remain daughters—daughters of our own mothers, daughters of a line of ancestors living through us. Sometimes, when life demands it, we become mothers to our mothers. In our culture, this shift is often silently expected—the daughter who suddenly takes on the care of her parents without question, without asking if she can, if she wants to, if she has the strength. The mother who juggles work, family, and the frailty of elders, sometimes to the point of exhaustion.
In the quiet wilderness under a night sky where the moon hangs large and milky over the horizon like a silent guardian, the grasses whisper and breathe in the cold wind i find my self as a young woman kneeling before a low wooden table bearing a bowl of fresh spring water, a small cloth woven of goat’s wool, a carved bowl filled with dried herbs—mugwort, yarrow, wild thyme. Beside me, my mother sits, hair thinning, eyes clouded, but sometimes flickering with the old fire. The daughter in me knows: these moments are fleeting.
In my ancestors culture, somewhere on the endless Mongolian plains, when the moon is at its peak, a gate opens between hearts one can hear what seems lost, remember what the mist of the mind has forgotten. I dip the cloth into the water and gently begin washing my mother’s hands (or is it any mothers hands?)—not to cleanse, but to renew the sacred bond. As i do, a song recalls me and i start singing—an ancient, hoarse song taught by my mother before memory faltered. It is not a song for ears, but for the soul—a melody mimicking the earth’s heartbeat, the rocking of horse-ridden journeys, the faint thunder of distant drums.
Sometimes the mother hums along, briefly, then falls silent, gazing afar. I rest my forehead lightly against my mother’s—the gesture of generations of women who know that when words fail, touch speaks. Our breaths mingle warm in the cold night. I remember the grandmother doing the same with her mother, as memory slipped like sand through fingers—and before them, countless women under the same moon, knowing care is not mere service. Care is prayer. Care is remembrance.
The song ends, water stills in the bowl. I draw a fur tighter around mother’s shoulders and whisper, “You are here. I am here. We are one.” Above, the moon watches, and somewhere in the grass a night lark begins to sing. For one brief moment—only one, mother smiles like she did when I was a child.
This moment is not mere poetry. It is a call to reclaim the ancient feminine wisdom that modernity has tried to silence under the clamor of performance and productivity. As Joanna Macy, whose life was a fierce embodiment of this reclamation, taught us so vividly, our work is not to conquer, but to reconnect—to the Earth, to each other, to the deep roots of our being. Her presence was wild, untamed, luminous. She was a warrior of the spirit, standing in storms of despair with the steady flame of hope and radical gratitude.
I imagine Joanna beneath towering redwoods, those ancient beings whispering secrets only the Earth can hold. In the rain-soaked protests and the quiet circles of grief and resilience she led, her voice cracked with emotion, a bridge between fear and love, despair and hope. Once, caught in a storm with winds howling like ancestors’ cries, she stood singing an ancient chant, her arms wide, drenched but unyielding—a wild hymn to the night, a fierce embrace of the archaic feminine that Gebser speaks of: the nocturnal, the silent, the rooted.
Gebser’s insight into the archaic structure of consciousness reminds us that the nocturnal is not darkness but a fertile space beyond time’s linear push—where the feminine dwells in the silent pulse of the earth’s heartbeat. To reawaken this presence in ourselves is to find refuge from the relentless demands of a world that honors action over being, output over wisdom, statistics over soul. It is a call to hold the space where life unfolds not in achievements, but in the weaving of belonging, care, and memory.
Joanna’s work—the Work That Reconnects—offers a ritual path through grief into courage, a map of renewal grounded in the rhythms of the earth and the heart. She showed us that true power is not in domination but in the sacred reciprocity of giving and receiving, loving and grieving, holding and letting go. Her legacy is a fierce invitation to women everywhere to step into the roles we were born to hold—not as isolated individuals striving against the world, but as nodes in a living web of connection, ancestors and descendants intertwined.
This path is not easy. It is wild and tender, fierce and gentle. It demands of us to hold the complexity of raising children while bidding farewell to elders, to live in the liminal in-between with reverence and trust. To stand as a woman today is to be the space where the archaic and the modern dance—a place where origin is honored and primordial trust reawakened. It is to be the pulse of a community’s soul, the keeper of stories, the cradle of life’s fragile continuity.
In this sacred holding, presence becomes a living prayer. Presence is no longer about performance but about being—the still center that holds the spinning world. It is a radical act of love and defiance in a culture that too often forgets the wisdom of care.
So, we rise. Rooted in the nocturnal song of earth’s pulse, wrapped in the memory of foremothers, carrying Joanna Macy’s wild flame forward—wild and wise, fierce and tender, luminous beyond measure. We become the space where life is cradled, where presence is a fierce, unyielding act of remembering. Here, the archaic returns—not as a relic, but as a living, breathing force, awakening in each woman the sacred truth: we are the keepers of the fire, the singers of the night, the holders of the space where all life may be born anew.
About the author: CORDULA FREI
is a distinguished author, editor, and curator with a profound dedication to integrative practices, deep ecology, and transformative narratives. As head of media for Integral Perspectives magazine, she has been instrumental in shaping content that explores holistic viewpoints. She co-created Achronon magazine, a platform challenging conventional timelines and narratives, and served as editor for Info 3 magazine, bridging spirituality, culture, and contemporary issues. At Germany’s first regenerative society, Hofgut Leo in Gresgen, she curated cultural initiatives and oversees organizational aspects, promoting sustainable and regenerative practices.
Her longstanding collaboration with Tom Amarque is rooted in a vibrant friendship and a shared passion for critical thinking, questioning societal mainstreams, and shaping transformative narratives. As the author of Soulskin, she explores the initiation journey of the feminine psyche as a deep psychological pilgrimage into personal transformation and with her collegue Andrew Sweeny, after meeting up in a cave in Paris reading Rilke at a poets slam, she is heartfully anticipating their joint venture of the Storytellers Writing Classes coming up for Parallax Academia.
Her life is deeply connected to deep ecology, living among horses and dogs, traveling through vast wilderness to engage in regenerative dialogue with nature. Through her work, Cordula Frei holds the Podcast Serie: “Roots of Enlivenment“ at Parallax Media with a invitation to inspire and lead in the realms of integrative thought, ecological awareness, and cultural transformation.
Write her at cordula@parallax-media.eu
If you feel called to walk this path beside me, meet me in my Parallax classes or support through a paid Substack membership — a gesture of reciprocity and devotion that helps keep this soul work alive.