What is your tapestry? The power of feminine creativity
Every woman I know has a story.
Have you heard them?
We share in intimate settings, in deep friendships and safe spaces, but out in the open, we know better.
It’s wisdom to know where our stories will be heard and held and where they will be defiled and dismissed.
This feminine wisdom has a history.
Our silence has been immortalized for almost three thousand years in the Greek myth of Philomela. Sue Monk Kidd tells the story in Dissident Daughter:
“While traveling to see her sister, Philomela was raped by her brother-in-law, Tereus. Outraged, she threatened to tell her sister and the world what he’d done to her.
He responded by cutting out her tongue and banishing her to a guarded tower where she was forced to live in silence.
Eventually, though, she seemed to know that if she continued to be silent she would die. So Philomela began to weave a series of tapestries that became her voice and told her story. She then enlisted an old woman to take them to her sister, who came and liberated her.”
Until now, the feminist writers, leaders, and artists among us have been few.
We’ve been silenced by the fear of ridicule, retribution, and dismissal, and our ability to understand, integrate, and tell about our experiences has been limited.
But what would happen if every woman felt empowered to tell her story with boldness, creativity, and intention?
When women tell their stories en masse through tapestry—a symbol for any form of creative expression
—we will continue to shift the cultural narrative around the feminine experience…
One that is still told through a male-dominated lens.
When we speak for ourselves, we can creatively express how expectations in both the public and domestic spheres play out in our day-to-day, how we experience our feminine spirituality with God, the earth, and our bodies, and how patriarchy is still alive and well.
So I’m curious, what is your tapestry?
Are you a writer, dancer, or painter?
Are you a teacher, speaker, or leader?
Do you keep a garden or a storefront?
Where does your feminine creativity find expression?
The ancient of story Philomela speaks to the forces that have long silenced us.
Sue explains, “The myth is about the loss of women’s voices. It suggests that the source of female silence is the rape of the feminine—the devaluation and violation of femaleness.
It suggests that when women protest this violation, their voices are frequently squelched through ridicule, sanction, and fear of reprisal. In the public arena, at church, work, and home, women’s tongues are often silenced when we dare to speak our anger, truths, and visions.”
When our stories were devalued or violated, we rightly responded by only telling them in the safest spaces. We know the emotional risks all too well.
This was the genius within Tarana Burke’s “Me too” movement.
Even though we already knew the statistics, the number of women who came forward with a history of sexual violence shocked the world.
When women didn’t have to name names, craft a compelling narrative, or go to court, they spoke up.
By saying two words, they were finally able to tell an often untold story.
They were our mothers, sisters and friends, and their silence was broken with “Me too.”
Every woman I know has a story, and every woman I know has a good reason for her silence. We already know the answer to the question, “Who would believe me?”
Only a few. And if you name a man who is responsible? Even fewer.
In our wisdom, we know that having our pain dismissed opens the scar, and we know that having our character maligned creates new wounds.
“Me Too” was a brilliant defiance of the norms we’d resided within: don’t share about experiences like that, and certainly don’t share them in public.
With no facts to debate and nothing worthwhile for dissenters to say, a safety net was inherently created for those who did.
Tarana modeled the power of organizing a social movement that connects and empowers, elegant in its simplicity after untellable complexity.
Could the myth of Philomela give us a new tool for effectively sharing our feminine stories?
Art has always held the power to change the world.
One cannot argue that a painting portrays the sunset incorrectly or that a song was written in the wrong key. Art itself is irrefutable.
The women who craft creative work and tell their stories are doing more than healing and expressing themselves, they’re also giving a voice to those who haven’t been able to do the same.
I’d love to know, what is your tapestry?
When we tell our stories through works of art, those with eyes to see will see.
And those who revile the shades and sounds we use in our feminine creative expressions expose themselves, their prejudice surfacing with every bitter word. This is the safety within artistic expression, there is no valid dissent or room for debate.
We hold stories of sexual violence, abandonment, and neglect, of grief and exclusion. We wear our feminine wounds in our compliance, self-doubt, and self-negation.
We press on within systems that weren’t built for us, and we feel the silencing of our feminine experience at work, in school, and in the church.
But the tides are changing, a wave of feminine creativity is coming.
The fear of ridicule, sanction, and reprisal are lessening in a world that’s more connected.
For many of us, our silence is no longer tied to our survival and belonging, but we still need to learn how to express ourselves in a way that honors our experience while exposing the harm that was done.
The next step will be to equip and empower more women to tell their stories through creative avenues.
What is your tapestry?
Growing up in a home overrun by masculine energy, my feminine voice wasn’t just devalued, it was often ridiculed and dismissed.
I learned quickly how to change my attitudes and behaviors to retain my belonging. As I grew and developed, much of my feminine nature was repressed.
Since childhood, I’ve had the same recurring dream of being voiceless in a crowded room, often with my parents and brothers, knowing that something was wrong. The problem was that no one could hear me. I would cry and shout and remain unheard.
This internalized voicelessness plagued me for decades, but in recent years, writing has become my tapestry.
I’m able to tell stories and weave words into pieces of art that allow me to communicate effectively and, occasionally, shift perspectives.
My ability to create out of my suffering has helped me to reclaim my voice, and it has allowed me to integrate my experiences in a way that brings healing and communion, love and acceptance.
This is the power of feminine creativity.
May we be a generation of women that learns how to weave tapestries to tell our stories, may we affect change and come to know what power and influence feels like. May we tear down and rebuild harmful systems and expose the patriarchalists among us.
May our feminine creativity become a stepping stone on the path to a more just world for all.
Writing is my tapestry, what is yours?