Recently I guided a young, 18 year old, woman through her first ever Maya Womb healing mentoring session. I have been wanting to work with young women for years. They are our future and they need help.

A 2020 study revealed that the prevalence of major depressive episode was higher among adolescent females (25.2%) compared to males (9.2%). ~ The National Institute for Mental Health

Despite being raised in a ”progressive” corner of the world with an in tune mother, she still knew very little about her body and held a lot of fear around safety, rhythms and trust.

However, when I asked her what her deepest intention was for our work together she said:

“I want to know the difference between the voice of my intuition and the voice of fear and programming”

I almost passed out. My heart burst open. I cried a little behind my eyes.

If EVERY woman, at any age, was brave enough to ask this question with the authority and commitment this young woman was we would be living in a very different world.

She and I spent a good majority of our time with me teaching her about her womb. The basic anatomical function before we moved deeper into the shapeshifting, life giving, life guiding, life inclusive, regenerative, evolutionary, oracular gifts of the womb.

She absorbed every morsel. I could see a fire in her eyes spark alive when I said:

All that as she had to do was learn the language of her womb, listen to and follow the wisdom and she would be guided toward EVERYTHING that will bring her abundance, support, healing and wisdom.

We talked about the primary wound within women- depletion and overgiving- aka the MOTHER WOUND. Women are the primary healers, the caretakers, the water bearers of Earth, family and community by way of being the dominant vessel for feminine energy. But when a women is depleted there is a direct link to some block between her heart and her womb. The root being a deep fear of receiving Love

I showed her little clay womb models of a bleeding and “at rest” uterus. I explained that the heaviness we feel as women during those first few days of bleeding is a blessed invitation to slow down and shimmy our wombs close the Earth- literally sit on the Earth, bleed into the Earth, be held by the Earth. When I told her about the purpose of bleeding on the Earth her eyes widened and I could feel the Elder in her come alive and begin to court her down her path.

Women’s womb blood contains Universal genetic codes that hold the blueprint of all Life. Every story, desire and dream of life lives within this liquid matrix that makes up womb blood. The purpose of the red tent and moon lodge was not about isolating women because they were intolerable or overly emotional or “messy”. The community would send the women into lodge to listen.

When this blood is gifted to the Earth from the body of a woman it awakens the stories of Life that are also woven into every part of the Mother Earth, and she begins to sing them into the wide open womb of the woman. The woman becomes a vessel of wisdom, of stories that guide humanity because they capture the mysterious love that encapsulates all of our lives, all of Life. Each woman would begin to collect these stories from menarche to menopause so that by the time they were elders they would be rich with wisdom to share around the hearth fire for their communities.

There is a Hopi saying:

“When all women give their blood to the Earth again, the men will come home from war”.

Sit with that for awhile. Let me know how it moves in you.

I told this young woman that pain is NOT normal. Pain is a sign of imbalance in her life and her body that her womb is trying to illuminate so that she can turn towards what restores her livelihood. I made it very clear that every intensified emotion she has right before and during her moon time is her TRUTH and that these feelings must be listened to rather than shoved away as a burden to those around her. Those emotions hold powerful medicine and wisdom. But most women pathologize them, gaslight themselves into suppressing them and end up with emotional dysregulation symptoms that then show up everywhere in their lives- in particular menopause. Women go crazy at menopause when every unexpressed emotion comes to a head and the lack of initiation into her womb wisdom is revealed. Our passageways in life are NOT meant to destroy us. Childbirth, menstruation, menopause, lets just throw death in there- are not meant to create terror, anxiety pain or confusion.

(I wish I had me when I was 18)

This young woman in front of me, under my hands, had never had her body touched much except by her mother, so she was very guarded as we began the hands on portion of our session. The guarding was a gift as it allowed her to stay safe and discerning- a byproduct of having an in-tune mama who was teaching her about body sovereignty. But it was also from the fear of being raised in an over culture that drops messages of shame and distrust into our children’s minds about their bodies.

I explained that her breath and her voice are her two strongest allies. And that we would move slow so she could differentiate between pain that said “stop” and tension that needed breath to be released- so she could begin to understand her mind’s response to the sensations in her body. When she began to see the fear and judgement that is the typical first impulse of the mind, she could breathe, listen and make a clear choice for herself to proceed or not. I explained that regardless of whether or not she identifies the discomfort as tension needing release, that she should NEVER endure one moment of pain regardless of where it stems from. No one has the right to tell her that all she needs to do is breathe and push her if her first reaction is NO. We honor that, she honors that, and then she can reassess whether she wants to move forward with our exploration. She ALWAYS has the authority to say NO and -that doesn’t feel good- no matter what….

Which brought us to a deep conversation around abandonment and rejection fears. She was able to connect the wisdom that listening to her womb and always choosing herself, her voice and her breath from the guidance of her body to that leading her to more love, not less, regardless of how the person in front of her responds/reacts. She hashed this out for a long while. It was so important to her to piece it together and take it from a concept in her mind to feeling how it landed as truth inside of her. Practicing this is where the medicine lives. Often practicing/making these choices to stand in our voice takes support because of how much oppression and fear the voice of wisdom has to move through to find air, breathe and live again.

As we moved deeper into session I asked about her dreams in life. Rather than share material goals or things she could become, she expressed how she wanted her life to FEEL.

Again- tears behind my eyes. When women are guided by their intuitive emotional bodies they become magnets for abundance, as the feminine is naturally abundant and we magnetize what we are, and everything is possible. To live from our feeling and sensorial nature is how we manifest.

This young woman knew, at this young age, that the greatest achievement in her life was to lay down at night knowing herself fully, being brave enough to listen to every part of herself, make choices from her womb and be at peace within because she has embodied her voice and breath, she has embodied her compass to guide her.

As my hands moved to her belly and her womb space I could feel knots of tension and resistance in her pelvis and around her navel. I saw fear begin to rise, like I do with so many clients, when we identified places of tension in such tender and vulnerable areas. She was afraid something would rupture or that there was something wrong.

When we aren’t educated about our bodies, which is on purpose, it is opens the doorways to external control of our bodies. We give our authority away by way of ignorance and fear. We are powerless.

Our bodies are what we “should” know more than ANYTHING. It is the one constant in everyone’s lives, and the most ignored and feared terrain.

It is not hard to heal the planet, the people, to end war and to feed children when women, when people, are brought back to the landscape of wisdom that lives within them. How can we walk the Earth in a good way if we can’t walk inside our own interiority in a good way?

But this path requires feeling the full spectrum of what lives within the nuanced emotional landscape. It requires guidance from those who walk the path. And vulnerability (that big buzz word) is non negotiable. It takes proper initiations to bring people back home to this wisdom, which essentially this session is/was.

Distilled down, healing of most anything requires womb wisdom, wise women. It’s actually simple.

Imagine if all young woman had access to this wisdom.

After taking her through her body with my hands I taught her how to massage her own womb and belly, how to breathe, how to listen, how to watch feelings rise and become a witness of them rather than pathologize herself. The greatest transmission I can share with any woman, any one, is how to heal themselves. The medicine for every human lives within and only in recovering that does full spectrum healing and therefore regeneration happen. This is the gift of the womb- regeneration, renewal, rebirth. But we must be willing to let things die- also the gift of the womb.

She asked to continue working with me- she was so inspired to live a guided life. She was willing to walk the unique path- that one day many moons ago was the common ground all women danced upon. This is an email I got from her after our session (oh my heart):

“Hi Shira, I'm feeling more positive, in a higher timeline-just after our session three people started excitedly talking to me just about random things. I've also been more motivated to do chores and other small things I usually wouldn't have done that I know needs to get done. Thank you for our session. Are you free for another one?”

Before she left we talked about the necessity of young women’s circles to support the counter corrupted culture choices that will be made when the voice of the womb is finally allowed to speak again.

We need one another to repair this burned bridge between us and our wise grandmothers holding this wisdom on the other side because it threatens the current “authority” that knows it has NO power when the women remember how to walk the path of the womb again.

ANYHOW! I am beginning to put the word out about working with young women and I will need community support. I want all young women to be able to receive this wisdom without worrying about money. And there must be an exchange because that is what keeps it all flowing. I am open to what that looks like. I thought about a fundraiser, about parental donations etc.

Your $7/month can help greatly. Especially if that list of paid subscribers grows, I can be in a flow that allows for me to say yes to these young women who may not have parents who can monetarily support their healing. You get some fun musings from my many voices, personal and “professional” to help uplift and inspire your own.

And- “If I build it the support will come”. It is more important to have embodied young women walking the Earth because that generates a forgotten form of abundance for EVERY form of life- so I thrive.

Please share. This is medicine for the people and that includes YOU. Blessed be.

PS. I did get permission to share this from my young client and her mother.

Her Many Faces

Womb Initiations for Young Women