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The Soul's Religion, Cultivating a Profoundly Spiritual Way of Life - Thomas Moore

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ALisa S.

Baldwinville, Massachusets,
United States 01436
http://www.alisastarkweather.com, www.womeninpowerprogram.com

LightPage networks I participate in
Gather the Women Global Matrix
Additional information available LIGHTPAGES GLOBAL NETWORK
Standing Women
Constellations of Hope

I am ALisa Starkweather from Massachusetts. I've been involved with women's empowerment as a trainer, facilitator, and visionary for 23 years and I am quite active in the world of women's networks that create social change and new paradigm shifts. I am the founder of Priestess Path, a women's empowerment and mystery school based on the archetype that is essentially a powerful woman bringing her gifts forward as her spiritual path. I am also the founder and visionary of the Women's Belly and Womb Conferences, Women in Power Initiations, Daughters of the Earth Gatherings, and more recently the grassroot movement, the Red Tent Temple Movement. I have three CD's of chants for circles that I have composed and am often a keynote, speaker or presenter at women's conferences.

I facilitate transformational work that has the potential of bringing deep healing to the darkest and hardest places to reach in both communities, societies and individuals. Please contact me for further collaboration. I wrote a big long thingie below and included testimonials. What I am about is my chant here:

Women Rise Up in our power and our truth Women Rise Up in our love for the earth Women Rise Up, honor life, death and rebirth Women Rise Up, for all we're worth We're a force to be reckoned with!

Interests
Helping women to be a force to be reckoned with, women's empowerment and women's leadership, creating new paradigm shifts, transformational leadership, gender reconciliation, community building, facing cultural and personal shadows through the facilitation of ShadowWork, building and collaboriting with women's grassroot movements that build social infrastructure for cultural change, gathering women in meaningful dialogues, councils and ceremonies that initiati action plans and results, building relations among us that address race, class and the need to listen deeply to what each culture among us brings into the circle, Restorative Justice work and training, Sustainability Movement, how to facilitate and train others in collective healing, writing, dance, art,

ON LIGHTPAGES GLOBAL NETWORK

Greetings! I am so glad to have this moment here to connect our worlds or dots so that we can continue to work together on the things that matter most to us in this moment. I am presently holding the formation of five visions. I think of them as five rivers. Just recently I am also holding down the seeds of creating a nonprofit called Daughters of the Earth Organization and many women are beginning to work on this with me over the summer of 2008.

I am the founder of many visions that are presently vibrant, expanding, and growing a network of powerful women who are deeply connected. I live in Massachusetts and women have been coming in from all over the US and internationally as well to work with me.

This is a call to women write now that I wrote last May.

"Believe, like the bud trusts the unknown blossom before it, in your own inevitable unfolding. Listen my sisters carefully to the inner callings and intuitive instructions enscripted in your soul. These visions, and seemingly impossible directions are here to pull your self towards our looming future in a time when we need such an inner compass to guide us. It is only fear that keeps us from believing that this moment is anything less inspired than the potency this mysterious lifeforce has perpetually demonstrated. Are we not a part of this miracle? Let us challenge all remnants of unworthiness and embolden ourselves to be truer than ever with the help of the community of wisewomen focused with a single purpose; to lift ourselves up from remaining doubt and bring forward the part of ourselves that bears our fruit." ALisa Starkweather

In 1998 I founded a women's empowerment and mystery school called Priestess Path. This is not a vocational training but rather a deeply archetypal journey for women who want to bring into being their fullest gifts to serve the world. A very long time ago the station of a priestess in her society held power as she was a caretaker of the people, the earth and a conduit of spirit. For example, she was consulted before kings and queens went to war. We have lost that station and to renew this old archetype is to once again take our place in caring for our people and our planet. The basis of these nine months or alternatively two years and thirteen weekends are ceremonial, challenging, enriching and are birthing women of great power who are now doing amazing work together. Women of all ages, backgrounds, vocations, and beliefs have been drawn to this as it is inclusive of our full and diverse womanhood experiences. By having a solid and safe container for her to come into her own self rather than a training that teaches someone to be something, women have found the strength, determination and support to bring forward the visions that are now coming through rapidly. I founded the Women's Belly and Womb Conferences also in 1998 because women need to source the power in their bellies and make connections with their wombs as a place of knowing, feeling, and direction. This writing describes this.

Sourcing Power in Our Bellies for Strength in These Times

"Our world is calling women to be in their power, their gut-knowing, their truth right now. We are facing terrible destruction and disease and growing hardships. Many of us have already lived through inner and outer wars long before now. In spite of this we still long to be in our bodies, know our ecstasy, share our gifts and be present with life as life is occurring. In an unprecedented container, the Women’s Belly and Womb Conference deliberately makes space for collective healing. It is not just a learning and informational day. It is a day to make new choices, to come out of denial, to recommit to our visions, our lives through loving our bodies and who we are in this world. It is an unforgettable moment in the life of a woman when she recognizes more of who she is and what is possible in her life. It is fertile ground for transformation. In order to do this we make space for what needs healing in hearts, bellies, wombs and lives as women." ALisa Starkweather, Founder of the Women's Belly and Womb Conference

But still there was more work to be done with the empowerment of women and the many places that we did not feel powerful with our voices, our sex, our ability to protect life, sharing and knowing our wisdom, our own vulnerabilities as well as our incredible feminine strength and leadership, our wild natures that society tamed, our disconnection with what we are most connected to, ..............and so in 2000 I met with two other women and we founded, Women in Power; Initiating Ourselves to the Predator Within. This radical women's initiation is about freeing ourselves from the dark cycles of the perpetrator and victim realms. Having become a certified facilitator of Shadow Work (www.shadowwork.com) in the early '90's in this profound transformational work and seeing the emotional shifts that people can make from rituals that heal, we have tools to face some of the darkest things in the human psyche that need to be reached and seen. Besides my passion for human transformation, the upliftment and empowerment of women to be a global force of change and my constancy in all that I am doing concerning restorative justice, perhaps this is the work that assures we have a path to places we have not dreamed to go in our liberation. Facing personal and cultural shadows is certainly a place we need to go to find new patterns that free us from old pains.

Women in Power is a three day international women's initiation with 30 women, eight facilitators for transformation, about twenty or more staff and a cook. It is quite an event and very life changing.

I still have two more things that I am doing but I have already written so much. If you are still with me and some of you I know are right there as this work is so critical, alive and transformational that we sense it from afar, then the next thing I founded in 2004 is Daughters of the Earth Gathering; a Women's Tribal Event where we now gather the women on the earth for council, collective healing, celebration, ceremonies and deep inspiration to move from as to what next sisters? We gather the elders, the young ones, the storytellers, healers, dancers, and yes the scientists, professionals, cooperate women and beyond to a place on the earth that is off the grid meaning it is all solar operated. It is a very important experience for women to have some time on the earth. Here we are seeing a healing of the sacred hoop. There is an emphasis of our diversity and many full scholarships are given to women of color purely to deepen our dialogue and see what among us culturally needs to be addressed.

Finally (but of course not finally) in September I began a grassroots movement. I believed that women were ready to begin to bring into our societies a place for us to gather, meet, circle and see. Women are so ripe for change and to do something and it seems to gather us is the first step. But how? There was a woman who told this story below on Gather the Women and I was very moved. It went like this:

"A story I have heard tells of the misunderstandings that occurred because of the exclusion of the study of the women's side of the cultures, and of women anthropologists being trained to see through the lens of the male gaze.

A woman anthropologist was up on a rooftop with some Native American/Indian women watching the men prepare themselves for a ritual in the Kiva. As the men lowered themselves down the ladder into the Kiva to perform their ritual, the woman anthropologist turned to the women around her and asked, "Aren't you jealous that you are excluded from rituals in the Kiva? Don't you feel that you are being left out?"

The women turned to her smiling and laughing and shaking their heads at her ignorance. They said to her, "You don't understand. We are not jealous. We are not excluded. We ARE the Kiva."

Now to understand this then we are the Red Tent Temples. Not the tent itself but the actual symbol of our womanhood as she who cycles from girl to woman to grandmother, from woman who bleeds without dying and can give birth to new creations. And so, we began the Red Tent Temple Movement where once a month we raise up a place for us to meet together on or near the newmoon under the banner of our precious womanhood one and all. Women cook, offer healing work, bring art materials, dance, speak stories, rest, and leave time to see what happens when the women gather for a day a month. It is voluntarily given to women by other women and held by donations. It is open to all women in every village, city and town and presently we have 23 up and going and four more women in other countries wondering about starting it up there. We will have an interactive website where organizers can put in their own information. Each one also holds a circle toward the closing. We want to weave back into our society the women's lodge or temple because if we do that all sorts of change will occur.

Now the real finally. I am so inspired to begin this nonprofit, Daughters of the Earth Organization. I have bought the domain name for it and also WomenRiseUp. The future is ours to see in how we continue to collaborate and cocreate in such an important time in human existence. The website would look like this: Daughters of the Earth Come Together (connecting the dots of us) Daughters of the Earth See/Know (naming what we see and know to work on together) Daughters of the Earth Speak (writings, articles, documentaries, talk, teleconferences) Daughters of the Earth Move (events, petitions, activism, the grieving/wailing piece with Iraq women) Daughters of the Earth Sing (music, chants, ..) Daughters of the Earth Dance (drum, dance, rituals, ceremonies..........) Daughters of the Earth Dream (new paradigms, visions, Dreamweather foundation!) Daughters of the Earth's Sons (support of the men around us) Daughters of the Earth Heal (our prayers, our intentions, our missions, our work) Daughters of the Earth Give (Kiva, microbanking, feed, lend, ...) Daughters of the Earth Gather (councils, circles, etc) Daughters of the Earth Art (artwork, photography, visuals) Daughters of the Earth Elders (wisdom of the grandmothers, 13 grandmothers, etc) Daughters of the Earth Protect Life (sustainability, peace activity, ending violence (Eve Ensler's work), our children, life, news, etc.) Daughters of the Earth Honor Our Young (programs, rites of passage, letters to the women about our moon cycles and the pill that eliminates it, etc.) Daughters of the Earth Links Daughters of the Earth Mission (to support the empowerment of women and by doing so balance the powers of the human world ~ to bring together our diverse beliefs and stand for what matters most in our woman hearts concerning life in these times)

I have made many chants on three CD's for circles. I am available to rally, speak, facilitate, and engage with. I recently returned from being a presenter and delegate at the Jaipur Summit in India where I met amazing women from all over the world. It was organized by the Global Peace Initiative of Women and called Making Way for the Feminine for the Benefit of the World Community. Thank you so much for your deep listening into where the rivers are moving swiftly here. I am truly in service and am willing to travel if my gifts and our co-collaboration continues to wave the world. Blessings ALisa

Recent testimonials as others bring another dimension to the introduction:

"The path to our inner Power can be a bloody Revolution... and ALisa bangs the drum and calls the hearts of women to battle. She has a gift for waking up our deep WomanSoulSpace so that we can remember. We can feel. We can be moved to cry, to scream, to laugh, to sing. She sings and drums and weaves the threads of our remembering. With ALisa, "experience" happens. We go beyond the words -- beyond our ceaseless talking, beyond our highly-praised analysis and intellectual pondering, beyond the whole damn alphabet that we are drowning in -- and taps our Souls. Wake up and Remember... Wake up and Remember... No more SleepWalking, no more SleepTalking... And we are changed. And there is no turning back." --- Nicole Oxendine, WiseWomanConnections MD

"How does one describe the work that ALisa offers? She speaks the truth of the collective stories of WOMAN, in the moment, bone-deep, right now, what needs to be said and she does it with clear love. Her style is improvisational: she meets each group with what it needs as if the Goddess Herself is speaking into her ears. Her heart is open, her sight is clear and her integrity is palpable. I have witnessed women move from fear and shame into empowerment in a moment’s time when experiencing ALisa's work. She is a beautifully humble, enormously gifted human who changes those who experience her offerings, forever." Valerianna Claff, Professor of Art Clark University MA "ALisa Starweather is an extraordinary individual and one of the most courageously and authentically human beings I have ever encountered. Her integrity shines through in all she does, and she shares her own growth process with the world in ways that consistently model what real empowerment looks like. She emboldens others around her to honestly face what is within them – shadow and light alike – and to take responsibility for their lives. Her conscious presence and focused intention create sacred space in which others are compassionately supported while being gently, consistently encouraged to risk and grow. ALisa has a gift for getting to the heart of a matter and facilitating rapid healing and evolution. She uses a variety of techniques to do so, creating transformational experiences of resonant beauty that help others discover their true nature and connection with Source. ALisa lives in service to Spirit and community, and the contributions she makes to any gathering emerge out of deep prayer and powerful intuition. Any women's gathering would benefit tremendously from her presence and participation. ALisa walks her talk, and catalyses those around her. I would highly encourage both event facilitators and attendees to take advantage of any opportunity to work with ALisa Starkweather. Doing so will change your life." -Dana Mari Neal OR

"ALisa Starkweather is a wondrous teacher who has a highly developed capacity to hold in her presence the largest scope of human emotion, i.e. the deepest sorrow, the most formidable anger, and the purest joy with copious amounts of compassion, love and patience. She is a healer who resembles a medicine woman, or a shaman. She is an endless resource of tools and techniques to help individuals move through their strongest blocks, deepest fears, or stifling emotions." - Nadine Sures, performing artist, Montreal Canada

"ALisa is a powerful, charismatic leader of women's empowerment and healing work. She uses rich poetic language, often combined with song and drumming, to captivate and inspire. She has the power to hold the unwavering attention of a large group and the intensity of focus and attention to connect heart-to-heart with individual women. She challenges old assumptions about women's power and place in the world with her dynamic, experiential work. Hers is the gift of awakening women from complacency, fear and self-doubt. To hear her is to be moved and transformed." Becky Schupbach, KY

"ALisa is able to magically merge with what shows up to create a container and allow "SHE" to come through her in a way that is like paints, revealing and facilitating in the color that is needed in the moment. The beauty of being in a group with ALisa is that she leads us where we unconsciously already want to go. She stirs us in our bones and we find ourselves inside of our own hearts, beating with the Mother. If love is the seed, then ALisa's unbridled passion and creativity inspires the spark to find our way home again." Reginia West Virginia

"I believe that the divine feminine is awaiting the emergence of womankind to rise up and offer their heart centered love, compassion, wisdom, and intelligence to the global conversation in this time of great need. ALisa Starkweather’s influence rests in her ability to plug directly into that divine feminine energy and carry women home to themselves on its current. To live with empowerment, women must confront both the lightness and the darkness within, that which is beautiful and that which is ugly. She must stand in integrity and weave relationships that hold the contradiction. ALisa is a master of creating the sacred space that allows for shifts in women’s conception of who they are and the breaking down of limitations and the building up of new structures. Her style is direct and gentle, sincere and wholehearted. ALisa’s work strikes a deep and resonant chord with women yearning for strength and connection. She challenges you to know and feel what is true. She transforms lives." Jennifer Lennon, Massachusetts

"ALisa Starkweather is as much of an ambulatory transformational event as she is a talented, engaging workshop facilitator or panel host. Experiential transformation is clearly both her forte AND her bliss! Over a decade -- during which she's graced my life as mentor, priestess, facilitator, student, and Friend -- she has consistently delivered irresistible opportunities for growth and self-empowerment to the women who encounter her work. Demographics and size of the attending group do not seem to affect transformational intensity that experiencing her work brings. What DOES seem to matter is the authenticity of each attendee's willingness to even consider expansion and/or exploration of their feminine power. It's exciting that ALisa is bringing her unique style of experiential events to more and more spirituality and womanhood movers and shakers... Through those leaders, ALisa's seeds of self-empowerment are guaranteed to bear inspiring and transformative fruit for an ever-widening circle of women worldwide." Julie Woods, Founder and Chair of Fans with Cans, MA

"When ALisa Starkweather stands up in front of a group of women, magic happens before she even opens her mouth. Through words, song, movement - as well as the sheer force of her love and passion - I have witnessed ALisa move women to know and connect with themselves, with each other, and with Spirit in ways never thought imaginable. Words cannot adequately describe the EXPERIENCE that ALisa creates - it inspires authentic emotion, deeper understandings, inner transformations, and concrete movement towards action that can help heal the world." Joanna Lindenbaum WomanVisions NY

"Whenever I have witnessed ALisa as facilitator I have seen many things that have me sit in utter astonishment as I marvel at her gift as teacher and healer to the women. ALisa speaks from her heart, a truth that others are able to hear, simply because of the way ALisa communicates. Communication is one of ALisa's greatest gifts. ALisa speaks in a way that grabs your attention and you are swept up in her brilliant, intelligent and very thoughtful story telling magic. I feel ALisa has a message that has to do with this being a time for the women to rise up. A time of needed healing and change and that this healing needs to come from a different place, from the feminine, from the women and the men that support these values." Bonnie, Supervisor, MA

"ALisa reaches across all boundaries and travels through space and time to create an opportunity for women to connect with their roots and their power. She is a shaman of women... the more women, the more diverse, the more powerful the affect she has with her magic of weaving the unbreakable web of women and raising the web to it's highest potential. Dreams become reality with ALisa Starkweather, and the Truth is unveiled." Kristin Pinto-Wilson, NC, MA

"ALisa Starkweather is one of the most transformational leaders, and facilitators I know. Her capacity to facilitate workshops of hundreds of women at a time is astonishing. She creates community within a circle of women. ALisa models a safe-sacred container for women of multicultural diversity. She teaches and believes in global healing for men and woman for a better universe. This global insight helps her to sustain the preservation of our future for our children around the world. I am proud to call ALisa my teacher and my friend." Ann Sousa, Shamanic Practitioner, MA

"ALisa Starkweather is a treasure to women, and therefore, to men. She understands deeply that in order for women to authentically learn their truths and to step into their power they must experience it for themselves. She does not merely talk at a group. She reads the energy and needs of a group and creates an experience where the most difficult, painful, intense parts of women can surface and be revealed. Never does she dodge these challenging parts of the women she mentors. She goes right to the core of what is troublesome, oppressive or painful, and her eyes, her voice, her presence, midwife each woman through it. She uses storytelling to enhance these experiential teachings and she always brings women back to themselves and celebrates them in their wholeness. She is a part of every group--never separate--and her power is her very presence, her gift is herself. Women who have been seen by her know love. She has a way of honoring women that is authentic, wise and caring. As a teacher and facilitator, I learn from her every time I watch her teach." Amy Jo Goddard, Sexuality Educator, Activist and Filmmaker NY

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