Women are natural-born creators. We come with a womb and all the other apparatus with which to birth babies. But when we arrive at the second half of our lives, that part of our creative potential is no longer available to us.

Part of the process of menopause is to grieve the loss of that creativity. We have lived since puberty for the biological purpose of creating progeny. Now that is ending, or has ended. Of course, not all women have given birth to babies by the time they reach menopause, and their grief process over the death of eggs never used can exacerbate feelings of loss and depression. Luckily for all of us, creating babies is not our only purpose. In the Power Woman stage of life, we are freed from that biology and ready to fulfill our soul’s purpose. To do this, we must create a new life for ourselves, based not in biology or society’s idea of what our lives should be, but on what our souls and that bright new spark of intuition in our brains are pushing us toward.

WOMEN AS CREATORS

In the prehistoric era, human beings thought only women were involved in the birth process. These ancient peoples witnessed human life coming from a mortal woman’s womb, and therefore believed that all of life was born from the womb of the Divine Mother. The creativity of the feminine was revered. Not only did we create babies, but also a strong, hardy species called the human race.

Humanity has created societies, civilizations, science, and art. We have crossed oceans, mountain ranges, and traveled to the moon and beyond. Creativity is the very heart of our nature. And though men have been the ones credited with these monumental creations, it is only because they have – usually with the use of brute force – maintained the stronger voice. Women’s accomplishments are written in a lighter hand, drawn on the walls of one-room schoolhouses, in the halls of hospitals, in the convents of the Middle Ages.

Women have not had a strong voice in the creation of society for more than five thousand years, but we have never been completely silenced. Now, at the beginning of a new millennium, it is time for women to recover our voices – to reconnect to the powerful creativity that led the human race steadily forward over the entire span of human existence. In the ancient cultures, the young women were busy with the babies. The grandmothers were responsible for creating the society in which the children could survive and grow into healthy adults.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER
- What does creativity mean to you?
- What do you do creatively in your daily life?
- Can you think of ten creative things you’ve done in your life. Try. Try harder.

WHO INVENTED FIRE?

Recently, while imagining our prehistoric mothers and grandmothers, it occurred to me that it must have been an older woman who brought fire to the tribe. I remember a drawing in my grammar-school history book of a hairy man rubbing sticks together and making the first fire. But what we know now of the Paleolithic era, suggests a much different scene. Men were the hunters. They left the cave and went on long hunting trips that lasted days and even weeks. The women stayed close to the cave. They foraged for berries and healing herbs, fed the babies, cared for the sick, and prepared the meat when the men returned. They ate the meat raw, because fire had not been discovered.

In this era the main focus was on survival. And the women’s foremost concern was to give birth and keep the babies alive. Imagine yourself as a grandmother in a Paleolithic tribe. You have learned a great deal about herbal remedies and food preparation. Over your long life, perhaps forty years, you have prayed to the Great Mother and have become adept at reading the signs she gives you.

It is a bitter cold day. Two of the babies are struggling to stay alive. You are not tied down to the cave by nursing and mothering duties, so you go out to gather herbs, hoping to find a remedy for the babies’ illness. A storm comes up. Lighting strikes a tree very close to you and causes it to burst into flame. You have seen this happen in the past, but never before have you been so close to the fire. It frightens you, but before you run, you realize that the fire is warm. You think of the cold, sick babies. It occurs to you that babies die more often in the cold part of the year than in the summer. You put two and two together. This warm fire might help the babies live. You’re afraid of the fire, but you are also a woman. You know how important it is to keep the children alive. So, driven by your instincts for the survival of your brood, you pick up a piece of dry wood and stick it into the fire. It lights. Amazed and scared, you hurry back to the cave with this possible cure for the children. You make a pile of sticks and create a bigger fire. The sick children huddle around the fire. They live through the night.

There seems little doubt that older women, the grandmothers, made most of the major discoveries of the pre-historic era. We are the nurturers and healers of an entire species. Men were busy hunting. They had no time for anything else. Naturally, they invented and developed hunting weapons, but other innovations, such as fire, pottery, cooking, basketry, weaving, farming, healing, all came under the auspices of the women. This is our heritage. This is the deep memory we women must reconnect with, so that we can begin to remember just how creative and powerful we are.

Barbara Wilder is an internationally acclaimed author, teacher, and healer. She is the author of Embracing Your Power Woman: 11 Steps to Coming of Age in Mid-Life and Money is Love: Reconnecting to the Sacred Origins of Money. A former actress, screenwriter, and film production executive, Wilder studied light-energy healing and growth techniques in The School of Actualism, a Hermetic Mystery school based on Agni Yoga & the works of Alice Bailey & Rudolf Steiner. She currently lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she writes, teaches, and maintains her practice as an transformational therapist and light energy healer. For more information on Barbara and her work, please visit her website www.BarbaraWilder.com.

Copyright © 2006 by Barbara Wilder