I’m back from LA and Sister Giant, the conference I attended put on by Marianne Williamson.

It was a fascinating trip, full of surprises and little gifts from the Universe, but it was not exactly what I had expected. However, I knew I had been pulled there for a reason in the midst of my winter blahs, so I went along for the ride to find out why.

I had not ever attended any of Marianne Williamson’s programs before and didn’t know exactly what to expect. I have to say that I am very impressed by and in awe of her speaking abilities. She never seems to be searching for a phrase or grasping to find a word in her mental rolodex like most of the women in her/my age group. The information coming through her seems to be constant. In addition to her speaking abilities, I also got a sense that she is basically very kind and very sincere.

She’s small in stature, a wisp of a thing, until she gets on the stage, where she takes on and exudes a powerful charisma. And she definitely enjoys displaying her femininity as made obvious by her 4 inch high spiked heels with pointed toes. I have to say that my Second Wave feminist self stood up and was somewhat taken aback, as she swept down the isle to the stage on that first night. But I let out a sigh of relief after I heard her talk and felt assured that she is definitely a feminist as well as a humanitarian. Guess she's part of what’s called the Third Wave of feminism.

“OK,” I told myself, “She can wear her spiked, pointy toe heels if she wants to if I can stick to my flat bottom shoes.” I made peace with the heels thing, and settled in for the rest of the workshop.

Marianne explained to the group that the purpose of this group was to educate women to their history. “If you don’t know where you came from, you can’t know where you are going,” she said.

There was another purpose to the calling together of these people as well, which was to help establish a field, a tipping point, consisting of women who realize and accept their power, their ability to make things happen, and understand that any one of us can make a difference in the world and can effect change. It isn’t necessary to get a majority of people to embrace the change. The tipping point to make a cultural shift is 11%. So if 11% of women understand and embrace their power, the shift will take place!

On Friday with a group of five hundred similarly minded women, I watched the movie The Burning Times, a documentary made in 1990 about the witch hunts. Marianne was quick to note that the film incorrectly listed the number of witch burnings as nine million, which was way too high. It has been estimated that the number of deaths is actually between 100,000 and 900,000 women—healers, herbalists, and midwives. This was the medieval church taking away any last vestiges of power women had left over from the times of the matriarchy and Goddess cults. And it worked. The church usurped the Goddess and made her into the Virgin Mary—cut off from her sexuality—“chaste” and “pure” and untouched by a man. Don’t be sexual if you want to be a good woman the daughters were taught. What a sick role model for women! For their survival and their protection it became necessary for mothers to teach their daughters to be silent and to hide their intuition and their skills as healers. This then has become a cellular memory for us, this fear of condemnation, hideous torture, and death. And hiding our power has become second nature.

But I digress...

After the movie, we broke up in pods of five to discuss our reactions. I had seen the movie before and I was tired and fighting off a cold, not helped at all by long air travel. A woman seated next to me in that group said something to the effect that she would like to be Marianne Williamson, or at least do what she does. I began to be aware of my fatigue, thinking, I don’t want to do what she does. I just want to go to bed. It hit me then in an ah-ha kind of way that although I respect Marianne and her work, I do NOT want to be her. I want to be who I am—exactly who I am. Then I felt a desire to be in my heart and appreciate who I am arise in my consciousness. I got the sense of the need to be strongly anchored in my fourth (heart) chakra. I began to get a deeper sense of an issue of self love that I have been working on for years. This message came through in different ways all through the weekend. It was then that I began to understand perhaps why I was actually at the workshop and in the City of Angels.

In the middle of that first night as I lay in bed in my hotel room, drifting between being awake and asleep, I had a profound experience. I saw myself go towards two doors. The first one was labeled: “Why am I here?” The second one, “What is my purpose in this life?”

The answer to door Number One came quickly. “To love and be loved” were the words I heard. The second answer came just as swiftly-- “To open up to my love for myself.” I felt more than heard the words. Next a string of impressions, feelings, and words danced through my mind and I saw for myself that I am actually living my perfect life. I have created exactly what I want and exactly what I need at this moment in time. My purpose then is to open up to my heart and my life totally and love it without reserve. I am to give myself that gift. I deserve good things and I don’t have to feel guilty for having them or beat myself up for not having achieved “more” in my life. I don’t need to do or be anything or anyone else. Ironically, I realized, it is only when I have totally accepted this state of beingness that I can expand and truly be more, coming from a very solid and powerful foundation of Love. I don’t have to be anything else, yet I can be anything I want!

The next morning, Saturday, we watched the movie, The Iron Jawed Angels, an HBO special that was put out a few years ago. This was followed by a lively question and answer period. Marianne had invited a professor of women’s history from UCLA, Ellen Dubois, to give us an historical perspective of the times and the movie. She was pleased to tell us that for a Hollywood movie, it was very accurate except for a few Hollywood touches like adding Patrick Dempsey as a love interest for Alice Paul. This she insisted did not happen.

After lunch we viewed another movie, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, about the war in Liberia. It was a powerful telling of how the Christian and Muslim women joined forces to oust the cruel dictator, Charles Taylor. How empowering and inspirational to see women with relatively no money or political power rise up and effect change!

As powerful as seeing these movies in a room full of diverse, animated, intelligent, and politically interested women, I found myself knowing more and more that the lesson I was taking back home with me was not about political activism but about my own self love. To love my life, who I am, and what I have created, to be anchored in that true deep love for myself, was the lesson shouting at me. And this time, finally, finally, I could feel it sinking in, very deeply. I do love my life, my home, my husband, my children, my dog, my town, my state, my country, and my planet. To be anchored in that unconditional love is what keeps coming back to me. “Anchored” is the key word. From that stability I can reach out and explore always knowing that I can safely find my way back home to love, simply by following the line to the solidness of the heart. I know now that if I come from my heart, anything, absolutely anything is possible.


I have to say that I skipped out on Sunday. It was LA and it was sunny and I had to get to the beach. So thanks to a friend I made there, I got a ride over to Venice Beach and spent the rest of the day at the ocean. At one point I sat on a rock and let the ocean just pour into my heart. I was filled to overflowing with the intensity of the waves—the sound of their roar, the smell of the surf, and the feel of the sun. I knew at that moment that I had locked into my heart and was taking back with me to my home the powerful and healing ocean energy.

As I write this today, the temperature has reached fifty degrees and it is sunny! The crocuses have begun to sprout! I feel it now deep in my soul—no matter what the surface looks like, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, and hurricanes, the challenging economy, that “All is well!” And I am Home.