Jean Shinoda Bolen
(1936-)

American Psychiatrist, Writer, Feminist,
Peace & Justice Activist

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QUOTES

"I believe that the thought that women together can change the world is emerging into the minds and hearts of many of us, and that the vessel for personal and planetary evolution is the circle with a spiritual center."

When you recover or discover something that nourishes your soul and brings joy, care enough about yourself to make room for it in your life

To be a soulful person means to go against all the pervasive, prove-yourself values of our culture and instead treasure what is unique and internal and valuable in yourself and your own personal evolution.

We need to meditate on what is peaceful. Once we have 'filled up' in this way, we once again have an abundance of love to send out into the world.

Before you can do something that you've never done, you have to be able to imagine it is possible.

"I think of affirmations and visualizations as tapping into the power of the imagination, which is a generator and transformer, a force that precedes and shapes who we become, and what we create and achieve. Whenever we attempt something new or difficult, we have to be able to imagine it before it becomes possible. It's the combination of inspiration and perspiration that brings about tangible results."

Listening, witnessing, role modeling, reacting, deepening, mirroring, laughing, crying, grieving, drawing upon experience, and sharing the wisdom of experience, women in circles support each other and discover themselves, through talk. Circles of women supporting each other, healing circles, wisdom circles, soul sister circles, circles of wisewomen, of clan mothers, of grandmothers. Circles of crones, circles of pre-crones, lifetime circles and ad hoc circles, even circles of women in cyberspace and the business place, circles are forming everywhere.

Gloria Steinem has often noted that women tend to be more conservative when young, and become rebellious and radical as they grow older, while it's the opposite for men. Women become fiercely compassionate crones when they are outraged at the suffering caused as much by indifference by those in authority as by the perpetrators. Compassion and anger come together for terrorized, abused, helpless, and neglected people, whose plight is considered of little importance because they have no power or value in a world where greed and power over others rather than concern for others is the ruling principle. Crones are not naïve or in denial about reality. When something in particular is an outrage, and doing something about it is a choice, a moment of truth occurs in which activists are born. The suffering of others or the feeling of Enough is enough! radicalizes older women.

 

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