🌹When God Was a Woman

Part 1: Remembering the Forgotten Story of the Sacred Feminine:

The Forgotten Woman

There was a time when God was not a distant Father, but a living Mother.

Before temples rose from stone, before scripture became law, the divine was seen in the curve of the earth, the rhythm of the moon, and the pulse of blood through the body. Life itself was holy.

Women were the keepers of that holiness — not by title or decree, but by embodiment. They were midwives of birth and death, of healing and harvest, of the mysteries that connected the unseen to the seen.

But slowly, the story changed.

The Great Mother — once celebrated as Gaia, Inanna, Isis, and countless others — was divided, diminished, and rewritten. The sacred feminine was replaced with hierarchy, obedience, and shame. God became He. Spirit rose above flesh. The earth became resource, not relation.

And women? We forgot that we were once the mirror of the divine.

The Erasure: How and Why She Was Removed

This forgetting was not accidental. It was strategic.

The erasure of the sacred feminine didn't begin with Christianity — it began much earlier, with the shift from goddess-centered agricultural societies to warrior cultures. As warring tribes spread across Europe and the Near East, sky gods replaced earth goddesses. Hierarchy replaced reciprocity. Dominance replaced balance. But goddess worship persisted, woven into the land and the people.

Then came monotheism — one God to unite empires, to centralize power, to replace the many faces of the divine with one authoritative voice. And Christianity became the vehicle that codified and spread this erasure most effectively in the West.

When the patriarchy rose to power, the sacred feminine became a threat. Why? Because she could not be controlled, measured, or dominated. Her power came from cycles, intuition, embodiment — from mystery itself. And mystery cannot be regulated by law, codified in doctrine, or bent to hierarchical rule.

So she was systematically removed.

Through violence. 500 years of Inquisition. 300 years of witch hunts. Women healers, midwives, herbalists, mystics — those who carried the old knowledge of the body, the earth, and the cycles — were tortured and burned. Millions of women murdered for the crime of remembering.

Through censorship. Mary Magdalene's gospels were removed from the biblical canon — and when they were discovered thousands of years later, they were found half-torn, deliberately destroyed. Why? Because she was the "apostle of the apostles," Christ's primary teacher and companion. Her authority threatened the all-male priesthood being built.

Through distortion. The story of Mother Mary's "Immaculate Conception" was twisted to mean virginity, purity, sexlessness. The distortion served a purpose: to separate the sacred from the sexual, to make women's bodies holy only when controlled by men.

Through rewriting. Eve became the seductress who caused the fall. Lilith was erased entirely, demonized as a succubus for refusing to submit. The goddesses became saints, stripped of their wildness and sovereignty, made safe and silent.

Through the taking of land. Women's relationship with the earth was severed when communal lands — where women gathered herbs, held rituals, birthed and buried — were enclosed, privatized, and controlled by men. The body of the earth became property. And women's bodies followed.

Through medicalization. Women's bodies and emotions were pathologized. Midwifery was criminalized. Childbirth was taken from women's hands and placed in the control of male doctors. Women's intuition was dismissed as irrationality, their grief as hysteria, their knowing as superstition.

And then came the Industrial Revolution — the shift from one God to one form of reason. "Rationality" replaced intuition. Productivity replaced rest. The body became a machine. Nature became a resource. And the wound that began with sky gods and warfare was cemented into the very structure of modern life.

It lives on in new forms today — in capitalism that measures worth by output, in medicine that treats symptoms without honoring cycles, in a world that has forgotten that rest, intuition, and mystery are not luxuries but necessities.

This erasure — the systematic suppression of feminine wisdom, power, and divinity — created a wound we're all still carrying. Women lost their reflection in the divine. Men lost access to their own softness, their grief, their capacity to receive. And we all lost our connection to the rhythms, cycles, and wisdom that once held us.

And here's the hardest truth: those in power could not admit they were wrong. To do so would mean facing shame, losing what they'd built their lives upon, dismantling the entire system that gave them authority. So the lie became doctrine. The violence became justified. And the forgetting became our inheritance.

We know this wound too. The inability to admit we were wrong. The fear of losing what we've built. The doubling down rather than the softening into truth. This is the wound of the patriarchy — and it lives in all of us.

But there were always women who remembered. Mystics, healers, midwives, poets, witches — who kept the knowledge alive even as they were hunted. The lineage was never fully broken. And now, we are here to remember what they preserved.

The Wound of Forgetting: How It Lives in Us Today

This ancient erasure didn't disappear into history. It lives in us — in the exhaustion we can't name, in the guilt that follows rest, in the constant reaching for worthiness we were told we had to earn.

I too know this wound intimately.

There have been seasons in my life when I said yes to everything — when I believed that strength meant never stopping, never resting, never asking for help. I wore my exhaustion like armor, convinced that my worth was measured by how much I could carry.

It took my body breaking down to realize I'd been living someone else's definition of strength.

In my therapy practice, I hear this wound speak every day:

"I knew I shouldn't have married him, but I did it anyway because it was time, and I didn't want to disappoint anyone."

"I fulfilled the five-year plan — the house, the career, the family — and why do I still feel so sad?"

"I'm so exhausted and my back is killing me, but I still went out to shovel the driveway."

"I have to work like a man and mother like a woman, and I don't even remember who I am anymore."

"If I don't give him everything he wants, he'll leave me."

"I can't take a break — everything would fall apart without me."

"I can't tell my husband what I really need because it'll just turn into a fight."

"There's just not enough time for me."

"I can't have a messy, emotional day — I have to keep it together for everyone else."

"I feel judged by my peers who only value data and outcomes, not the heart or the human experience."

"Why doesn't this wedding feel joyful? Why does it feel like it's about everyone but us?"

"Why, when I have everything I was supposed to want, do I still feel this empty?"

"Play nice. Be pretty. Smile. It's like I've been performing my whole life."

"It's my job to look after my family — they're sick, they need me. I can't just walk away."

"I can't pause from my kids, even when I want to. What kind of mother thinks that?"

"It feels like there's no room to even think for myself anymore."

"I'm scared that if I slow down, everything I've built will collapse."

"He's a good man, but where's his heart? I just want to feel him — not the provider, the person."

"I don't know what I want, only what everyone else needs from me."

"Somewhere along the way, I stopped belonging to myself."

Make no mistake — these statements are experienced by both women and men. They reflect the collective wound of the loss of the divine feminine: the ability to rest, to receive, to be present in the heart. This is a human experience, not limited by gender, and it belongs to all of us.

We were told to be good, not whole.
To serve, not to shine.
To prove, not to simply be.

The distortions live in us as much as they live in the stories.

We've internalized a worldview where the divine masculine stands alone at the altar — while the divine feminine kneels unseen beneath it.

When God became a man, womanhood lost its reflection in the sacred mirror.

The Cost of Losing Her

Without that reflection, generations of women have learned to look outward for worth.

We perform, please, and perfect. We carry, often quietly, the exhaustion of trying to be enough in a world that forgot our holiness.

We call it burnout. Anxiety. Disconnection.

So many of us perpetuate the forgetting without even realizing it. We do it every time we:

• Apologize for existing. We say "sorry" before we speak. Sorry for needing something. Sorry for taking up space. Sorry for having an opinion. We apologize for the sound of our voice, for the space our body takes up, for having needs at all.

• Push through exhaustion because rest feels like weakness, like something we haven't earned yet.

• Silence our desires because they feel too wild, too selfish, too inappropriate. We want time alone but feel guilty. We want pleasure but feel ashamed. We want to create, to play, to pursue what lights us up — but we've been taught that our desires are indulgent and that a good woman puts everyone else first.

• Suppress our emotions because they're "too much." We cry in private because tears are weakness. We swallow our anger because rage isn't feminine. We hide our grief because sadness is a burden.

• Measure our worth by productivity. Our value is in our usefulness, our output, our ability to hold it all together.

• Hide our intuition because it doesn't sound "rational" enough. We second-guess the knowing in our gut, dismiss the wisdom in our body.

• Dim our power to stay safe. When we speak truth, we're told we're being difficult. When we set boundaries, we're threatening. When we lead, we're bossy. So we learn to soften our edges, lower our voices, and make ourselves smaller.

• Mother everyone but ourselves. We give endlessly — and we collapse alone at night, wondering why we feel so empty.

This wound shows up in our bodies: insomnia, digestive issues, chronic pain, hormonal imbalances.

It shows up in our relationships: resentment simmering beneath the surface, loneliness even when surrounded by people.

It shows up in the mirror: a woman who looks strong on the outside but feels hollow on the inside.

But beneath all of this is something older — a grief that knows we've been separated from our source.

If God were a woman, we would not have lost touch with the sun and the moon,
the tides of the ocean,
the rhythms and seasons of existence

If God were a woman, the body would not be shameful.
Desire would not be dangerous.
And rest would be a return to the divine, not a departure from it.

A Note to the Guys

This series is not about blaming men or rejecting masculinity. It's about understanding what happened, why we're still living with the consequences, and how we heal it — together.

Patriarchy isn't masculinity — it's an unconscious wounding. A system built on dominance, control, and the suppression of what cannot be controlled: the body, the feminine, the earth, the mystery, the cycles of life and death.

The masculine, when healthy and whole, is beautiful. It is protective, clear, grounded, and steady. It offers structure so the feminine can flow. It provides boundaries so creativity can flourish. It holds conviction so the heart can lead.

Both men and women carry patriarchal wounds. Men have been severed from their softness, their grief, their capacity to receive and be held. Women have been severed from their power, their wildness, their right to take up space.

This work is as much for men as it is for women — for their own remothering, their own softening, their own return to wholeness. Because when the feminine is honored, the masculine also becomes free.

This isn't about opposition. It's about integration. When the masculine is healed and honored alongside the feminine, both rise in balance and power. Wholeness becomes possible for all of us.

Why Now?

We are living in a time of collective awakening — a moment when the old structures are crumbling and the feminine is rising not in opposition, but in restoration.

This is the era of remembering.

The exhaustion so many of us feel isn't personal failure — it's the body saying enough. The anger rising in women isn't pathology — it's power reclaiming its voice. The confusion men feel about their role isn't weakness — it's an invitation to become whole.

This remembering is happening now because it must. Because we cannot build a sustainable future on the bones of what was destroyed. Because our bodies, our relationships, our planet are all crying out for balance.

The divine feminine is rising — and she is calling us all home.

Remembering the Holy Woman Within

And yet, even in this forgetting, something in us remembers.

There's an intuition — subtle but insistent — that calls us back.

It lives in the woman who tends her garden and feels time slow down in her hands. It lives in the one who dances barefoot in her kitchen and feels joy return. It lives in the mother who cooks for those she loves and feels healing move through her touch. It lives in the woman who lights a candle at her desk before she writes, as though summoning something sacred she can't quite name.

These are not small acts. They are acts of resistance — quiet rebellions against a world that tells us we are only valuable when we are useful. They are rituals of remembering.

A Ritual of Return

If you feel the call to remember, begin simply.

Find a quiet moment today and ask, "Where do I already touch the sacred without realizing it?"

Breathe deeply and imagine the pulse of life beneath you — steady, ancient, and familiar.

Whisper aloud:

"I remember you.
I remember me."

Let that be your first prayer.

The Invitation: A Journey Through Six Archetypes

This is the beginning of our remembering — the first step in a journey through the stories of the women who were rewritten and the archetypes that live on within us.

Over the coming weeks, we'll journey through six archetypes of the sacred feminine — women whose stories were rewritten, distorted, or erased to serve patriarchal power. Each one carries a wound we still live with today. And each one holds a key to our wholeness.

We'll meet:

Lilith, the Untamed One — who refused to be controlled and was demonized for her sovereignty

Eve, the Blamed One — who dared to seek knowledge and was punished for her curiosity

Mary, the Silent Vessel — whose body was made holy only through purity and erasure

Mary Magdalene, the Misunderstood Teacher — whose authority was stolen and rewritten as scandal

Mother Earth, the Consumed Body — whose cycles and rhythms we've been taught to ignore

Sophia, Holy Wisdom — who was nearly erased from the story altogether

These are not just ancient myths. They are the stories we live every day — in our bodies, our relationships, our sense of what we're allowed to want, to be, to become.

This is what we're here to learn in this era: how to reclaim what was distorted, remember what was forgotten, and restore the balance that makes us whole.

Because the divine feminine was never truly lost.
She's only been waiting for us to remember her name.

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If this piece stirred something in you, share your reflections or rituals of remembrance in the comments — I’d love to hear what remembering the sacred feminine means to you.