That Goddessy Stuff

In the spring of 1989, around my 31st birthday, I had a reading with a world renowned psychic. Nancy Ann Tappe was famous for her theories on the Indigo Children who, she claimed, began arriving in the 1960’s to shift global consciousness. Nancy Ann had a unique gift for seeing subtle variations in auras and interpreting personality traits and propensities based on “Life Colors,” and I wanted her to tell me the color of my life’s work. I wanted career guidance.

What Nancy Ann said was, “Darling, you are a triple blue. Blues are the archetypal females in the spectrum. What this tells me is that you have failed as a woman in past lives. This life, you are here to get it right.”

I was devastated. I wanted words of encouragement for how to cut it in a man’s world, not a triple blue excuse for why I was failing to launch. 

I didn’t like being a woman in this life either. I’d witnessed my paternal grandmother, totally brilliant and fluent in a few languages, become a recluse after her husband died because he had not allowed her to drive. My maternal grandmother had an impressive career in banking but was underpaid and overworked and miserable in her marriage. My beauty queen mom had been widowed and saddled with four daughters before she turned 30. As her eldest girl, at 8 years of age, I was aware that as soon as the requisite grieving period was over, she took off her black dress and actively searched for a replacement husband. She had to. It was the 1960’s, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem hadn’t burnt bras and marched for our rights yet. My mom was socially ostracized for being a single female in the suburbs, never mind that she would’ve left four babies at home to work for menial wages. Remarriage was necessary for survival. 

And even though I had benefitted from the 1970’s Women’s Movement, my experience was not all that liberated. I graduated from NYU with honors but worked as a cocktail waitress in a short, slitted, thigh-flashing skirt to pay my rent, and later when I’d upgraded to a midtown corporate position, I was called upon to serve the all male board members their coffee. I had moved to ‘bright lights, big city’ with a fervor to ‘make it there’ but felt my light dimming at every turn. As a young woman, I felt objectified, patronized, and oppressed. That’s why I went to see Nancy Ann and had been seeing dozens of psychics for years. I wanted them to tell me that I’d ultimately be a success which at the time meant making a ton of money to be powerful on my own.

Well, Nancy Ann Tappe also told me that I would marry a nice man, and I did. He was an artist, was in touch with his feminine side, and respected my need to work. I’d begun to write when we met, had just secured an agent, and was extremely devoted to developing my craft. Even so, as soon as we were married, I lapsed into 1950’s-60’s conventional house-wifey behaviors. I cooked, cleaned, focused on the baby when she came, and doted on the primary bread winner – him. It didn’t matter how much I loved my work, I had internalized the Handmaid’s Tale. I was operating on deep, subconscious impressions of the subjugated women I’d witnessed and the societal norms of my childhood.

In 1989, Nancy Ann Tappe also talked to me about the ‘divine feminine rising’, the breakdown of unchecked masculine structures in the decades to come, and the collective shift toward restoring balance. The ideas, though promising, didn’t seem to solve my personal dilemmas, so I filed them away. 

Then, in 2009, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My daughter was pubescent – her breasts were newly budding while mine were under attack  – and I wanted her to love herself and her body better than I had. So, I joined a Women’s Moon Circle and brought her with me. It’s a long story that I chronicled in detail at that time in a blog called Lump Lessons: A Healing Odyssey. In short, the cancer was a life saving wake-up call. I’ve been loving myself and endeavoring to become a whole, healthy, and joyful woman ever since.

Recently, a female acquaintance referred to The Oracle is You workshop that my friend Lisa Levart and I are about to facilitate as “that Goddessy stuff.” She put her hand up like a stop sign and said, “Ya, no. That’s not me. I’m not into that.”

There was plenty I wanted to say in defense. I wanted to tell her about how healing it has been to acknowledge my struggles and surface my strengths through writing, and how Lisa’s Goddess on Earth oracle deck with its various depictions of raw, real, fierce, magnificent women has empowered me; but I paused. Breathed. Thought, Ya, no. I get it. I’ve been challenged by all I’ve deemed woo-woo and new agey too. It took a life threatening illness to help me break free of the tight corset of my Emily Post upbringing.

Now, I want heart-led, grounded strength. I want to honor my empathy, intuition, and sovereignty. I want to nurture myself, have a balance of giving and receiving, lean into compassion, and collaborate for the well-being of all living things.

I want to embrace the truth of my blueness.