Lucy H. Pearce > Quotes

“Who is She? She is your power, your Feminine source. Big Mama. The Goddess. The Great Mystery. The web-weaver. The life force. The first time, the twentieth time you may not recognize her. Or pretend not to hear. As she fills your body with ripples of terror and delight.

But when she calls you will know you’ve been called. Then it is up to you to decide if you will answer.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“For some she came in a dream. For others in words as clear as a bell: it is time, I am here. She may come in a whisper so loud she can deafen you or a shout so quiet you strain to hear. She may appear in the waves or the face of the moon, in a red goddess or a crow.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“At her first bleeding a woman meets her power.
During her bleeding years she practices it.
At menopause she becomes it.
Traditional Native American saying”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Moon Time: Harness the Ever-Changing Energy of Your Menstrual Cycle

“Together we are learning to move from raw emotion and frozen muscles into a flow which emerges deep from within. We are learning to dance our prayers, bleed our words onto the page, laugh our images onto canvas, build our dreams in the world – to transmute and transmit the energy of the Feminine through our bodies and out into the world.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“The Dalai Lama says that the world will be saved by Western women. Not any women, perhaps not all women, but Burning Women. Women who have stepped out of silence and into the fullness of their power. Angry women who love the world and her creatures too much to let it be destroyed so thoughtlessly for a moment longer.

Burning Woman is the heart and soul of revolution – inner and outer. She burns for change, she dances in the fire of the old, all the while visioning and weaving the new.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“We dare not talk of the darkness for fear it will infect us.
We dare not talk of the fire, for fear it will destroy us.
And so we live in the half-light,
Like our mothers before us.

Come to the fire,
Feel it warm your skin.
Come to the fire,
Feel it burn in your belly,
Shine out through your eyes.
Come dance in the fire,
Let it fuel your prayers.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“These are burning times. And they call for Burning Women. Women embodied in their passion. Woman feeling in their bodies. Creative women. Courageous women. Women who have learned to run on a different power source to the world which is falling into flames around her. She has already disentangled herself from the wreckage of the patriarchal culture, so she will not be dazed, confused and disorientated by the systemic changes happening around her. Centred within herself, receptive to the Earth beyond her, she knows how to cultivate from the ashes, she knows how to find the embers to fuel the new fire.

Burning Women arise.
Our time is now.
Our time has come.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“Pain is a portal to transformation,
It does not knock politely.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Medicine Woman: Reclaiming the Soul of Healing

“Once we start to work with Feminine power we begin to see that it is not our minds that are in control of this power – it ebbs and flows with the movements of the planets, the procession of the seasons, the moons and tides, our own internal cycles of menstruality, anniversaries, the events around us. All these and more impact our experience and expressions of power. We learn to become aware of these various patterns and their impact on us and work more consciously with rather than against or in spite of them. We learn that they are all part of the same process. We open towards the energy, rather than shut down to it. We learn to trust the flow.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“We hardly dare trust that this is a process of transformation – that out of the ashes will rise the phoenix of humanity.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“May yours be the sparkle of light on the ocean,
The whisper of foam on the sea,
The warm sand guiding your feet safely home,
A pebble in your pocket from me.

Some sea glass, a starfish, some driftwood, a whelk,
Treasures washed up on the shore.
A flower, a feather, an urchin, a pearl,
Keep your eyes open for more.

May you know yourself held in the palm of Her hand,
Blessed by the waves wild and free,
Blown by the wind, anointed with salt,
Beloved of She of the Sea.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, She of the Sea

“It may be the first day of your life, the prime of youth or several decades in, when Medicine Woman calls you. Your name on her list. Her new initiate. She crept in whilst you were sleeping, when you over-exerted, when you kissed him, or ate that, or lived there or pushed too hard just one time too many. She crept in and curled up in your cells, your heart, waiting to meet you. Longing to know you. Longing for you to know her, at last.
And what feels like the end is in fact a beginning, of a new road, an unknown path of pain and healing. She will show you how to slow down, she will run her fingers roughly through your life and help you sort the busyness from what matters, she will show you how to find support… and who you really are, beyond your roles and expectations… and even more beyond the System the world has forced you into. She transports you into the timelessness of big pains and tiny joys. Initiates you into your strength. Into your love. Into your courage. Into a world beyond your control.
She has sent me an invitation. I see yours too, tucked in your bag, amongst all the receipts and bills, the pens and detritus of life. Take it out.
It is time.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Medicine Woman: Reclaiming the Soul of Healing

“Standing in the ring of fire, the eye of the storm, the vortex of pain and pressure is simultaneously the most vulnerable and most powerful place to be. Here we embody paradox. We stand our ground and surrender completely. Here we know the full power of the Feminine.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“The deep Feminine, the mystery of consciousness, She who is life, is longing for our transformation as much as we are. She holds back, allowing us free reign to choose, nudging us occasionally with synchronicities, illness, births and deaths… But when we make space for Her, she rushes into all the gaps, engulfing us with her desire for life and expression. This is what She longs for, this is what we are for: experiencing the Feminine through ourselves. We simply need to slow down, and find where to put our conscious attention. And it is this, this willingness to look again, this willingness to put consciousness onto our places of unconscious, to express what we have always avoided, which starts the process of unblocking, so that She may flow through.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“Breaking our silence is powerful. Whether it comes as a whisper or a squeak at first, allow that sense of spaciousness, of opening, allow yourself to trust the bottomlessness, and lean into the dark roar which will light up every cell.

Though it may start softly, we build in confidence and skills, we realise we do not need to wait for permission before we open our mouths. We do not need to wait for others to make space for us, we can take it. We do not need to read from others’ scripts or style ourselves in weak comparison. We do not need to look to another’s authority because we have our own. Down in our cores. We have waited so long for permission to know that it was our time, our turn on stage. That time is now. Our voices are being heard into being. They are needed.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“We often fear that the Revolution needed is too big for what we can give.
Too much change is required inside, outside.
And we are too small.
But all that is required is that you step into the truth of your life.
And speak it, write it, paint it, dance it.
That you shine your light on your truth, for the world to see.
And as hundreds, then thousands, then millions do this – each sparking the courage of yet more –
Suddenly we have a world alight with truth.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“Some of us fall through the unseen cracks in the world of health on a bright summer’s day through a run-in with machine or microbe, like Alice down the rabbit hole. Some of us were born this way. And some find out that our genes have hidden within them a ticking time bomb. Waiting. Silently.
However we got here, we are now inhabitants of the state of sickness. Our papers for the world of health have been rescinded without notice. Our body-world has been colonised by patriarchs, and we, the natives, should know our place: small folded patient, compliant, silent, not defiant.
They seem to believe that our bodies are just an errant version of theirs. That our souls are not woman-shaped on the inside. That it’s not our place to take our space and insist on our inner difference.
Their gospel is scribbled down on prescription pads in spider scrawl. They are not to be questioned, especially not with our own heresy.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Medicine Woman: Reclaiming the Soul of Healing

“We are weaving her-story into reality.
Unweaving the limiting his-stories.
Creating our-story.
Reaching beyond religion and patriarchy and capitalism and so-called democracy.
Into new ways of being and seeing.
We are the bridge between worlds
We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“Burning Woman is a powerful image. A role model. A metaphor. A warning. A source of power. She is Feminine power incarnate.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“Often we can get caught in our own struggles, our own small stories, that we forget our place in the larger story arc – the way that our actions, our choices, our achievements can and will blaze trails for that who come after us, so that they do not have to spend their time and energy re-fighting the same battles.

For sure we walk a spiral path, but for generations of women the spirals were so tightly packed that it seemed they were going round in circles – let us blaze trails so that the path we walk takes in wider and wider sweeps of human experience.

Trail blazing is what we do when we find ourselves in the wilderness, with no path to guide us but our own intuitive understanding of nature and our destination. At times we must walk through the night, guided only by the stars. We know when to sit and rest, to shelter from storms, when to gather water, and what on the trail will sustain us and what will do us harm. We are courageous and cautious in equal measure, but we are driven forward, not only by our own desire to reach our destination, but also by the desire to leave a viable way for others who follow.

Trail blazing is an art-form. It is how we find paths through what before was wilderness. We push aside braches, or cut them back, we tramp down nettles and long grasses, ford rivers and streams, through the inner and outer landscapes.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“Those in the System, would like us to share their belief that all the changes [we are witnessing] are not connected: they are simply anomalies, isolated symptoms to be treated or preferably ignored, before the all-powerful Western capitalist patriarchal model goes on to ever greater heights and grander ejaculations. Most are numb to it, caught in fear, denial or resistance.

But we, Burning Woman, know this process intimately. Amongst Burning Women and Men, there is a fierce, quiet knowing that these are both the death pangs of the old, and the birthing pangs of the new.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“We are the granddaughters of the witches they were never able to burn. If history teaches us that a ‘witch’ is nothing more than a woman who doesn’t know her place, then damn straight, I consider myself a witch. Ruby Hamad When”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“Our bodies speak, if you would only listen. They speak another language: the mother tongue. It’s half the puzzle, the missing pieces you have been searching for, the how and why behind the symptoms you fixate on, the whole behind the healing, which cannot be found at the bottom of a bottle of pills.
But you do not speak our language. My sick sisterhood, whose bodies have been felled by mysterious illnesses, bearing the arcane names of men long dead, to signify their suffering with no cure, no hope. The mothers who long for answers to the questions that their bodies are living, for soul-utions to the protest against this cold, hard world.
Into their dry hungry mouths are dropped pills not answers. Prescriptions and descriptions of symptoms – not cures or laws to halt the toxic corporate world that is allowed to carry on felling us like trees in the Amazon…
Each woman is an Amazon. But she does not know it. Instead she is treated. Separately. Her pile of notes, her bills, growing higher. Each one believes the sickness is hers alone. Each is sent home, ignored, tolerated.
Alone. In the darkness.
Until one day Medicine Woman arises within her.
And there in the centre of her pain she finds her outrage, her strength, her persistence as she searches for answers. She finds the will to die to this world and the right to live a different life where she is honoured for the value of her soul, not the sweat of her brow.
She begins to understand the messages her body is sending…
Things are not right. In here… out there.
She begins to remember there is magic in her: the power to heal, the power to transform.
Medicine Woman rises.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Medicine Woman: Reclaiming the Soul of Healing

“Somewhere I lost myself.
I lost the beat of my heart as my own drum.
I have a sense that it was the same time I lost Medicine Woman.
One day my soul slipped out of my body.
Or maybe it was pulled too hard. Or shocked away. I don’t know.
But I know that I lost Her.
And have been sick ever since.
An orphaned child
In a world that does not feel like home.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Medicine Woman: Reclaiming the Soul of Healing

“If we are to be women in power, then it must be power on very different terms. we have to find a new source of energy. New structures of power. Ones that don’t deplete us or our environment. We need to run our lives on sustainable energy.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“The Sick Woman begins to see that life is wilder, more chaotic, harsher and more loving, paradoxical, and downright strange than she was ever taught. She discovers for herself the power of moon and the tides, the shifting of the stars and the seasons, the haze of pollen and shift in air pressure and how they impact her dreams, her moods, her body processes. She learns that she is not an independent automaton but a wild being woven of life and death, a chaos of magic, not a machine of logic. She learns that the outer impacts the inner in myriad ways. And vice versa. She learns that she is simultaneously weaker and yet more powerful than she ever knew. She is dangerous with this knowledge which does not appear in the medical books and bibles except as anomalies. She’s singing from the wrong hymn sheet and messing up the patina of perfection that the patriarchy is aiming for. In a display of a million marching soldiers with polished boots, gleaming medals and straight legs, there is the sick woman, bare breasted, hair loose, scars showing, shameless, dancing to her own tune.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Medicine Woman: Reclaiming the Soul of Healing

“In my work with hundreds of women over the past few years a theme has emerged: women’s desperate, unquenchable desire to step into their power, countered by the fear of what will happen if they do. The longing to express the riches inside them, wrestling with the deep terror of being burned by the judgement, hatred or rejection of strangers or loved ones if they do.

This fear of being burned is an oddly female one. It is a fear which keeps us small and scared… but seemingly safe. From the outside this can seem like an overreaction. Both the need, and the fear. But women, it seems, have an innate knowing of what it means to burn… and be burned. They know the dangers in their bones. And it makes them wary.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Burning Woman

“This is the crux of being a Creative Mother. It is more than how many jumpers you have knitted, or having an exhibition in a fancy gallery, or a bookshelf of your own books. It is about the act of living authentically whilst honoring your mother self and creative self. About saying yes to life, every part of your life, and finding how to weave them all together.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Rainbow Way, The

“Miracles start to happen when you put as much energy into your dreams as you do into your fears. Richard Wilkins”
― Lucy H. Pearce, The Rainbow Way: Cultivating Creativity in the Midst of Motherhood

“Creativity takes courage. Not just once, but consistently. Without courage we cannot be creative. Without feeling fear at some point we will not reach our creative potential. From first putting paint on paper through to selling our work on a worldwide stage there is plenty to be scared of. But this is where creativity lives – on the edge of our comfort zones.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Rainbow Way, The