A Woman's Worth

Somehow I missed the boat back in 1993 when Marianne Williamson published ‘A Woman’s Worth’. I heard about this author, this book, but just didn’t take the time to read it. I was delighted to find it waiting for me on the shelf at the used book store when I did a big book stock up last week (unbenownst to me that it was already sitting on my shelf from the previous trip).

It was just the right book for me to read right now – ironic how that thing called ‘timing’ happens. I had just returned from an annual 4 day retreat with my goddess girlfriends and was reveling in the glory of my feminine spirit.

I was thrilled to find Marianne Williamson really telling it like it is about what it means to be a woman in this world and how it is that we got here. From the pre-Christian days when the feminine and the masculine were equally acknowledged and shared power, to our current cultural dilemmas, Williamson explores where our feminine spirit came from, how it serves us, where it got subjugated along the way, and what we need to do to reclaim it.

She says, “This is a book about a woman’s inner life. Here, we are our real selves, while in the outer world we are impostors. We’re not sure why we’re posing, except we have no clue how not to. We have forgotten the part we came here to play. We have lost the key to our own house. We’re hanging out outside the door. Today, the reason we haven’t found our grail, the key to who we are as women, is because we look for it in worlds of false power. Neither men nor work can restore our lost scepter. We can’t look to the world to restore our worth; we’re here to restore our worth to the world.”

This is not about gender, it is about valuing the feminine aspects of the world: connection, compassion, stillness, being, weaving, creating, nurturing….. Our current western culture, especially in America, overvalues the doing and producing nature of humans and we as women feel pushed to do, do, do, which flings us farther and farther away from our true spiritual nature of embracing our feminine selves.

What if our world valued caretaking and nurturing just as much as it valued product production? What if women became comfortable with her feminine nature and stepped to power using her full self? That’s what we want and we can make that happen by starting to know and claim our feminine spirit.

Do you know who you are? Do you feel that at the end of the day if you haven’t crossed 10 things off your list you are worthless? Do you listen to your intuition and inner wisdom and take the time for yourself that you crave?

Be, do, have. That is the natural order of things. We be, then we do, then we have. Not just do. Not just have. But be – that is our feminine.

I encourage you to get this book and savor the words within. If you were one up on me and read it years ago, it’s time to remind your feminine spirit that you haven’t forgotten her. As Marianne Williamson asks, ‘What would it take for us to remember our worth?’