Sisters Inviting Sisters

A Story about WOMEN ON THE MOVE 

Organized by Jane Malileka with Leonida, Faith, Barbara, Shauwn, Mileta and myself. 

Technology failed me despite Jane hosting the meeting while being in touch with me and trying to get me in. We talked after and I told her that I was thinking of sending out to the community what I planned to say, to celebrate together that these are the events we are now able to make happen, and these are the connections that are deepening. 

This is what I would have said: It is always a gift to have this chance to be together in a room, as women having our voices heard, brought together to meet, share our stories and find ways to stay connected with each other. 

I am 73 now, with more than a half century being part of building this women’s movement, and am continually amazed that we are able to be in touch with each other, to be in discussion together, and to be speaking out together so strongly now, as women. We have never before had this. It is women’s voices and perspective that are so needed. I believe that it is because we are so aware of and involved in creating this needed shift, that we are designated as trouble, and continue face this ongoing move to try to silence us. 

This meeting was a gift from Jane. I had looked forward to being there in that online room she created for us, and I celebrate that World Pulse has made it possible for us to find each other. It is always a celebration to be able to speak out together as sisters, making sure that what we have been through and what we know together is understood. When we're very lucky we have the chance to meet in events like these. It still amazes me that now we can meet and work together even more closely, and globally. My reason for living is to see the end of all violence toward women and girls, and the rise in leadership of women in our communities and as a world council to break through the layers and centuries of broken promises and ever escalating violence specifically and still globally aimed at women and girls.

I am told I was born yelling. This has always made sense to me as I have long felt my reason for living is to work for an end to all violence, not ever letting go of the necessity that we begin by ending all violence against women and girls. I became a feminist before I knew the word, before becoming aware that women were controlled in so many ways. I was aware that so much violence toward women was happening, and that there were and still are many written and unwritten rules that men were the boss. I was aware that women had been denied the vote in the past in my country. It was the 1960’s before Indigenous or Asian women could vote in Canada. Paid jobs were hard to find for women. My mother was alone in our community in breaking the rules by insisting that housework was to be divided among my 5 brothers and me. She spoke out about being unable to get medical help without my father’s signature. She almost died being forced by doctors to carry a dead baby. Women were raped or seduced, then scorned for being pregnant. One third of women in Canada in the 1960’s were single mothers. Women before me have written and spoken out about all the needed changes to bring freedom, safety and respect to every woman and girl. We gathered all the information we could by holding meetings. Women older than me who inspired and informed me were challenging governments on inaction, and documenting needed change. The UN adopted wording written by women on the equality of women and men, the Declaration of Human Rights, signed the month before I was born. Statistics of the high levels of poverty of women, those who had fled violent marriages, those unable to escape, doors locked to most paid jobs, women before me and in my generation helped push through many of those barriers. 

Women my age, women I am still in touch with, still working alongside each other have concentrated on and continue to concentrate on creating as much safe space as possible, safe houses and healing for women and girls as the violence continues and escalates. We pushed through locked doors to jobs previously open only to men. Throughout our world, in this disgusting and cruel economic system, denying women money is key. 

We are kept down because we know a different system is possible and urgent, and because this is what we are working for. It is not by mistake that the work that women have done is continually erased. Inventions stolen, stories of accomplishments hidden, rewritten. We are punished for speaking about it, but many of us know that we must continue, that this is our very reason for living. Ending all forms of violence against women and girls everywhere, as the first step toward an end to all violence, everywhere. Raising women’s voices for an end to all injustices. 

In the 1970’s across North America we opened small women’s centres and gathered statistics on the amount of violence against women to embarrass the governments into funding women’s shelters and rape crisis centres, which because of the work of many women were being created in many countries. We learned how to publish newsletters, and brilliant books inspired us. We were called “too radical” but let it run off our backs because we could see that radical change was necessary. We learned how to organize events, and learned and continue to learn from each other what is needed by listening to each other’s stories. Inspired by women south of us in the US and inspired by women we met on travels or found through women’s newspapers, we kept growing. 

I feel such joy that we are global now, and that I can be in touch with women everywhere who also believe in change, and that we can be working together. A number of women have been gathering information for years on the nature of patriarchy and showing us evidence of the existence of matriarchies in the past and into the present day. Matriarchal councils of women that form peaceful societies for everyone. Such a contrast to the lack of information we were given as we grew up. I remember asking when I was in high school in the 1960’s why there were no books written by women. I was told that it is because no woman has ever written anything worthwhile. I have since found those books that were kept from us. The hiding of women’s stories and accomplishments is still happening today, but together we are creating a global library of our own herstory. This is why I love to be an Encourager on World Pulse. Finding the news about what we are experiencing, that rarely gets reported in the larger world. 

For a long time I have been committed to this women's movement, committed to creating freedom and respect for all women, for the end to any so called traditions that keep women enslaved or treat us badly in any way. Committed to helping women and girls heal. When we begin to learn that there have been matriarchal cultures throughout time in which women were respected leaders, we realize what lies we have been told, and how much the history books have intentionally left out. So much of what women have written, our work to heal this world and create peace, continues to be hidden or ridiculed. This is what is so powerful and wonderful for me in finding World Pulse. 

I found World Pulse because a woman who knew me well gave me the magazine for my birthday, and soon a link to its newly built website. I learned how to be on a computer to be on World Pulse and now can celebrate all of the World Pulse sisters, and all of our members working for peace and a world in which no one suffers. I celebrate all the stories of women mentoring other women and girls, rewriting so called tradition to make sure that every woman and girl is living her life freely and without violence. 

The stories on World Pulse are the stories women have unconsciously dreamed of knowing. To all be in touch with each other, and to be working together. Learning from each other what needs to change. It is women’s voices that have been silenced throughout time and continue to be punished. We know that all of our lives can be different. I believe that it is because we can imagine and are working toward a world without violence of any kind, a world community in which there is no poverty, and in which we are taking care of our planet, and that these goals are exactly why we are under so much attack. 

We shake the patriarchy. A world without poverty. A world being carefully taken care of. A world in which a money system does not keep women from having money. No system that forces a sister to lose everything if her husband dies first. A world that does not demand free labour from women in a government system that keeps women in poverty, and which continues to fail at ending all forms of violence toward women and girls, knowing full well that our intention is that there be no more violence at all, toward anyone. Knowing full well that our intent as women is that no one goes hungry, with clean water, medical care, a home, that no one is forbidden to go to school, forced into marriage, exposed to chemicals, or has their land stolen and ruined with pipelines and chemical spills. That we as women are working for a world with no violence toward anyone, nor to our Earth and that these are the reasons we are under such attack. 

So to have been given the chance to be with with sisters today, to be able to hear about your lives and your ideas of what we can do from here on together, to me is an extraordinary gift. Sad that I could not be there, but so grateful knowing we have our lives to make these meetings happen. When we speak out, we get strong. When we know each others’ stories, we make sure we create change that heals all of it. 

So many of us are working continually in our communities and strengthening our connections with each other globally to create this peaceful world. There is no excuse for this economy that we have been forced to live in, nor for the destruction of our planet, nor for the ways we as women are continually mistreated and silenced while we face even more wars and the broken promises from a half century ago that violence against women and girls would end. Instead, so many people with no food, no schools, no medical care, ongoing and escalating violence, mountains of garbage being dumped, so many people and whole species of animals dying, world leaders showing up in photographs of gluttony, billionaires in control as they continue to maintain this corrupt system, while destroying our beloved Earth. 

Through all of this, there is such joy in having the opportunity, the good fortune of being able to make connections with and work alongside so many who have the same goal: a world with no poverty, no violence, a world in which women are respected, our planet respected. From my deepest self I believe that it is what is in our hearts as women that needs to be lifted now, our leadership respected for the sake of all. This is why I am always grateful to be able to raise our voices together, and grateful too that I at least almost got to be there in the meeting with you sisters. 

Deep Love