Loba’s writing has affected women from all over the world, feeding their creativity and growth. An expanding sample of articles follow, many of which appeared first in publications such as SageWoman, Beltane Papers, Awareness, Aquarius Journal, New Connexions and Sentient Times.
 

“I cried as I read Loba's article in SageWoman and I realized I had something to give... something to say about things. We must find the joy in life and make life a joy! Sisters, we can do this!”
-Stephanie, San Jose, CA

“Your writing conveys passion, a wildness of instinctual truth.”
-Lisa Sarasohn, Author of The Belly Book, Asheville, NC

“You remind me so much of myself and my hopes and dreams for the sisters... for the earth... for the future. You give me hope for us all. Hugs and more hugs to you!”
-Shekhinah Mountainwater, Author of the feminist classic Ariadne’s Thread

There's a reason they call it "grounding." It's right there, in the soil we walk on, the dirt, the ground. It's something we do with our physical and energetic bodies, not with our minds. It's founded in the visceral experience of our connection to the sacred ground at our feet, beneath our floors, under our bouncy bottoms! It's deeply realizing that no matter where we go, we are attached through an energetic and emotional umbilical to the Mother Earth. When we're truly grounded, the feeling of certainty and faith in our truths comes from knowing we're a part of an all-knowing whole, and trusting that our instincts and intuition reflect the voice of Gaia and the will of Spirit.

People often say "ground yourself," when what they really mean is "calm down." But while a grounded person is calm in their purpose and center, they can be as fiery and active as a volcano. We're grounded anytime we're fully being our authentic selves, in touch with sacred purpose through feelings rather than thoughts. This is usually easier for us women than for men, partly because by embodying and valuing our emotions we keep an "empathic channel" open. 

The most grounding activities involve a hushing of the mind, and a heightening of sensation. Going for walks in nature. Gardening. Gathering and preparing wild foods. Exchanging back rubs. Soaking in hot tubs. Feeling the wind and sun on your skin, and listening to the sound of quaking aspen leaves or a gurgling river. We can trust our work, trust that we'll do the right thing no matter how hard or how many distractions, when we've just returned from a outdoor vacation. We're a little clearer headed for decisions whenever we've first grounded by stepping out under a pine in front of the school or office.

I've spent the last ten years falling ever more deeply in love with my canyon home, and with a self I never knew existed! From beneath the masks I once wore was revealed a woman, as needy and vulnerable as giving and strong. A nurturing woman, feminine woman, a woman who loves her body and all its "imperfections." A woman who knows her home inside and out, running barefoot through river bottoms full of stickers and sharp rocks, knows where the plants grow, and which she can eat and which she can make tea with. A woman who knows her way, and has led other women barefoot up steep hills in the dark with no moon, no flashlights, bending close to the ground to feel which way the trail goes.... is it over there? (No, feel the ground with your toes, it's here!) Yes, a grounded woman, rooted to canyon soil, fed by its river, singing where I am heard by no judgmental ears. Singing to only my sister elk and graceful heron, bats and bobcats, mountain lion and coatamundi. To the raccoons and ringtail cats, skunks and swallows, hummingbirds and scorpions, rattlesnakes and bumblebees. I sing to you my song of grounded celebration, my voice echoing off the canyon walls, the canyon singing back to me.

I spent most of my life as distracted and deluded as anybody. If I can "come down to earth," so can anyone. The connection that feeds me can feed you in a neighborhood backyard, or through a special rock you pick up off your altar. It isn't something you "get," because you already have it. You just need to feel it, pay attention to it, and then act out of that sacred center. We can find it in even the busiest moments, a refuge of quiet vision and knowingness from which we can reach out, touching others most intensely and meaningfully, cuddling with the power and promises of the Earth, creating art and community, standing up to threats and defending what deserves defending. Grounded in being, in presence and place-- we're sacred, flawless, and never alone. 

Hallelujah, we're home!!

Women squat barefoot on the ground, grinding cooked herbs on an ancient stone metate. They speak of how powerful it is to feel the spirits of the women who lived here thousands of years ago,making the same timeless motions that they once did, eating the same treats they enjoyed in their own special day. The tribal songs of those black haired maidens seems to rise up from the metates themselves, as though released by the magical act of having plants ground on them again. Two sisters return to camp carrying between them a large cloth laden with wild lamb's quarters, others carrying armloads of firewood. We feel like an ancient and primal tribe ourselves, living intimately with each other and the gifts of this enchanted land. We make polenta, roasted beets and yams with a garlicky nettle cream cheese dip, and serve a huge panful of quelites, a traditional Mexican dish of sautéed wild greens with onion and chile. Women of all sizes and all ages pass around bowls full of wild fruits, roasted local pinon nuts, and assorted cheeses both pungent and mild. There are few words spoken besides our heartful prayers of thanks, all chatter melting down into murmured "mmmmmms" and "yuummmms." As the sky darkens we hand feed each other gooey pieces of decadent chocolate cake, taking our time chewing, and savoring every bite. 

We've temporarily left the people we usually take care of, in order to focus on the sacred dimensions of loving and taking care of ourselves. In this age of "separativeness and busy-ness" it is all the more important that we learn to give the gift of deep nurturance to our own beings and bodies-- to better be able to give it to each other and to the feeling, needing Earth. Creating personalized rituals of body-honoring helps heal our neglected inner selves, blessing our happily embodied spirits. The foundation for any woman of power is self knowledge and self love, knowing she is worthy of every reward, challenge and assignment! Only in this way can we inspire truth and self acceptance in others. We set an example as responsive priestesses of our own pleasure, manifesting-- through the skillful employment of our hands and the investment of our hearts-- the treasured rites of Sacred Indulgence!

No matter what you've been told, indulgence isn't excess, or a lack of discipline.... it's knowing and responding to our natural desires and real needs as women. Nor is it self-centered. To best nurture our sisters, we should first learn how to indulge our selves in the healthiest ways: knowing when a hot or cold cloth on our forehead is just the ticket, knowing the feel of silk against the skin, or the mood altering affects of a change of clothes or the lighting of incense. The taste of home baked carrot cake. The experience of a steaming hot tub scented with floral lavender. What it's like to be stroked with a tender blue heron feather. How good it is to end a hard day of work by slipping into a comfy robe that seems to say to us "You're home now.... really home!" 

     We're surely more sensitive to the needs and feelings of the world around us, when we're attuned the pleasures of candlelight and soft music, beautiful clothing and clean sheets on the bed.... when we burn sage in the morning to clear out strange dreams, make meals with love and eat them with the most prayerful attention. We know we're all inseparable parts and organs of the larger weaving.... so to neglect or dishonor ourselves, even as we tend to others, is to neglect or dishonor the whole. We can practice loving, caring for and responding to every part of our bodies, making any changes like weight loss or gain in a spirit of honoring our beings, rather than out of self-hatred or self-doubt. Sacred indulgence is a conscious, ritual celebration of our uniqueness, holiness, sentience and grace. 

     After dinner we circle beneath the moonlit cliffs, a huge pot of river water simmering over fragrant oak coals. Big bowls of hot water are passed around and we drip essential oils of lavender and rosewood into them, breathing deeply as we begin our water-kin ritual. Slowly and consciously we wrap each other's feet with thick warm washcloths and together sing wordless songs of connection, celebration, and honoring. It's a sight so magical, so powerful: glowing women affirming each other's beauty and worth with presence and grace. It's a circle of heartfelt giving, and it feels like an impossible dream.... but it is as real as the warmth penetrating our skin and our hearts. We unguardedly give and accept mindful coconut-oil foot rubs, share poems, sing in honor of the perfection within us. It's past midnight before we climb into our blankets spread on the soft giving sand, lulled to sleep by the whisperings of the Sweet Medicine River and our many contented sighs.

     From nearby come the sounds of night swallows swooping down on a flight of insects, and a mountain lion lustily calling for its mate. Like theirs, our needs are natural, and our hungers holy. "Respect yourself!," the whole canyon seems to say. "Indulge! Indulge in your authenticity, in wild colors and yummy flavors, in scary adventures and important missions! Indulge in the meal and prayer of your life."

Tribe: A group of people united by time and place, needs and goals, essential values or a shared spiritual practice.

Sisterhood: The gift of our actively and intimately reaching out to one another, simultaneously serving both the authentic self and the health of the whole. 

We are truly a tribe, a Sister Tribe with roots grounded in the ancient past, and branches extending out to every existing community. We are connected not only to each other, but to this planet we're apart of, and all its many creatures.... and to a long lineage of place holders and dreamers, maidens and wise women and crones dating back to the very beginnings of human kind! We may no longer share a common cave or even neighborhood, but we still share a common planet-- and a common, passionate dream. We are united not just by the sensitivities of our gender, but by a glad and purposeful mission.

Even those of us not blessed with having other women on our land or in our homes, find we are members of a tribal sisterhood founded in love for Mother Earth and every child and creation of nature, in the respect and honoring of all life and a commitment to inspiring the greatest possible integrity in all our relations. The word "integrity" is a derivative of "integral"-- meaning that every part is necessary for the health of the whole. And so, the integrity of any tribe is dependent upon the nurturing of wholeness in each being, and each beings fealty to the greater good. And so, Sister Tribe: A primal and primary weaving, of purposeful women's hearts on a mission of personal and global wholeness! 

Women from all over the world are consciously interwoven, manifesting art and beauty and ritual often focused on celebrating and paying homage. All-women bands and dance troupes, poetry and women's groups. Sisters living and working closely together as well as at a distance through the mail, creating forums for solitary sisters to join in the sacred circles of prayer. Sister Tribe. I've nurtured this vision more tangibly since I started leading Wild Women's Gatherings and workshops at my precious canyon home. We spend a whole week camping at the foot of intensely powerful cliffs, cocreating sacred space: giving each other and the land our loving attention, listening to each others' most powerful stories and songs and braiding each others' hair. Asking questions of one another. Tending fires, baking breads, and stirring pots of soup. Dressing up in pretty clothes or running around totally naked. Noticing every detail of the land, its moods and rhythms. Coming together in the powerful rituals of the sweat lodge. Coming together in all our intensity, tears and laughter. Being there deeply for each other, challenging one another to go ever deeper! 

For the women I end up keeping in touch with for years afterward, these gatherings are a microcosm of the way we wish the world could always be, and the ways we wish we could always be as well-- sharing everything together in a place of awesome beauty, learning incredible amounts about ourselves and each other in the process! Giving all we are at all times to the magic of our sisterhood, giving our whole selves to loving the Earth, and receiving the most beautiful and meaningful gifts in return. Of course we all have obligations, and it can be hard just to commit a week to participating in a women's workshop, festival or gathering. But there are ways we can continuously cultivate that same sense of Sister Tribe, the sharing of our hearts, our goals, our love of magic, and our commitments to the evolving creation we're each a sensual and responsible part of. Here are but a few, and I invite you to add to the list!

1. Fully own our power to create sacred space at every available opportunity. With our selves, with the earth, with each other.
There are many different levels of sacred space, as there are of depth and connection, commitment, gratitude, enthusiasm, and so on. The more we recognize and own our powers and abilities as priestesses, the more we can go about our everyday life creating sacred space and sacred moments of connection with the mundane and even profane realities that surround us. The groundwork for being able to create sacred space is all about knowing and loving ourselves deeply, being so grounded in our connections to all the parts of our selves and to the earth that we always something to give in any interaction be it with a stone, a tree, the lady at the checkout stand, our lovers.... or a dear sister we've been meaning to call, to write, to visit! 

We're constantly being handed opportunities to connect with and serve the sacred, as well as to receive the sacrament of wholeness that resides in each of our hearts, albeit sometimes buried under layers of fear and denial. We can keep reminding ourselves, there's something precious here that is of the heart. What is it, and how can we better touch and open and serve it? We need to practice becoming more aware of these opportunities and acting from our hearts, from our guts. Practice honoring our sisters and other beings, while honoring our own truths. Giving as much as possible, while being careful not to let our tendency to give dishonor our spirits in any way. 

Practical ways we can create sacred space with our sisters that honors the feminine in particular, even when there's only two of us:
Taking long walks in nature
Savoring beautiful music 
Dressing beautifully 
Gathering around a fire, or lighting candles
Trading massage 
Sharing any form of sweet physical attention such as brushing or braiding hair, hugging,
cuddling, or washing one another's feet with hot water!
Cooking with or for each other, and eating slowly
Checking in on each other's hearts and feelings

2. Share purposeful prayers and goals
What do we really have in common? Let's find out! We need to talk about what our common hopes, dreams, and challenges are so we can give each other support in living our dreams! If we have opportunities to get together, we should make time to address these things, and figure out what we can actually and immediately do to help birth our visions, and make our dreams come true.

3. Challenge ourselves, challenge each other!
We'll always encounter obstacles that seem insurmountable at the time. We can help each other see where there are cracks in the imprisoning walls, ways we can shapeshift our realities with each other's help. Finances, children, unwilling partners? We must not let anything get in the way, and where there's sufficient will there's a way! Let's open ourselves to all the help that's available, avail ourselves of the Earth's active instruction, support and assistance.

4. Honor the land and serve the land, together.
The voice of Spirit is heard best through the land, and women's land-based communities are cropping up all over the place! Become affiliated with one, start your own, or commit to prayer and service together at a special spot in your local park or on a dead-end road. Create altars, songs and dances inspired by the sprits and beings of these particular places. We can find out about native and invader species in our bioregions, and by spending a little time every day actively healing the land, we contribute to our own healing as well! 

5. Honor each other as teachers.
What are we learning from each other? We can honor those lessons and gifts, by remembering them and putting them into visible practice. And we need to give our sisters all the credit they deserve for all their efforts or accomplishments, for every way they've served as an example or inspired us. And we must be sure to tell them so!

6. Be an inspiration to our sisters in every way we can
Make the time to get to know every aspect of our selves, and to love and be true to that self. To be with Nature, and receive her knowledge through our focused presence. Enjoined.

7. Don't take each other for granted 
Show as much appreciation of each other as we possibly can at all times, even if it means getting up an hour early to make it happen! Especially when a sister has gone out of her way to make time to serve us in some way in the midst of her own busy life! 

8. Communicate our hurts, and be equally willing to apologize and forgive
It only weakens our relationships, if we keep things bottled up or swept up under the rug. Sisters must be able to be honest about what offends them, to admit where they've gone wrong and make efforts to right those wrongs, and for any wronged party to acknowledge these efforts and make the effort to forgive.

9. Don't be lame
We shouldn't be slackers when it comes to our sisterhood! If we've promised someone we'll write or call them, or do them a favor, we need to avoid making excuses and just do it!

10. Share the work as well as the play
Instead of thinking we're too busy to gather with our sisters, we can invite them over to help out with mundane tasks. We'll have a lot more fun and probably get a lot more accomplished if we do our chores together! If mothers have children that make focusing on things like sewing or home repairs difficult, they can come together to take turns getting things done and giving the kids attention!

11. Resist the urge to compete, or to compare
Bodies, jobs, boyfriends, partners, children-- we women have a bad habit of endlessly sizing each other up and figuring we are the lesser or greater in any given situation. How about accepting that we are all special and beautiful, with our own unique contribution? If we think we have a "funny-looking nose," imagine being able to love its uniqueness so much that we teach our sister how to love her chubby belly! 

12. Bring the Sister Tribe together
We need to own our power to make new connections happen-- by posting flyers for each other, sending out the pertinent emails you get to every woman on your list, staying alert to great opportunities and available connections that might not be timely for us but perfect for a beloved sister. We can take responsibility and help create major transformations in our sister's lives! 

13. Practice giveaway-- gifts that make a difference
We all have things in our households that don't get enough attention, or that could be useful, or even serve as tools of deep magic and connection for a certain sister of ours. We can give from our own "things" that we intuit will be meaningful and purposeful in the hands of our sisters, such as fabric we're not using, candles that will remind our sister of the loving glow we feel when we're together, gifts of food from our pantries.... anything real, beautiful and nurturing could be a good thing to pass along. We can bring to our gatherings the clothes or jewelry we don't wear enough, bottles of condiments, or lotions we've made. And of all the many possible gifts, the most powerful of all are the drawings, weavings and poems that touch a sister's heart, invoking each other's presence in our everyday lives. 

14. Teach the children together
Mothers all over the world are joining together to home-school their children! And even the kids that go to public school can come together afterwards or on weekends to learn how to cook, draw, knit, sew, dance, do yoga, sing prayers to the trees, and so forth. Sisters can inspire their kids to discuss essential subjects together like the importance of loving ourselves, the benefits and challenges of being whatever age they are, their goals, prayers, dreams, and feelings. 

I can feel it, this Sister Tribe.... purposeful hearts weaving, reaching out to each other to join hands across the lands, and across the seas. Touching each other in our most vulnerable places, like a river we're blessed to submerge in, touching us everywhere at once. In my most challenging of times I hear my sister's voices, as I hear the spirits of the ancestors that inhabit this sacred canyon. They whisper in my ear, reminding me to bend down low to the ground, to notice the glowing stone and the magnificence of the spider, to slow down and thank the first flame as I light my woodstove fire. They join me in this magic purpose of reconnection, this dance of deep feeling and delight. Together we feed the fires of our connection, joining the shining land in celebration of our mission: our common tribal song.

Mother Nature shows us how to reclaim our wonder-filled wild selves, and our power as teachers and healers. Confidence follows our learning how to really open and give.

We’re all teachers, setting examples and sharing our lives. But we don’t always accept responsibility for the affect we have on others. The day we acknowledge our influence and roles our message and love becomes so much more powerful. A teaching is not just a matter of truth and clarity, but of self confidence and self love.

As you read this I’ll soon be hosting the third annual Wild Women’s Gathering in the mountains of southwest New Mexico. After four years of working with women’s groups here, I still have to battle self doubt from time to time, but these events have shown me that a sure way to feel good about our abilities and gifts is by finding ways to manifest, share and give! Leading someone into the light means going there our selves, and it’s far easier for others to open up emotionally and spiritually when we’ve genuinely opened up ourselves.

Form magically follows the energy— as feelings are expressed, situations change, and intentions and needs are revealed. No matter how attached we are to our plans beforehand, it’s especially potent whenever we can respond to opportunities, whenever somebody expresses something deep or something significant and unexpected happens. The way water-striders skate across the surface of the river, make us think about doing the seemingly impossible. Wild-foods pizza baked over coals on an antique shovel demands and gets our presence, informing us through our eyes, and tongue and nose. A spontaneous moonless hike turns into an opportunity for all of us to exceed our imagined limitations, how much we can really “see” without our eyes, and the ways in life in which we’re really “in the dark!” A swim in the river planned to get us out of our minds and into our wilder beings becomes the seed for sharings about self-image and shame. A certain vulnerable story comes up, and a circle bodies and self acceptance shifts to the difficult subject of relationship, and the difference between codependency and the interdependency represented by everything around us: the river nourishing the cottonwoods and willows, the willows providing a home for the insects and birds, the lion needing the deer and the deer needing the grass.... and the water, and each other!

Like everything else in this nature, the Wild Women’s Gatherings have unfolded according to where we’re “at” and what we hunger for, the experiences and wounds and hopes that each person brings with them... and the direction of Spirit. The wildflowers bursting with color, the shade of the gnarly oaks and the coolness of the water are all unplanned but somehow perfect. The kinds of delicious wild greens we add to our meals depend on what’s growing at the time. We move through one powerful experience after another, with the only certain direction being deeper.

If I’m anxious about how well I do, it’s only because I want the women making their pilgrimages here to get the most out of their investment of time. It seems to take a whole day just to slough off the vibe of airports and cars, to still the mind enough to begin noticing where we are in the now! I’ve been thinking about how there are just so many waking hours in a lifetime, and so few of these are give over to solitude or prayer. Or getting together with our fellow sisters. Or soaking up the lessons of the untamed world, dancing and cuddling in the arms of sweet Mother Earth! And then here we are, suddenly together. We sense that we’re welcomed by an ancient spirit, encircled by a protective river. We start feeling safe enough to take risks, and to face truth....

The maps list this as the San Francisco River, named after that lover of animals, St. Francis. But to the “Old Ones” it was the Sweet Medicine, and together with the echoing cliffs it both mirrored and amplified truths. Even the ones we don’t really want to hear! We don’t have to say a thing for people to feel it themselves, being brought face to face with their suppressed fears and unfulfilled dreams! For tens of thousands of years this bend in the canyon was a ritual center for the Mogollon people, pit-house and cliff dwellers who needed their own ritual time and focus in order to stay in alignment with their spirit filled environment. Like us, they used ecstatic dance, solo quests and the heat of the sweat lodge to help keep their pushy left-brains in check!

Maybe it’s because I had to struggle to show any degree of competency in college and at work, that I naturally cut out to loiter in the here and now. Like some canyon animal, whenever I’m not having to focus on real pains I’m blissed out, whether I’m transferring rain water or watching butterflies do loop-dee-loops in the sky! If the right-brain is like a little girl’s sandbox, or like a bag full of crayons, then that’s where I want to be! It’s this trait that makes it easier for me to teach by example, than to write an article like this! It’s so easy for words to intrude, when it’s time to connect or grieve or play!

When I decided to call these annual events The Wild Women’s Gathering, I didn’t mean “wild” as in out of control, or a “wild party” or whatever. I meant wild like “authentic, original nature,” moving to the rhythms of a wild, wild world! Being wild is being in touch with our hungers and hurts, needs and desires, moon cycles and life cycles. Being wild is passionately valuing the living Earth we’re a part of, nourishing her, and then standing up when she’s threatened.

The results, if we can even talk about results, have seldom been what anyone expected. One woman remembered what she loved most about her husband, and others have found the strength to leave unsatisfying relationships. Teens have considered this their rite of passage to empowered adulthood, and my elders have used their time here to accept and “own” the gifts and responsibilities of cronehood. And everyone gets the benefit of feeling their truest hearts, together with other heart-full women! My self consciousness gives way to the magic, as I’m empowered by what I’m able to give. And as I so appreciate what each woman gives me in return: teachers for each other, and students of the living world!

When the swimming and dancing are done, the tears are all soaked up by the ground, and the songs and laughter of re-wilded women continues vibrating off of the holy crimson cliffs. One by one the sisters pack up, and wind their way down the canyon towards their cars. I watch until they are out of sight, waving like the wind swept pines. Once the last seeker has gone the river seems to wrap around me like a cushy comforter. And in the stirrings of the current I can feel the movement happening in these sisters’ lives, growing and flowing wilder than ever! Teachers and healers all!

I hold tight to the way our farewell hugs felt, and hold tight to everything we shared and learned. But it isn’t long before I’ve lost track of time again, bending over to lift and fluff the grass that marked the circle where we’d sat.

Here are some important practices I have been working on myself to cultivate awareness, responsibility and presence, so that we might give and receive the gifts at hand as openly, intimately, and heartfully as possible. (please read as often as you can and ask yourself how you’re doing)

1.Being aware of speech- when it adds to or detracts from presence, practicing making portions of the day without speech, quieting the chatter in our heads, becoming aware of the ways we let any chatter influence our presence, our intimate engagement with the land, each other, and the All

2. Being aware of movement-- when are we “in the dance”, when we are not

3. Being in our senses, in our bodies as much as possible

4. Paying attention to and honoring our hungers and other needs as sacrament, sitting down to eat, drinking water as prayer, all body tending as prayer, etc.

5. Noticing when things need tending and acting in the moment as much as possible, taking responsibility for maintaining and contributing to harmony, the feeling of the whole canyon as a sacred altar

6. Tackling something that seems unpleasant or otherwise daunting every day for however long we can, and seeing if we can shift our attitude and feel satisfaction in our heroic efforts!

7. Making time every day to focus on pure delight and connection, both with and without any accomplishment

8. Making time every day to let in the whole range of what the earth is feeling in a grounded, heart-centered way

9. Being aware of our “stuff”-- when personal issues, fears, challenges get in the way of our presence, taking responsibility for shifting the energy if possible, or asking for help

10. Noticing patterns of what “stuff” most often takes us out of presence, out of the flow, and making commitments to doing the work to release ourselves from these patterns, habits, ways of seeing, interpreting, believing, doubting

11. Keeping a honest journal of all lessons, challenges, ways we’ve experienced old habits taking over, ways we have streched our capacities , accepted limitations, asked for help and gotten it, been present and aware, felt our hearts open, and become aware of new promises/commitments we want to make to ourselves.