Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes

There’s a painting of Joan of Arc by Jules Bastien-Lepage that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Every now and then, when I’m in New York City, I like to drop in on that painting, as if it were a distant relative I enjoy seeing from time to time.

From these texts, and from observing my parents, I drank the cultural Kool-Aid. I metabolized the preferred range of human behaviors. The noble characters in the books we read had qualities like quick thinking, curtailed emotions, rugged individualism, and a competitive nature.

story to paint womankind as “second in creation, and first to sin.” That tagline brands our culture—it’s our DNA, it informs our daily lives, it lives in our bodies.

I know, in my bones, that we can break Cassandra’s curse, that we can dispel our culture’s enduring mistrust and devaluing of women. And when we do, all of humanity will benefit.

All I know is that in my early thirties I became acutely aware of the feelings of constriction, heartache, and anger that had been brewing in me since I was a girl. Slowly, the desire to do something to change the story became stronger than my fear of speaking up.

I keep a basket of quotes on my writing desk. I’m always adding to it—beautiful lines from poets, mind-blowing bits from scientists, motivation from activists, quiet wisdom from spiritual teachers. Every morning when I sit down to work, I randomly pick a quote and I use it all day to lift me up—to clear my head of petty thinking, to give me the cou

To empower the lost voices and undervalued ways of women is not an either/or, oppositional proposition. Rather, it is an act of restoration, a righting of a world seriously out of whack.

That one really gets me—how menstruation and childbirth and parenting are all seen as burdens as opposed to examples of strength, worthiness, and power, whereas the physicality and roles granted to men are vaulted into god-like attributes.

Becoming familiar with our culture’s origin stories and tracing their influence is a surprisingly effective way to take stock of our own lives and to claim an authentically powerful voice—one that proclaims not only our equal rights but also our unique capacities and concerns.