Tiger Style with Goddesses Durga & Xi Wangmu: Tiger Grandmothers of the 110th Anniversary of the Bread and Roses Strike

As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead Go crying through our singing their ancient cry for bread. Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew. Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses, too!

As we go marching, marching, we are standing proud and tall. The rising of the women means the rising of us all.

No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes, But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!

In 1907, the Skowhegan textile strike led by a 17 year old girl worker at Marston Worsted Mill stood up to a culture of sexual harassment and retaliatory firing… this was the first successful strike of the IWW. It preceded and made possible the famous Bread and Roses Strike led by women workers in 1912. I’ve been reflecting on this 110 year anniversary of the Bread and Roses strike and the 5 years that built up to that point… in the same way the pivotal year of 2017 (The murder of an unapologetically Pro-Black Abolitionist freedom fighter young man we loved named Brandon Harrison and so many more events in our lives) brought us to this tipping point in 2022.

This Lunar New Year - Year of the Water Tiger is being ridden into 2022 by the goddess Durga’s many armed powers to remove all obstacles & Queen Mother of the West - Xi Wangmu’s medicinal potency - of the elixirs of life from the Kunlun mountains to make the dreams we don’t dare to speak possible.

The striking women and children on the frontlines chanted “We want Bread 🥖 and Roses 🌹 too!” We want to survive with sustenance but so much more than that, we want refuge and replenishment, for our art and writings to be published and honored, for our sisters and children to delight in beauty and wonder and possibility. This New Moon in Aquarius bring the possibility of the Age of Aquarius- of a New Era of Justice and Harmony on Earth coupled with the Tiger Year bringing the Courage of the Heart that we needed. ❤️🐅🧧🥮🍊🥖🌹

For sisters who feel called by the seed potency of the New Moon and Tiger Lunar New Year email rossamedicine@gmail.com for an invite and ask to be put on the Our Medicine is Resistance email list for opportunities to gather and for personal and collective consecration of Sagrada Femenina ✨

Reflections on Replenishment

Blessings sisters and thank you for the powerful New Moon Call last night. In following through with what we spoke about last night I am transmuting all this pain, exhaustion and stress and invite you to dance with me on a 7 week journey to creativity, laughter, joy, replenishment, nurturance, beauty, pleasure and possibility before my 40th birthday. Due to birthday trauma and a lot of unhealed wounds including colonial and patriarchal programming about worthiness through suffering and martyrdom I avoided my birthday and though i cared for many, like so many of our sisters here... I often gave and gave while exhausted and depleted and ignored my own advice.

As my daughter is 13, I want to break generational curses about suffering in silence. As I poured her tea tonight, she told me a story for the first time: "When I was in 3rd grade, I was at my Auntie's house and tried to speak up and use my voice to state my needs. She said "I'm the grown up so don't question me." I told her "well, my Mommy is my friend and I'm always allowed, encouraged even to share what I'm feeling." Then she said something that shocked me... Auntie said "Well this is my house and my rules. I am not your cousin's friend. I am his mom and he doesn't get a say in it. I am his mom and not his friend. We will never be friends." And then I felt immediately uncomfortable around her and never wanted to go over their house again even though they had money and cool stuff. I like that you are my friend and I can trust you with my feelings. Especially now that I'm changing and it's my moontime and I don't have to hide who I am or what I'm going through. And you can help me to feel relaxed and cared for so I can rest on my moontime."

I've been reflecting on this deeply, trying to figure out when did life become so exhausting and maybe it was when I was a 13 year old girl realizing that I was not listened to. It is exhausting to continually be unheard. I see how my child is not embarrassed nor avoidant of love, creativity, nourishment and care and I believed deeply with all of my heart and my soul that our grandmothers did not want us to suffer. That they wanted us to feel joy and experience more from life with reverence to nature. I want to listen to my sacral chakra and wombspace and be in community where our stories and our painful truths and longings for pleasure and possibility are believed and beloved. I want to break these generational curses for all my grandmothers before me and for all my seeds and their seeds who come after me.

I almost doubted myself and didn't share this…. but i'm speaking from the heart in hopes that it reaches you... especially if you are weary. As an ofrenda I am offering 3 replenishment filled info sessions on Friday - October 8th, Saturday - October 9th, and Wednesday - October 13th. May the potency of this Libra New Moon bless you with Beauty, Balance and the Harmony we need at this important time.

To learn more:

https://www.rossamedicine.com/classes/juicy-whole-alive-and-complete-a-replenishment-and-writing-7-week-course-for-sur-thrivers

In gratitude and trust,

Rossa

Our Medicine is Resistance - Ix Healing Circle

This is a love letter to my survivor sisters.

As much of my one-on-one medicine work is hidden, I am reflecting on how much healing sexual trauma from the somatic body has surfaced in 2020. As an ofrenda we will be holding a Survivors Healing Circle consecrated to Ix -the nagual of women in the Mayan Tzolk’in.

For our sisters feeling called to release this trauma.

For our sisters who want to honor and acknowledge these invisible wounds as a practice of safety.

For the many mothers and grandmothers who’ve asked me in Alaska, in Oklahoma, in Mindanao how to prepare for when their girl-child is raped.

For the mamas struggling to release guilt and shame of not being able to protect their daughters from the same trauma they experienced.

For capitalism fetishizes our numbness and learning to feel again and not disassociate from our womb space is a radical act.

For our reclaiming of sovereignty of our womb space.

To grieve and honor the sacredness of this temple to Sagrada Femenina.

Our Medicine Is Resistance - is an anti-patriarchal, decolonizing space which centers the experience of BIWOC. This is a study of replenishment & liberation, for women of color to heal collectively with the intimacy of being held by another woman’s .

If you feel called please email rossamedicine@gmail.com for an invite.

Hallow's Eve, Dia de Los Muertos, Mercury in Retrograde Invocations

We have 2 months left until not just the end of the year, but the end of the DECADE, and it is up to us to be the architects of the destiny we want to create. Perhaps truth and magic have always been spooky to those forces of desecration and assimilation. But we daughters of the brujas they couldn’t burn, reclaim the broom to make a clean feng shui-style sweep of that which no longer serves us and arise for moon-kissed flight.

Light some incense. Pour a cup of tea. Speak this invocation aloud after the sun has set.

I will burn copal for you.

We invoke Tonantzin, Mama Mary, Pele, Mayari, Kuan Yin, Palden Lhamo, Iemanja, Oshun, Oya, Kali Ma, the Triple Brigid. We say a prayer to the holy mothers, to Grandmother Spider and the web she weaves.

We pray for the indigenous people who defend the land and waters, the creatures of those land and waters and the water and land herself.

We offer prayers for the dead, those displaced, those who cross in-between/ liminal spaces - La Nepantlera.

We invoke our Grandmothers (Speak their names, and the name of their town/ village if you know it).

As the the veil grows thin, La Luna (the Moon) is rising to fullness… and so are we.

Like Ixchel crossing the rainbow bridge, we step into this time as a spiritual refuge.

Retreat from the noise + frenetic energy of our day.

Relinquish mistrust, self-doubt + cynicism

Reflect on the lessons of our day

Review what we have been putting off for far too long

Refine our practice of self- cultivation

Re-center our firmeza

Re-kindle those soul-level friendships we lost touch with

Renew that which makes us want to be a better person

Illuminated by reverence and remembrance,

we are strengthened by the thousands of ancestors who conspired for you to be born, this place

at this critical time, in an inflamed world.

May we re-ignite the sacred in our lives.

Ashe. Aho. Eo.