The man with whom she sang showtunes, read the New York Times cover to cover, shared meals, spent her days. They have been inseparable for eight long years.

It all started a year after his first wife died.

My mom, a woman who had been a faithful practitioner of the art of flirtation for 88 years, noticed a flock of widows fluttering around Ted, baking cookies for him, leaving dinners at his door. This is how octogenarians begin a courtship, mind you.

Knowing he was a good catch, she made an irresistible play for Ted’s affection. After bumping into him – first in the lobby, and later, the elevator – twice in one day, she announced “If you run into me one more time today, Ted Mann, you’re going to have to take me to lunch.”

He did, they did, and by Valentines Day, all the other widows fell away, and they were engaged.

To have received the gift of this love – at this time in their lives – was almost too much goodness for me, for them, for all of us, to process. She lives on the 18th floor. He on the 17th, in the apartment just below hers. They had many years full of operas, and concerts, and theatre, exquisite meals, foreign travel, and the pleasure of sharing their days.

So many of us are experiencing unimaginable loss right now. Loss of loved ones. Loss of jobs. Loss of the lives we used to live pre-pandemic. Problems with race, gender, disability abound. I do not know how to grieve all that needs grieving in this world.

My grief feels like an insignificant drop in a world that does not recognize sadness as sacred.

And yet my body tells me that the grieving makes me feel alive, matters. And to trust that place inside of me.

In the words of Martin Prechtel, “Grief expressed out loud, whether in or out of character, unchoreographed and honest, for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”

We knew it was unlikely that Ted would make it out of the hospital, and for a few days, we drew shallow breaths between phone reports on his progress.

When I heard, on Saturday, that he’d passed, I said to my mother, “I’m coming to you.”
She said “No. I need to be alone. To process.”

My body said no to her no.

But it was futile. She refused my offering to come.
She did not want to trouble me, or be a bother to anyone. She wanted to march on independently, and to prove she could do it alone.

I had a deep, gnawing sense that I needed to be with her, which left me feeling ungrounded and lost. I got in the bathtub and cried for two hours.

There is a strange trancelike place that happens after someone dies.
My mother makes good rational sense most of the time.
But the shock of loss is no place from which to make decisions.
And the more I felt into my body, the more I knew that she was just way more lost than I was.
She could not hold the loss – it was way too big to carry.

So many of us were raised to hide our feelings, to push away our sadness, our rage. My mother comes from a culture where feeling deeply is shameful and a sign of weakness. Where strength is viewed as stoicism.

My gift to her was my lack of stoicism.

My need to be with her – to hold her, to cry with her, to light a yahrzeit candle together in the kitchen, and look at the empty seat at the table that used to be Ted’s.

So, on Sunday, I jumped in the car and drove the four hours to my mother so we could soak in sadness together. To spend this time together, finding our way to mourn this loss.

Today, together, we are led by grief.

Trusting the irrational way she whips through our bodies, dropping us to our knees, taking us back to life.

With so much love and pleasure,

Regena is a feminist icon, a teacher, a speaker, a mother, a best-selling author, and creatrix and CEO of The School of Womanly Arts.

The post Finding her way in grief appeared first on Mama Gena.

I want to check in with you, with all of us: How’s your energy? How’s your sense of wellbeing? Your attitude? Are you bouncing through the day, boundless and joyful?

Or are you just slugging through it…checking everything off, but feeling depleted and running on fumes. (Maybe more than others know because you do your best to put a smile on.)

I meet a lot of fume-runners.

Wanna know why? Because existing as a woman in this culture is exhausting. Working in and out of the house is exhausting. Homeschooling your kids with a full time job is exhausting. Doing the emotional labor for our families, especially when loved ones are ill, is exhausting. Fighting to be heard is exhausting. Pinching already pinched pennies is exhausting. Walking home in the dark with keys between your fingers is exhausting. And if you’re a Black woman, a woman of color, a differently- abled woman, a transwoman? Then add racism, ableism, and transphobia to the list of things that exhaust your body and spirit.

If you are taking better care of others than you’re taking of yourself, it’s not because you’re lazy. It’s because you are tired. Sister, you have every reason to be tired.

And, I don’t want that for you or for us. I love the bodies of women. I love us. And I want us to be nurtured and nourished.

Last week, I was on a call teaching the final session of my fall course GPS*. Writing that course and teaching that course was the perfect antidote for my pandemic blues. Why? Because the course included everything that we women need to unplug from our innate negativity bias, and plug into our aliveness.

There is actually a recipe for living an engaged, turned-on, happy, healthy, ecstatically alive life for a woman, no matter what.

It’s just that no one really teaches us what we require for the basic care and feeding of our innately sacred feminine bodies and souls.

So here goes: We need community and sisterhood. We need tools and arts that connect us to our turn-on. We need activism. If one of these cogs in the wheel is out of balance, we slog and slug instead of bound and bounce through our day, our lives.

Here’s how it works: There was a mother of two in our class, raising eight-year-old twins, one of whom is deaf with Down’s syndrome. Not easy stuff by any stretch. And like many of us moms, she was feeling like no matter what she did, it was never enough. So she continued to give more, and more, and more to her family, depleting herself until she reached empty. She was absolutely positive she had no time for herself.

But within this community of sisterhood, being witnessed by so many women who could relate and were rooting for her, she found three tiny tools that brought her back to herself in just three minutes flat. She locked herself in her office, threw on some music for a sensual dance break, moved her hips like a mofo, and self pleasured.

Literally three minutes.

And the slog turned to connection – connection with her body, her sensuality, and her sisterhood.

The gravy on the stuffing of life is witnessing and being witnessed.

And that is where the activism lives. When we stand for a woman in her celebration of herself, and her life, no matter the circumstances, no matter the way the cards seem stacked, we assist her in finding her way home to her turn-on.

We don’t stand for her victimhood, we stand for her joy.

And because of our presence, she gets to find the space and feel the power of choosing her own joy, above all other values, and by doing so, she creates the word she wants to live in for herself, and all of us.

With so much love and pleasure,

Regena is a feminist icon, a teacher, a speaker, a mother, a best-selling author, and creatrix and CEO of The School of Womanly Arts.

The post Three tiny tools, three minutes, to bring you back home appeared first on Mama Gena.

We are in the midst of a massive shedding – breaking and transmuting generations of malignant, broken, patriarchal-world-culture ways of being. It is so hard.  

I have never boxed professionally, or even amateurly, or, ever, actually   But I feel emotionally punch-drunk – like Rocky staggering through the 14th round.  

As soon as I start breathing a sigh of relief, or a little hope floods my soul, I read a headline that decks me with fresh terror.  

Sh*&t feels too real for me right now.
And I know that for some, it has been this way for a long time.  
More of us feel desperate.
More of us are seeing what has been hidden in plain sight.

As a result, each of us is processing tons more emotional charge.
Meaning that every day, you are not only dealing with your own emotional wild cards, but getting dealt a fresh deck of others’ fear, anger, lack, challenge, and oppression.

How to deal?

The Patriarchal World Culture has encouraged/forced/conditioned women to sit back and let men lead.

Yeah, no.

The relentlessness of hurt and harm and death on oppressed bodies can lead to numbness, and overwhelm. You move through each day just trying to survive.
For others, rage and grief flow like twin rivers inside the body.

Unfortunately, going numb does not keep us safe.  

Nor does sinking into paralyzing depression.
And rage? Well, I am going to get to that.

The feminine was built for these times.
The body woman is creation and recreation.  

We give life, we bring life, we restore life, whether we ever give birth or not.

It’s just that women have not been taught the architecture of how to use this glorious instrument of ours, to fire up new solutions and choose new neural pathways, to alchemize pain on the inner and the outer. Our innate genius has been oppressed, forced, and shamed right out of us. 

But we have the opportunity to support the emerging divine feminine.  
Some of us feel a sense of urgency now, to find our own leadership in a new way, an ancient way. To awaken the slumbering feminine genius who lives inside, and let her lead.

You are the one we have been waiting for.
You are the oracle, the high priestess, the great transformer, the source.
(You can feel that, yes?)

So, the question becomes: How to tap in?
Answer: Through the body.

The portal is the one we have been taught to ignore – our sex.

We have been trained to bypass the very seat of creation, recreation, erotic power, our life force.

Yeah, no more.

It’s time for every woman to put her key in her own ignition, turn her Pussy Power on, and lead from whatever spot she finds herself in. 

Whether you are in a position of responsibility or a position of feeling trapped, you have the power to assist all of us in climbing out of this mess, by tapping into your deepest truth – your GPS* – and living it out loud.

When you move from your power source and follow your truth north, approval is neither sought nor required.

You just know.

GPS* turns on your inner guidance system and transforms your anger, fear, frustration, desperation – you name it – into fuel that propels you, rather than destroys you.

GPS* is not only what you need, it’s what the world needs.
Even the tiniest drop can change your life.

With so much love and pleasure,

*Great Pussy in the Sky

P.S. For updates on my GPS* course launch this October, add your name to the waitlist HERE. And to connect even sooner, check out the Womanar I’m hosting on September 24th. It’s a mega-dose of divine guidance, and a sneak-peak of our fall programming all in one!

Regena is a feminist icon, a teacher, a speaker, a mother, a best-selling author, and creatrix and CEO of The School of Womanly Arts.

The post Turning Rage Into Fuel appeared first on Mama Gena.

The dictionary definition of normal is “conforming with, adhering to, or constituting a norm, standard, pattern, level, or type; typical.”

Nope, there is nothing normal about a woman. Not one thing.

We are born gifted. Incredibly gifted.
As women, we are magical, magnificent, limitless in our capacity to create and invent.
We are built for challenges.

And guess what?
Since you were born gifted, you will never ever ever lead a normal life.

Normalcy is the enemy of giftedness.
Why?
Your fuel is in your sensually-activated, creative power.
Creativity happens only on the edge of the outrageous, the wild, the frontier, the unexpected.
There is no creativity, no intuition, no vibrancy, no sensuality, and no inspiration in the normal.

Not to mention, the time of normal is over.
Even if we want it, long for it, it no longer exists.
Whatever boundaries we used to perceive, have all but disintegrated.
Which wonderfully and surprisingly, works for us women.

There are no boundaries to a creatrix.

She can spin a web to catch herself when the ground below her disappears.
Life is her language and creation is what she was born for.
The trenches dug by others are of little matter. She knows the deeper truths and listens well.

I have impeccable timing.
Insane charisma.
Boundless energy.
Huge love.
The ability and training to find the gold in a tonnage of sh*t.
And a fine attunement to the illogical, nonlinear whispers of unseen truths.
Which is what makes space for the miraculous to occur.

For example, last year I was looking for a beach house to rent, andbut instead stumbled instead on a charming but highly disheveled old house that was for sale. I had been semi-looking for a beach house for years, and had something much different in mind. But when I walked into this impossibly trashed little house, there was a voice within me that said, “Yes, this is the one”.

Without an inspection, without hesitation, I told the broker I would buy it. Everyone who knew me was against it. I had never bought a house before. It needed work, as in lots of work, and it did not really make all that much sense.

But I have made a habit of leaping when my deep inner guidance – my GPS* – says leap.

And here it is, a year later, and this is the house that I now call my full time home, after moving here during the pandemic.
This is the house that turned out to be even cuter than I could have imagined.
This is the house that gave Peter, my boyfriend, a chance to show off all of his incredible construction and farming skills. (Who even knew he had any of these?!)

And who knows if I could have even afforded this house, now, a year later, with prices doubling and tripling since the pandemic.
This is the house that was born the same year my mama was born. (A sign from the GPS* that I was indeed in the right place at the right time.)

And, as if I needed a further sign that my choice was divinely guided, a few weeks after we moved in, two horses appeared in the pasture right behind my house. So now, this house has given me another dream come true – I have neighboring horses that I get to feed carrots to and play with every day.

I want all women to become really really skilled at trusting the illogical.

Trusting their timing. Trusting what is in the periphery. It is not just fun and miraculous to tap into these matters, but it is important to be ahead of the curve. Our partners, children, friends, family, colleagues, depend on us to stand in our intuitive knowing and live our path.

Women are built for this.
It’s just that the patriarchal world culture cuts us off from our genius by demanding that we conform to what’s normal.

Connecting to your GPS* is teachable.

There was a time when I was none of these things – courageous, trusting, full of faith in the unknown – but rather, the opposite.
I was scared all the time. Totally lost. Underachieving. Overthinking to the point of deep depression.

Learning to connect with my sensual power has allowed me to find my own navigational certainty and tap into my GPS*, which is why I wrote a course by that name, that I will be launching this fall.

Let’s face it, sister, normal was never who you are. You were never going to be good at it.

How do we plug into the channel where the goddess guides our path?
By doing THE OPPOSITE of what the patriarchal world culture asks us to do.

This is not just a time of explosive change, it is a time to learn to tap into your deepest intuition, join forces with your GPS*, and live your most deeply held desires.

With so much love and pleasure,

*Great Pussy in the Sky

P.S. If you’re ready to kick “normal” to the curb and ignite your inner GPS*, add your name to our Course Waitlist for Fall 2020 and get ready to learn how!/span>

Regena is a feminist icon, a teacher, a speaker, a mother, a best-selling author, and creatrix and CEO of The School of Womanly Arts.

The post You are not normal appeared first on Mama Gena.

These boots and I made a lot of magic together.

These were the boots I scoured the internet for, in order to fulfill a vision and create an opportunity for women to reimagine themselves as fabulous and hot at any age, any time, any size, just for the f*%ck of it. These boots invited women to join me – and themselves – in the sheer, wild delight of being outrageous. (Outrageousness brings out the best in a woman. Always has, always will.)

I had an idea to kick off session two of the Womanly Arts Experience weekend by singing Aerosmith’s “Pink” with a chorus of dancers.
Why? Because turning on a woman sets her free.

Because when a woman lives her wild, the world benefits.

Because my inner rock star loves a chance to play. And I knew if I could do it, any woman could. Me and those pink glitter boots created a new normal of who and what a woman is – of what 60 and beyond looked like, felt like, acted like.

I felt so much grief as I passed those boots along, and so much gratitude as I dismantled every piece of the Pussy Palace – my home and office for the last 25 years.
Since I began the School of Womanly Arts, 25 years ago, I had always had a Pussy Palace.
Now, no more.

And the question that haunts me: Can I still be a Queen without a Palace?

For so many of us, our lives are changing at a breathtaking rate that is nearly impossible to keep up with. I want to reach inside that portal of change and place a grounding, sisterly hand on your shoulder, as we navigate all that is unknown.

There is a new place of trust that is being asked for.
We are no longer able to rely on what is happening without, and it is time to learn how to completely surrender and trust, within.
Which is no easy feat for a woman.

We were taught to mistrust our bodies, mistrust our erotic power, mistrust ourselves and each other, from birth.

And that, right there, is the gift, the opportunity of this time.

I have been a live, in-person, hot pink, glitter boot dancer and facilitator for 25 years. That has not only been what I do, but it has become who I am, the woman I know myself to be.

Over a year ago, I got a powerful inner signal, from my higher power, the Great Pussy in the Sky, to stop delivering live events. And the amount of grief and gratitude I have been moving through my body is enormous. I got to save my own life with the tools, arts, and practices of the SWA, and impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of women and men. I created real community, and taught women how to create community on their own. I could not imagine anything better. Nor did I want to.

But that was then.
Now, something else is being called forward.
And none of us really knows what. Or how. Or when.
It is so difficult to trust something that isn’t what we already know.

How do you let go of what was, when there is nothing even remotely familiar on the horizon to reach out and grab onto?

Yes. That.
Right there.
Can you feel the call? The quickening?
It can be very faint, very fragile, but it is there.
Sometimes it is buried under deep layers of depression.
Deep layers of terror.
Loss.
Resignation.

But when we choose to connect with the wild outrageous feminine force inside of ourselves, we realize we were born for these times.
Actually, these times are what we have always been waiting for.

The time where the patriarchal world culture is crumbling all around us, and it is up to each of us to connect with a buried truth, that was always ours, that is so needed in the world right now.

Time for each of us to unplug from the judgment of the world and plug into the deep, irrevocable, feminine intuition and knowledge that we were each born with, and taught to disregard.

This is why I wrote a new course called GPS*, which we will be launching in the fall.

Because when a woman truly connects to her Pussy power, she is guided within and without to see opportunity where there is none, for herself and others.
There are so many ways to interpret the circumstances we are in.
And everything rests on our interpretation.

Our world is suffering from its disconnection from the feminine. And each of us, as women, now has the opportunity to bring both ourselves and the world back into realignment, when we begin to trust and surrender to our own truth and intuition, our inner GPS.

We don’t need to wear pink glitter boots. We carry them inside.

And we don’t need to live in a Palace, to know we are Queen. We can Queen from anywhere, anytime, no matter what we are doing.

Crown on, sister. Let’s do this!

With so much love and pleasure,

*Great Pussy in the Sky

Regena is a feminist icon, a teacher, a speaker, a mother, a best-selling author, and creatrix and CEO of The School of Womanly Arts.

The post Am I still a Queen without a Palace? appeared first on Mama Gena.