Dear Patriarchy,

You are an institutional model that although was created by men, harms men as much as it harms women. True, men have more power in every worldly way possible. True, women are still treated as things to serve a purpose for men and our power is revoked time and time again. And…to see how men are disempowered inside your structure we need to zoom out and see your master plan…we need to see how you value logic, reason, conformity, blind faith, pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, having power, and continually pleasuring and beefing up the self at whatever expense, always walking on the heads of others.

You as a backbone of innocent religion demand blind faith, mental conformity that drains the will and oppresses all women and the queer community. You as a backbone of innocent atheism demand that all knowledge not deriving from the five senses of the human being is to be dismissed as irrelevant. You as the backbone of innocent politics turns loving intelligent leadership into a self-centered quest for power and control over others. You as the backbone of innocent education turns children into conformists who do not question what they are told and serves the few at the top. You as the backbone of innocent family puts men in roles of the strong logical leaders and women as subordinate creatures needing to be owned and tamed. You as the backbone of any family or relationship not straight or cis turn queer people into sinners and shame them into submission. You as the backbone of the innocent self install shame into every heart of every human if they dare stray from the set of the meaningless rules, values, truths, and expectations you propagate through our institutions of family, religion, education, and politics.

Your structure is set up to divide people and pit them at war with one another and be at war within the self. Men are raped of emotional connection and their internal self is manipulated, therefor they tend to be sick in the head. Women are raped physically and kept subordinate in the world. We are less sick in the head because we are emotional connected, aware, and we process our feelings with each other. Men are more sick in the head and women are more disempowered by your imbalanced power hungry structure, patriarchy.

And yet, I do not blame you. In fact, I do not blame at all. I see that you, patriarchy, are the reflection of us humans and what we refuse to see and heal in our own shadow territory. Deep down, we fear one another and fear our own power. It’s a big ancient and complicated story….the vicious cycle between you and us, patriarchy. Multigenerational trauma and cultural conditioning set up every infant to be already marginalized, disempowered, and fragmented….even the most privileged. It’s a spectrum of “haves” and “have-nots” experiencing less and more intense degrees of pain and injustice.

The only people who are fully liberated inside have healed themselves enough to discover their true power within and no longer seek it as much in others or in this broken human world in need of repair. For our true internal power source cannot be taken away by another. As long as we continue to overly externalize the power source as another person, an almighty god, a country, a leader, or whatever, we are not healing, we are getting it wrong and perpetuating the vicious cycle.

This is why I also thank you, patriarchy, even in the pain. Because you are showing me what I need to see and heal inside of me. You make it obvious that I crave empowerment and self worth that I must find within myself. I know it’s a process and path, this healing thing. I have to go through the stages. I need to go through the stage of blaming you and hating you, to get my anger and sorrow out for all the pain and injustice. I did that for a bit and then I moved to the next stage of accepting the reality of you, patriarchy, and also accepting the reality of my past trauma and multigenerational wounds.

I found acceptance of what is and began to focus on my healing process. I started feeling my own inner source of power and this is the big healing for me as a targeted women…coming into my own empowerment…so that I can then move beyond empowerment and into the next stages of strategy and re-centering. In my privilege, I move beyond inclusion into awareness and then allyship (thank you Letitia Nieto and your book “Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment, for showing me the way). I am a work in progress for my own healing and the healing of this world.

I don’t know how it all works but I do know that each individual that shows up with loving, kind, tolerant, firm, dedicated, intelligent presence that is balanced and honors both feeling and logic, faith and reason, dark and light, life and death (etc) brings healing to the world. To heal the world is to come together as one human race (with distinctions and differences in race, gender, age, health, sexual preference, and culture that are treated with equality). We must come together in numbers and say no to you, patriarchy.

Do you notice how I have lowered the case of your p? I am taking you off your throne inside of me in threat and power. I know I battle my own complicity too. Where I indulge your structure due to my privilege and also my wanting of convenience. I am on no mountain top. I admit and own my shadow aspects of self and do not judge myself for we all are made up of light and dark aspects. I do my best in each moment. I try because I know that the one and only solution is for the human race to come together and say no to you. If you are not needed, patriarchy, you will naturally decay and die as all structures eventually do.

May we all be on this path of helping you decay and die because although I accept the dark and light cycles of nature, I am in it to win. I am a lover who intends to see every human free and every infant born into true-self prosperity.

I send this letter to you without editing my thoughts because I want to express myself from the heart and off the cuff.

One day you will be gone forever, patriarchy, I just know it.

Love,

Michelle