The Queen of My Self

Step Up & Take Charge

Donna Henes — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:00:07 +0000

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. - Erica Jong The story of our lives is ours to create. We can design our own roles and ideals, compose the scripts, and author the sagas of our own futures and that of the environment around us. While we cannot necessarily control the circumstances and influences that present themselves to us in the course of living, we can choose how we will respond to them when...

Read the full post here »

Let Your Power Out!

Donna Henes — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:00:48 +0000

Many of you have, I am sure, come across this fabulous writing many times. It speaks to the heart of the matter of women’s dysfunctional relationship to our own power. In my spiritual counseling as a Midlife Midwife™ I dispense this powerful inspiration as a prescription for fear, shyness, self-limiting thinking, self-deprecation and self-destructive behavior. I tell my clients to post this where they will see it often and to repeat it aloud daily. It is...

Read the full post here »

Balanced Empowerment

Donna Henes — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:00:24 +0000

Empowerment Several time ago I asked the question “What does power mean to you?” This piece about the empowerment of women was sent to me by Kali Fyre, a sister Queen and reader of The Queen of My Self. It is from her blog, “Awakening the Iris.” For me, women’s empowerment is really about BALANCE, or at least how I teach it. Statistics show that a culture that marginalizes its women suffers in totality, and when...

Read the full post here »

Coming Home to the Self

Donna Henes — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 10:00:22 +0000

Speaking of Self-Sovereignty, here is a piece by Sister Joan Chittister, the popular Catholic spiritual writer. It landed propitiously in my mailbox whilst I was in the midst of working on these recent posts on the Self. Good timing, Sister Queen! Coming Home to the Self By Sr, Joan Chittister We are a culture of misfits — not because there is anything wrong with us as a people but because we...

Read the full post here »

Sovereignty is Hard!

Donna Henes — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:00:48 +0000

Coming from the tough love school of spiritual counseling as I do, I feel that it is only fair to warn you — There are no 10 Easy Steps to Sovereignty. The roads leading to Queendom are diverse and many. The way to Self-esteem can be complicated and long. Each woman must take her own path, make her own trail, clear a passage for herself through the thick brambles that reach up to trip her. What roads do exist are unmapped, bumpy, and full of...

Read the full post here »

Answer Only to Your Self

Donna Henes — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:00:04 +0000

I Don’t Really Care What You Think Today, we see many women in public life, ranging the gamut from Hillary Clinton to Sharon Osborne, who have stepped out of the shadows of their husbands and families to pursue their own ambitions for themselves. Millions of ordinary women face the same challenge in our daily lives, as well. After a couple of decades on the job, many of us feel that we have explored one option or direction as far as we can and now we want to do something...

Read the full post here »

Auntie Gravity – Part 2

Donna Henes — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 10:00:35 +0000

Auntie Gravity – Part 2 An Antic Cronish Goddess by Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. "An’ you jus’ start thinkin’ of them lines," She says, "as your Auntie Gravity’s rainbows, an’ remember all the colors of what you done in your life. An’ where’s that ol’ somewhere over the rainbow? In a land full of midgets, that’s where, mental midgets that don’t know...

Read the full post here »

A Senior (I Should Be So Brilliant) Moment

Donna Henes — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 10:00:21 +0000

A Senior (I Should Be So Brilliant) Moment This is the Letter of the Year from The Times of London: An elderly lady actually wrote this letter to her bank. The bank manager thought it amusing enough and sent if off to the Times to be published. This newspaper thanks him most sincerely. Dear Sir, I am writing to thank you for bouncing my cheque with which I endeavoured to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three 'nanoseconds' must have...

Read the full post here »

Auntie Gravity – Part 1

Donna Henes — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:00:56 +0000

Auntie Gravity – Part 1 An Antic Cronish Goddess by Barbara Ardinger, Ph.D. Here is a goddess for mid-life. Sisters, do certain parts of your anatomy that used to stand right up and salute, now ignore the flag no matter now vigorously it’s waving? Is "perky" a word whose meaning passed you by a decade ago? From behind, do you look like you’re sitting down even when...

Read the full post here »

Go Light-Footed Through Life

Donna Henes — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 10:00:58 +0000

Go Light-Footed Through Life by Sister Joan Chittister There is a deer in me—made for running, for scampering while the rest of the world around me walks. I am made to find and drink from foreign streams. I am meant to go light-footed through life. So what am I doing in “stability” and “community,” in a lifetime of “Rules” and hierarchy and patriarchy masking as “a woman’s lifestyle”? But then, on...

Read the full post here »