I was driving home the other night, lost in thought as my headlights lit the way through the darkness. My creative juices were flowing, thanks to some amazing bodywork and a coaching call with my mentor.
Also my friend, and the woman who helped me bring my babies into the world, my mentor, Katharina, is an archetype consultant, trained by the famed Caroline Myss herself.
You’ve heard me talk about archetypes here before – especially about the archetypical masculine and feminine traits that we all express, and how being in rest and creativity and connected to the earth are parts of the feminine that myself and so many others are trying to reclaim.
This night we talked about the many other archetypes – which are, in short, patterns of behaviour we all express – that are a part of me and how I operate in the world.
If you know me, you won’t be surprised to hear that the poet, the rebel, and the warrior are all archetypes that play a strong role in my life.
As I was winding down the rural road toward my tiny oceanside home, I had an aha moment.
My rebel and warrior archetypes simply love to recruit my poet to do their bidding.
If I’m losing you in archetype talk here, what I mean is that I often use my words to express my more rebellious beliefs, or the ones for which I am standing firm, a warrior. The written word has always been my way of exploring and expressing how I feel about the world around me. The fact that I have the poet archetype, specifically (as opposed to the author, or the writer, for example), means that I am able to share these thoughts, I believe, in a way that is softer, that shines a light on a new way of thinking, that is persuasive, yet also holds a sense of reverence and beauty.
I glanced up at the moon and laughed out loud at the amusing yet deliciously enticing thought that popped into my head next.
If my rebel and my warrior are using my poet to express themselves, then I should be dismantling the patriarchy, one haiku at a time.
I’ve never really written haikus, but I found the idea amusing: a play on the absurdity of the idea of dismantling the patriarchy with poetry (although maybe not so absurd?), as well as some of the absurdities of the patriarchy itself.
And so, a little creative project was born.
As the weeks have passed, I’ve found that my silly-yet-incredibly-enticing project was just what I needed: something bite-sized, that engaged my left brain a little as I counted syllables (a haiku has 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in the second, and 5 in the third). I’ve found myself thinking in haikus as I put my son down for his nap or drove my daughter to school. It’s been really fun.
I decided to be a bit high-tech about the whole thing, and I downloaded a haiku-writing app to make it easy to jot down my poems, and when I did so, a new idea was born: this app is a social haiku writing app, as are many out there, I learned, and I thought – why do this alone?
So I want to invite you to engage your creative wild feminine, and write a #haikuagainstthepatriarchy. Use the hashtag and upload a photo of your haiku on Instagram (like the photo in this blog post) and maybe we really can dismantle the patriarchy with poetry.