The Feminine is Limitless On Deep Power and Self-Adoration

Boa tarde, it's Megan here. I'm writing this from a room with a fan. To be specific, in a type of community, known as a favela, on a hill above Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach. The population of this favela, and many favelas, is primarily Black, primarily female, and 80% Evangelical.

I'm here with my laptop on a pillow on my thighs, to separate my already warm skin from the heat of a laptop that is nearing its final days. I'll work until local leaders turn the power off today, so they can make an adjustment in hopes of strengthening the grid in this comunidade.

Power outages are common here, in an excluded place. I take 100 steps up and down each day, at least twice. I'm working with a community organization that focuses on reforestation, agro-ecology, social and economic sustainability, and providing opportunities for the people living here, who are systemically oppressed.

There was a massive storm the other night, leaving two feet of water on the streets below. I watched it, like an electric trance, rolling up the coast. The emergency alert system in the favela sounded just after an alert came across everyone's cell phones. Shortly, the power was out. It was a 9-hour outage, nothing compared to. 48-hour outage we experienced when I first arrived.

The hotels and the apartments below remained with electricity. We had candles and samba. Local musicians visiting to work on the project, caught in the rainstorm. I was lucky to be there in that candle-lit room filled with song.

I was lucky to be there the next day, the 2nd of February. When the women in the house prepared coconut cake and fresh fruit for Yemanjá, the goddess of the sea descended from African traditions. She is Brazil's mother, and yesterday we honored her with gifts, prayers, and candles.

When the champagne was poured over the offering, she came to swallow it immediately. "She's hungry," said one of the women. I fed her my sorrows and my dreams for the next half of my life. With a white rose in my mouth, I dove into her embrace. "She's my mother, and she's your mother, too," said a woman on the beach; we locked eyes as I emerged.

I am grateful to be here in her home, with her children. It is an incredible honor of my life. But with 20 people in one house, in a language I'm still trying my best to speak, my neurodivergence is triggered daily. I do not naturally have the capacity within my system for this level of community. But through their patience, and my surrendering, I am allowing myself to be cracked open. And love, acceptance, learning, boundaries, and care are filling in the cracks.

Nevertheless, I descended to the sea last night. Candles were left burning in the sand for the tides to claim them. White and pink roses were everywhere. People dressed all in white were singing and running into the sea in the darkness, as the nearly full moon illuminated the white water rushing in. The flags were red. But the people here know their mother. And she knows them.

I thought of her, this great mother who is the mother of all, these oceans that are an unstoppable and unimaginable force. The feminine is by definition abundant, all-encompassing, and infinitely powerful. She will always rise, because she cannot be contained. For every individual woman who is stripped of her autonomy and agency, a million waves roll in resistance. In her honor.

We are the waves for the future.

Every other "she" is another you.

Every one of us is a daughter of the sea.