by Stacie Orrico

Two years ago, after giving birth to a beautiful son and deciding with my husband to wait for a couple of years before having another, a voice called to me. It was the voice of a woman. She told me that She was coming, and that She needed to use my body as a vessel to get here. I tried to pass it off as a hormonal ticking clock, or lack of sleep, and I swept the idea aside. Sure enough, the following month I doubled over with cramps as life implanted into my womb. So much for the pull and pray.

I swear to you that from the moment the baby was conceived, I knew she was a she. I could intuit the feminine spirit coming to life within MY body. She seemed older and wiser than me somehow. When my body broke open, and she slid out into my arms, I looked down at her and was overwhelmed by presence of this perfect, divine woman in my embrace. She had never been contaminated by the outside world, never silenced, never touched, or indoctrinated, or abused in any way. She held everything: the wholeness of feminine power undisturbed. All at once I felt a lioness roar rise up within me, and the urge to protect her perfection was consuming. Experiencing her wholeness simultaneously made me painfully aware of what life had done to me, how I had been robbed of my freedom, power, voice, and magic. It wasn’t gone, but I knew I couldn’t access the fullness of my daughters power within myself.

I learned to play in a world where girls donʼt get messy and dirty, learned about sex at twelve years old from a man who was there to “love and protect me”, learned that healing and forgiveness could only be found in an evangelical youth group, learned that the creative musical process is best overseen by a studio full of men who chop your words and melodies into something that sells, while suggesting that I see a dermatologist for my acne and lose a little weight.

The fibers of myself that held me together were given names. Powerful fucking names. Intuition named “irrationality”, emotional intelligence named “fragility”, love for community named as “neediness”, sexuality as “the dirty, shameful, stepping stone we have to use to get ahead”. We all know about these curses, right? But when I held my daughter in my arms I found myself asking:“WHY? Where did this information come from? Who said it to us, and to our mothers, and our grandmothers? Who cursed us and how can we break that power of that spell?” I felt in my bones that if I donʼt do the work of excavating the truth, I’ll never be able to give my baby girl the tools to preserve her innate power.  

Around this same time I was gifted with the opportunity to attend a yoga retreat centered around the Divine Feminine. I didnʼt really know what that would mean, but I thought, ‘Yoga and divine feminine? Yeah!’ That just sounded dope. Especially since I am still pissed off child towards my religious upbringing where God was so clearly a dude. What I could never have fathomed was the fact that this yoga teacher/healer/bad ass/in touch goddess, her name is Jenny, was going to usher me into the presence of my own divine femininity. The pure essence of magic that is woman. She didnʼt lead us there by talking about the idea and trying to convince us, she took us on a journey through the lens of our bodies, created an incredibly safe and nurturing space where we could let our skin and bones and blood and hair and fat and pain and illness tell our stories. We wept and mourned and wrapped our arms around one another as the hurt spilled out. I could hardly speak for almost two days, which is a small miracle if you know me, there was just so much shame lodged in my throat.

But then, something else happened, and it wasnʼt just the giddy feeling after a good purge. When we unloaded the burdens hurled upon us through our female lives: we were left with what IS. What has always been from the beginning of time and will always be. The unshakable, indestructible, life bearing, all knowing, magic of who we were created to be. And I tell you, goddamnit, she was big!!! She was so powerful! She was lovely, but she was NOT to be messed with. Together we were able to fearlessly sit in the midst of that power, in a room full of women. Women from very different walks of life, we were innately given the gift of connecting with one another.

The women in that room gave me back a good dose of bravery I hadn’t experienced since I was a tiny person. I left the weekend knowing that if there was any path to navigating the shit show that is the modern feminine experience, it had something to do with this. Stories trapped in our bodies, the need to be cradled in a womanʼs embrace, a sacred source that pulses through the blood, wombs, and curves of each and every one of us.

In the following months I could not avoid the visceral feeling of my throat tightening up, my voice feeling paralyzed. For the majority of my life I would have told you that singing was my greatest passion, maybe even my greatest gift, so you can imagine how this made things a little complicated for me. I listened to my body saying that I needed to create a space to speak, and started to dream up an idea of what it would be like to collaborate with Jenny to host another event, but this time with women who are artists. Poets, songwriters, journalists, play writes, and novelists: to come walk through her teaching on the divine feminine but this time with the hope of creating from the work. Letting our bodies tell our stories, and healing by giving voice to them, renaming every freaking word in our vocabularies if need be.

I wondered: what would it be like to create a truly safe space to create, with some of the most powerful female voices of our time, without having to fight for and defend who we are as women. To just speak from the endless power of what exists in us innately, gently nurtured out of us in the loving embrace of our fellow creatrix’s? That wondering turned into The Nile Project: a creative salon to explore the diversity of feminine experience. A place to reclaim your voice and your body.

Now, I am not a scholar or an intellectual. My teenage music career freaked me out, and has left me in creative limbo for a decade. I am terrified because I feel so unqualified to curate this thing. I am a tiny baby at the beginning of this journey of discovery, but if anything in my story resonates with you, and you want to embark with me, it would be my greatest honor to gift you with this experience. I have this feeling in my gut that it might be incredibly powerful and healing. As scary as it is to step towards you and ask you to join me, I fear that if I’m not brave enough to ask I may never have the courage to use my voice. And if I donʼt, who will name my baby girlʼs world?