How Patriarchy’s Death Story Stole the Feminine Power of Life
Rewriting Death’s Story Helps Us Loosen Patriarchal Control & Reclaim Power (2 of 5)
This is an ongoing series: Post 1 (From Fear to the Pregnant Void), Post 2 (How Patriarchy Stole Death’s Story) post 3 (A World on Fire: Grief is Praise).
Dear Soul ~ I am right there with you, next to you…taking a deep breath with you right now.
This past week has been a whirlwind. I’ve been creating YT content, having deep conversations, and trying to get a pulse on where we really are as a country. Is the “flooding the zone” keeping people too disoriented or tuning them out to see the full picture? I have to say yes.
And then Monday happened.
On my way to get groceries, I had a completely traumatizing experience with the symbolic "white MAGA angry man."A man who, when I simply honked at him to ask him to get off my tail, did not just rage — he tried to humiliate and dominate with the only power men think they have over women: sexuality.
While many would say, “Men will be men,” I refuse to let that thought-terminating cliché pass unchecked.
Because this isn’t just one man. It’s a pattern.
I drove for Uber/Lyft for years (2016-2024) — first in the Bay Area, then Nashville, then Texas. I’ve watched the road rage intensify, the entitlement swell. This isn’t random or post-COVID frustration, which I once thought it was.
This is what happens when patriarchal leadership gives permission for men to act as immature boys — thinking they can reassert control, humiluate women by the sexual dominance and physical means.
💡 Paige and I will be discussing this and more LIVE on YouTube today at 2pm CST.
So why, in the midst of everything happening right now — when men are once again displaying voilent offensive sexual gestures and more thinking it will “control” women — am I still talking about Death?
Because how a society understands and tells the story of death is how it justifies the way it lives.
🚨 Right now, the Christian nationalist movement—through Project 2025 and the 7 Mountain Mandate—is using its death story to justify total political takeover.
When death is framed as something to be conquered instead of understood, it fuels fear, control, destruction, and domination.
This is why understanding death differently isn’t just a philosophical exercise.
Understanding and reworking our Death Story is survival.
WHAT CAN INDIGENOUS CREATION STORIES ADD TO OUR UNDERSTANDING OF DEATH?
Western culture has erased almost every story where death is not the enemy.
Yet, if we dig deep enough—beyond the dominant narrative—we can find an entirely different way of seeing it.
A world where death is not a failure.
Not a punishment.
Not a battle to be won.
If we know where to look, we can find a world where death is simply… part of life.
Let me share one such experience:
It was my first Christmas Eve after leaving Evangelical Christianity, just four months earlier. I had already encountered Inanna’s story—the first crack in the Christian death story I had been told.
But I was still searching.
That night, I sat inside a sweat lodge, listening to the creation story of the Ohlone people.
Instead of frantically scanning for all the ways he was wrong—as I had been trained to do in church, defending myself against the “demonic deception” of other faiths—
I simply listened.
I let the words settle into my body.
And what I found startled me.
I could see the similarities to the Genesis story I had once believed. How similar people of this completely foregin culture were to my “Christian” roots.
Hmmm…
This small act of recognizing a shared truth sparked something in me.
Instead of seeing other spiritual traditions as traps set to deceive me, I began to wonder:
What if stories weren’t meant to be taken as absolute fact?
What if they were shifting metaphors, each one offering a different way to understand our place in the vast, chaotic world?
That question changed everything.
It was the key that unlocked a new way of seeing my mother’s death.
For so long, I had held onto the Christian narrative: that she had failed. That she had sinned. That she had stolen life from God’s hands.
But as I sat with Inanna’s story…
As I sat with the story in that sweat lodge…
A new story emerged.
A story where my mother was not a failure.
A story where she was not a sinner.
A story where she was brave.
She became part of a long line of courageous women, each one doing what they could to awaken those who came after them.
I lived with this new story. I let it replace the old one.
And in doing so, I found healing.
WHAT IF THIS STORY OF THE SPIRAL WERE OUR NEW STORY OF DEATH?
Years later, I encountered another story—one even more profound in its simplicity.
Unfortunately, I don’t recall which Indigenous wisdom tradition it comes from—perhaps someone reading can share!
But here is what it says:
We are born at the center of a spiral.
As we live, we expand outward—gathering experience, wisdom, knowledge—until, eventually, our bodies can no longer contain all that we have become.
And in that moment?
We do not end.
We spiral beyond the body.
Death is not a cliff.
Death is not something to be beaten.
Death is simply the moment we expand beyond what our physical form can hold.
Actually, I was going to move on to talk about the power of greiving that which we have lost…but I want to leave it here with this question dear soul. I would love to hear your ponderings on this:
What if death isn’t a loss, but a return? If we stopped fearing it, how might we live differently?
What if death isn’t a loss, but a return? If we stopped fearing it, how might we live differently?