Climate change seems to rate as 'off the charts' according to what most people might consider manageable stress levels. It sits in the territory of 'too big to handle, so probably wont handle'...and yet somehow, we have to. We know we are headed into seriously unpredictable times, so wouldn't it make sense to turn towards those who's more predictable response would be to care take and collaborate?

At the bottom of the ‘Why Woman’ page on the nav bar of our site, you’ll see the research exploring masculine and feminine responses to stress. It was found that men's natural testosterone driven response to stress tended more towards aggression and competition, while womens feminine oestrogen driven response was to ‘tend and befriend’. In other words, we literally are wired differently.

Women are hormonally wired to cooperate, co-create and take care when things get hard. We reach out each other, we include, share and communicate; we are orientated away from aggression and competition, presumably because we perpetuate life and so are more orientated to protect life through non violence. Our subtle, empathic, intuitive nature as Mothers and carers tends towards the more compassionate forms of conflict resolution.

When talking about masculine and feminine I am talking about qualities of energy and behavioural tendencies that exist in all of us. We all have both. Women have masculine energy and men have feminine energy. Most women may tend towards more feminine, and most men may tend towards more masculine energy, but there are plenty of exceptions to the rule.

For the patriarchal experiment to have manifested as it has, we have not been witnessing a balanced expression of masculine consciousness in action. Our world has swung towards war as a solution, to conquering as a way of gathering resource for the few, towards huge disparities of wealth and the climate change that threatens us all. Why? Because the more heart based, counter balancing feminine consciousness that would help guide, soften and include has been largely missing in action after thousands of years of dismissal and diminishment.

Patriarchy has provided huge technological advancement, physical comfort and apparent security for a minority within a culture of competition and inequality that leaves our children with a legacy of permanent and ever worsening global instability.

So here’s the crux. It is easy to destroy something that you have no relationship with. You wouldn’t cut down the tree that you climbed every day as a child, or shoot someone you went to school with, but you may cut down a tree that just happens to be in the way or shoot someone that you have been taught to fear as ‘the enemy’. Perception is everything, and feelings change perception.

‘Feeling’ is a more naturally feminine quality because it requires a softening, an allowing and a receiving of something and our bodies are naturally receptive. Men have also been shamed in their emotions. Boys don’t cry. Men the world over have had to harden themselves just to avoid the horror of ridicule and rejection by their own sex.

This is not a negation of men. There are plenty who cry unabashed at the atrocities in the world, and who lead and live through a more feminine consciousness, but en masse women are already orientated to feel and respond from our feelings and we need a seriously large awakening fast. We will protect what we love, and if we can be supported to feel and relate to Mother Earth as something, someone worth protecting, then we may have a chance. Imagine if we cared for our planet as we do our families. Would she be suffering the 6th mass extinction right now? No.

Mother Earth is being taken for granted, raped, used, and pimped to the highest bidder forevery kind of her dwindling bounty.

What can we use her for? How can we make money out of her? We take for granted everything that she gives while doing what we want without thought for consequence.

It’s the story of so many women past and present, and the very real face of what has been happening to the feminine on this planet for far too long. If we joined the dots and started to relate to her as an extension of ourselves, (although it’s the other way around!) would we still find it acceptable? I think it might become very much easier for women to build a relationship with Earth and to feel protective. Both she and ‘we’ deserve better, and we can take that stand. Instead of standing by while Earth is stripped and defiled, let’s do what we can to re-robe her. Let’s reforest.

A feminine response to climate change would be one where everyone is considered, where long term considerations would take centre stage and where we would try to figure out how to create safety for everyone. What do we all need? What solutions benefit everyone? How do we create a world that aims to do

more than top up the already overfilled bank accounts of the few?

A feminine culture would value people over money, nature over money and peace over money because she is orientated from the heart and from an instinctive drive towards connection, community, protection, love and the perpetuation of life.

Could women take a stand for Mother Earth? Yes. Could women take stand for the value of Mothering or for the value of Woman? Yes. Who understands it better than us….but will we? That’s the million dollar question. More likely to with the encouragement and safety of a shared sisterhood standing together I think which is the WHY of TreeSisters.

If we want to see a planetary awakening back towards a re-evaluation of the Feminine then we are going to have to lead, and it’s time. Please join us and spread the word. Anything is possible if we work together.

World in Fire image by Danilo Rizzuti