The Sacred Faces of Female®
The Sacred Faces of Female® are thirty-six living embodiments that illuminate the many ways women survive, protect, awaken and thrive throughout their lives. They first made themselves known to me over twenty years ago and slowly, through meditation, contemplation, dreams and shamanic journeying, revealed thirty-six expressions of our inner relationship with Self.
Over time I began documenting, archiving and awakening to this new somatic language and inner landscape, gradually coming to know the gifts, wisdom and medicine that each Sacred Face carries.
Twenty-two of these are known as the Thriving Life Faces. They represent the inner resources that support us: our ability to find our own voice, take compassionate embodied action, uncover the origins of buried rage, cultivate calm and inner equilibrium, and remember the sacredness of our lives lived through being born female.
The remaining fourteen are known as the Burden Carriers. These represent the many ways we may have sought to protect ourselves: hiding our true nature, diminishing our natural radiance, burning out, or carrying the needs of others whilst neglecting the needs of our own bodies and inner lives.
To witness, name and embody these Sacred Faces of Female is to enter into relationship with the wisdom they carry. Over time they reveal new ways of meeting change, courage, creativity, grief and becoming more embodied living.
In 2020 I began discussing with visionary artist Jo Seshen Scott how together we could deepen this exploration by bringing The Sacred Faces of Female® into visual form through painted images. What began as a shared exploration has become a deeply collaborative body of work, where my poems and written transmissions sit alongside Jo's extraordinary painted interpretations of what she experienced through meeting The Sacred Faces of Female within herself. Together we continue to discover these Faces through our dialogues, creativity and lived experiences of carrying these living embodiments within us.
The Sacred Faces of Female® remains an unfolding body of work. They are not offered as a fixed system or therapeutic programme, but as an invitation into conversation with the many inner landscapes that shape our lives. Through poetry, art and shared dialogue, women are invited to encounter these living embodiments and discover what they awaken within themselves.
If ever there was a time for these Sacred Faces to begin finding their place in the wider world, I believe that time is now. Over the coming months this page will gradually become home to the poems, paintings, conversations and reflections as this body of work continues to unfold and is shared.
If you would like to hear about future Sacred Faces Conversations, or receive updates as the work develops, I would love to hear from you.
Why Our Sacred Faces Matter
Throughout our lives we move between many inner states. Some sustain us. Others protect us. Some lay dormant an are waiting to be remembered.
The Sacred Faces of Female offer a language through which these inner landscapes can be recognised and brought into conscious relationship. Each embodiment carries its own presence, story and invitation unique to each woman, but together they create a collective recognisable map that honours both our survival states and our capacity to thrive.
Meeting The Burden Carriers
Within The Sacred Faces of Female pantheon you will meet The Burden Carriers. These are best described as the survival experiences that live within us, which often develop when life becomes challenging, overwhelming or unsafe.
These reactive states are not signs of weakness or failure. They are intelligent responses shaped by experiences of discord, trauma, loss, carrying too much stress for too long, or when we are met with threatening situations or carry memories of such events. These inner states can feel unrelenting and burdensome, and over time may hold us back from living fully or reaching our goals and aspirations.
Within The Sacred Faces of Female® there are fourteen named Burden Carriers, introduced through the poem Burden. When a woman reads, works with or simply hears this poem, many recognise something deeply familiar, there is a language for experiences that previously felt difficult to name. The internal burdens we carry are supported by the framework of The Burden Carriers, whose role is to guide a woman towards the inner wisdom that sits behind her uncomfortable thoughts or feelings.
Recognising an inner state as burdensome - especially one that is longstanding and often held without support - can bring mixed feelings. There may be sadness for what has been endured alone, but often there is also a deep sense of relief, because something long held inside has finally been named and understood.
Meeting The Burden Carriers is not about getting rid of uncomfortable feelings or difficult states of mind. Rather, it is about gently recognising and meeting those previously unseen parts of ourselves with compassion and renewed understanding.
As we begin to understand the wisdom held within these protective survival states, the corresponding Thriving Life Sacred Faces gradually come into relationship with them, offering new qualities, perspectives and inner resources. Over time this allows what once felt burdensome to be slowly transformed, restoring greater balance, vitality and a deeper sense of embodied wholeness.
The Thriving Life Faces
The Thriving Life Faces represented within The Sacred faces of Female pantheon, bring to us the inner qualities that support us to live with strength, calm, and connection. They are not lofty ideals we must strive to become, but instead, living resources within us that can be accessed, remembered and embodied over time.
Some Thriving Life Faces offer grounding and stability; others bring courage and change. Some reconnect us with our younger selves, others awaken the wisdom of the elder within - while others open gateways into our animist nature, and our connection to the transendental.
As we begin to understand our burdened survival states, we can draw upon these supportive thriving life qualities as they naturally start to emerge - helping us feel more relaxed, confident, and more able to move forward in our lives.
Each of the Thriving Life Faces carries its own unique presence and gifts. Some arrive slowly and without fanfare, while others emerge at moments of profound change or crossroads during our lives. Rather than asking us to become someone new, they invite us to remember qualities that have always lived within us, which are waiting to be remembered, recognised, expressed and embodied.