Book Excerpt

Diane Wolverton recently released her first book, Return of the Yin: A Tale of Peace and Hope for a Troubled World, which is part fable and part visionary glimpse of a world transformed by love.

Return of the Yin: A Tale of Peace and Hope for a Troubled World
by Diane Wolverton
2003, M.O.T.H.E.R. Publishing, Rock Springs, Wyoming

Introduction

This story began to unfold in my mind shortly after Princess Diana's Tragic Death in 1997. Since then, it has ripened, matured and become more relevant to our world. It came to me as a fairy tale, a format that seemed appropriate for the myth-like qualities of the themes involved. The tale contains strong allusions to the Princess, her life and her death; but it is not a story about her. Rather, it is about the archetypal feminine she represented, the yin energy she personified and the conflicted state she found herself in as she tried to find joy in a world dominated by values not her own.

Women today know well her experience. In different ways, we each have felt the isolation, the sense of not belonging, the brutality and the fear. Like Diana, we long for balane a pace - and find them continually out of our grasp.

In my own journey, I have sought to find balance in an unbalanced world. I have struggled to gather up and hold on to my authentic self in spite of all the centrifual forces pulling at me from different directions. In her beautiful book, Gift from the Sea, Ann Morrow Lindberg gives this condition a name. She calls it "torn-to-pieces-hood" - from the German word Zerrissenheit. Now, nearly fifty years after Lindberg's lament, this condition has not improved. In fact, in many ways, Zerrissenheit has only worsened.

In just the past few years, we have experienced scandal in the White House, a contested presidential election, 9-11, war with Afghanistan and Iraq, war against terrorism, Enron, church scandals, environmental catastrophes and escalation of domestic violence, rape, and violence of all kinds - all testaments to the gross imbalance in the world today.

There is hope. There is a vision for a balanced world contained in the pages of this small volume - a vision that is played out in the lives of the characters. The story gives the vision shape, makes it real and tells us, yes! Yes, it is possible for the women of the world to unite and galvanize for the purpose of restoring balance to the world.

It is possible to start a revolution. Simply. Quietly. Powerfully. It is possible to start a revolution in the spirit of the yin. No need to yell and scream or rail against anyone or anything. Just peacefully paying attention and shifting, shifting, shifting our resources. It is possible to start a revolution now. It is up to us.

Yes. Let us begin.

A Vision from the book...

I have a vision…

I see a world very different from the world I live in. It is a world that honors the yin and values it as equal to the yang.

I see a sixteen-year-old girl who is unmarried and pregnant who doesn't have to choose between a life of shameful poverty and abortion. She knows she will be welcomed into a circle of women where she will learn to bring forth her gifts.

I see a world that honors the sexuality of all women, in its many diverse manifestations, and recognizes it as sacred and beautiful.

I see a world where a woman doesn't feel economic need to stay with a husband who beats her, because she knows she will be welcomed into a circle of women who will help her to find her voice and her gifts.

I see a new mother who doesn't have to choose between staying home with her baby and going back to work. I see a world that incorporates children into the workplace so a woman does not have to make a choice between being marginalized as a homemaker and being taken seriously as a career woman.

I see education pulled out of the hands of the sun gods and given back to the Goddess of Wisdom. I see the process for teaching becoming less like a banker depositing knowledge on students and becoming more like a midwife drawing the knowledge out of each individual learner.

I see a political structure that values the yin-values nurturing and non-violence and Earth and no longer feels the need to conquer, dominate and control the sensitivity and truth that the Goddess brings.

I see a medical system that honors the medicine woman. It values the natural healing wisdom of our bodies and gives up the ego need to "cure."

I see these things and I long to help them manifest themselves in our world today. Then I see a way. I see the way the great leader from history, Mohandas Gandhi, freed his country from the rule of tyrants, and I see a parallel of how we can free the yin from the tyranny of the yang – with non-violence and with wisdom.

Gandhi's people felt helpless to do anything about their enslavement because the kingdom that enslaved them had the wealth and the power and the weapons. Similarly, women feel powerless to rise up against the strength of the patriarchy because it holds the positions of power- and has all the weapons.

But Gandhi helped his people see that each individual has power. He cried out against the products of his country's oppressors. He helped his people see that they were supporting their oppressors with their own money. Once they realized they no longer needed these products and started making their own, a shift occurred and the great powers took note.

So it is with the world today. Women buy into the vision that the yang culture has for us. We support it with our dollars. Marketers know that most buying decisions are made by women. All the industries that are killing us are supported by us.

We have tremendous power. We have economic power. We can reclaim it by turning away from our insatiable desire to have more and more of what is offered to us by the yang. We think it will fill up the void inside us, but it enslaves us instead. We can start to reclaim our power by creating circles of women rippling out everywhere, helping women discover the void is filled from within, no without. Women will come to know that they don't need a closet full of clothes or a house full of things. They will learn what is enough.

And they will crave to purchase the things they need from women, like them, who have found their grounding in the yin. Women can create small industries and they will be able to compete with the big businesses because they will be supported by their sisters and the power of the yin will bless them.

We can learn to say "no" to the products that are made by our tyrants. We can build cooperatives and networks. Quietly and gently, an infrastructure will grow that supports itself. The big corporations will no longer be needed to sustain us. We will no longer sustain them.

Gradually, as the money flow slows down to the big yang industries, the powers that be will start to notice. They will rage at us. They will want to burn us- and some of us may die along the way.

They cannot stop us. The yin is returning. I hope I can be a part of preparing the way for her.

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