Composing Matriarchal dreamscapes with Nergiz

This episode is for the Matriarchs, young and old, the ancestors and future ones, and those building a life-sustaining, regenerative world for all. 

This week, Emily is joined by the luminous Nergiz, a mother, writer, artist, and composer of Matriarchal dreamscapes. 

Tune in for a world changing conversation about... 

• The misconception that Matriarchy is women rule when it means mother beginning and how that differs from patriarchy  
• Allowing Matriarchy to transform us by living, practicing, and recreating it in our daily lives 
• The political, economic, social, and cultural cornerstones of Matriarchy 
• Nergiz’s forthcoming community-funded book, Matriarchy: An Ancient Vision to Redefine Power and Restore the Earth  

To connect with Nergiz, subscribe to her newsletter, support her community-funded book, and follow her on Instagram. 

Mentioned in this episode: 

• The Great Cosmic Mother by Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor 
• Nergiz’s reading list for a Matriarchal world  
• Matriarchy Now coalition 

Thank you Bre Legan for our artwork and Paul Krasnoshchok for our music.

Resources & Links
🌹𖠿 Join the Gates of Venus waitlist
🌱✨ Subscribe to the Soil and Stars newsletter
🌔🌀 Receive the free Lunar Living guide and attune to the gentle, nourishing cycle of the Moon

Transcript

Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Soil and Stars, a podcast exploring our interconnectedness and unique roles within the web of life. I'm your host, Emily Hall, and I invite you to awaken your mind, open your heart, and remember that you are made of soil and stars. Welcome back to Soil and Stars, a podcast where we awaken and deepen our connections with the living world and cosmos. Holy moly, do I have a conversation for you today? Like truly a dream come true conversation. As I was visioning season two of the podcast to be centered around Venus, immediately I knew I had to reach out to this creator, this writer, this artist, this luminary, and ask her, just totally cold outreach and ask her if she would be willing to be a guest on Soil and Stars. And to my utter delight, she accepted and she said yes. And it was a dream come true to meet her virtually after religiously and devotionally reading her words for months and feeling so connected to the world that she is building and to the world that she is inviting all of us into. And when I think about, you know, we've been exploring Venus, and I'm thinking about Venus on a systemic context, if Venus was creating our economic, our social, our political and cultural systems and conditions, what would that energy of Venus, that archetype of Venus, what system would we create globally? Well, to me, without a doubt in my mind, that would be matriarchy. And I just even have chills all over my body when I say the word matriarchy. It is so freaking powerful. And today, as this episode is being released into the wild, is a solar freaking eclipse in Leo. For the Astro girlies out there, you may know that the lunar nodes, these very faded points in the sky, which is where the sun and the moon and the earth and the earth's orbit align. These are the points where eclipses happen. And today is a solar eclipse in Leo. So that means the lunar nodes just changed signs within the last couple of weeks. So the South Node is now in Leo and the North Node is now in Aquarius. And so for the next 18 months, we will be grappling collectively, personally with these themes of Leo and Aquarius, which is our individuation, our unique creative gifts, right? What we individually have to create and to sow in this world and who we are at our essence. That's Leo. And then Aquarius, the collective, humanity as a whole, systems and structures and how we organize ourselves, the systems that we build to relate and connect and live in community together. And the emphasis is on both of these. It's about finding balance between the two of these. And so it just feels so freaking cosmically timed. I shared this a couple episodes ago ago that this podcast is so intuitively guided. And the story arc of this entire season just came to me one morning as I was laying in bed. And I just knew the order of the conversations and this journey that we were going to go on together this season. And so I just plugged them into the calendar, not knowing that, you know, we're midway through the season. This is the sixth episode of season two. So this is our midpoint. And the midpoint is on a solar eclipse. And it's a conversation about matriarchy. And that just feels so cosmically ordained to me because eclipses are faded, right? Again, not every eclipse is going to result in Earth shattering, life-changing events for us individually. But we do notice their reverberations in the collective. Planting a seed, giving words, giving amplification to matriarchy. That is the world that I want to live in. I am creating with so many others around me, likely you are too, dear listener. If you're tuned into Soil and Stars, I know once you hear more about matriarchy in this very nuanced way that our guest is going to educate us on today, that likely all of us believe in matriarchy. Because if you're tuning into this podcast, you love the earth, you love humanity, you believe in a regenerative, life-affirming, sustainable future, you believe in a future where children are centered as sacred, beautiful beings. You believe in a world where every single human has all of their needs met so that we can all collectively thrive. That is the world that I am building, that is the world that you are building, that is the world that we are building. And to me, that matriarchy really encompasses this. And so I'm very excited to plant this matriarchal seed today on the solar eclipse, and may the seed ripple out into the universe and reach far and wide and inspire and impact all of the matriarchs out there. All of the matriarchs, young and old, whether you are a mother or not, whether you ever give birth to a human child, it doesn't matter. You can be a matriarch. Because to be a matriarch is a way of being.

Meet Nergiz

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Today this project has evolved into Chicks, media for the matriarchy. Nerghiza's work bridges academic research and popular imagination, translating the ancient living wisdom of matriarchy into language that reaches people who need it most. She is a member of a global matriarchal council alongside scholars like Heidi Guttner-Abendroth and Genevieve Vaughn, two of the most prolific matriarchal scholars of our time. Nurghiza's upcoming book, Matriarchy, is a community-funded book that reimagines power and invites us to build the next world. But without further ado, please savor, amplify, share, and enjoy this world-changing conversation with Nerghiz.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Hi, Emily. Thank you so much for having me. It's such an honor to be here.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

It is such an honor to have you here. I am such a devoted fan and just supporter of your work in the world. I think it is so needed. It is so much more than medicine. It is true frameworks for building the world for the future generations, for really just calling in this beautiful dream and possibility and reality of matriarchy. And so I am just so excited to talk with you about all things matriarchy today and introduce the listeners who may not be familiar with you yet to get them introduced to your work because I think everyone who's devoted to building a better world needs to be subscribing to Nerghiz's newsletter, needs to be following her on social media. So to begin, Nerghiz, would you just be willing to share a little bit about yourself and your work and anything that's on your heart today?

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much for the lovely intro. Um I, you know, my name's Nerghiz, and I am an independent writer and artist and a mother to a beautiful, almost three-year-old daughter, Kamaya. I've been writing about matriarchy publicly for just over two years now, but um before that I was studying and researching um intersectional eco-feminism with my now defunct page, Chicks for Climate. Um, and that I was doing alongside like working in tech, in marketing, kind of as a way to balance out the soul sucking that was happening in my day job, and to feel like I'm doing something against, or not against, but to to kind of bring awareness to and to bring hope to the climate crisis movement um and how interrelated I felt it was with you know other social justice movements, specifically feminism. And I graduated from a women's college in New York City where I was definitely, yeah, I was studying economics, but I was definitely doing it within kind of like a feminist framework, just because like all my classes were, you know, there was like two percent men in these classes. Um so that really gave me like a foundational education of feminism as it has happened so far. Um, and you know, I was in college when Donald Trump got elected, like that whole, you know, I was really f in the epicenter of some of these uh, you know, chain the changing tides. Uh-huh. Um, so I think that really informed my feminist, you know, um development. And I started reading, of course, that's part of my work, I started reading like feminist text, eco-feminist text, and then at the age of 26 I became a mother unexpectedly. And, you know, after I gave birth, I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Like this is this is so wrong. This is like, how is it possible that I've just done this thing that's the most important thing I'll ever do? Besides like creating like transforming a piece of land into something like a permaculture oasis, you know? Like that would be incredible. And I've just done this. And like the society doesn't care. And not only does it not care that like I've just done this, but it actually doesn't deem it productive or of value. And I'm supposed to basically do this alone and do everything else that's expected of me as like a just a regular person. And that's impossible. So you end up being in an incredibly vulnerable situation with no societal support, and yet all society wants you to do is like do this thing, become a mother, and there's all this pressure. Anyway, over three years of motherhood, I've definitely learned a lot about this experience. Um, but the first few months were really like a crucible for me to like. I I mean, I was breastfeeding my daughter, and I didn't want to, you know, watch, I wanted to do something quiet, so I would just read books. And a friend of mine recommended The Great Cosmic Mother by Monica Shu and Barbara Moore, I believe. And that was just like, wow, like this is this feels so true in this situation that I'm in. Um, and then I don't know if it was before or after this that I just like I think I had already thought about matriarchy before this. I need to get my story straight a little bit here. I can't remember. It's such a blur. But anyway, I ended up finding matriarchy, like um books about matriarchy, Heider Guttner Abentorf, this German um woman who I've become very close to, writ has written books over 40 years about this subject, and I was just like, oh my god, this is it, this is it, this is exactly like this puts value on what I've just done. Not only that, but like it it shows like why it's important. It's not just about, oh, I'm in this really vulnerable position, help me now. It's about, no, I've just done some, like I've done a service to society by creating another person that we can all love, you know, that we can if you just think about like the value of a human being, and I've just I'm creating this is an ongoing process. But also like to the system itself, you know, I've created a worker. Like that is something of value. And by by make creating it, by making it free or making it worthless, it's like I'm being exploited for this work. So basically, I I wrote an article around six months post-partum that was that said like why the next wave of feminism is matriarchy. And it went completely viral. It ended up reaching Heidegner Abdworth, like she messaged me, you know, we we've had a friendship now, and then um it just it just not only that, but like it just validated to me that this idea is so potent, and there's so much and there's such a resonance because other people feel this too. It's not just me, and there's something here that is so valuable, not only can it inspire like millions of people, but it can actually help us to solve some of these problems that are the most important problems of today.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Thank you so much for sharing everything, Nerghiz. And yeah, I really pick up, you know, I've been reading your work for several months now. And so a lot of what you've shared, I've I've read about you in your newsletter on Substack from a young matriarch. And I think it's really interesting that you studied economics. And I didn't know that you went to college in the United States, so that you really studied economics in New York City, like literally the mecca of global free market capitalism. And yet, like you said, while you were studying economics, which you've written about before, which is being taught obviously in a very capitalist patriarchal lens, I'm sure, but you still brought that feminist lens. And I think that is something that I've been really picking up in my own studies, whether it's like my spiritual explorations or really just any topic that I'm interested in going deeper on, is that we are always going to bring our worldview and our lens and our lived experience to whatever we're studying and learning about. And if we're learning about a topic that's been primarily taught and written about and spoken about more from men and white men and Western men, right? That lens is going to be very different than the lens that we're bringing as eco-feminists, as supporters of matriarchy. And so I think it's really interesting that you have this foundation in economics, but then you're able to bring this eco-feminist lens to it and say, okay, because I know one of the cornerstones of matriarchy that you write about is gift economies. And so it's helpful to know like what is in existence so that we can dismantle it and create something better, create something more generative, more nourishing. And I really appreciate your vulnerability talking about motherhood and just the lack of support. And there is just so much I could say about just the hypocrisy of our wider society of how they treat mothers, how we treat children, in that there is this belief and this desire from some politicians and political groups for people to be churning out babies left and right and to be having more babies, because unfortunately, they are viewed as workers in this capitalist system. And they need more workers to keep their capitalist system going. But then there's, at least in the United States, there is like no support. We don't even have paid family medical leave. You can't even take like a maternity leave or paternity leave unless you work at a place that allows you to do that, right? There's no, there's just, you know, there's no universal health care here. There's like it's I could just go on, and the listeners know that like this is what we're up against. And so in a culture and in a world that wants like more people to be having babies, but then there's no support for people once they do. And for you to be living that. And then the other thread that I was thinking about, um, I've been really deeply following Bill Plotkin's work lately, and he writes about um human development and nature-based, like full-spectrum human development, which I feel like his work is definitely like overlapping in a Venn diagram to your work and matriarchy of like, how do we help like evolve human society? And he talks about, he recently wrote a newsletter about like an approach to life is like living the questions of like, we don't have to have the answers. And he kind of had a list of like questions that you could be living as like an initiated adult, is what he talks about. Because he really talks about like soul development and soul initiation and finding our gifts and what we're here to contribute in this lifetime and how we can help like shift out of the industrial growth society into a life affirming society, which is all I feel like matriarchy is all about affirming life. But one of the questions that he posed is what is the role of human children? And as someone who is not yet a mother, but is on the path of becoming a mother, hopefully in the next year or so, that is a deep question that I'm sitting with. What is the role of human children? Because to me, the role of human children is not to be workers, the role of human children are to be beautiful little beings that we're nurturing and that we're supporting and that we're guiding, and really to be the next ones to continue to sow and tend the seeds that we're sowing.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Exactly. That that's exactly it's about this continuity of life. You know, when you you are around children, you understand the sacred responsibility of forming this life that will interact with the world as an adult. And it's it really is the most important work I'll ever do because a human being is such a powerful, you know, entity, and not not in terms of like superiority, but just in terms of like the you know, our brain, you know, we have completely different brain capacities. It's what has allowed the takeover of patriarchy around the world. Um but a human child is really representation of like the potential of the now. Like what is yeah, like what is What will this seed become? And I get to like everyone who is around this child gets to shape, you know, how nourished the soil is around this child, like how protected this child is from different like events, you know, and how resilient they are, and then eventually how much that they can contribute to the wider ecosystem.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Absolutely. Well, we've been talking about matriarchy, so I'd love if we can maybe like define for the listeners who are like, yes, we've heard of matriarchy, but I think it's you talk about matriarchy in such a potent and expansive and yet really easily accessible and digestible way. So

Matriarchy as mother beginning and patriarchy as father rule

SPEAKER_00 22:40

what does matriarchy mean to you and in your work in the world? And then how maybe if we could talk about compare that to our present system of patriarchy?

SPEAKER_02 22:51

Yeah. A lot of people misunderstand matriarchy as women rule. Um but that's actually not, you know, matri doesn't mean woman. And archie can also be um can also mean beginning, as in archetype or Noah's Ark, or archaeology. So matriarchy very literally means mother beginning, and that is a manifestation of how it, you know, how it be how it lives in the world. It it it's about recognising that every person is grown in the womb of their mother. Every living being is somehow mothered into existence. The earth um is our collective mother, you know, she gives us air and water and and fire for us to, you know, for our spirits and our consciousness. And uh it's about respecting and honouring that fact as a material reality. You know, it's something we can see, it's something we can touch. Um so matriarchy is really the the philosophy, the worldview that then political, economic, uh, social, and cultural structures are born, I think. And in contrast to patriarchy, patriarchy doesn't mean men ru rule, it means father rule. Um, which really is um a completely perfect description of what it is. It's about the f the elevating of the father archetype as a the ruler of his domain. And fathering, like as a verb, is really about ownership, right? It's about do I own this like husbandry, think about, you know, all of these like kind of male connected words in our culture are about ownership. Um and that's really what patriarchy is about and how it began 6,000 years ago. It was about the ownership of um the the father line, you know, to to determine who your son is by blood, you have to control the um the woman, really, because you know, the woman is the only one who can determine who her son, who the father of the son actually is. So it began as this system of you know owning women and children as part of like inheritance through the sun line. And now it's become this like global, it's you know, because patriarchy's nature is to consume and conquer endlessly, it's now taken over the whole world. And, you know, it's really about domination, a system of hierarchy and domination, which is how it manifests politically, economically, socially, and culturally. And it's how we're in this situation that we are in today.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

And you've made this really great, like simple visualization uh that you've shared on Substack and on social media, where I love the breakdown of matriarchy as mother beginning. We all originate from a mother. And so I know mothering, and you you clearly write about this, is beyond the gender binary as well. And that mothering, like anyone can mother, anyone can nurture. Um, but that you know, this graphic that you made that matriarchy is a spiral, which I love because that is just such imagery. I'm even looking at the painting behind you, and there's spirals on the painting. And uh, and it's just such uh I don't know, there's just some so much resonance with the spiral to like life and just the journey of life and living in cycles, but cycles that spiral and weave. And then you gave the graphic of the visualization of patriarchy as a pyramid, very clearly with the hierarchy. And it's so interesting to me as I've been kind of, yeah,

Composting internalized patriarchy

SPEAKER_00 26:54

because sometimes it takes a while to really like understand all the nuances and the way that patriarchy has infiltrated our lives, even like that internalized patriarchy. That was when I was in my 20s, that was one of the like first big political awakenings that I had to like go through myself was to really sit with and confront the ways that I had internalized patriarchal ideology, the ways that I was conditioned to be jealous and envious of other women, the ways that I was conditioned to view other women as threats and competitions and always for the attention of a man. Like how, how, like, just how sad. How sad. So, like deconstructing that internalized patriarchy, which was almost like the, you know, when we hear people talk about the male gaze, it's like we're internalizing that. And how was I viewing myself and my own life and the world around me through this male gaze? And very fortunately, I have had such amazing queer and femme and women friendships in my life to like be there in community with me and be the ones that really sparked and were the catalyst for that own deconstruction. Like I remember one of my one of my good friends in my mid-20s when I lacked a very toxic, abusive relationship and had so much healing that I had to do. And I moved in with this friend, and she really supported me through that. And she would just give me all of these feminist books to read. And it really helped plant this seed and really started to shift my worldview. And so I think about patriarchy just like I think about capitalism and colonialism. It's the water that we're swimming in, and it's very insidious, and it shows up when you start to really become more conscious of it. It shows up in everything. And so I love how you frame matriarchy as right, like because we've we you mentioned that that um essay that you wrote that went viral, that the next wave of feminism is matriarchy, and that in some of these previous waves of feminism, that it has been, at least maybe in especially through that white feminist lens, about getting women equal footing in a patriarchal system and in a patriarchal world. But the way that you write and that you have learned and that you talk about matriarchy is we are building a completely different world. We are exiting this paradigm, we are leaving patriarchy behind, and we are sowing the seeds for a completely new paradigm. So I was wondering if you could share. You recently wrote about some of the cornerstones of matriarchy. Would you be willing to talk about those?

SPEAKER_02 29:40

Yeah, for sure. I just want to add um something to what you were just saying because it's part of the the cornerstones. Um because in in through my work, like I have I have become a changed person. Like this this worldview really saved me um in motherhood, and it it really gave me like a you know a foundation in what motherhood really should be like, and and not only that, but like how that extends out to the entire society. And my my my kind of like personal um statement for my work is composing matriarchal dreamscapes. So what I do is like I I see all these problems, and you know, everything that you're saying I so relate to, every single one. And part of the challenge of what I'm doing is like trying to communicate and to envision how we can create matriarchal systems now, like realistically, and how it can fit into everything that we've like we've experienced. But in my opinion, this is the most fertile time for matriarchy to return, because you know, hundreds a hundred thousand years of human existence, arguably, I mean, we don't have hard, hard, hard evidence from like the very beginning, but it it just makes logical sense that you know we organized our communities around maternal values, you know, looking after each other because that's how you would survive. Um, and now it's just become like, you know, we've forgotten our roots as humans. Um, and I talk about this in my work, like we are a matriarchal species just like orcas or elephants. Like we are a species, like you can already see it. It's not something necessarily that we need to reinvent. You can already see that like a lot of moral authority in in every household lies with the elder woman. Like that is kind of a universal thing. Um, even if there's a hierarchy still, like, you know, economically. But you know, we we already have the power. And and m my other sort of inspiration is Genevieve Vaughan, who I really recommend everyone to read her work. She's like the mother of the gift economy coming back into, you know. There's been loads of people who've written about the gift economy, but hers is like a more feminist take on it. It's about the maternal gift economy, it's about, you know, this this structure already exists and it's about restoring power to it. It's about, you know, stopping this patriarchal system from being a parasite on what already like matriarchal power is already there, but it's being siphoned. So anyway, my my work is to kind of like live in my own life, like what it means to to create, recreate matriarchy, and then like have that change me, and then write that into the work. Um and that's what I think is really special also about matriarchy, because it's not like a far-off theory, it's about real life, you know. Um it's about you know, what do we choose to get what do we choose to put value on? You know, what do we how do we interact with other people like in terms of like, do I think feel that this person is better or worse than me? Or, you know, can I can I cherish this person as like a sacred, you know, part of life and and and then treat a spider the same way? Or or treat my food as like nourishment rather than something that has been like just like plundered from the earth and the earth has been degraded in the process of creating it, and I probably won't be nourished by it either. Like it's it's really about that. So

The political, economic, social, and cultural cornerstones of Matriarchy

SPEAKER_02 33:32

the cornerstones are really like kind of just frameworks that can help us split up all of these problems and and really like tackle the root. So the political cornerstone of matriarchy is and this is you know, Dr. Haider has written and uh she's kind of the the foundation, and I've just I've kind of developed my own theory on top of it. But p politically, matriarchies are societies of consensus and egalitarianism. So political decisions are not made in a like you don't go and vote and then re and vote for someone to represent your interests in government. You actually create like a small you start by like creating a small community of like, let's say five to ten people who all if something is to be done, they all have to agree. Right? And then like that this is how uh you know mothering is done, and that's where I've learned as well. It's really like my daughter and I get along per really well when both of our needs are met, when we're both happy with the situation, you know, and and that's it's like a symbiotic thing. And when I see her as equal to me, not as like I'm not her, you know. Of course I I'm the one who sets boundaries, but like I and I have more wisdom than she does at this point, but it's not about being better than her or knowing better, it's really about guiding her. So politically, like that's how matriarchal structures function. And then economically, there are um there are you know gift economies. So right now we live in a capitalist exchange economy where I give you this and um the I I'll I'll give you five dollars and you give me like a bushel of apples for a little math class. But um, and you know, we've been told that that's what's natural. Um, you know, oh, there's no trust, people can't trust each other, people are way too greedy, so you have to have this like immediate exchange. I give you this money, you give me like, and then I never speak to you again. But gift economies are about like, hey, I'm struggling and I really need some apples, you know. And then your your friend is like, I'll give you some apples, like I just grew some apples. Um and then later on, like your friend, because you there's there's now trust between you because this friend just gave you something you needed. Later on, the friend might need something, or the friend's daughter might need something, or whatever it is. And this is how like a gift economy is grow, like that's the foundation, but it it's how it grows. And it's you know, it's been done, it's been documented in indigenous societies to have worked over thousands and thousands of years. So, yeah, and it's how it's how human mother-child relationships function as well. So we're we're all familiar in the language of the gift, it's just about expanding it out to like what we think is like real and yeah. And then socially, um matriarchal societies are community-based, so they're not about the individual. Um, they're really about like how can we each how can each person become like strong enough to also be strong together? Like it's like, and then how can we be strong together to be strong individually? Like it's those things interlocking together. And in my like work, I have kind of come to the conclusion that like metrifocal, matrilineal, and matrilocal um communities are the way are the strongest human like unit, family unit. Because in patriarchies, the family unit is the the father, the mother, and the children, and that really sets up like a hierarchical um family structure and it normalizes hierarchy across the society. But if you're if especially daughters are not like pressured to marry and leave their maternal homes, that's it's like there's more you can have more strength involved in that. And I you know, I've I had to leave my maternal home because it was patriarchal. But I also was not able to rely on the father of my child, so I've had to do this work like alone, but I know that when I'm supported as the mother of this household, like my child is better stronger and more resilient. So there's that, and then there's the cultural aspect, which is that life is sacred. You know, we we I was thinking the other day, like we are the only known life in the whole universe, like we don't know whether there's other life in the universe. We could very well be the only planet with life, it's possible, and how amazing is that like in this mind-bogglingly huge universe, cosmos, that we might be the only planet. That is such a gift, and we can really like there's so much, there's so much life, and it's everywhere, like everywhere you look. So that in itself, I feel like is just something to really revere and just honor every second that you can take a breath because a tree has you know released something, and then the tree is only able to exist because of all these other different factors. Like wow, it's just amazing. And and then when you take part in this like cycle of of creating life as a mother or as a gardener or as a carer for someone, you really appreciate like how much skill it takes and how much power you need to have to do it effectively and nourishment and abundance. And really a matriarchal society is about culturally like understanding that rather than what we currently live in, which is like, oh well, life is just something I can use to make money.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:47

You know.

SPEAKER_00 39:49

Thank you so much for walking us through all of those four cornerstones. I just want to recap. So the political cornerstone is the consensus decision making. And I also really love like one thing that's really very clear to me is that like we can build this now, we can live this now, and there are many humans who are. And I really love how you have shared that this work, taking this up as your life's work, has changed you as a human being. That is how I feel so much about all of these different things that I'm passionate about. They change me. And it's in that transformation of the self that I can then become a better steward. Steward's a big word that I resonate with when I think about my relationship with land and with the earth and with my garden and even just with my human community. It's being in this like stewardship role. And I think that is what it's like what we are all here to do as humans is to create, is to steward, is to love, is to experience joy and pleasure. And I feel like all of these, that's what matriarchy sets up the foundation for all of these beautiful things about being human, to connect with other humans. Like what a gift. Like I just have chills and everything you were talking about. I was like, this is what I am living now. Yes, you know, I really view us, we're very much like a transitional, liminal kind of generation and society right now, where it's it's very clear that the patriarchy is dying. You know, many listeners know that like I don't shy away from the language of collapse or polycrisis. I'm deeply inspired by the work of the late Joanna Macy, who really coined this uh time that we're in as the great turning. And so I love the great turning. And I feel like Nergese, you are someone that is fully embodying and living what your role is in the great turning, which is to be this torch bearer and this light for matriarchy, lighting the way and inspiring so many others to being like, yes, and also just giving us that light to be like, oh yes, there are so many ways that I am living matriarchy now. And I having that conscious awareness now and that language, I can just continue to deepen in that and practice it even more and feel even more confident in doing that. So we have this political cornerstone of consensus decision making. And then you mentioned we have so it was political, economic, and then the economic cornerstone is

Moving toward and practicing the gift economy

SPEAKER_00 42:25

the gift economies. And oh my goodness, do I love gift economies? And, you know, the first time I heard about gift economies being someone who lives in the United States, you know, on Turtle Island, on stolen land, you know, Robin Walkimmerer was the first person reading Braiding Sweetgrass that I really started to really connect with this word gift economy. And so I'm really interested to um you said her last name is Vaughn, who was the writer you mentioned. Yeah, Genevieve Vaughn. Genevieve Vaughn. And and really about, I really like this image of like that these matriarchal gift economies, they exist now, and it's just this kind of patriarchal capitalistism that's been siphoning energy. And I have so many stories about living the gift economy in really small and big ways. Like, you know, for example, my partner, um, he is both him and our huge gardeners like really, really dream of being like small-scale like farmers one day. And so he's been the one that's been really getting the on-farm experience. And so there's this really beautiful opportunity. Um, we have a uh community-supported agriculture farms here where in the United States, I'm sure many other places all over the world. And they have a worker share opportunity where instead of buying a share into the farm, what you do is you exchange your labor. So one day a week for half a day, my partner shows up to the farm and he puts his, you know, he's he's helping tend and steward the farm. And in exchange for his labor, he's getting a fresh box of vegetables every week. And he's been doing that for this is his fourth year. And in his four years of doing this worker share and working on a local organic vegetable farm, we talk about the gift economy often. He talks about how these small, like local farmers deeply inspire him in this in the terms of the gift economy. Because when you're a farmer, when you're a gardener, anyone knows you are always going to have a surplus. Sorry, I just waved to my partner out the window as I'm talking about him. His ears must be ringing. Um but uh like he just talks about the generosity of the farmers and how much that opens his heart and how he just loves farming because of this generosity of when you have a surplus, you can't eat all these zucchini, you can't eat all these squash. Like you have to share them, you have to give them away. Otherwise, they're gonna go bad. And even what I've learned, we've been kind of networking with some of these local farmers here in our community, is that like what we've heard is like at the end of the farmer's market, when whenever surplus doesn't get sold, then all the farmers are exchanging and trading and bartering. And like you don't have to grow everything. Like, I'm not really interested in growing vegetables. It doesn't light me up. I want to grow the medicinal herbs and the pretty flowers and the native plants. Like that's my realm. But I'm like, but I can be connected to the vegetable growers. And then when I have my surplus of all the herbal remedies that I make the oils, the tinctures, the body butters, my favorite thing in the world of becoming an herbalist is I always have this stocked apothecary. And any herbal, you know, creation is not going to have a super long shelf life. You know, some of the tinctures will be available for several years, but an infused oil that has like one year of shelf life. And I have this surplus, I can't use it all myself. And it's just such a joy and a pleasure to me to go to my friends, to go to my family. Here, I made this, I would love to gift this to you. And then to really feel into ooh, which herbal you know creation is the best thing for this person. And like, I'm gonna give it to them because this is what I'm feeling they need. So, all that to say is there are so many ways to practice the gift economy. And I do really live into this to the best of my ability. And I love the gift economy so much. And there are so many little ways that we can practice it here and now while we still have to survive within this capitalist economy. So, and then just wanted to pull out the last two cornerstones. So, okay, we had political, we have economic, and then we have social and cultural. And social was kind of the matrifocal, uh, the like, yeah, valuing mothers. Am I okay, maybe I'm forgetting the uh the social one or community-based.

SPEAKER_02 46:58

Yeah, no, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. Like, if you center, it's it's really about centering the mother. And I think some people might it's such a stretch now from like this society to to what I'm saying that I think it's hard. So I do actually want to re-kind of explain it. Um right now, especially in a in um in the West Western world, um you know, as a woman, let's just I use the terms woman and man in my work, and we'll talk about this a little bit later, you know, the gender binary, but it's really about simplifying, you know, everyone is kind of labelled with these term most people are labelled with these terms at birth. So I use that language to just make it easier. But I am, you know, inclusive. But essentially women who are part of patriarchal families today on the whole are encouraged to leave their family home and get married and have children, right? That's like the the kind of like the this wider societal expectation social norm. In a matriarchal family, that is not the case. You the women are not getting married and leaving their homes. Like you're not considered, you're not pushed out of the family home like when you're an adult. What this has now developed into is like, okay, if you're in a kind of more liberal household, you're not necessarily expected to like get married and have a husband, maybe eventually, but you're expected to be like an independent person, in you know, you have a job, you have, you know, you have your own house and like you live away. And then if you don't get a partner, you're essentially like gonna die alone. Is the is the norm. That's patriarchy. And it's like curdled a little bit into this this thing where like you know, I s I know so many like my friends from college are in one of these two categories. You're either alone or you and you know you have this great job or whatever, and then or you have a partner. So I

Transitioning to Matriarchal communities and families

SPEAKER_02 49:08

think the transition, the transition from that into a matriarchal society where like mothers are living together and not only and and when I say mothers, this it's it's a such a completely different worldview that it's almost hard to like put into words because English is a patriarchal language. It is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

I feel like the listeners who are right, the people who are like moths to the flame of this podcast, they're in this worldview with us. So I feel like they they they're picking up what you're putting down.

SPEAKER_02 49:42

That's good to know. Okay, so yeah, whether you're a physical mother or not, um, you know, you if you're they're basically the norm in a matriarchal society is that we live together, um like as a community, rather than like either one individual in an individual household or um a you know nuclear family. And the the thing is like as a mother, if I teamed up with like another single mother and like two child-free women, let's say, like that would be a matriarchal family. Right, because we're you know, there's the mothers and there's there's a child involved as well, so there's like continuity, and then eventually, in in order to like deepen the kind of like rootedness of this family that we've created, we would invite like elders to join, right? We would invite brothers to join. If one person, and this is kind of what I write about, if one if one or two people are partnered like with a man, that man would be very much welcome, but there would need to be an agreement, and this is like how things are done in matriarchal societies. If if the women like bring a man into the house, they can get and if they get divorced and they like really can't live with each other, the man has to leave. That's just how it works. Um and then if there's any like property involved in in like the inheritance, it gets passed down the mother line. And it doesn't mean that it has to be biological, it's like the whole community kind of agrees on and that person doesn't own the land, they steward, they're like you know, they're the root of the land.

SPEAKER_01 51:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 51:28

So that's what I mean by metrilineal, metralocal. People don't leave the the home of the mother. And if there's like if you know people um if if one of the women in the the household gets becomes pregnant, their lover is not expected, unless they make an agreement, is not expected to like head up the household or create a whole entirely new household, like that the child belongs to the mother's household. So my challenge is really how to bring in these like ancient and indigenous ways of living, that but you know, both of our and our ancestors lived this way, and there's you know still remnants of that today, into a modern Western kind of way of thinking, which is tough.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

It is, and there are so many people doing this, Snergies. Like, like I mentioned, I'm part of a queer community, and I feel like the queer community really embodies this because so many queer individuals have been cast out of their families because of who they are and and that lack of acceptance and that homophobia and that transphobia that is like because of patriarchy, because of the this ridiculous, extractive, exploitative, patriarchal worldview. And so a lot of queer community like have been forced to find chosen family. And I feel like so many of my friends are queer. Several of them are mothers, are parents, and actually a lot of the folks that I'm connected with here in uh Milwaukee, where I live, are really um interested in like I think in some circles is referred to as like intentional living communities that is more of this like cooperative where you're having multiple people living in a house together. And maybe everyone is going in on that house and it's different people. There may be kids there, or maybe it is just some adults. But I do there are threads of this happening now and have been happening. And when you were talking about um, like what a matrifocal community would be like, I was actually thinking of my own family, and I was thinking about my grandmother in particular, who is like the matriarch of our family. You know, she's the eldest daughter of her family. And um when she uh she was the oldest, and so my mom was born in like 1964, and at the time that she was born, so I feel like what you're describing, my grandmother has lived, like she lived that. Like when she was married, she still lived with her, with her parents and with her sisters, and her sisters are all quite younger than her. And so my grandfather was in the it was in the Vietnam War in the 1960s, um, and he was not present when my mom was born. He didn't meet her till she was almost one year old because he was abroad and he was at war. And so my grandmother lived with her parents and with my mom, and like raised my mom with her, with her parents there. And then all of her sisters, who are like quite a bit younger than her, but my mom always talks about how her aunts were more like older sisters to her than aunts. And so I feel like that imprint, what you're talking about, that lives on in my family story, especially my maternal side of the family, because that's how my mother was brought into this world. And eventually my grandfather came back and they did buy their own house, but they never lived far. Like they all lived very close to each other. And it's even been interesting that imprint has lived on in my family because my grandparents, they have always lived like 10 minutes away from us. Anytime we moved somewhere, they moved with us. And even if we weren't sharing the same household, they wanted to be near. And I always view my grandparents almost as another set of parents for me because we have such a close bond and they always wanted to be present in mine and my siblings' life. And so I do see this, right? Like this is communities are doing this. Many families are living intergenerationally. And I feel like, especially in like non-white families, in other cultures, like non-Western and even just non-white families, like it is more of a cultural norm to live intergenerationally. And I even think of my own ancestors being Polish and they immigrated here in like the late 1890s, early 1900s. And I think why my grandma lived, because this this is very ancestral. Like, even though, yes, um, yeah, even I'm just thinking about this actually, sorry, as I'm like talking. I'm like my Polish lineage and my Polish ancestors, they always lived intergenerationally. One because they were poor, but two because that was culturally what they did back in their homelands. And then they came to America and kept that norm going. And that was just kind of the standard was that Polish people would live intergenerationally. They would rent these houses and then share those houses with like two to three other families. So I do like this happens, this is happening. So I just wanted to share that and like reflecting on like I've experienced like bits of this in my life. And it is possible, and people are doing it.

SPEAKER_02 56:44

Yes, yes, yes. And once you give like a framework to recognize it, it's just instant because we all have these experiences. And I think I like I know a lot of people who live in communities. Like I have a couple of friends who live in like eco-villages, and and a lot of them tell me about like the um the challenges. And I and I, you know, I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who lives in one in Austria, and she was saying, like, you know, we do this like consensus political stuff, but it doesn't work, people disagree, like there's all these challenges. And then I asked her, like, okay, but what position to do mothers have in this community? You know, is there like a language for you know resourcing the people who like do the most care work? Um, like, is there a framework for that? And she was like, No. And it's like, okay, so that there's this can exist in fragments, and it does, but because there's not exact there's very little familiarity with the entire framework, and there hasn't been like a legitimization of this way of living, like mainstream, it cannot, you know, it's about reweaving it together so that it can be strong and it can actually work properly.

SPEAKER_00 57:58

Yeah, and I'm a community organizer through and through, and often me and my fellow friends who also like are in community organizing and do a lot of hosting and gathering and like collaborating with others. It's oh it's not, it's not gonna be this idealized like kumbaya thing. Like when you are really devoted to living communally with others, one there has to be a deep layer of inner work that's doing right, that own kind of healing within, worldview, deconstructing and rebuilding, as we're talking about, that this matriarchy really helps guide us through. And then we have to practice living it. But even if we all come into a space with this matriarchal worldview, we're still gonna have disagreements. And that's why I'm deeply interested and like really love like conflict transformation and transformative justice frameworks. And I feel like what really opened me to matriarchy was actually doing political organizing and learning about abolition and learning from, you know, Miriam Kaba and Belle Hooks and Adrienne Marie Brown, a lot of amazing black intersectional feminists who I feel like really do embody matriarchy in their own ways, is that like we have to be willing to be in the mess of it. And exactly like you said, there may be many amazing eco-villages existing and co-living things, but a lot of people are still bringing their uninterrogated patriarchal worldviews and conditionings into these spaces. And that's okay. It just there needs to be space for that to be deconstructed and composted. So yeah, I totally believe in it. I know it's possible. It's like there just has to be equal inner work as there is outer work. And also, I think people really need to understand we need more resourcing and skill building about how to be in community together, how to be in conflict together, how to tend to our own bodies and nervous systems when we're in conflict, and how to not let conflict like fracture a community and actually have those skills. And that's where I think like frameworks like transformative justice, restorative justice can really come in and be a balm to support that when there is, because there's always with humans, there's always gonna be conflict. And even in a consensus-based decision-making society, like to get to a consensus, there's gonna be conflict, and there's gonna be people that are having to compromise. And actually, to get to a consensus, it's gonna be a lot of compromise, and that's a skill that we can all develop.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:25

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, then there's like, you know, there's so many res like there's so many people doing this work, and it's like if we all it come together under this umbrella, you know, that's like really trying to resurrect like how we have always lived, I think it can be really powerful.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

And then I didn't want to leave the last cornerstone out as I've been kind of re- I love that I've been recapping, but we've been going deeper with each one, which is like I love it so much. This last one, like, oh, does this? I mean, all of them resonate with my heart and soul, but this one I feel like I'm really like here to live and practice this, but this um viewing

Viewing all life as sacred

SPEAKER_00 1:01:04

this cultural cornerstone of viewing life as sacred. When you were talking about it initially, and you're talking about just I could just feel the emotion of like when you're talking about the trees and like the air that they give off and the oxygen and like the generosity of these trees, and just viewing life as sacred has been one of the deepest internal shifts within me that has made life so meaningful in the most mundane moments. Like this morning before I logged on to have this conversation with you, I drank my coffee in my backyard and I recently hung a birdhouse that was a gift from my mom. And yesterday I noticed this cute little bird, a little wren, building a nest in this birdhouse. And I just would go outside and just watch them. And at first I'm uh facing uh the front of my house, and there's like uh I can see the roof uh from one corner of my vision. This little bird visited me on the roof, and then when I went to the backyard, I saw them building the nest. And this morning they were out there and there was another one, and I just like found so much joy and so much pleasure in watching these two little wrens interact and just totally captivated and like fascinated by them. And I'm like that simple act of connecting with these birds, of just I'm a I love bird watching, of just like it brings so much joy and awe. And it's just like life is so sacred. And like, you know, again, patriarchal capitalism, like one of their strategies and like marketing tactics and advertising tactics is to tell us that we are not enough, we will never have enough, that we are faulty, broken human beings, and we just need to buy all these things to fix all of our problems. When really, like, you know, I feel like with gift economies, with viewing life as sacred, with doing this deep inner healing work to kind of purge these um patriarchal worldview from our bodies and from our minds, we can find so much joy and pleasure in just remembering that life is sacred and connecting with the trees on our block, getting to know the names of the flowers, going for a walk, and enjoying the song of the birds. And that has been the biggest shift for me. And that is really what Soil and Stars is. This this really is about supporting people and deepening and awakening their relationship with the living world and cosmos. And really, that is in service of remembering that all life is sacred. And that means that our lives are sacred, that we humans, we are sacred life too. And so these cornerstones, I just feel like they really do prop me up in so many ways. And they are this foundation. And I'm so grateful that you are building upon the work of matriarchal scholars, and you get to really be this young matriarch coming in and bringing like a fresh perspective from a younger generation, and it is just like so resonant with me. So I just so grateful for your work, Nerghiz.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:16

Wow, thank you so much. That makes all the hard moments worth it because it's not been an easy journey, I have to say. Like, you know, all my background, um, I'm culturally Azerbaijani. So a lot of my like uh a lot of my familiarity with with some of this is like my culture and like how I grew up, how I was raised. But now I just have words to, you know, I put words to it and I've connected like eco-feminism, like with my upbringing, and and you know, seeing the earth as as as kin. There's really something that my grandmother instilled and still, you know, she she stewards the land, the our ancestral land. But you know, it's not been easy at all to s to tell my family, like, no, I'm I'm leaving this really lucrative like tech career behind. And you know, I studied economics, but I'm not doing econom like I'm doing the the inverted version of it. That like no university economics department would look at my would take my work seriously. You know, I I already have a a uh book published with a big publisher. I approached them with this idea, they rejected it. You know, I went through 30 publisher rejections before deciding to publish my book, you know, independently. And yeah, there's a lot of frankly like disrespect and like pushback, you know, against what I'm what I'm talking about because we're so indoctrinated, like the wider public is so, so indoctrinated in this like patriarchal worldview. But it's just like this morning I was having kind of like a hard moment because of the you know the the the demands of single motherhood in a patriarchal society and also like Doing what I'm doing with like not you know not having like a a team or like even just like you know my with my first book my agent I could email if I was having a hard hard day or my editor but it's like now I'm really like alone in this but yeah the earth supports me and also like all of the stuff all of the hard moments have really become like a compost heap for me to like you know I breathe and like the the pile turns and then I can use it to kind of nourish the soil. And that's another benefit of this work is like being able to think of life in this way rather than like what we're taught, which is you know, if you're having a heart like if there's something hard or if there's like you know, death is bad, death must be avoided, like life is linear, and if you're not going like up, up, up, that means something's wrong. It's really about like no, it's you know, there are these like phases and there are these down moments, and what can you learn and how can you transmute it into like power and and and pleasure and joy eventually and abundance and a lot of my work and I really want this is such an important part of my work, is about boundaries is about like saying no to what doesn't nourish. And that's really been you know been a hard journey for me at like socialized as a woman, in especially in an Azerbaijani context, which you know is a very extreme version of patriarchy where women are really like considered like breeders, like you're no value if you don't reproduce and you're expected to like be stay you know, compliant and quiet, and you know, these are the things I grew up with, and doing this work has been about no, like I don't exist as like a vessel for other people's you know joy. Like I have to I'm self-generate and I have to like regenerate my own soil so that and part of that is like not allowing like all of this like gunk and allowing people to come into my garden and just take, take, take without giving back. So all of that is to say thank you for just reflecting back what I'm trying to sow in the world. Uh I really, really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:23

Yeah, you are sowing so many seeds. Like I said, I've been engaging with your work for a few months now, and it is the newsletter that nourishes me. I'm like always talking about your work with my friends, with my partner, with my family. Uh, because that is how I process. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is changing me. This is nourishing me. And I want to share that with others and encourage others. And so honestly, reaching out to you is like dream guest for this podcast. And so I am so just grateful that you said yes. And I feel like we have had such a really deep, like rippling, spiraling conversation. And I just wanted to see if

Matriarchy: a community-funded book

SPEAKER_00 1:09:08

you I would love for you to share a little bit about your book with the listeners and highly encourage the listeners to support your book because it is community funded and I cannot wait to receive my copy. But can you just tell the listeners about this book that you're writing?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:23

Yes. Oh, this is like the the you know, the sacred creation of of the season. I'm just so, so excited about everyone receiving it eventually. After we finish it, because it is really hard to kind of not only like condense all of this information, but also like develop it into like a new kind of theory um that is appropriate for like today's world. I'm I'm I just turned 30, so I'm on the cusp of like I'm like the eldest Gen Z, I feel like. So I can understand, you know, Gen Z culture, which is really like you know, Gen Z is like the media right now, popular media, popular culture, that's like what and what I'm trying to do is trying to translate these ideas for a modern audience. Um and the book is like a kind of a a manual in a way for understanding what the problem is, uh, you know, why patriarchy as a system has led us to this polycrisis, like you said, climate, social, you know, political collapse, and like the degradation of rights across the board, the rise of right-wing governments, like this is all you know, patriarchy has culminated. Six thousand years has culminated in this moment. And the promise of matriarchy as like a way to not only like survive, uh I mean uh what is coming because we're destroying the the the biosphere, meaning we're destroying ourselves. So if we don't fix it, we will go extinct, along with you know all the precious species on the planet. So how is matriarchy a way to solve that problem and like how what you know what have matriarchal societies looked like in the past? How can we create it today? And one chapter, this is the amazing thing about being independent. One chapter is a fiction, um fictional story of a matriarchal village 15 years from now. So I really like Yeah, so I I can I think it's a great thought experiment to like really imagine what it will be like once these crises really come to a head to live matriarchally like in you know in this context. And then the last part of the book is about the path. So how can we actually do what can we do now tangibly? How can we connect more to life, to ourselves, to others, to the earth? How can we unlearn in a patriarchal conditioning? And how can we like each given our unique uh skills and knowledge, what can we do to steward? And I'm trying to make it like universal but also intimate. It's tough. But the book, I should have led with this. The book is called Matriarchy, an ancient vision to redefine power and restore the earth.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:27

Well, thank you for writing this, and I trust that it will come out at the right time and that all things have their timing. And I love that you have your newsletter so we are getting like little snippets and getting to kind of read and read alongside you as you're writing this book. And I have not written a book yet. Definitely one of my like life bucket lists, like hope to write a book one day. But I am friends with a lot of authors and friends with a lot of writers who write novels, who really take on these really big projects. And I have such admiration and respect for book writers. Like you are taking on like the marathon of writing projects. Honestly, it's more like multiple marathons. Like I'm sure each chapter, each section of the book is a marathon in and of itself. And I can just feel the love and the intention and just the world building, the dreaming, the visioning. And like, I'm just thinking about your daughter. What a gift that like you are writing this book for so many of this, but to give that to your daughter one day when she is old enough to read that. Like, to me, that just feels like a gift to her and then a gift to all of us. And I am just thinking of like, I'm someone who loves to host a book club. And I have this whole idea of um maybe sometime next year um doing like I want to start a world builders book club with my newsletter subscribers. And I already know the first book that we'll read is Emergent Strategy by Adrian Marie Brown, which is one of like my foundational texts for like just living life. But your book is gonna get added to that book club, like that world builders book club, because that's gonna be another framework that we need uh to guide us through these times. So I am just so grateful for you, Nerghiz. I will just continue to like hype you up and support your work and encourage so many others to support you because what you are doing is so needed. And I just really deeply resonate. Yeah, like we're only a couple years apart. I'm on the younger side of the millennials, uh, definitely not a Gen Z, but I really, I really do appreciate that you're taking like, I really think it's powerful when we take ancient frameworks and not just try to repl replicate them, but like really reinvision them, really kind of use them as that soil, as that nourishment, and then like create that into something through our lens and for our generations and the future generations through a modern context. And you are so doing that, and it is just so beautiful. So thank you for all that you do.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:14

Thank you so much. Oh, that's exactly you know, the the tension, where the tension lives is where the you know the creation kind of happens. It's like the ancient and the new. And I just want to say, like, also to any listeners, you know, I've been my whole life, I've been called naive, foolish, you know, oh, you don't know how the real world works. And I've I've sometimes criticized myself, you know, for being kind of oh, head in the clouds, there can be better ways. But no, like this is where the strength is, you know, and and I and I'm I'm not gonna lie and say, you know, I haven't gone headfirst into situations that maybe I should have had a bit more like wisdom. Or I don't know if you're a tarot reader. Definitely okay, like the full card is like 100%, you know, my younger self, like definitely jumping in and and not really thinking about the consequences. But some like we need that energy, that's why it's a card in the deck. You know, sometimes you need that so that you can imagine living something different. So yeah, I had you know, anything that you're criticized for, and people really like, you know, that's like a common theme, I feel like is a clue as to what what your strength is.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:31

I love that. Yeah, so we need that fool, that leap of faith that, and I also just feel like so much of like one of the like biggest things that has kept us in these really harmful systems is a lack of imagination. And when you are labeled as idealist or naive, because I have been called that as well, it is because the people who are criticizing you, their capacity for imagination has been stifled and just needs, you know, those like barriers need to be broken down. I always think of it within myself as like as I've had various levels of political and spiritual awakenings in my life, I view it as dams that were built around my imagination, those dams being broken down. And then here come the waters flowing, and it's the waters of imagination, of spirit, of being connected to something beyond myself. So I love that you're including a fiction section of the book because I think that is so needed to nourish the imagination. That is clearly you. You are always in touch with your imagination and your visioning, and then to offer that in the book to then awaken and nourish the imagination of others. And we need our imaginations. I feel like they are one of the most powerful resources and tools as we're working to dismantle patriarchy and capitalism and build the next world. Our imaginations are one of the most precious resources that we have.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:06

Yes, yes, exactly. To change our definition of what's normal. Oh, that's one of my favorite books as well, The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate, who I definitely feel like he should have, you know, that the sit the system that he's like critiquing in the book is patriarchy, although he never uses that word, but we know, we know what what he was referencing.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:28

I'll have to read that book. I and you have an essay that I'll link in the show notes about your recommended reading list for matriarchy, which is just like such a robust list. And I and I added the great cosmic mother to my list after reading that, because you and another a few other people that I deeply uh admire have recommended that book. So I will be adding that to my list. So Nerghiz, I wanted to see were there any final reflections that you'd like to share, and then what are the best ways for listeners to connect with you?

SPEAKER_02 1:18:59

Yeah. Um I am part of this coalition. It's called Matriarchy Now Coalition. And, you know, I love being part of this group because it's all these women, and most of them are elders, who have been doing this work for like decades, and they do these demonstrations all around the world to kind of communicate what a matriarchal what matriarchy now really means and how to create it. So I encourage everyone to check that out and support the the coalition. Heide Guttner Albentroth is part of it, Genevieve Vaughn is also part of it. Um there's this other woman, Angela Dolmetch, who started a matriarchal community in Colombia 20 years ago. Yeah, and they've they're fully living according to like matriarchal, like get the gift economy, matriarchal politics, all that. So,

Outro

SPEAKER_02 1:19:51

yeah, there is really the people doing this work. Um and we can only create this together. You know, I always say in my work that this is like one mosaic tile in the in the full picture of matriarchal change. You know, my work isn't is hopefully there to inspire you know the imagination of others and then to really get others to to figure out how they can live matriarchally and then be an influence in their own communities. And yeah, in service of that, um my work can be found on from a young matriarch on all platforms, so on Substack, on Instagram, TikTok, um, and you can pre-order my book on MetaLabel. It's called Matriarchy, an ancient vision to redefine power and restore the earth. And respond, like, comment on any of my you know articles. I'm so happy to like be interact with everyone and really create the world that we deserve together.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:52

Thank you, Narkies. I am just so grateful and just really savoring this conversation we had. I cannot wait for it to land in the ears of so many listeners. So thank you so much for your time, and thank you to the listeners. Until next time. Thank you to my dear friend Brie Legan for designing our enchanting logo. And thank you to Paul Krasnoshok for our music. To support the show, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, leave us a review, and share this episode with the people you love. You can also become a patron for $5 a month or $50 a year by subscribing to the Soil and Stars newsletter at of SoilandStars.com. Your patronage supports the sustainability of this project and will help me hire professional support in the future. Thank you for tuning in. Visit the show notes for links to connect with our guests, to subscribe to the newsletter, and for other resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you.