Sue Patton Thoele - Strength: Meditations for Wisdom, Balance Power

This book is a powerful guide to fearless living. Sue Patton Thoele teaches women how to honor, embrace, and claim their personal strength and inner wisdom.

HEATHERASH AMARA, author
of Warrior Goddess Training

I am so thrilled Sue Patton Thoele has done a new meditation book! Her warm insight on strength, wisdom, and power is sure to resonate with every woman looking for support in these challenging times. I know I will keep her words by my side.

MJ RYAN, author of Attitudes of
Gratitude and Radical Generosity

This edition first published in 2019 by Conari Press, an imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2019 by Sue Patton Thoele

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-739-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover design by Kathryn Sky-Peck

Interior by Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Typeset in Incognito and Adobe Jenson

Printed in Canada

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www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter

Judith (Juju) Mangus, whose love, understanding, and
knowing offer me safe harbor and mystical gateway.

Christie Coates, whose love of and commitment to
spiritual connection inspire my own.

Mary Bell Nyman, teacher extraordinaire,
whose light-hearted wisdom dances through these pages.

Surprised and delighted thanks to publisher, Michael Kerber, whose casual question, Want to write another book? reignited a fire I thought long cooled. Applause and a thousand thank yous to Greg Brandenburgh whose editorial expertise is exceeded only by his ability to entertain. Thank you, Greg, for insightful guidance and many chuckles. Gobs of gratitude to production editor, Jane Hagaman, whose easy-going and helpful manner is balm to my writer's soul. Equal dollops of respect and gratitude to Chuck Hutchinson for his copyediting finesse and thoughtful comments accompanying changes. To all the talented people at Conarimany of whom I will never knowwhose combined skill and energy crafted this beautiful book, please know I am incredibly appreciative of your efforts on Strength's behalf.

As always, appreciation and gratitude to my husband, Gene, whose encouragement and support helped launch my writing career and keeps the business end of it afloat to this day.

Everlasting gratitude to the incredible women everywhere whose powerful hearts create a Sisterhood of Strength.

Women are incredibly strong. Most women are inherently able to overcome whatever life throws at them in order to accomplish what is needed, often under dire circumstances. Along with a woman's ability to be strong is the capacity to do so without sacrificing the feminine qualities of wisdom, compassion, and empathy. Innately, women know how to balance strength with caring and respect. When we act from our hearts, which we often do, our strength is guided by kindness and sensitivity to the needs of both ourselves and others.

Society desperately needs the tempering and respectful energy of feminine strength. School shootings break our hearts, stories of abused women and children haunt our dreams, and elitist disregard for the feelings and rights of the vulnerable leave us seething. With good reason, our hearts are aching to make things better. Since our empathy and fury run so deeply, what keeps us from acknowledging and acting from our unique strengths? Why are we hesitant to use our gentle yet forceful power?

Two reasons: Conditioning and fear.

The heart of the matter is that women have been conditioned to play small and downplay their strength and wisdom in order to protect the status quo of male domination. We have been trained to hide our light and been curtailed by laws and customs. No more! The Chinese proverb When sleeping women wake, mountains move is being affirmed by societal shifts throughout the world. We are awake and deeply aware that our strength, wisdom, and compassion are needed. For our world to survivefor Earth to remain a beautiful, bounteous, and healthy environmentand people to live happy, productive, and cooperative lives, feminine energy must be acknowledged, honored, and empowered individually and globally.

As I write this, a fatal shooting at a high school is being reported, the twenty-second in twenty weeks according to National Public Radio. Another heartbreaking example of the world's desperate need for feminine qualities and values to have a greater voice in planning, power, and leading. A voice that understands basic human needs for safety, education, and mental and physical health. A voice whose heart advocates for the well-being of all. My prayer for Strength: Meditations for Wisdom, Balance, and Power is that it helps women courageously claim and act from their inherent strength and gentle power. Although feminine strength has been downplayed and dismissed for eons, that must end now. We are called to find, and use, our natural feminine gifts of inclusion, wisdom, civility, respect, and acceptance privately and publicly. Women's gifts promote connection instead of separation and build up rather than tear down. Feminine ideals and ethics care for children rather than make it easy for children to kill children.

It is my fervent hope that Strength: Meditations for Wisdom, Balance, and Power helps women own their deep-seated strength so completely that no amount of bullying can make them doubt it or keep them from acting on it. Feminine strength is a mighty and loving power that is greatly needed in order to civilize and humanize our dangerously out-of-balance world. It's up to us. And we can do it!

All my books begin in the fertile soil of my own growth, and Strength: Meditations for Wisdom, Balance, and Power arose from a steaming pit of outrage. Infuriated by huge injustices in the world and smaller ones I dealt with personally, I stewed and seethed and resisted and blamed. Prompted by deep unhappiness and gently persistent spiritual nudges, the therapist in me eventually kicked in, and I realized I'd succumbed to old patterns of downplaying my wisdom and giving my personal power away. Recognizing I was much angrier with myself than I was with them, I could figure out why I'd lapsed into self-sabotaging behavior, forgive myself for doing so, and begin the process of owning up to, and acting from, my innate strength and power.