Fifth World Women Walking Upright

WELCOME FIFTH WORLD WOMEN.

smallerdr It is good to find you here. This is our time, our great joy, our canvas, our challenge, our sacred work, and our sacred trust. We are born for these times. What we each are, the world needs, every last woman of us. Every good impulse we have, every calling, instinct, stirring, essence, skill, ability, intuition, guidance, and dose of common sense, from the biggest big to the smallest small … all of this adds to the wealth and well-being of this world. We are a holy food for these times, the prasad of these times … you and I, exactly as we are, right now. Each of us is an activated blessing for this earth and this life. We make the Divine visible in the world through recognizing and remembering our essential natures.

In November of 2004, I had a great health adventure. In the space of 48 hours, I stopped the whirling dervish of everything I was doing and took a six-month sabbatical … which eventually became the rest of my life. I made pilgrimages to southern India, Hopi land, and the Black Madonna region in the south of France, emerging from these experiences with Prasad for Women, a series of talks for Fifth World Women Walking Upright … for women like you.

I am deeply grateful to the many people who have ordered and listened to these talks across the years. It is humbling to know that you have found them helpful, either a little or a lot. They were originally available as CDs for a modest price, but the times they are a-changin’ … and I am changing with them. I have now decided to offer the content of all these talks for free, here. I am deeply inspired by the work of Charles Eisenstein (and his book, Sacred Economics) and by the gift economy work of my friend Filiz Telek in Turkey. Women are stepping up and out everywhere. It’s time. As both Filiz and one of my elders, Grandmother Red Leaf, say: “Women are the Medicine.” I agree with them. Women are the prasad of our times. This is a wildly potent, sacred and creative time … one we were all born to step up, out and into as we share our unique gifts in our own indigenous ways. These talks are some of my gifts to you, from my heart to yours.

If you want to follow my Fifth World adventures, you can find me at HolyBeePress.com and on Facebook. To meet other Fifth World Women’s inspirational stories and images, please visit Filiz Telek’s sites: Women Are Medicine and Filiz Telek.

Blessed be. Blessed bees. Blessed Women.
Debra Roberts

Who are Fifth World Women? Why are we the prasad, or holy food, of our times … exactly as we are, right now?

Women on the Verge of Their Hearts Breaking … Open

What is the difference between hearts breaking and hearts breaking open? How does heartbreak grow us?

Fear, the Treasured Guest

Why should we take fear by the hand and invite it to our table? How is fear a messenger and not the message? Why it is vitally important to be discerning, to learn to listen to our bodies, and to meet the Mother of all fears … of who we really are.

The pivotal year I went to Hopi, my destination was the home of Thomas Banyacya Sr who had passed away a few years before.
He touched my heart in the 1990’s (and I talk about this in my recording, Fifth World Women Walking Upright). I felt called to drive across country to express my condolences to his family for their loss and to let them know how grateful I was to have met him. I set off on Route 40 from Asheville, NC, arriving days later at the Banyacya family door. I'd brought quart jars of honey to give them as a gift. (There was a beekeeper who lived around the corner from me.) Thomas’ daughter-in-law, whom I had never met, greeted me at the door, welcomed me in, received the jars of honey, and said, “Why I was just telling Thomas Jr. that we were out of honey and that I needed to go to the store to get some more.”

In that moment, unbeknownst to me, something bee-ish, full of grace, slipped under my radar and into the heart of my life. When people ask me when I became a beekeeper, I realized that it was in that moment. By the end of that year, I was in bee school and the bees got me, body and soul. They are some of the greatest teachers of my life and I have been at their feet ever since (all six of them).

If you enjoy the Prasad for Women talks and are so moved to make a donation, it will be gratefully received. Your gift helps to support my bee sanctuary (and holy bee habit).