Tea With Nina Simons & Nina Utne

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NU: YOU'VE TALKED ABOUT MOVING FROM FEAR INTO FIERCENESS. CAN YOU DESCRIBE HOW THAT MIGHT WORK?

NS: A few years ago, Diane Wilson, whose dazzling memoir of battling polluters in her home town just came out (see review on page 44), said that she knows she's on track when she can smell her fear -- and she heads straight for it. When I first heard that I didn't really know what to make of it. But recently I've cultivated a different relationship to my own fear and I'm learning not to give it decision-making authority. In fact, my fears often indicate where my deepest feelings lie.

For example, I've learned I have a fear of revealing myself, of taking a passionate stand that reveals my vulnerability or that might make me a public target. Given the urgency of the times we live in, that fear is something I feel a need to overcome. When I stand up and speak publicly and invest myself fully in what I care about most deeply, then my own fierceness emerges in alignment with my purpose.

What we're all being called to do in this time -- and we need a balance of our best masculine and best feminine to do it in the most effective way -- is to make a stand on behalf of what we love most passionately and most deeply, to encourage the mama bear in each of us to instinctively and fiercely respond to the urgent call to act in defense of life. For me, that's where the transition from fear into fierceness takes place, right at the intersection of the masculine and the feminine.

Nina Simons will be a featured guest at the Revolutionary Women spa and retreat.

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