In the many hidden epicenters of the polycrisis, between out-of-control hormones and everyday toxins, live women-in-the-middle. They are the ones who care, guide, feel too much, and survive on almost nothing. Despite their experience, dedication, and attentiveness to the world, they live precarious lives. They have to invest twice as much to earn half as much, take risks without a safety net, and support homes, bodies, and relationships with one hand tied behind their backs, sometimes both, and their eyes covered. Despite all the twisted comforts and privileges of modernity, they face uncertain lives, where they must continually take risks with no certainty of ever escaping precariousness.
They live on the edge of exhaustion, hormonal burnout that burns without being seen, induced by cyclical metamorphoses and intensified by environmental toxins.
It is the systemic erosion of the body that still tries to nourish a world that does not sustain it in return.
It is a chemical imbalance between what hurts and what is received, between what is felt and what can be said.
I know women with degrees, wisdom, and compassion who support families, teams, projects, and communities. But the return is unstable, silent, and scarce. The modern world demands that they are always “ready,” that they do not fail, that they reorganize themselves without ever collapsing. And if they collapse? They are described as unstable, dramatic, and unpredictable. The uncertain intensity is the price they pay for feeling and thinking outside the domesticated norms, in networks that, instead of caring for them, more easily shame and humiliate them. “You have to conform.”
But they are alive and boiling inside, with nerves on edge and hearts beating in resonance with the wounded Earth. Women who the world considers “halfway,” but who are whole, even if shattered. They are halfway there, yes, and the path they are opening is not one of resignation, but of Life.
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Honor hystera. Re-member. Response-ability. (Un)learn together.