Once the Queen has conquered the challenges in Her life, She begins to claim Her royal power. She cuts through fear and ambivalence to become the sole ruler of Her Self. She has struggled for Her transformation and has achieved it. Her proud potency is palpable, Her authenticity uncontested. Her life now takes on a new ease, a grace, a certain lightness of being born of Her Self-knowing, Self-respecting, Self-directing, Self- projecting passion and purpose. She sails ahead on Her own steam, cutting efficiently through seas that are sometimes smooth as glass, sometimes choppy and fraught with danger. Her age and vast experience is Her ballast. She keeps Her center, come what may.

Something remarkable takes place once the Queen has stepped into sovereignty. Now that Her own life is in working order and running more smoothly, the Queen can afford to enlarge the territory and expand the horizons of Her Interests and influence and extend the parameters of Her physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual domain. Firmly rooted in Her best Self and acting on Her own behalf, She is free to reach out in ever increasing concentric circles to others.  

Now She can freely offer Her compassion, expertise, time, and money to people and causes that call to Her sense of response-ability, literally Her ability to respond. Response-ability is the willingness to encounter each person, situation, event, and emotion with an open heart and an open mind, so that we can respond to the needs of others and our own needs with equal care. Born of awareness and consideration, response-ability means choosing to be fully conscious and present in life and to participate conscientiously in its enfoldment.

In her book, Women Of the 14th Moon, Brooke Medicine Eagle, a Native American Earth wisdom teacher writes:

"When our elders step across the threshold of the Grandmother Lodge, leaving their bleeding behind them, they become the Keepers of the Law. No longer is their attention consumed with the creation and rearing of their own family... Their attention turns to the children of all Our Relations: not just their own children, or the children of their friends, their clan or tribe, but the children of all the hoops: the Two-Leggeds, the Four-Leggeds, the Wingeds, the Finned, the Green-Growing Ones, and all others. Our relationship with this great circle of Life rests ultimately in their hands. They must give away this responsibility by modeling, teaching, and sharing the living of this law - in everyday life - to men, women, children - that all might come into balance."

Maturity brings with it the understanding that everything is not about us. That the world does not revolve around our personal story. That we do not exist in a vacuum. And that all those other people out there actually have lives of their own and are not simply extras in our movie. Life and living have shown the Queen the value of community, cooperation, concern, care, and communion.

The role of women as ethical leaders and dispensers of justice has persisted in the cultures of traditional peoples. Among the Haudenosaunee of the Northeast (called Iroquois by the Europeans), the women had charge of the day-to-day governance of the tribe. The Clan Mothers, post-menopausal wise women, chose the chiefs or council members, and held veto power over them, vested with the authority to represent the needs of the people in the discussions and deliberations of the longhouse council.  

"The Clan Mothers ran everything.  

They had the last word. I think that's the answer."

- Floyd Red Crow Westerman 

Popular ombundswomen, they oversaw meetings to prevent abuses of power and to intervene when necessary on behalf of the good of the entire tribe when its collective interests had been ignored. If, in their studied opinion, the chief overstepped his command, the Clan Mothers were empowered to remove his horned helmet. This de-horning signaled that he could not speak for the remainder of that council session, his words rendered meaningless. This practice was the inspiration for the checks and balances system of governance outlined in the United States Constitution, which in turn, was the model for the Charter of the United Nations.

The Hopis say that when the Grandmothers speak, the world will be healed and there will be peace. In February 2003, several Haudenosaunee Clan Mothers, the descendents of those women who so impressed the American founding fathers, issued a public statement to encourage other women to oppose the War in Iraq. "The Americans copied our laws and customs, but they did not understand them," they admonished. "Our way is solving community conflicts through discussion in a People's Council. In our tradition, three criteria must be kept in mind through all deliberations:

taking onto consideration the needs of seven generations to come.

"We are now facing an unnecessary war," their proclamation continues. "We have a duty to use our power to do good. We have decided to remind all humanity of this important truth. War cannot happen without the support of women. We ask the women of the world to come forward and play their rightful role as the progenitors, the creators of all men, of all humanity, the caretakers of the earth and of all that lives upon it."

It is essential to collectively struggle to recover our status  

as Daughters of the Earth. In that is our strength, and the security, not in the predator, but in the security of our Mother, for our future generations. In that we can insure  

our security as the Mothers of our Nations.

Today, just as the cumulative damage to our Earth is reaching a perilous point of no return and our entire natural and cultural environment is in the throes of dangerous disconnection and dis-ease, we wise, mature, accomplished women are called upon to step up to the challenge and ascend the throne of conscious, conscientious leadership. Rachel Carson, an Empress of the highest order, warned us, "We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road-the one 'less traveled by' - offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth."

It is incumbent upon us to use our considerable Queenly power, in whatever way seems appropriate to our individual skills and involvements, to stem the tide of unthinking aggression that can drown us all. We are the Clan Mothers. We need to grab the reins and redirect and correct the negative and harmful conditions that exist in our community, our society, and our planet.

Best blessings of wise women ruling wisely,