Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World

by Jean Shinoda Bolen

Book Overview

In its original edition, this culmination of Jean Shinoda Bolen's life's work sold over 25,000 copies. Now in paperback for the first time Urgent Message from Mother is a call to action for all the women of the world. This unique combination of visionary thinking and practical howto seeks to galvanize the power of women acting together in order to save our world. Bolen outlines the lessons we can learn from the women's movement, draws on Jungian psychology and the sacred feminine, and gives powerful examples of women coming together all over the globe and making a significant impact.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1573243531
• ISBN13: 9781573243537
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: Conari Press
• Length: 187 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.9" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

A Must Read :

Jean Shinoda's latest books is a must read by every women who knows in her heart she is tired of the conflict, anger, violence, abuse and warfare in our world; this book is for everyone who knows this can be a nurturing, sharing and cooperative world. Millions and millions of astute women, the world over, are sensing they have power and influence and can use it the way women intuitively know how: in communicative groups where feelings and ideas are shared, shaped, mutually agreed upon and then implemented--creatively. Read this book, find some women to gather with, and the next steps will come to you quite naturally.

Voices Gathering the Women

I read Dr Bolen's book over a few days, rather than racing through it, trying to digest each of its vignettes, and realizing how on-target her summation is: We must gather the women! I was also surprised by the coincidence -- and I'm beginning to doubt that was all it was -- that I read it only a week after finishing Xanna Vinson's "The Song of an Emerald Dove." It tells the same story from a different perspective, and as fiction. But both of these women are telling every one of us that it is time that we paid attention to the cries of Mother Earth and the cries within our own souls that there simply must be a better way to run a planet! Dr. Bolen doesn't pull any punches. She sums up so much more than we had ever imagined was going on around us and does it without nagging or harping. She just tells the story. We need to make some changes. The people that she tells us about seemed to take action against unbelievable odds, but they had an inner faith and a calling. The story she tells reads well and never lags. The parts are all quotable at dinner, lunch, or on the Metro. Talk it up. Buy them both. Read them together. Then get up, get out, and get our act together!

Compelling, Alarming, and Promising

"...The urgent message from Mother Earth and the archetypal feminine is to gather the women and save the world, because leaving it up to the men is going badly, and will be catastrophic. The premise on which men rule the world is religion, with monotheism the form of religion that is bringing us to the brink." - From the book According to author Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., the legacy of patriarchal history is competition, domination and control. Patriarchal religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam are hierarchical in nature, sanctioning war against each other and claiming divine superiority and favoritism. Patriarchy revels in the humiliation of enemies and amassing bigger and badder toys-nuclear missiles being the epitome-while women, children, and the planet suffer from male egos run wild. Bolen, a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst, steps into the role of mother bear in her newest book Urgent Messages from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World-declaring, "Enough is enough!" Invoking the archetypes of Mother and sister/Artemis, Bolen rings the alarm bell as Earth heads towards certain disaster. Unless women rise up, empower others, and lend their voice, she asserts, the vulnerable will continue to pay the price for patriarchal values. Citing numerous sociological and psychological studies, Bolen shows how-in general-women and men think, behave, and communicate quite differently. For example, stress triggers the "flight or fight" response in men, resulting in isolation and aggression. Women, however, react to stressful conditions with a "tend and befriend" response. Females seek social contact and support, as well as protect and nurture their young. Adrenaline and testosterone promote the "flight or fight" response, while estrogen and oxytocin promotes calm, relaxation, and maternal feelings. Because of hormonal differences, most women find it stress reducing to admit a mistake or discuss a problem. For them, such problem solving generates ideas, support, and possible resources. For most men, however, there is a hierarchal structure of one-up or one-down. Beginning in the schoolyard, boys learn that asking questions or looking "weak" begets derision, humiliation, and exclusion. Interestingly, this is why men often don't ask for directions when lost. Projected on the global scale, however, these differences are even more obvious. Women tend to seek compromise and consensus, pursuing what is best for all people-especially the vulnerable. Men, however, often seek to dominate, conquer, and "be right"-with grave consequences. Using biblical examples like Cain and Abel and the Great Flood, Bolen paints a chilling portrait of what happens when patriarchal spirituality perpetuates unquestioned. She writes: "Through a psychological lens, the image of the Lord is of a controlling father who overreacts and justifies what he did by blaming the children for bringing it on themselves. Living with an authoritarian father, children learn nev

A Clarion Call

This book is a clarion call to every woman (and man) who cares about creating a sustainable, peaceful and harmonious planet. "Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World" is filled with inspiring strategies and uplifting stories of historical and contemporary women who have created shifts in the patriarchy status quo -- average women who have "circled together" and supported one another to create positive change in the world. Why does this work? Dr. Bolen provides us with scientific evidence and many examples of how women think and do things differently than men. She outlines in detail how women can be the driving force to save the world and clearly articulates why there is now an urgency to use our innate power as women to create the change that is so desperately needed. I was deeply inspired by this empowering book. It is definitely time to "Gather the Women" and bring our planet into balance. We can easily start on that sacred journey by reading this book, circling the women, and taking action!

A Political Classic; As Important as Lakoff's Don't Think of An Elephant,

Urgent Message From Mother: Gather The Women, Save The World This is a very, very important book that anyone who cares about the endangered state of the USA and the world must read, male or female. In Crawford, Mother Cindy Sheehan has changed the balance here in the US. It's because she is speaking as a mother. This book is an inspiring strategy book, a historic compendium of how women have used the feminine archetype and women's ways to heal society, to rescue cultures from world. Consider as powerful and profound and take it to heart. Jean Shinoda Bolen is dead on right when she says that we need to gather the women to save the world, I'm a guy, and I'm certain that it is male or masculine energy that is screwing things up here. Bolen presents, in many different ways, examples, evidence and proof of how women do things differently and how that different approach is desperately needed now. It's not that men can't do what is needed. Men CAN do it too, but they have to embrace the approaches that women use, the reactions and strategies that women use to react to stress, to trouble, to war, because the way women responds is more nurturing, more healing, more likely to build community rather than competition, more likely to create synergy. I discovered this book because I came to the conclusion that the right wing in the USA and fundamentalists throughout the world are engaged in a huge backlash and war against both women, women's right and the feminine archetype. I concluded that their reaction is a last dying paroxysm of resistance to a trend that is inevitable-that women regain the rights and privileges they had thousands of years ago, before agriculture and the hierarchical culture and slavery it produced appeared-when goddesses and priestesses were common and when women shared in leading society. Having also studied George Lakoff's books, including Don't Think of An Elephant, Moral Politics and Metaphors We Live By (which I read in the 1980's) I concluded that Lakoff's model, which has led to him becoming a "framing" guru for Democratic leaders, could benefit by adding a mythic, feminine archetype perspective. When he talks about nurturing parent and strict parent cultures and families, he could also be talking about masculine archetype and feminine archetype families and cultures. Jean Shinoda Bolen's new book provides a conceptualization of ways to think about language, interventions, cultural phenomena, and change strategies that have the potential to be just as powerful as Lakoffs. She's not talking about framing, but she is offering a different way to approach the same problems. Any reader of Lakoff's Don't Think of An Elephant should find this book rewarding, empowering, enlightening and energizing, with a plethora of ideas of how to take action and go the next step to make a difference. This is a book every woman who cares about politics and change should read and every man who can handle dealing with embracing the femini