Why I Can't Stop Talking About the Matriarchy Within

How lasting cultural change begins with the stories, wounds, and conditioning we carry inside ourselves.

Why this? Why has this become my life’s work?

More specifically, what changes inside a person, or a culture, such that exploitation stops feeling normal? Lately I’ve been realizing that question sits underneath everything I write.

The honest answer is that I didn’t exactly choose this work. Or at least it doesn’t feel that way. It feels more like something that kept showing up in my life until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

For years, I was in an abusive and exploitative romantic relationship. Before that, I spent much of my life in a similarly harmful dynamic with one of my parents. Different people and circumstances, but the same pattern.

For a long time, I thought getting out was the hard part.

When you’re in an unsafe situation, that’s what everyone focuses on, right? Leave. Just leave. Here’s how to make a safety plan. Here’s how to get out. Most of the resources that exist—shelters, advocates, helplines—are centered around the immediate leaving. And thank goodness for that! I’ll forever be grateful for the people and resources that helped me leave and supported me in the aftermath.

But once you’re outside the immediate danger, in many ways, the story’s just beginning.

First comes the challenge of staying out of toxic dynamics. Then a deep-seated loneliness sets in. With this phase arrives the task of facing the version of yourself that those dynamics helped create.

As the dust settled for me post-leaving, the reflection in the mirror became clearer. Not an easy thing to face.

I had physically left, but the beliefs that had kept me there so long had not left me. Self-doubt. So much shame. A tendency to abandon myself. The part of me that had learned to tolerate less than I deserved. Until those things began to change, I wasn’t actually free. I was simply outside the immediate danger. In many ways, freedom is still a work in progress. Layers.

I’m not downplaying the leaving part. If you’ve managed to do it, no matter how, you are brave to me.

But a different level sets in afterward and the challenge is becoming the kind of person who no longer believes that kind of treatment is acceptable.

For me, that has meant learning—slowly, imperfectly, and continually—that I deserve better. Not because I’ve become more of anything (more productive, accomplished, useful). But because I began reconnecting with a worth that had always been there underneath the conditioning.

Only then could I step onto the path to thriving.

When exploitation feels normal

The more I processed, the more I began to notice that abusive dynamics are perpetuated through normalization and shame.

Many of us were raised in systems that taught us to distrust ourselves, disconnect from our bodies, suppress our intuition, and measure our worth through productivity, sacrifice, and usefulness.

We inherited stories that depletion is normal, self-sacrifice is love, and value must be earned rather than remembered. When those beliefs take root early enough, we begin to embody them. We become shaped by them.

Human beings are extraordinarily adaptive, especially in the childhood years. Families, religions, and cultures condition us. Survival strategies become habits. Habits become beliefs. We often can’t recognize them as conditioning at all.

What once helped us survive becomes normalized. Then, compliance feels responsible. Self-abandonment appears as virtue. We come to believe depletion is simply inevitable.

Seeing that pattern in my own life led me to recognize versions of it everywhere, including in the larger culture around me. Which is why I don’t believe that changing laws, institutions, workplaces, and cultural norms is enough on its own. Necessary? Absolutely. Sufficient? No.

If we don’t address the internal programming that taught us to tolerate exploitation in the first place, we’ll recreate it. Maybe dressed differently, with different language, and better branding. Under the guise of liberation, but… we’ll recreate it. We’ve seen versions of this before.

Some movements that genuinely sought liberation ended up asking women to succeed inside extractive systems rather than question the systems themselves. I think of Gloria Steinem-era feminism and later Girlboss culture.

There's nothing wrong with ambition. But too often equality has been framed as just becoming more successful participants in systems built around domination, productivity, and endless extraction. Which is just compliance, under the guise of “winning.” Plus, that version of success remained more accessible to some women than others, often shaped by race, class, sexuality, and proximity to existing power.

The deeper issue was left untouched. That is, the worthiness wound remained untouched. That leads me to the question that keeps pulling me back:

What changes inside a person—or a culture—such that exploitation stops feeling normal?

It’s a political question, a psychological question, a feminist question, and a human question. All.

The answer lives at the intersection of inner and outer transformation. Both the collective work and inner work are essential. One without the other is incomplete. That’s why this has become my life’s purpose.

I haven’t discovered something here that no one else has ever seen. Many teachers, activists, healers, and thinkers have spoken about the inner dimensions of liberation before me. I stand on their shoulders.

What I’m trying to do is contribute my own language, framework, and lived experience to that conversation, because of what I’ve been through, but also because of timing. I believe we’re living through a profound transition. A paradigm shift isn’t coming… it’s already underway.

You can see it in the growing distrust of institutions, rising conversations around nervous system healing, mutual aid, climate resilience, embodiment, community, and belonging. People are searching for something beyond extraction, even if they don’t yet share a common name for it.

Becoming the bridge

I don’t know whether we’ll see the full realization of a matriarchal future in my lifetime. In fact, I suspect we won’t.

That’s even more reason I do believe some of us are here to become the bridge between the world we’ve inherited and the one we’re trying to imagine and co-create. If that’s true, then our job centers around participation. Showing up imperfectly and helping build what comes next, starting on the inside, working our way out.

These ideas won’t leave me alone

They keep returning, so I’m listening. For however long I’m permitted to hold this baton, I’m going to run with it. That’s why I’m currently developing a framework, a practice, and perhaps eventually a book. In many ways, the guidepost I wish I’d had years ago.

I’m going to share much of that development here, openly and freely, as it unfolds. If this helps someone stand a little more firmly in their own power—and from there contribute to the collective—I would consider that an honor.

I don’t have all the answers. Rather, I think we’re trying to remember something together. I’m just gonna keep showing up and doing my part.

What I know for certain is that my life changed when I stopped focusing on how to survive and started asking what it would take to truly thrive. That question is leading me back to myself.

Now I find myself asking the same question at a collective level. What would it take for us not just to survive patriarchy, but to outgrow it? To become people who no longer find it acceptable on a soul and life-force level? That’s the lasting transformation and the real paradigm shift, without the bypassing.

First we leave.

Then we learn how to stay out.

And eventually, if we’re willing to do the deeper work, we learn how to thrive.

Together.