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September 23, 2001 |
Intense Dreams:Bosnia Todayby Nina Kojevnikov |
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[Danica Anderson is again leading a group to Bosnia this October to celebrate the Goddess of Old Europe with Bosnian women and to help them recover from the terrible sufferings of years of warfare. This description of the work was written by one of the Bosnian participants. It's too late to join the journey this year, but if you would like information about Danica's work, please go to her web site at See Danica's article describing her previous visits at <http://www.awakenedwoman.com/boswitches.htm>] I too am looking forward to Bosnia. It is indeed a pilgrimage to go there. As I mentioned to Patricia Reis, the best word to describe Bosnia is "intense" -- intensely beautiful, intensely suffering, intensely damaging to the feminine, intensely poor, intensely corrupt, intensely warm (in terms of the generosity and welcome of the people). Bosnia is also a catalyst, precipitating change, and an awareness within each person of just what is going on within. Believe me, any unresolved issues or unlooked-at issues crop up in Bosnia - it strips one. But that should be a joyous process -- first the descent, and then the emergence at the other end into the light. I have been thinking about something which happened when I was there with Danica last February. Danica has taught me to honour my body, and so suggested a very wise discipline -- that of us taking an aerobic walk in Novi Travnik before the start of that day's training. On those walks, I learned how therapy literally takes place on street corners, in supermarkets, and in coffee cafes. On one of those walks, up in the hills, we came across a man who spoke superb English. He asked Danica to come back the next day to see if she could ascertain what was wrong with his wife. It turns out that she was suffering from Alzheimer's, and of course, the local hospital sent her home because there are no medical supplies, no medical help, no resources. She had a huge lump on her head, and I became aware of just how many people in former Yugoslavia have strange-looking lumps growing out of their heads. Undoubtedly, something in the environment is profoundly and terribly unhealthy. Unused bombs, "radiation tipped", have been dropped into water supplies, and women now either spontaneously abort foetuses, or else they give birth to malformed babies. The incidence of abnormal births is statistically extremely high, unnaturally so. Even the environment in Bosnia is traumatised, as are the animals. Dogs cower, and slink away. On another one of these walks we saw a puppy, who was torn between his (her) own desire for human contact (as you know, puppies and babies are naturally very trusting, and long for human touch and comfort), so s/he came towards us, and then backed away; came towards us and then backed away. But he wanted for us to pet him, so s/he ultimately overcame his intense fear, and let us touch him/her. It broke my heart to see what had happened to this dog; s/he was no longer exhibiting "natural" dog behaviour -- this mirrors the trauma of war, and the mutilation of the feminine. Nature and what is "natural" has been turned upside down. I cried on the way down from the mountain. My own mother is dying of Alzheimer's, and I think she now has a very short time to live. But I cried from something else -- the destruction and suppression of what is feminine, what is true, in Bosnia. I am Russian, and like Bosnia, we refer to our country as the "motherland" (and not the "fatherland" -- countries in the West are considered masculine). However, the supreme irony is that Slavs treat women and what is feminine with supreme contempt. The famous (perhaps infamous) book in Russian literature, the "Domostroi" ("The House Orderer") lists the principles "by which the head of the household should rule HIS house." Therein, he is instructed to regularly beat his wife to keep her in line. There are no laws against domestic violence in former Yugoslavia, and the women in Bosnia are taught to serve their men -- their fathers, their husbands, and their kinfolk. The culture at the moment is a warrior culture, extremely patriarchal, and intensely damaging to anything that is important to women. And yet Bosnia's roots lie deep within the feminine, as Russia's do. I thought of my mother because she did not honour her own femininity, her own needs, her own personhood. And when she wasn't "of service" anymore, both she and my grandmother were cast off -- dispensable -- and placed into nursing homes. Nowhere were their contributions to my father's well-being acknowledged and respected. In fact, he hates them both, as I was hated in my childhood. After all, I wasn't a man. I told Danica that I saw myself in both my mother and in that woman in the hills above Novi Travnik; she was frightened of her husband, and when she talked to Danica, she realised that she had found -- at long last -- someone to whom she could communicate her fears, and the fact that she realised something was going on. I realised that if I did not take care of myself, that no one was going to do that for me. I learned that I should try to honour myself and take care of my own needs. I am not very good at this -- still. But Bosnia has taught me to look at this issue. And I think of that woman who couldn't tell her husband that she knew what was going on with her. I have also been thinking about how important it is to have a balance between the masculine and feminine, and how things go dreadfully wrong when that balance is lost. The masculine is also good, but in most contexts, it has completely overshadowed the feminine. And when the feminine is dishonoured, when women are tortured, raped, dishonoured, treated with contempt, and viewed as people who "do" (and not people who "are"), then the earth is polluted with impunity, and we lose contact with our emotional selves, with what is spiritual, with what is "embodied." We lose the language of feeling and emotion; we fail to nurture ourselves, others, and the planet. Last year's conference empowered the women in Novi Travnik. As the ten days went by, we could see the women growing in confidence. They became articulate and focused. Their menfolk also began to treat them with more respect, in that these women began to bring in money. Most importantly, they began to acquire a vocabulary that didn't involve victimhood. And they got in touch with their feelings. And I am sure that that is what will happen to all of us in Bosnia this year. We will also discover things about ourselves that we wouldn't have discovered in a more "normal" environment. But perhaps we will discover that was is considered "normal" in our Western societies involves destruction of the feminine as well; it isn't very "normal" either. Come and bring your dream journal. Because you will dream intensely in Bosnia. I hope this made sense and didn't sound like drivel. I am looking forward to meeting all of you, and to sharing a wonderful time together. May you be blessed today
and always, Nina Kojevnikov, Ph.D. Telephone: +31 (0)70 328
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