Occupy Your Self

*Cooking Up a Story video on farmers supporting OWS movement, featuring my compatriots Heather and Vule*

About two weeks ago, on the morning I was supposed to begin a 6 month culinary program at the Natural Gourmet Institute, I called up the school to let them know I wouldn't be showing up for class.  Not that morning, nor any other morning in the foreseeable future.  I hung up the phone beaming with excitement at the world of possibilities and uncertainties that lie before me.

That same afternoon I went down to Zuccotti Park, the home and headquarters of Occupy Wall Street.  As I loitered around the Kitchen tent, a harried young woman (who I now know as my friend Heather, the woman in the video above) thrust a box of purple cauliflower into my arms, directed me towards a van, and changed the course of my life.  Within a half an hour, I was in a kitchen somewhere in east Brooklyn chopping fresh vegetables for a curry dinner headed to 1200 hungry occupiers.

Its been 15 days now and I am starting to take the lead on the OWS food sourcing efforts, coordinating farmers, cooks, and co-op donations to make sure our meals are as delicious, healthy, and sustainable as possible.  Sound familiar?  Yes, inexplicably I've managed to become the OWS Sourceress.

However, in the spirit of democracy and non-hierarchal leadership, I am helping to build a system that can be run by anyone and isn't dependent on the proprietary knowledge of one person.  I may be taking the lead today, but by next month it could be someone else, and I could move on to another area.  I believe fluidity, flexibility, and transparency are essential to the success of this movement and is the leadership model for the future.  Its an exceptionally feminine model of leadership.  Circular rather than a ladder, cooperative rather than hierarchal, knowledge is shared instead of hoarded.  Leadership roles are not given, but rather are self-empowered.   Its beautiful to watch and experience.

This is a model you can create and follow in your own daily life.   Many of us struggle with an internalized misogyny, and are waiting for a masculine force to come along and give us direction, to tell us what we are doing is of worth.  Stop waiting for someone else to give you the power to make decisions, take control, or create something! Sometimes this masculine force is a very real person- your father, husband, boss, a future partner.  But who wants to be controlled by someone else's vision of success?

Occupy your own life.  Source what is nourishing and reject cheap imitations.  Love your feminine energy.  Allow it to shine and celebrate the feminine values of creativity, fluidity, curiosity, faith, hope, and love.   The world needs your compassion, justice, and empathy right about now.