EVE ~ To breathe. To give life. The one who is Living.
Stories define us. They seep into our bones, are absorbed into our cells and form the fabric of
who we are. They are how we make sense of the world and, ultimately, hold the power to
contain us or set us free.
I was raised Catholic, so the ancient bible stories are embedded into my psyche. For those of us who experienced formalised religion in our childhoods, we remember well those Sunday School hours spent in the dank smelling rooms of churches, where we were told about ‘woman’ - who was created from man for the purpose of companionship – the one who instead, sneaked away and conversed with the serpent, seeking the only thing she was told she mustn’t have - knowledge. Turned temptress she tricked the man into joining her in sin. Quite the story! And the moral? That discontent would lead to banishment from a ‘perfect’ life and into one of pain and toil – quite the burden to bear.
You don’t have to believe the bible to be fact to be influenced by the story of Eve. How woman
was created and failed in her purpose. How she fell into temptation and how the weight of all evil sits squarely on her shoulders. The power of storytelling means that you don’t have to inherently believe the story to be true to be moved on a cellar level by its message. If you’re told you’re less than, in varying ways, for long enough, eventually you can brainwash a whole culture into subconsciously believing the narrative is truth. Why do you think Mama Bear’s porridge was cold after all? She was busy toiling of course… And haven’t we all had our share of cold coffees to relate.
But dear god, I love Eve. I wonder what it was like for her in the garden, looking at that
beautiful apple. I love her curiosity. I love that she bravely followed her knowing, her instinct,
her deep desire for knowledge… and that she then wanted to share the goodness of that
knowledge. I love that she wasn’t content to sit in her pretty, curated paradise but that she was
willing to step beyond, take a risk and push the whole thing forward. Eve is a fucking badass and I love her for everything that means.
The wheels of time have been turned and changed forever by the curious, the daring, the rule breakers, the ones who choose to put themselves in the firing line in the name of progress. To me, the Genesis story is a poem – a metaphor if you will. A thought-provoking challenge that asks what kind of world am I going to create with what has been given to me? Am I going to push forward, step beyond my comfort zone and take risks to better myself and in turn, humanity? Or will I sit in my safe surrounds and whine for help. Eve is the true protagonist of this story. Her curiosity was not a sin. Rather, her bravery, a necessity for human evolution.
The stories we tell ourselves are powerful.
As a woman far on the other side of forty, the stories I hear more and more often these days, are ones of women derailing. Stepping off the path, by choice or necessity, with a desire to shake off (and occasionally, blow up) those old weights of expectation that hang firmly over our collective shoulders. Brené Brown talks about this phenomenon as ‘The Midlife Unraveling’ and in my experience thus far, it seems none of us can escape it.
So many women, friends, acquaintances and even strangers, talk to me about this sense of their story, everything they’d been told and believed to be true, coming apart at the seams. For some, unravelling begins with a significant incident - mine did - but others quietly start to come apart and feel completely uncertain of the why.
Regardless, there seems to be a turning point where we are urged, required if you will, to pull
apart the old narratives and re-tell our stories in our own way, as the protagonist.
Could you imagine how joyful and liberating it would be if the bible (or any of the ancient
stories) were told by women! Indeed, Eve would have had her own chapter. It would have been
a call to womanhood, to bravery and curiosity and leadership. A story that celebrates knowledge and chooses evolution. That book would have been life-giving to all women. It would have been called - THE BOOK OF EVE. 🍎
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