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or partial, when we are cut off from our feminine source, from the Feminine Divine, symptoms inevitably break through.
    Although outwardly appearing stable and satisfied, inwardly we may feel silenced, afraid, stuck, self-doubtful, unable to carry through with things, angry but unable to express it directly. We may grow perfectionistic and driven, but strangely at the same time we may feel powerless, without boundaries, overwhelmed with the roles we are expected to carry out. Moreover, we may harbor fears of being left alone, of risking ourselves, of conflict.
    In my mid- to late thirties, before my awakening began, I was experiencing many of these symptoms. Yet I was unable to see that they were trying to tell me something, that they were voices urging me to drop deep into my own feminine nature.
    Wake-Up Calls
    Even on the literal level, waking was always hard for me. I have had only one nickname in my life, given to me by my brother, eleven years younger than I. He called me Sue-up, a name he madeup for me when he was a toddler and I a young adolescent. At that time I’d sleep so soundly that alarm clocks could not get through to me, and I would wake only after being shaken a half-dozen times. Each morning people in my family would go around asking, “Is Sue up?” My little brother, who was learning to speak, thought this was my name.
    Now beginning to wake up at thirty-eight, I realized that once again I’d been living up to my old nickname. As a woman I’d slept so soundly that wake-up calls had not really gotten through to me. Not the feminist movement, not the marginalization of women in the church, not exclusive male language in scripture and liturgy. I had been upset and alarmed by the staggering assault on women through rape, spousal abuse, sexual abuse, harassment, and genital mutilation, but somehow this didn’t initiate a full-blown awakening.
    I’d been disturbed by a stream of statistics, such as four times as many girls die worldwide of malnutrition as boys because boys are preferred and given more food. Or the fact that women do two-thirds of the work in the world and receive one-tenth of the world’s wages. 9 Or that American women earn 75 percent of what similarly employed men do and comprise only 2 percent of top management. But neither did this rouse my feminine heart in the sort of way that propels one into a life-changing journey.
    The first fictional story I ever wrote was about a woman who walked in her sleep nearly every night. 10 “People deposit their misery somewhere in their body,” the character Hallie says. “Mine apparently is the sleep center of my brain.” But despite her awareness that her sleepwalking signals something wrong in her life, she refuses to face her life or her problems.
    Then one night she sleepwalks outside and climbs a ladder that has been left leaning against the house. She wakes three rungs from the top, everything around her darkness and air. Frightened, she backs down and returns to her room, where she ties her arm to the bedpost, afraid she’ll sleep again and wake on the roof, this time stepping off into thin air.
    But even then she doesn’t confront the changes she needs to make. So she walks in her sleep again, this time backing the car down the driveway and crashing into a Japanese elm. It takes the crash to wake her. She sits at the wheel, stunned, a trickle of blood on her forehead, knowing finally that she must alter the direction of her life.
    Here is one of the principles of women waking: If you don’t respond to the first gentle nudges, they will increase in intensity. Next you will wake up on the roof. And if you do not respond to that, there will likely be a crash. There are women who sleep through the crashes, too. I imagine by then the impulse to wake gives up and they drift into permanent hibernation.
    Why in the world do women sleep through all manner of wake-up calls? I think part of it is