By ‘Dog on Dog’ I mean our innate ability to sense another being through our whole body. Go to the dog park and marvel at the honest way dogs sniff, lick, tail tuck, snarl, snap, hump,rub, wag, play, bark, when meeting another dog. What are their bodies telling them – Is it safe? Can I play? Am I in danger? Should I run? Initiate a Game? Walk away?

We have our own ‘Dog on Dog’ response to ‘the other’ as well. Our challenge is our own unique imprinting through our ancestry, our family, our education, our community, our generation and our experiences that we have through those lenses. Our survival has many complex layers and filters that often contradict and override our bodies instinct. And unlike an animal we scent ourselves with deodorants, hair and body products, perfumes and colognes to mask our ‘smell’ which contains many secrets that ‘our animal’ can read with ease.

‘Am I safe’ can be filtered through an opportunity to get a job over our personal safety. The hope of ‘being connected’ to a life we dream of can erode our standards of behavior. The dream of ‘finding love’ can mask our gut instincts.

Our immune system has one basic job, to determine what is self and what is non-self. Air, food and drink comes in and gets sorted into ‘Yup, this is health building or nope, not a healthy item, sending it out.’  Our immune system weighs and measures itself against our most precious gift – our homeostasis, our innate equilibrium. Our whole being mimics this process as we build our unique selves.

We spend much of our lives discovering who we are not. Which actions, decisions and thoughts are ‘who am I’ and which are ‘who am I not’. Recovery from being a victim of a sexual assault (yes, it happened to me too) is a deep and profound rising up, peeling away, re-grounding of what it is to be ‘Walking While Woman.’

I hope we are not just waiting for the next newsy soundbite in the Jian story or the next shocking news story to take our attention for a few days. Beyond justice and victim/perpetrator identities are the voices of women to be heard in how we educate, govern and treat people. Because a woman’s body is designed for patience and survival through nurturing she asks not what is good for the economy but what is good for humanity.

Can women even hear their own deep wisdom anymore?

The answer is yes, yes they can.

If they listen for it.

If you listen for it.