{"id":536629,"date":"2026-04-17T21:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T21:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/536629\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T21:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T21:24:08","slug":"can-we-claim-a-glorious-matriarchal-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/536629\/","title":{"rendered":"Can We Claim a Glorious Matriarchal Reality?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I launched Mothering Nature<\/a>, I was motivated by killer whales, Orcinus orca. I was also driven by all I’d learned as a biologist, science writer, and mother in patriarchal systems, despite humans living most of our history in a matriarchy<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Orca are matriarchal. They are one of the few mammals besides humans to evolve non-reproductive grandmothers; they, too, undergo menopause,<\/a> and orca grandmothers are life-or-death essential members of their families. <\/p>\n

Christina Rivera’s profound essay, “The 17th Day,<\/a>” limns the luminosity and motherlove shared by people and orca. When I saw her new book, MY OCEANS, I knew it might be a wisdom<\/a> hymn for living today.<\/p>\n

Rachel Clark: Could you briefly describe what drove you to write MY OCEANS?<\/p>\n

Christina Rivera: In my book, there\u2019s a true story of a time I happened upon a beached porpoise on the Pacific coastline of Costa Rica. I put my hands on the creature, looked it in the eye, and felt it die under my palms. Writing that sentence even now makes my eyes sting. Instead of looking away from that moment, I stared into it. Wrote through it. Used it as a portal to all my repressed feelings. Of great eco-grief<\/a>. Of greater interbeing. The first draft that unrolled from my pen was a poem. (Mind you, I am not a poet.) Seven years later, the final draft that emerged was this wave-like series of lyric essays that all fit underneath the title, MY OCEANS.<\/p>\n

RC: For me, reading MY OCEANS was a healing act. Even though you deal with some of the most difficult issues of our time, has writing it given you sanctuary amid the chaos we see today?<\/p>\n

Do you have any sense of the reasons for that form of power?<\/p>\n

CR: Writing the book gave voice to something inside me that needed to scream into what feels like an abyss. It shouldn\u2019t be an abyss. It should be an ecosystem. If it were an ecosystem, my scream would be cushioned by moss, damp earth, and old-growth canopy. My scream would be returned by howls. What I think I\u2019m trying to say is: There\u2019s no place for my anger<\/a> at the indignities I see in the world today. But writing this book gave me pages in which to explore and express my anger, then my grief, then my love. But it was a pilgrimage, and I could not skip through or ahead. I do hope the reader also feels this permission: to drop into these emotions and to re-emerge relieved, or at least lightened by the shared resonance.<\/p>\n

RC: You write in the title essay, “My Oceans”: \u201cMore than anything in the world, I want to ram whaling ships!\u201d Can you speak to the urgency of that? Have you worked on board a Sea Shepherd ship yet?<\/p>\n

CR: I still want to ram whaling ships. Some of my anger has been released (more so from guided meditations in Thich Nhat Hanh\u2019s Engaged Buddhism<\/a>), but the environmental urgencies are everywhere I turn. It\u2019s overwhelming. But having a practice and a sangha (community of practice) has given me the boundaries<\/a> I needed to buoy myself amidst the swirling urgencies. I\u2019m still obsessed with eco-pirates and have only just realized there\u2019s another entire book in me about them. So I\u2019m building that concept and also planning some \u201cexperiential research.\u201d So eco-pirating is still on my bucket list, but I do hope I\u2019m getting closer!<\/p>\n

RC: Whales are prominent in your book and life. What about them do you connect to? <\/p>\n

CR: My love for whales feels ancestral. Like whales are in my bloodline, or my past lives. Past lives seem rather hopeful, but bloodline isn\u2019t that far off, considering humans share 85 percent of their DNA<\/a> with whales. Whale flippers have a basic bone structure similar to human hands. Whales carry relics of the same pelvic bones humans still use. Maybe they are more ancestor than not.<\/p>\n

RC: You talk about how supportive your husband has been throughout your life. How does that play out for you, given the feminist themes of your book?<\/p>\n

CR: My husband exemplifies so many \u201ctough\u201d masculine qualities (hunts, shoots, fixes, excels at sports), but he\u2019s also confident in holding the space for my independence, my creativity<\/a>, and\u2014so importantly\u2014he\u2019s competent in holding the family together in my absence. I need periods of silence to be creative, to listen. Having a young family is not conducive to that type of silence, which makes stepping away (\u201cmy absence\u201d) essential. That\u2019s where I see the divine masculine has so much potential: in competently \u201cholding space\u201d for creativity. It\u2019s a big conversation. Which is why I\u2019m writing into it!<\/p>\n

RC: You connect mystical inspiration to our capacity to heal ourselves and our planet. Could you share more about that?<\/p>\n

CR: I love the concept of parallel worlds, and sometimes I imagine our current world as just one of a billion possibilities in an experiment where patriarchy fails. It makes me feel better to think that everything we\u2019ve sacrificed here in this one sad reality could still contribute to making another world possible. Not just any world, but a glorious matriarchal reality\u2014where the migrations of birds and whales and butterflies are religions, and the principles of care, and respect for biodiversity, thrive throughout the land. But to manifest that world, I also know we must first dream it. <\/p>\n

So I do consider it my work to help imagine this one-in-a-billion world, where a care-based society arises\u2014in a swift and \u201cepic force\u201d\u2014to hold sacred all we can save<\/a>. And regardless of the outcome, I am so happy to be on the team of all the artists and creators: painting, writing, dreaming<\/a>, planting, and manifesting<\/a> a care-based existence, into being. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I launched Mothering Nature, I was motivated by killer whales, Orcinus orca. I was also driven by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-536629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}