I want to talk about the matriarchy. Neither as a fantasy, nor as a political slogan, and not as the opposite of the patriarchy with different people in charge. As something real, and something we can actually build, right now, in the middle of everything.
First, what it is. The matriarchy, as I understand and use the word, is not a system where women rule over men. That's just the patriarchy with different people at the top, and it solves nothing. The matriarchy is a value system. One that centers care, interconnection, intuition, and the understanding that the wellbeing of the whole is inseparable from the wellbeing of each part. It has existed in cultures throughout human history. It is not new. It is not radical. It is, in many ways, a return.
And right now, we need it more than we have in a very long time.
Here is where I want to be honest about something, because I think a lot of conversations about this skip over it: accountability is part of the matriarchy. It is not the opposite of it. You cannot build a value system rooted in care and then look away when harm is being done. Silence in the face of injustice is not neutrality. It is a choice, and it has consequences. The matriarchy demands that we see clearly, speak honestly, and refuse to normalize what should never be normal.
We are living through a moment that is asking that of us loudly. ICE raids. War. Rights being dismantled in real time. The pressure to look away, to keep scrolling, to tend only to your own small circle, is enormous. And I am not here to tell you that you have to be on the front lines of every battle. You don't. Sustainability matters. Rest matters. But awareness matters too, and so does the willingness to say, clearly and without apology, that some things are wrong.
And then.
And then there is the other side of this, the one that is harder to talk about without sounding naive, but I'm going to say it anyway because the science actually backs it up.
The heart generates the largest electromagnetic field in the human body. It is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the electrical activity generated by the brain, and the magnetic field produced by the heart is more than 100 times stronger than the field generated by the brain, detectable several feet away from the body in all directions. This is not metaphor. This is measurable.
Research from the HeartMath Institute has shown that different emotional states produce distinct patterns in the heart's field. During stress and negative emotions the heart rhythm is erratic and disordered. During sustained positive emotions, such as compassion, appreciation, and love, the pattern becomes coherent, sine-wave-like, and that coherence has measurable effects on the brain's ability to think clearly, make decisions, and regulate emotion.
And here is the part that matters most for what I'm talking about today: that field doesn't stay inside you. Studies have shown that the heart's electromagnetic field can produce measurable effects in a person five feet away. Attitudes of coherent genuine love, appreciation, care and compassion change a field environment, both locally and throughout the world.
You are, quite literally, broadcasting. All the time. The question is: what signal are you sending?
This is the part of the matriarchy that is hardest to hold alongside the accountability piece, but I believe both are necessary and neither cancels the other out. You can hold someone accountable for harm and still not let your heart close. You can refuse to normalize cruelty and still practice sending love into the world, including toward people you disagree with, people who frighten you, people who are making choices you find incomprehensible. Not because they deserve a pass. But because a closed, contracted, fear-saturated heart field does not build the world we are trying to build. And because the research tells us that collective coherence, large numbers of people intentionally generating compassion, has the potential to influence something much larger than any one of us.
This is not passive. This is not the same as doing nothing. A coherent heart in the middle of chaos is one of the most radical acts available to us.
The matriarchy is accountability and compassion held in the same hands. It is clear eyes and an open heart. It is refusing to accept what is wrong while refusing to become hardened by it.
That is the work. That is what we are building.
With love,
Cerissa