We Are All Lionesses: Coming Home to Ourselves

Welcome to The Lionesses! We are so glad you are here. We hope you find inspiration on this platform we are curating. 

Our journey to get here has been a winding road. As all the most interesting and transformative journeys tend to be. Lots of lessons learned along the way and a very different outcome than originally intended.  This space you see here today is not what we thought it would be. It’s so much more. 

Over three years ago we purchased the domain which hosts this container with a very different purpose. You see, in  our day jobs we are climate policy researchers. Our work is focused on supporting the most vulnerable on the frontlines of climate change. And we have worked with young climate leaders from the global South for several years now. Many of these young climate leaders are women and some of them were facing gatekeepers who were preventing them from engaging  in discussions on global climate policy.  

One young woman in particular was having a very rough time. We circled around her, like lionesses protecting their cubs. We confronted the gatekeepers. We wrote blogs. We protested. We raged. Our efforts were not for naught. Because in the end she rose. And now she is a true leader, supporting and empowering others. 

That experience changed us all.  

This all happened at the beginning of the pandemic. It brought a lot of challenges to be sure. And in no way do we want to diminish the way in which so many suffered and lost their lives. But for us it brought a lot of quiet evenings and time for contemplation, which we so badly needed. It gave us opportunities to ask ourselves the hard questions. What comes next? How can I be an agent for change?  And most importantly: who am I really? 

During one of those quiet evenings one of us heard a whisper. It said, “The Lionesses”.  That led that one to buy the domain name which now hosts this platform and to start a crusade to figure out what The Lionesses was meant to be. 

Originally we thought The Lionesses would focus on empowering women working on global climate policy. Because that was what we felt was most needed. To scale up and replicate the way we had circled around the young climate leaders we work with. So we gathered a few of the amazing women we have the honour of working with and asked them: what should we do with this space? One person said: 

“This initiative shouldn’t be just for women. It should be about bringing all people together to have important conversations about the world we want to live in.” 

We contemplated what she said for months thereafter. What might that look like? 

At the beginning of the pandemic we had started to host discussions on how we might create a different world. It was one born primarily out of fear. We felt that too many people were  focusing on all that was going wrong in the world. And we feared that it would lead us to more of that. We have to stop it, we told ourselves. It felt urgent and protracted. Ultimately, those discussions didn’t go beyond the first few months. Because we needed to do our own work first. Because you can’t change the outside without first changing the inside. 

The pandemic gave us time and space to evolve on our own journeys. To meditate and contemplate. To read and listen to be inspired by others.  To join virtual discussions to hear what others had to say.  To come to understand the truth not just in our heads, but also in our hearts.  To meet our essential selves, the true nature of who we are, which is everything. And also nothing that can be described.  To know that everything is perfect, even if it doesn’t look that way at times in the world around us. 

It hasn’t been easy. But it’s definitely been worth it. We look at everything in a whole new way. 

And once we felt secure in that new knowing we went back to the drawing board. What might The Lionesses be now? A sacred space we decided. For igniting imagination. For sharing inspiration. For sparking creativity. All with the aim of creating a better world. To help us all remember who we truly are. 

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Our spirits know everything is perfect. But we are human for a reason. To experience all that is human. And the adventure we are called to now is to create a different world, a brighter future. But we’ve learned that change is an inside job. And in order to see change on the outside, we need to change on the inside. And we need a re-balancing. To embrace and elevate the feminine to connect to and nurture each other and flow more with life. We believe that we are all Lionesses. 

So here we are. 

We welcome you to this sacred space, a curated space of  insightful articles, mind-bending stories and deep conversations. We invite you to join us on a transformative journey as, together, we unlock the secrets to manifesting a future brimming with beauty, abundance, and divine harmony. As we transcend the limitations we have imposed on ourselves, as individuals and as a collective. Limitations which only exist in our minds. 

We invite you to dream with us, to imagine with us, to be inspired and to create something beautiful together. 

Welcome home to yourselves. We’re glad you’re here. And we look forward to learning from you. Please let us know what you’d like to see this space become. Because it belongs to all of us. 

The Lionesses