Matriarchs and matriarchs-in-the-making,

I am writing to you in the days after our election here in the United States. Many of us are sitting with what this moment is closing, and what it is opening.

A message, and a beginning

A strong message was communicated across the nation in this election, one that says we will celebrate and value diversity and cultural traditions. And with that said, moving leaders into these positions is just the beginning.

Many people are asking me: now that we are witnessing a so-called rise of the matriarchy, what does it mean to embody matriarchy within a hierarchical system? Our leaders are stepping into structures that were built as triangles, with authority concentrated at the top. Can the circle live inside the triangle?

For me, this is a question of how we do so, and what we do.

Can vulnerability and feminine strengths be embodied safely in hierarchical systems?

Yes.

I want to say that plainly, because so many of us have been taught otherwise. We have been taught that to be soft is to be unsafe, that to feel is to be weak, that to admit what we don't know is to give our power away.

Mijanou, a fellow woman on this walk, offers a teaching I return to often. She writes of the woman who has lived through many cycles of death and rebirth and still remains, stronger and wiser, because "she's faced the music… she's admitted the truth." Her power was never in hiding. It comes from having faced what is real, lived through it, and still remaining. Vulnerability is not the absence of power. It is the doorway to it.

In Matriarch Makeover, I invite readers to list the traits our culture has named as "feminine weaknesses" and turn each one into the strength it truly is. Apologetic becomes accountable. Emotional becomes attuned. Soft becomes receptive. When a leader brings these strengths into a hierarchical room, she does not have to abandon them to survive there. She can let them change the room.

The safety does not come from the structure. It comes from how we hold one another inside it.

The how: matriarchal oases

The place I see the opportunity for beginning is in how we design our meetings and other decision-making forums. If we can create matriarchal oases within these hierarchical systems, that can be the beginning of change.

The most important thing is that the core values of matriarchal principles and practices are felt, not just analyzed. Felt in how we show up for one another. Felt in supporting a community of care, even when we have to make decisions quickly. The body knows the difference between a room that extracts from us and a room that holds us.

It shows up in how we support all who we work with to take the time necessary to tend to themselves. There is nothing we are meant to do if we are having to do it at the expense of our own life energy.

That is the challenge of the hyper-extractive system we are living in now. The more technology has created efficiencies, the more it seems to take from us. So I ask: how do we create spaces where we can take that back?

The what: putting it in writing

And then, of course, there are the practices themselves. Bringing matriarchal decision-making criteria into the governance documents of one's organization is a powerful place for this to begin. What we write into our charters, bylaws, and commitments to one another is what outlasts any one leader.

In fact, it is sometimes better to start at the regional level, so that we can see up close how these principles and core values shift how we are in relationship with one another, and how the work we are tasked to do changes in quality and impact.

Holding our leaders as we hold ourselves

I invite all who were happy to see the results of this election to keep going. Because in order for us not to recreate the hierarchy, we must hold our leaders accountable as we would hold ourselves: no matter who they are, no matter what party they are associated with, no matter what their identity.

This is where vulnerability becomes power. We face the truth. We name what is real, even when it is uncomfortable, even when the leader is one we championed.

We all deserve to be held with the same integrity that we say we want in the world. And we can do that with love, and care, and truth, and power.

For your reflection

Before we turn outward, I invite you to begin with yourself, and then to consider what it might look like to hold our newly elected leaders accountable:

• Where in your own life have you been taught that your vulnerability is a weakness? What strength is waiting underneath it?

• What might it look like to hold our newly elected leaders accountable to protecting our children?

• What might it look like to hold them accountable to protecting our natural resources, the waters, lands, and air that sustain all life?

• What might it look like to hold them accountable to protecting our elders, and the wisdom they carry?

• How might you hold these leaders with both love and accountability, the same way you would want to be held?

Be gentle with yourselves this week, and keep going.

With care,

Maija

🌿 Matriarch Makeover

Maija Danilova West is a governance practitioner, peacemaker, and the author of Matriarch Makeover: A 30-Day Invitation. Her forthcoming book, From the Triangle to the Circle: Matriarchal Governance Design, is addressed to practitioners of law, peacemaking, and governance who are earnestly seeking a way to practice that is more life-affirming.

Original content by Maija, copy edited by Claude.

Last updated: November 10, 2026