Adventurers and artisans . . . entrepreneurs and explorers married women and ‘spinsters’ . . . businesswomen, wild women, upper class and proper . . . all of them ~ intelligent, ingenious, and eccentric.

These women of the western world lived before mass transit and some lived far before the suffragettes. Extraordinary and ordinary ~ they are role models and mentors most of us have not known. They have been omitted from our textbooks, classes, and media; fortunately this is changing.

I am most grateful to the researchers and writers who have illuminated these women’s lives and decisions to step way outside “the box”; I especially thank Alexandra Lapierre for her extraordinarily inspiring book Women Travelers (2007).

Now is the time. We are living at a juncture where female role models are necessary for our evolution as a species. Vessel of Voices (VoV) would like to offer a few ‘lifeboats’ as we venture forth into the unknown seas of this new era of cooperation and heart-centered focus.

Staying with the nautical metaphor, the first fleet of lifeboats will provide the lineage, a sort of heritage many of us have been deprived of in our schooling. I offer to you a modest review, a summary of a few women who have paddled and trekked far before our mothers learned to walk. Imagine that ~ if our mothers and grandmothers had known of these trailblazers; and not only that, had been taught to think outside the culture, to break through what was considered taboo for a woman . . . some did, but far, far too few.

What if it is your responsibility, and mine too, to be inspired by those who did break cultural taboos (by saying “No” to obedience and never ‘straying too far’ – and certainly not on one’s own!) and paddle our own canoes in the river, not the mainstream? What if it is solely up to you to re-dis-cover your dream, keep it alive, and grow it like a brilliant, joyful flower in your garden?

In the next 10 months of 2008 a trailblazer will be featured each month with a quote in VoV Inspirational Quotes and a short article on my Vessel of Voices blog. It is my intention and hope that these stories will strengthen your courage, connect you more deeply with your own heart, and help you remember your dream for your life. In the process of socialization we are taught to be suspicious of our heart’s passions and even of our dreams. Well, the time has come to balance all of the analysis of our overburdened thinking function with heart-felt and heart-centered focus and action.

If each One of us reaches down into our own wellspring, fashions a vessel or container to carry and hold the dream, and swims to the surface keeping the lifeline alive, then we are in the flow, living on purpose, and making our dreams our realities. We need each other to do this. We need role models and mentors. We need community and loving support. We need a lot of heart and we need Courage. Then, we begin to create what indigenous tribes have known and what many other species ‘know’ ~ we can call it by many names: collective consciousness, podmind. Oneness . . .

The trailblazers featured in Vessel of Voices lived between the late 1700’s and the mid 1900’s. They had two things in common: each one followed the beat of her own heart and each woman wrote of her adventures.

Courage and curiosity with a wild dash of the rebel set these women apart from their peers. With parasols, butterfly nets, crinolines, pith helmets, and glass jars of India ink they traveled around the globe by sailing vessels, by foot, camel, horseback . . . any mode of travel available.

For most of these women the ‘call of the wild’ was irresistible . . . to not take action would have meant living a life without heart and succumbing to the societal rules for the ‘weaker sex’. Saying “No.” to the ‘law of the culture’ was as necessary to remaining vital as drinking water. Setting out on one’s own, as a woman, for foreign lands, did mean risking ‘everything’ – from losing one’s family, her husband and children to losing her status-her place in the world and her happiness.

Freya Stark, one of the pioneers, retorted “What happiness?” “There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.”

Each and every one of them had sufficient self-respect and harnessed enough courage to speak her truth, make a plan, and take action without apology. Far from apology, with boldness and flair, and, in some cases, accompanied by an entire entourage, they set forth.

AND . . . they each took pen to paper, writing of their adventures; without the letters, manuscripts, and diaries they surely would have disappeared into complete oblivion. Many of the writings remain hard-to-find and little known. But what a treasure chest of role models for all of us – if our female children and young women today read and know of these women who have lived ‘outside the box’, who have ‘followed their hearts’, stood on their own two feet, and made their voices heard then self esteem and self confidence are naturally woven into the fabric of becoming a woman ~ and limitations, not dreams, are shattered. Each woman hit her stride and followed her dream – perhaps early in adulthood, but more likely later in life – usually in midlife. It does not matter when so much, just as long as one listens to the inner call, turning the ear to something stirring underneath the clamor and clatter, beyond the cluttering and muttering of the monkey mind and the herding of sheep in our culture. Then, and only then, can a woman, or a man, find her (his) own voice and own footing.

Ask yourself today, “What is my heart whispering to me?”

Try ‘listening’ to the beat of your own heart between your inhale and exhale. In that pause you may discover a peace that has evaded you.

Marianne North will be our first featured trailblazer.