Let me introduce myself… My name is Ellen Bachmeyer, the founder of The Windhorse Center. I am a psychotherapist, visionary, mentor and teacher. I am a wife, mother and friend. Even though writing has been challenging for me, I nevertheless decided it was time to write a blog. After all, The Windhorse Center’s tag line is “Women Discovering Wisdom and Voice in a Changing World.” So it is time for me to walk the talk. It is time to start speaking the wisdom I have grown in my studies with my mentor, Marti Spiegelman, (Shaman’s Light™ and Awakening Value™) and with indigenous wisdom keepers in the Andes and Asia, my extensive psychological training and my own personal healing journey. Side note to self… we are evolving all the time. Change is a continuing process. It requires that we step into the unfamiliar, the unknown. So here I am stepping into this experience of discomfort and doing something that is unfamiliar. You see in graduate school we were trained to never disclose anything personal about oneself. In my private counseling practice, I work with many women in all seasons of their lives but primarily the “boomers.” Many of them have raised their children, retired and relocated to Florida for their “golden years.” Only they were not so golden. These women gave up deep connections to the places they had lived for years. They felt distant from their children and grandchildren. Their wisdom as elders was not valued and was shunned by their adult children. They found it challenging to be with their spouses all the time, and this new relationship between them had never been addressed. They felt lost, depressed and anxious. They wondered to themselves, “Is this all there is to my life?” Their life felt like it lost all meaning. They were unhappy, but felt they could not or had no right to express what they wanted. They had spent their entire lives caring for everyone else. Their worth was determined by how well others responded to their caregiving. They had no sense of what THEY wanted. Yet, I could see they carried so much wisdom from their years of living experiences. They had no way to express it. Their dreams had gone to sleep long ago. As I began to work with these women, I noticed they started to reclaim their sense of who they were. They began to resurrect their dreams and give voice to them. They began to embrace their life with new vibrancy and energy. I began to wonder why it took almost a lifetime for women to claim their wisdom and power. I felt strongly we needed not only to help the women at the ultimate season of their life, but young women just starting out in the world. All humans embody masculine and feminine wisdom. Right now in the world, there is an attempt to silence the voice of the feminine, and this imbalance has been devastating to the wellbeing of all cultures. To shift our world as we know it and for the generations to come, we must begin to acknowledge and embrace the masculine and feminine energies within ourselves. It is out of all these experiences and concerns with our culture and the women I have worked with that The Windhorse Center was born. The Windhorse Center helps keep the dreams of women alive and empower them to make a difference in themselves, their families and communities. In the blogs to follow, I will be writing about many concerns and dreams that impact women and their families’ wellbeing. I will share ways to navigate in all seasons of life to grow and keep the dreams of life and love alive.