The Menstruality Podcast - 206: Listening to Your Body, Reclaiming Your Power and Knowing Your Worth (Meggan Watterson)

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Today’s conversation is an exploration of what happens when women’s stories and voices are suppressed, and how we reclaim our power in a world which has historically denied our worth. It’s the story beneath the story of menstruality, the foundation for all we’re reclaiming with menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. Our guide in Harvard-trained feminist theologian, Meggan Watterson.When Meggan first encountered the new testament she broke out in hives. For years she studied the female saints, gurus, poets and mystics throughout history in all the world’s religions, got a master degree in a comparative world religion view of the divine feminine.  As she says, our ideas about the divine and who gets to speak on behalf of the divine effect the status of women the world over, as well as our own relationship to our sense of spiritual authority and trusting the voice of love we hear inside of us. Meggan is also the Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of Mary Magdalene revealed, and her new book, The Girl Who Baptised Herself, explores the erased story of one of the first female ministers in the pre-patriarchal, Christ movement, a girl named Thecla who reclaims her power from within her, inside a society which entirely denies her worth, so that she can ascend to the life that’s meant for her, and what her story can teach us all about how to claim our worth, and the lives that we desire. We explore:Why Meggan often gets called a whore - as well as a lot of other colourful names - for teaching about the ancient gospels that were erased from the new testament by Constanine in the 400AD, so that the idea of male succession could have legitimacy.Writing as a spiritual practice, and how Meggan became the woman she needed to be to write this book.What Thecla’s story can teach us about how to honour the divine in a way that includes the female body, particularly in a world where the reproductive rights of women and people with wombs are being taken away. ---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardyMeggan Watterson: @megganwatterson - https://www.instagram.com/megganwatterson

Welcome to the Menstruality podcast where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red Skool where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host Sophie Jane Hardy and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders Alexandra and Sharni as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, change makers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. your community and the world. Hey, you're welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited to share this conversation

with you. It's a conversation about what happens when women's stories and voices are suppressed and how we reclaim our power in a world which has historically denied our worth. It's the story beneath the story of menstruality, the foundation for all we're reclaiming with our menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause practice. Our guide is Harvard-trained feminist theologian Megan Waterson. When Megan first encountered the New Testament, she broke out in hives and she went on to study the female saints, gurus, poets and mystics throughout history in all the world's religions, eventually getting a master's degree in a comparative world religion view of the divine feminine. As she says, our ideas about the divine and

who gets to speak on behalf of the divine affect the status of women the world over, as well as our own relationship to our sense of spiritual authority and trusting the voice of love we hear inside of us. Megan is also the Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Mary Magdalene Revealed and her new book The Girl Who Baptised Herself which was released this week explores the erased story of one of the first female ministers in the pre-patriarchal Christ movement, a girl named Thecla who reclaims her power from within her, inside a society which entirely denies her worth so that she can ascend to the life

that's meant for her and we explore what her story can teach us all about how to claim our worth and the lives that we desire. Let's get started with Megan and listening to your body, reclaiming your power and knowing your worth. Megan thank you so much for joining us on the Menstruality Podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you all for inviting me. I was part of your Red Ladies community for quite a while until my life got totally turned upside down by my son arriving on Earth. But your work, your writings, your teachings have been a massive blessing in my life. And this new book that is well-thumbed in my life already, cosying up in bed with it at night, it's really working me. It's such a

beautiful book. I could cry. Thank you for writing it. There's so many questions I want to go into about it, but first we often start this podcast with checking in around where we are with our cyclical nature. So I'm curious what cycles you're present to in your life right now and how they're influencing you today. The creative process for me today. The creative process for me is so sacred and can't be controlled or contrived. That's the part where often I'm asked to hold a lot of mystery and sometimes I'll want to know what's next. So in terms of a cycle, I'm, I've given birth really to the girl who baptized herself, like this book feels complete and it's going off to print.

So there's nothing more I can do to, to prepare for that. And so this period right now is just being attentive to the mystery of what's next and not trying to rush, you know, not trying to force something, but really just sort of holding this space for whatever's next to arrive in that right timing. And so I tend to play often creatively, just sort of try out new mediums. I'm working on just for fun of a fiction book. So that's fun to sort of play with and see where that goes. And then I'm also starting up a sub stack because that feels like it has a lot of life to it. It feels more immediate.

Yes. Whereas my post before, I have to go through an assistant and go through this editing process. And whereas on sub stack, I can do everything myself. And it feels more intimate and more immediate, like journal writing. So I'm really excited about starting that. That feels like it has a lot of life for me. That's the cycle I'm sort of, that's loudest for me right now.

Yeah, I expect it's been a big birthing, a big pregnancy and a big birthing, this book. It really was. It was because I, with every book, when you sign a contract, at least for me, it's knowing that I'm signing up for becoming the woman that can write that book. You know, like I know personally that it's not just... Because for me, writing has never just been writing. Writing is a spiritual practice. And so when I signed this contract, I know it's like, okay, buckle up. For the next whatever, it's typically around five years for me to write a book, you know, it's going to be adventures that I can't foresee. And it's going to change me fundamentally as a person in order for me to arrive at this place now having completed it. Yes, yes, yes. Tell us before we get into

understanding more about thecla and her story, can you just tell us a bit about your story so that for those who don't know you that are listening can hear about it? Because you're a feminist theologian and in the book, it made me laugh at the beginning, you said, you know, I wasn't raised Christian, I was raised as a feminist. And when you actually read the New Testament for the first time, you came out in hives. So it's like this Father God and this exclusively male succession from Christ. And then you said in the book, I just sort of raise an eyebrow and call bullshit on it. So I'm just curious, like what made you carry on? Well, first of all, I know now from having written Mary Magdalene revealed that I was

not alone in that encounter with this very masculine and male ideation of the divine. I actually one of the most common comments that I receive as a writer is that you have just articulated something that I have always known. You've put towards what I have always felt within me. I just haven't said out loud. So that reaction actually feels common to, you know, maybe not the hives, you know, bringing out like that intensity of a reaction. But I think for me, it's because nothing really enrages me more than a Christianity that sanctifies bigotry, you know, really that that says, okay, yes, God is all about love, but only for a certain select few.

Because for me, that is fundamentally untrue. That's not my reality. That is not anything I can even conceive of being true is you know. It just literally doesn't make sense to me and. My strong reaction. It was really as I grew into it.

You know it was my body telling me, I think the body never lies. And it was my body saying there's so much more to this story. The story and you care so much. Like I would love to have not cared quite that much about it. Like I would have loved to have been able because for a while I would have nothing to do with Christianity. I studied everything except it, right? I studied the divine feminine,

which just means like female saints, gurus, poets, mystics throughout time and through all religious traditions. So I studied that for years and years. I got a master's degree in that, essentially, looking at a comparative world religion view of the divine feminine. That's really where I came up with the idea

of the divine feminine oracle, because I wanted all of us to have this history that's been erased. Like many of us don't know that one of the first authors, spiritual authors in all of history was in Hedawana, from Mesopotamia. Her poetry about the goddess Inanna influenced the Psalms of the Old Testament.

Like, and you know, here we are in the 21st century the Psalms of the Old Testament. And here we are in the 21st century with so many women still doubting their voices and still feeling like because we have had a disproportionately fewer number of female authors, especially in the realm of theology, in the field of theology, and spiritual voices in general. So I wanted us to have that history. It had been erased. Um, but eventually I knew that I visceral physical reaction to a Christianity that says God is male and masculine and that

this is the reason why, for example, today in the conclave, right? There are exactly zero women being considered to be made pope, right? And for me, that matters. That matters. Like our ideas of the divine and who gets to speak on behalf of it affects the status of women and girls the world over. And this is really important for all of us, it also affects our own relationship to our spiritual voice within us, like to our own sense of spiritual authority, our own sense of trusting that voice that we hear inside of us, that voice of love. And we need more stories that model this for girls and women. And that's really been my calling. I'm so grateful it's been your calling. So grateful.

The piece that's always made my blood boil the most is that Eve was made from Adam's rib and I was like I literally cheered out loud with this part of the book where you said the man here has taken a power that is exclusively reserved for those who have a womb the power of making a body within the body and made it his own a reality defying feat of assuming a power that is actually female, and then telling us that we're in fact made weaker for it. Yes, Megan, name it. You bring these truths forth very eloquently and I guess it's because you've been sitting with them your whole life.

Yes. Yes. And that and, you know, the irony of that, that then the thing, like, for example, that we menstruate, the very thing that allows us to most closely mimic the divine power to give life, somehow then becomes the thing that defiles us. Right? That's just a little too convenient for me. That's just, that's, that just doesn't track, that doesn't track as anything other than misogyny and, and a patriarchal rendering of a power that should allow us to have equal say in, in all things having to do with the divine, but instead it's the thing that makes us less worthy? I mean that is, it just to me that just reeks of patriarchy. It doesn't, it does not land as as true. And it's,

it's phenomenal how these ideas still affect us so profoundly, these ideas of purity. And these ideas of, of the Virgin versus the whore, and they're all still alive and well in the 21st century. Yeah. Well, you get called a whore all the time. Yeah. That's one of my favorites to be called. I get called a lot of colorful things for, you know, that called a lot of color for color colorful things for. I'm you know, bringing out these voices of women and also trying to suggest that these scriptures that were erased like the Gospel of Mary and like the acts of Paul and that

law. That they were erased for good reason, right? They were erased so that this whole idea of the male succession can have legitimacy. So, but the word whore is, it's just, yeah, it's electrifying because that word is what Mary Magdalene was named officially from the sixth century onward as a way to delegitimize her teachings and ultimately have the Gospel of Mary excluded from the formation of the New Testament. And to this day,

the formation of the New Testament. And to this day, it's so threatening for some people, for me to suggest that her gospel is just as legitimate as any of the gospels that were codified in the New Testament. It's so incredibly threatening when for me, it's like, threatening when for me it's like why wouldn't if if this is sacred word you know if this is just as ancient as those other texts that were codified why wouldn't

we want to include them why wouldn't we want to see what Mary has to say about Christ? It changed my life when I saw what Mary had to say about Christ. So I was in the south of France on a pilgrimage myself. I was working on a film about Mary Magdalene. It turned into a film about something else, sadly. That would have been great, the film about Mary Magdalene. But anyway, when I learned that there were these scrolls, and maybe you can tell the story of it, that these scriptures had been discovered in the desert in Egypt, right? So Mary's Gospel wasn't actually discovered at Nag Hammadi, but the majority of these ancient texts were, but Mary's Gospel was found in three different places in Egypt along the Nile, buried in caves and urns. Yeah, and it's from that time,

it's from the time of the Christ movement. Right. The beginning of it. Exactly. Yeah, and then they weren't included. Can you say a bit more about why they weren't included, for those who don't know this story? Yes, so there were about 300 years from essentially when Christ was crucified to when Christianity

became the emperor's religion, the empire's religion codified under Constantine in the fourth century. And during those hundreds of years before that, to be Christian was seditious. You would be put to death if you confess that you were a Christian. So we have stories like Perpetua's who was in Carthage and in the third century, she was martyred for calling herself Christian. And part of that, what that meant was that she referred to a woman, Felicitis, who was imprisoned with her, who was a slave. She referred to her as her sister they called each other sisters and the reason why that's so significant is that's. Proof that they did not perpetuate the conception that was prevalent within the Roman Empire that you you had to adhere to this idea of a hierarchy, of like this Roman hierarchy of power. And it was patriarchal, where the emperor, the ultimate father was at the top. And then, you know,

men, educated men with with who owned women and slaves, and then women and slaves down to the bottom. She had a bit more power than Felicitis would have because she was married to a powerful man. And so her role, she was meant to, first of all, be a dutiful daughter and wife and mother. But she named herself Christian more than anything else. And she, by calling Felicitis her sister, she's saying, I am no more worthy than she is. We will not participate in these ideas that divide us, that suggest that any one of us could be greater or less than the other. So that's evidence of what the Christ movement, which is what scholars are

referring to that time period now, as the Christ movement because it was so dramatically different than the Christianity that formed under Constantine. That was patriarchal. So we have this time period where we see scriptures like the Gospel of Mary, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Thomas, all these scriptures that are emphasizing that there is a royal power, a sovereignty that exists within each one of us to connect to something that is greater than all of us, that exists in all of us in a way that renders us all equal, right? These external forms or ideas of us of being greater or less than each other based on our sex or sexuality or our position, whether we are a slave or free or they're all external. They're not true. They're not real.

So that is what the Christ movement practice. But then it dramatically shifted once Christianity was formally institutionalized under Constantine in the fourth century. Scriptures had to be excluded because they told such a different story about Christ. They told such a different story about power and about worth and about who could speak on behalf of Christ. So they had to be excluded if they were going to make Christianity patriarchal. It could have been so different. And it still can be.

And it still can be. It still can be. You know, I mean, for me, I think that's the way it was always meant to be is not, which is another thing that I think I say that threatens people is that because tradition is so sacred to people and I respect and I understand that. I think though that these scriptures were buried because the world wasn't ready for them and we found them now, maybe because there's hope that it might be time. You know, we might be ready to incorporate a wider, more inclusive conception of not only the divine, but also what Christ was teaching. You know, what was the real message? Was it really to

adhere to these external patriarchal structures or was it to challenge those structures, which is what Christ did in his lifetime. So it just makes sense that these, you know, these scriptures were planted like seeds and now it's time for them, you know, to really come into our consciousness and bloom and see what else might happen in our awareness with these scriptures returned to us. That's so beautiful. It's when I hear you speak about Constantine and the patriarchy that was, it sure reminds me of something. Like it sure reminds me of things that are happening in the world right now. Right. Not, it's not, it's unfortunately everything that, for example, Mary struggles with in her life and that Thecla struggles with in her life is still incredibly relevant. Unfortunately,

it's contemporary. I mean, Thecla at one point is sentenced to death for having refused a man who the scripture says has great political power. she just protects herself from being sexually assaulted. And then she has to wear the word she stripped and paraded through the streets wearing the word sacrilege. Now we have Giselle Pelico, you know, saying during her trial when she's offered to, you know, remain anonymous and stay at home and not have to show her face in court. And she says, excuse me, but shame has got to change sides. I am not the one who should feel shame here. I have nothing to be ashamed about, nothing.

These men are the ones who should hold the shame. And it's just so phenomenal to me that in both those scenarios, right? Here we have a text from 70 AD, the Acts of Paul and Thecla. It's the women in the crowd when she's being sentenced to death for having just basically rejected a powerful man, right?

Told him actually her body is not a commodity. It's not on offer for him to do as he will. So she's put to death for that. It's only the women in the crowd that scream unholy justice. And that remains the same today. The tremendous shouldering of the burden that women have to carry to fight for other women when there is assault, when there is rape, it's the women who are carrying this. We

have to burden the shame and the fight for justice. It's women who are leading all of those campaigns. So screaming out unholy justice, it remains the same. It remains the same. Yeah, and in the book you mentioned that it was at the Women's March in 2017. So still the largest single day protest in US history. That you were reminded of that sentence and all the women all cried out in a loud voice as if from one mouth. Yeah Yeah I couldn't stop hearing that refrain all throughout that that march. It was one of the

many reasons I knew that I needed to return to it and I needed to start studying it in depth, the acts of Pallanpecla. Yes and so in the book, you go through these seven stages of spiritual awakening. Yeah. Here's the thing that started happening as I was, so when the world stood still in 2020, I just wanted to go deep. One, because I couldn't really do much other than help my son, you know, get through his school day, which I was horrible at. I mean, really, he preferred that I try not to help him. Like, I always made things worse if I tried to help. But I was pretty much just his sort of, you know, teacher's aid during that time. But I, because I kept feel like I was, you know, sort of be, I was gently lovingly being haunted by that club,

you know, and I kept hearing that refrain and the women all cried out in a one in a loud voice as if from one mouth. And so as I began to read the chapters of the acts of pollen that law, I was noticing that she goes through these marked stages in order to, you know, for for her to start off as this girl sitting at her window essentially locked in a life and in a world where she's trapped doing the bidding of her mother, her fiance, her father, right? Like she has absolutely no control over what's going to happen next. She has to, by law, marry, become a mother, you know, be a dutiful wife and daughter.

So she's trapped in this patriarchal rendering of what is expected of a female. And then by the end of it, you know, we have her ordaining herself, baptizing herself and becoming a minister. So it's such a profound transformation. And it was so electrifying for me to see that because really what I was looking at as I read it again and again is ascension to power but from within, right? Not an ascension to power that we're used to seeing like where you're climbing this corporate ladder or you're you know doing what you have you have to, you know, to launch this product

or do this thing. It's like, you know, we see these, these external modes of claiming power, what we have conceptualized to be power. And what that is doing is claiming a power from within her that allows her to ascend to the life that's meant for her. And this I felt like is one of the most relevant and timeless, timeless sort of frameworks for any of us, you know, roadmaps for any of us to know. And the difference, which I thought was really striking, between these seven stages and like the classic heroes journey, like the journey that Joseph Campbell talks about and the journey that, for example, Odysseus takes

in the Homeric epics, it's usually that they're starting off because the hero already has power, right? This is like Odysseus was this hairy, powerful man, you know? So he starts already powerful and he's on an island and then at the end makes it home right to his literal physical home and his wife Penelope so he makes that journey. This to me was decidedly different because this is the journey of someone who starts off powerless. This is the journey of someone who's told they can't walk a divine one, right?

Like this is some, this is for those of us that feel trapped, that feel like we can't, you know, free ourselves from the expectations of others, which is more unique to women, I think, is feeling beholden to the expectations of others. So we often find ourselves at certain parts of our lives where we feel trapped in a life that we don't even necessarily feel like is ours. It's the culmination of trying to make everyone around us happy. So that's where we start off with Vekla. And what I noticed was that one of these stages, which the hero's journey does not contain, is a stage where she has to reclaim her worth. And she has to know and to feel that she's worthy of what she's wanting to do and to become. And that to me was incredibly striking because I think in all of the, you know, circles of women that I've ever, you know, all of those retreats and conferences and the single red thread, I think that connects all of them is this perpetual sense of women feeling unworthy of the lives that they actually desire. And that to me is just so wild. And it's something that I felt like

fecla freed me from. So it helped me really come face to face with. So I ended up having to write very personally in terms of worth in ways I never have before because she and her story affected me so deeply. And I really felt like I was able to heal in a way I never had before and I don't know if I would have without her story, which was also part of the passion. It is part of the passion about why I'm so excited to share it. It's why I wanted to include parts of the acts of Paul

and Tecla at the beginning of each of the chapters. That was strategic because I really wanted to make certain that we all have access to her story. This conversation with Megan felt so liberating and plugged me right into the vital importance of honouring our bodies as sacred. And as I mentioned at the beginning, this conversation today is really the story beneath the story of menstruality. And in many ways, Red School's work is fundamentally about honouring our bodies as sacred, as powerful, as worthy. If you feel called to this work then you might be interested in joining the Red School Menstruality Leadership Programme which happens once a year and the doors are opening soon. If you'd like to be the

first to know when they do please join the waiting list at MenstrualityLeadership.com. That's MenstrualityLeadership.com. That's menstrualityleadership.com. And here's some of the feedback from one of our recent graduates from last year, Beatrix. She says, it truly is evolutionary, revolutionary work, compiling a wealth of knowledge, spanning both the tangible world of ordinary day-to-day human meanderings and all its flavours and seasons, as well as the unseen otherworldly realms of deep primordial insight and universal connectivity that lie within our wombs and the world at large. I knew this work was going to be pivotal but I must say I was utterly blown away by the whole process. It catalyzed the autumnal process of shedding away the old,

only possible to weather due to the deep internal compass your teachings awakened within me, guiding me through the rocky landscape of ego death and intense waves of PMDD, that's premenstrual dysphoric disorder. It's my journey through the MLP, the menstruality leadership programme, which gave me the knowledge to see that which is working me, and the courage to surrender with grace and listen to and respect the deeply cyclical process I'm navigating. Thank you so much for sharing that Beatrix. If you want to explore the programme and join the waiting list, you can do that at menstrualityleadership.com.

It was very generous how you shared from your personal journey of reclaiming your worth, I really appreciated it. And I think so many readers will absolutely find their own story inside it because there was such a universality to it. As I was reading I just kept thinking about the practice of menstrual cycle awareness because when I was coming out of my own immersion into toxic patriarchal spirituality,

which was in a yoga school in Thailand actually, so it's everywhere, you know, anywhere, go anywhere on earth and you can find it. Yeah. I'd been so harmed. I was so broken that I went into the stories of the goddesses, you know, and did my started my own quest in that way. Found you, found Shamaliada, found, and found menstrual cycle awareness. And the reason why I kept thinking about it with Thecla's story is because that the practice of checking in with myself each day and seeing how I am and how my each different phase of my cycle is affecting my mood, my energy,

my emotions, it's a way of me reclaiming who I am regardless of what the world says about me or is demanding of me or wants of me. It's outside of my identities. It weaves into my identities as well, but it's my way of coming home. And I can imagine when you were talking then about, you know, Thackler is a story that's relevant for all of us because so many of us feel unworthy for the lives that we know that we want. What we see in this community at Red School is, wow, the more we check in, the more we listen in, the more we just innately know what we deserve and what we're worth. But it's a path, like you said, it's a path down and in.

Right. Further up is farther in. And also that illuminates the difference as well between the hero's journey and this template that's in Thecla's. Whereas. Odysseus goes to the literal home I would argue that that will arise home in her own body. Statement at the end when she confronts the mother that wanted her burned at the stake right refer refusing to marry she says to a mother I am standing before you she uses that I am statement and there there's that sense of that our journey, like the greatest pilgrimage we can ever go on

is this one inward, right? Where, and this perpetual return as you're saying to really check in with what do I want? What am I feeling in this moment? And what, because I believe the body never lies. What is my body telling me about this situation in this moment, you know, and constantly returning so that there's this reclamation of embodiment, which I think, really, religion as a whole, has really sought to divide us right to see the body as less than the soul or the spirit. And this is a reclamation of that. Yeah, yeah, there was a point I'm trying to remember now, Paul is talking to someone, another woman called Lectra, I think, and you and you say, I think Lectra would know

about power having given birth to children. She'd know about the power of the body. Right, right. How it's a, like, to just exist on this idea of a binary where it's the soul that's sacred and not the body is really what's been prevalent for millennia. Whereas, you know, when when we go through, I mean, really any holy mix, it isn't just in childbirth, it's in it's in a lot of physical crisis. A lot of people with chronic illness explain this to me that there's this meeting of

explain this to me that there's this meeting of what's sacred within that. So that it's this mix of the truly mundane and also the truly other worldly in that same moment. But that to call the body somehow, you know, only worldly is so incorrect and limiting right it's also otherworldly and contains a universe within each one of us. Yes yes this other theme that really struck me in the book was stillness. Yeah. So back before she refuses the emperor dude, she refuses to marry her betrothed. Right. And she just sits still for three days and nights and she doesn't eat and she doesn't drink. And what it reminded me of was menstrual retreat, actually. It reminded me of how menstruation slows us down, sometimes through pain, you know, back to the chronic illness, like sometimes it's through severe pain, but it

slows us down. And I wondered if you could speak about why stillness is so important in this journey of reclaiming our worth, why it's so relevant in the Thackler story. Especially at the time when I returned to it, of course, because literally the world was standing still in 2020 when I first started studying this this text again. And so there was this sort of global sense of the importance of stillness and the things that we were becoming aware of by stopping, you know, nature was kind of taking over. We were really understanding our interconnectedness. by stopping, you know, nature was kind of taking over.

We were really understanding our interconnectedness. We were emphasizing how important love and family is. It was just really interesting how the microcosm was the macrocosm. Like there was definitely a mirroring going on. And, but for Thecla, when I came across that, of course, at that time, it was so moving to me, because I thought about how, you know, seriously, if a woman wants to upset in rage and disrupt her life, all she needs to do is just stop doing all the people because it was so interesting to me how terrified her

fiance and her mother are and all was doing is literally sitting at her open window listening to Paul but they are absolutely freaking out because she's refusing to acknowledge the life that she knew before. She is cutting ties with everything that had been habituated, everything that had been expected of her. And I was like, how revolutionary is that? Right? Like what, and what an act of self-love like she just refuses to move I mean, yes, she's listening to Paul, but it's also that she's refusing to Answer any of their questions. She's refusing to acknowledge

her relationship To them because she's making her relationship to her own inner voice and her own sense of what's true for her. She's putting that first. And I think too few of us ever do that. Too few of us take those sacred three days, right? It's like going inward for too long, right? We have at this point like an acceptable amount of meditating, right? You can, okay, if it's somewhere off to the side while you're showering, you know, while you're commuting or stopped at a light or waiting in line at the grocery store, that's fine, you know?

But if you're going to put your relationship to your own soul, like so at the forefront that you're denying and literally ignoring your relationship as a daughter, as a partner, then that's really, I mean, that ultimately gets her burned at the stake. So that's the amount of, that's how threatening it is because no one can control that.

No one can control that moment when Thecla redirects her life. She redirects it from the course that had just been expected of her to the one that she wanted to follow from within her. She was turning her life literally inside out where instead of following the direct directives of everyone around her, she started following the directives of her own heart. And no one can stop us from doing that. Like actually no one can. Like no one can stop us from doing that.

Just suddenly standing still in the center of our lives and saying, you know what, I'm gonna reclaim it. I feel like there was a day in Iceland when all the women stopped for the day. Really? I need to look into this. If you find that, will you send it to me? Because I love, I love moments like that where we just say, no, actually, no, you know?

And it's usually out of like a protest for something that, you know, we deeply believe in. But in this situation, it in, but in this situation, it's about that was own life, right? She's standing up for herself. She's standing up for this one life she gets to have, right? And she's saying, I'm not going to waste another second living out somebody else's idea of who I need to be to them. I'm going to live out the expression of what my soul needs to be in this world.

Oh, that's so electrifying. It's so freeing. And it's this love that liberates that is calling. Right. I've been studying with a woman called Dr. Cynthia Ingah, whose teacher is from the Andean tradition in Peru, and she took a whole 13 months of her life to do these 13 menstrual retreats where for four days and nights she was alone in silence with a particular diet and particular spiritual practices. And inside that community, that's just part of life and always has been it was never broken. So it didn't have this patriarchal

Input which broke it and and it's just so beautiful It's been like delicious for my soul to feel what possible and it's what theclo is doing she's she's saying no right and it didn't matter that there wasn't a male Who would ordain her. It didn't matter. Everything was possible. And I think that that's what's so exciting,

hearing about these other frameworks of practicing what it means to be spiritual. All we've really ever known within Christianity and in the West is this construct that was created by and for men. So do the rituals actually really name us? Do the rituals include menstruation? Do the rituals include, does the idea of the sacred include and envelop the giving birth?

It's been entirely medicalized and still holds that pal of this is what women are meant to endure because of eve's audacious apple eating right so there isn't the sacred imbued and threaded through all of these in ways that i ardently believe that if women had always been able to be a part of the conversation, a part of the creating of the liturgy, of the rituals, if women's voices hadn't been, you know, systematically threaded out and Mary Magdalene's authority transformed, you know, from Mary Magdalene's authority transformed, you know, from Christ's partner, spiritual, equal, even maybe to, you know, becoming the penitent prostitute. If, if we had had women in places of spiritual authority, if that had been validated, because that was true, this is what the Acts of Paul and Thecla show us, right? Like after Thecla

baptizes herself, Paul's like, go and teach the word of God, right? She's already well on her way. Like she doesn't need that transmission at that point anyway, but theologically to have that moment of transmission, what that should prove and what that says is that Paul gave her authority. That succession that's supposed to be exclusively male right here in the Acts of Paul and Peckland, it's given to a woman. So we know that that's an artifice that was created in the fourth century, right? And we have proof here that actually there's a precedence for women in places of spiritual authority from the very start. From the very start. We have the Southern Baptist Convention,

you know, even now today, exiling female ministers because they're saying there is no precedence ministers because they're saying there is no precedence for female leadership in the church. It's like, yep, there is. It's just that it was taken out of the New Testament because it's evidence of female leadership in the church from the So, you know, it just, it both aggravates me and excites me that we don't know yet what it looks like fully, right? To honor the divine in a way that includes the female body. We don't know yet what that looks like fully. We have known what it has meant and what it looks like. I mean the entire field of theology itself even is exclusively, I mean for the majority of the whole existence of theology, the field has been all male. So to just have even female theologians now

speaking from, you know, it was very important for me to speak from my embodied reality as a female. Now that is criticized for being not real theology, right? Because traditionally, for not being not real theology, right? Because traditionally, when you're teaching theology, you're not meant to include yourself, you're meant to speak from this more omniscient place. And I don't believe that we ever say anything outside the body. I believe we all are located within our own experience. And I believe that the body, my physical reality informs my ideations of the divine. And I think, and I believe that those positions of power that these early theologians were writing from,

these male theologians, they are also a part of the theology that they create, right? I mean Augustine as and Tertullian were had had a lot of issues with women and a lot of issues with the idea that a woman could ever speak on behalf of Christ or could have a position of authority. And Tutulian, who was known as the father of theology, he was enraged at the Acts of Palantekla. He hated the Acts of Palantekla because it overtly proves that women were worthy of baptism and ordination. And so he was one of the largest voices to make certain that the Acts of Paul and Declav

wasn't included in the New Testament. Now he himself believed that women were inherently sinful. He believed that the female was inherently sinful and that men needed to be wary of them. And I ardently believe then that his theology helped to instill that others believed the same. And that right there is power. It's creating this stance that performs itself as universal when really it's just

actually his. He just has a profound platform to speak from. Yes. So in a world where, for example, women's reproductive rights and people who have women's reproductive rights are being taken away, How can we call on Thecla, the power of Thecla and the wisdom of Thecla to stop this from happening? Yeah, it's a great question. Something that I have been asking myself, obviously, being here in the United States and seeing so many of the rights that my mom fought for and that I fought for as a teen, you know, seeing so many rights for women and for the queer community has been devastating, absolutely devastating. And so I feel like

I understand on another level why I was hearing that refrain, you know, and the women all cried out in a loud voice as if from one mouth, because what what ends up happening when that GLA believes in that voice within her and actually acts on it. it right like when she refuses to to do what's expected of her but instead really begins to trust and believe in the worth of her one life and the the the worthiness of that voice right it like if we don't trust what we hear inside of us we can't we act on it. And so once she reclaims that sense of self-worth, which the external world doesn't provide for her, right? She has no rights in the world around her. Women could not vote. They could not be a part of the political structure. So she actually had no external power, but when she worth is that key that she reclaims that then begins to allow her to believe in this, this desire she senses when she stops for those three days and goes inward, this desire that she has to feel worthy enough to be face to face with Paul,

meaning for me equal, face to face, right? She's equal to him and can claim the life that he has claimed as a minister. So if we can reclaim that sense of belief in ourself, which we tend to have a bit more effortlessly we can reclaim that sense of belief in ourselves, which we tend to have a bit more effortlessly when we're children, right? If we can reclaim that and begin to really listen to what it is that we feel like we need to do

to be in service of love in this moment, we don't all have one thing that we can do. It's what's so incredible about this is that that call, that call to love, it comes from within and it asks something different of each of us. And so our work is right now to participate in that stillness, go inward, really hear what it is that we're meant to do believe in ourself enough to then do it and then what happens is there's a convergence sort of like the mystic till our dish are done. When he says in the omega point everything that rises must converge. And here it's the ascension is going further inward. So farther up is actually further in.

And when we can align our lives in this way where we are just that integral, where what we hear within us is what we do external to us, you know, we just really align, everything that rises must converge. And so what happens at the end of the acts of Paul and Tecla is that love freeing herself, right? To live this life that she was meant to lead live awakens all of the women in the arena to suddenly act in ways that they have never acted before. Right? for, right? They free themselves from that grip that they should be seated and should be just watching, you know, Thecla be mauled by wild animals and put to death, you know, for having

refused this powerful politician. And instead, when they see her baptize herself, free herself, herself free herself. They are freed and they start throwing rose petals and Nard and cinnamon in into the arena and they lull the wild beast sleep so they joined that law in her effort of saving her and so really one of the most prevalent and I think pertinent messages that runs throughout her story is we have to save ourselves. Like, we are the ones that have to do the work that will change the motion that this world is moving in right now. It's not going to come from outside of us. It's not going to become from these structures that are creating it.

It's going to come from within us, within each one of us. And I think that is the answer, which sounds deceptively insular, right? And individual. But again, everything that rises must converge. I think that, you know, that moment is going to come. I think it's been embedded in this scripture all along for us to have now of the joy that's on the other side of unifying, right?

Like, Beckley unifies herself, like her egoic, you know, individual physical self with her soul, with that voice inside of her, that voice of love that wants to guide her. She unifies, and as she acts on it, it unifies the women around her altogether so that they become a force that has never existed before and they save her and they save each other so i really believe in that the timing of this and

i just would really emphasize, and it's my greatest desire for anyone hearing this, to believe in that voice that you've probably been discounting for most of your life. Believe in that it's very quiet and un, that river beneath the river. And it's, if you make time to get still enough, you'll begin to hear it more and more. And what I want most is for each one of us to start really honoring it and following it, and then hopefully taking action on it. And you have a community actually

that meet once a month in service of this right in the house of Mary Magdalene. We meet throughout the year we go on sabbatical for the summer. But we meet throughout the year to practice something that I refer to as the soul voice meditation and we study these scriptures that were edited out of the New Testament. These scriptures that really emphasize this sovereignty, this royal power that exists within us, like the Gospels of Thomas and Philip and the Gospel of Mary.

So we study those texts and then we practice the soul voice meditation so that we can begin to really become intimate with that voice inside of us that really has a singular desire for us in this lifetime, for our own sense of success and fulfillment, not the external world's idea of what that might be. Yes, yes to that, Megan. I really want to honor your time.

Thank you so, so much. The best way to find out is at, I imagine, meganwatterson.com. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you for this book. Thank you for all the fire in you and your courage and everything that you do. I've appreciated this conversation so much. Thank you, Megan. Thank you. Hey, thanks for listening all the way through to the end. If you know someone who you think would enjoy this episode, please forward it to them. And it's so helpful for us if you can give us a rating and a review on Apple podcasts is the main way that you can help this podcast to grow and to reach more people. So thank you so much. And we'll be with you again in a couple of weeks time.

And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.