Honouring the Ancestral Mothers: Samhain and the Unfinished Work
At Samhain, when the veil between worlds grows thin and gossamer, we light candles not only for those we have loved and lost, but for all the ancestors who came before us—especially the women whose names we may never know, whose stories were never written down, whose contributions were dismissed or erased. These are the women who whispered their wisdom in kitchens and at bedsides, who passed down knowledge through lullabies and folk remedies, who kept communities alive through their unpaid and unacknowledged labor. They are the invisible backbone of human history, and at this sacred time, we call them forward from the shadows and say: we see you, we remember you, we honour you.
But we must also remember by name those women who fought openly and fiercely for the rights we now sometimes take for granted. The suffragettes who were force-fed in prison cells so that we might vote. The women who organised labour strikes while caring for children, who demanded equal pay and were mocked and threatened for their audacity. The activists who marched for reproductive freedom, who insisted that women's bodies belonged to themselves. The writers and artists who were told their voices did not matter but spoke anyway, creating space for all the voices that would follow. The scientists and scholars who had to work twice as hard for half the recognition, who persisted despite every door slammed in their faces.
We remember the women of colour who fought not only against patriarchy but against racism, whose struggles were compounded and whose contributions were doubly erased. We remember the Indigenous women who have been protectors of the earth and carriers of ancient wisdom, resisting colonisation and cultural genocide. We remember the queer and transgender women who fought for the right to exist authentically, who built communities of survival and resistance. We remember the disabled women whose voices have been systematically silenced, who have insisted on their humanity and their right to full participation in society. We remember the poor and working-class women who organised for basic dignity and justice while the world looked away. We remember all the women who fought against weapons of mass destruction and the end of all life on our planet.
These ancestral mothers lit torches in the darkness, and we walk by their light. They broke ground that was frozen hard, and we plant seeds in the soil they loosened. They spoke truths that got them ridiculed, ostracised, imprisoned, and sometimes killed, and their courage reverberates through time to reach us now. At Samhain, we honour them not with passive gratitude but with active remembrance—by acknowledging that the battles they fought are far from over.
The truth is stark and undeniable: women around the world still face violence, discrimination, and systemic oppression. We are still fighting for bodily autonomy, for equal pay, for safety in our homes and on our streets, for the right to be heard and believed. Girls are still denied education, women are still denied healthcare, mothers are still denied support. The structures of patriarchy are ancient and deeply rooted, and they do not yield easily. Our ancestral mothers made tremendous gains, but the work they began remains unfinished, and it falls to us to carry it forward.
This is not a burden but a sacred responsibility, and it is also an opportunity. We stand at a pivotal moment in human history, a time when the old systems are crumbling and new possibilities are emerging. The masculine energies of domination, competition, and exploitation have brought us to the brink of social and ecological collapse. We can see the evidence everywhere: in rising inequality, in environmental destruction, in the erasure of compassion from our politics, in the treatment of the most vulnerable among us as disposable. The paradigm that has governed for so long is revealing itself as unsustainable, and we are being called to imagine something different.
This is where women must stand up and lead, not by imitating the harsh hierarchies of patriarchy but by embodying the divine feminine energies of cooperation, nurturing, and interconnection. These are not weak qualities—they are the most powerful forces in existence, the energies that create and sustain life itself. The divine feminine understands that we are all related, that what harms one harms all, that true strength lies in community rather than conquest. She knows that the earth is not a resource to be exploited but a living being to be honoured, that children are not investments but precious souls to be cherished, that the measure of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members.
Women have always been the weavers of connection, the builders of community, the ones who see the threads that bind us all together. We are the ones who have traditionally cared for the young, the old, the sick, and the dying—not because we are naturally suited to such work by our biology, but because we have been trained in the arts of empathy and attention. These skills, so long devalued by a culture that prizes individual achievement over collective wellbeing, are exactly what the world needs now. We must bring them out of the private sphere and into the public realm, insisting that our societies be organised around principles of care rather than profit, compassion rather than competition, inclusion rather than domination.
This means advocating for policies that support families and communities. It means demanding an economy that values care work and recognises that a society cannot function without it. It means protecting the environment with the fierce love of those who understand that the earth is our mother and her health is our health. It means creating spaces where all beings—regardless of gender, race, ability, or species—can thrive. It means listening to the voices that have been marginalised and centering the wisdom of those who have been pushed to the edges.
It means, too, that we must do this work not just for humans but for all creatures who share this earth with us. The divine feminine recognises that the web of life is whole, that we cannot save ourselves while destroying other species, that the liberation of women is bound up with the liberation of animals and the healing of ecosystems. An inclusive, compassionate world extends its circle of concern beyond our own kind, acknowledging that we are part of nature, not separate from it, and that our fate is intertwined with the fate of forests and oceans, rivers and mountains, and all the beings who call them home.
As we stand at this Samhain threshold, remembering the women who came before us, let us also envision the world we want to create for those who will come after. Let us honour our ancestral mothers by continuing their work with renewed dedication and creativity. Let us call upon the divine feminine energies that live within all of us—regardless of gender—and allow those energies to guide us toward a more just, compassionate, and sustainable way of being in the world.
The veil is thin, and the ancestors are watching. They are cheering us on, lending us their strength, reminding us that change is possible because they themselves were agents of change. They are asking us to be brave, to speak up, to stand together, to refuse to accept injustice as inevitable. They are planting seeds in our hearts, seeds of courage and vision and hope, seeds that will grow into the world we dream of if we tend them with dedication and love.
This is the work of our generation, and it is sacred work. At Samhain, as we remember the dead, let us also commit ourselves to life—to creating a world worthy of all those who fought before us and all those who will be born after. Let the divine feminine lead us forward, not with domination but with compassion, not with force but with wisdom, not with separation but with recognition of our profound and beautiful interconnection. The battle is far from over, but we do not fight alone. We carry the strength of all our ancestral mothers, and together, we will transform the world.
Blessed be
And so it is