By AMY E. JACOBS

I am back from Washington DC, and a historic event that we must make sure is as catalytic as it was cathartic.

The Women’s March in Washington was an incredible thing to witness and to participate in. The sheer number of people there, the feeling of peace and solidarity, and the collective empowerment brought tears to my eyes on several occasions. I am deeply grateful I had the opportunity to be there.

But I am no stranger to the effort to make change on this planet, and as idealistic as my Pisces soul might be, I hold few illusions about what it will take. Even a gathering as massive and global as the Women’s March will sink into the folds of history if the energy it generated isn’t channeled into new choices on the personal level of our habits, thought patterns, and internal awareness.

I wrote an article for Planet Waves on the reclaiming of the word “pussy” (coming out tomorrow – follow my Facebook for the link.) This significant and symbolic shift in collective female consciousness was brought on by Donald Trump’s bragging about sexual assault and made a stunning visual debut at Women’s Marches around the world in the form of posters, banners, and all kinds of creative costumes. I chose it as the theme for my piece after noticing an unintended shift in myself around the word: even a few months ago I would have felt a little gross speaking it out loud, but the unpleasant connotations in my own mind now seem to have been shed with no effort on my part at all. And I am part of a community with attitude towards sexuality that is much more open and reverent than mainstream America.

So that’s cool — “language is the liquid that we’re all dissolved in” after all. A word for female genitalia with derogatory insinuations is inherently oppressive and disempowering. If those meanings have been cleared, even a little bit, then a bit of feminine truth and power has been reclaimed. That is something that no Executive Order by Donald Trump can ever take away.

Returning to life post-March, however, I’ve found myself with a deeper awareness than ever before of the pain of womankind, both historically and in the present moment. I can see it in the way I interact with my boyfriend. I can quite literally feel it in my body, when I tune into areas of numbness, or tension, or pain. And I can hear it in the voice of my heart, like an echo of the collective cry that has been on the lips of women for millennia.

So my question for anyone who is hoping to harness the spirit of the Women’s March and use it for resistance and change in these surreal times is this: where are YOU on your own internal journey?

If you’re a woman, how deeply do you know yourself? How much priority have you placed on sexual healing, developing body awareness, searching for the patches of fear and anger in your consciousness and choosing to gently but firmly uproot them? How strongly have you chosen Love?

If you’re a man, the same questions apply, but let me ask a few that are more specific. How much have you educated on yourself on the historical oppression of women? How deeply have you looked into your own consciousness to see where and how your might be perpetuating it? How are you deliberately creating a safe space for the women in your life to step into their power? And yes–how strongly have you chosen Love?

I ask because it is on this personal level that the only real solution lies.

Showing up in numbers too great to ignore with totally badass posters is extremely important. But as you probably know, Donald Trump was in his office, literally signing away women’s reproductive rights as well as dozens of other crucial components of American Democracy as we marched. I do not doubt that there will be resistance. But as we’ve already seen at Standing Rock and elsewhere, efforts to hinder government decisions will be met with force.

America is a big place. It will require a lot of human bodies to enforce the decisions currently being put on paper by a few dark-minded, white-skinned men in Washington DC. That means a lot of human hearts will at some point have an opportunity to choose between following an order or following the directive of their souls. They will have an opportunity to choose between Love and Fear.

If you are someone who can see this in advance, make your choice now.

And then, make it a million more times, in every moment. And put it into action not only through marching, not only through calling your legislators, not only through sharing on social media, but by digging into yourself. By holding yourself to the highest standards of dignity, integrity, and faith. And by supporting your sisters and your brothers with this vibration–because you never know what kind of a difference you might make.

This is the true potential of the Women’s March on Washington, and the rise of the Divine Feminine that so many spiritual leaders recognize as essential to the survival of our species.

The moment is now.