Interview with a Visionary:
Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.

By Jan Deremo Lundy

For many women, Jean Shinoda Bolen M.D. has been an invaluable guide to exploring their deepest selves. As a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst, she has earned deep respect, but it was her riveting, personal account of mid-life pilgrimage, Crossing to Avalon, which spoke to women the world over. Her writing over the years about “the feminine” has been ground breaking, especially Goddesses in Everywoman; The Millionth Circle; and Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty. Her newest book is Crones Don’t Whine & Other Rules for Juicy Older Women. She is currently a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and is a renown activist for women’s issues. Her website is www.jeanbolen.com.

HGJ: We begin with the question, Where is your heart right now, Jean? What are you passionate about?

JSB: Well, as often is the case with me, I’m not usually a one track person. And so, I’ve recently come back from being with other women who have been involved with the Millionth Circle, the organization that grew out of the book I wrote, The Millionth Circle. We went to the Parliament of World Religions to offer an experiential workshop on what it’s like to sit in a circle with a spiritual center. And that’s the biggest vision: the idea of circles with a spiritual center, and seeding it though the grassroots until a critical mass develops out of which culture can change. Just as we’ve experienced it before with the women’s movement and consciousness raising groups. I have a great optimism for that being an idea whose time has come—through women being together and telling the truth of their own lives—through supporting each other to make a difference in whatever voice and activism they choose. So that’s my activist side, by the way, which I’ve always had. From time to time it gets dormant, but basically I’ve been an activist that has risen to many different occasions along the way.

But my nature is more reflective. The center of my work really is my continuing analytic practice. And, personally, the many kinds of things that I can think about and touch into through intuition and imagination and experience. I’ve always been somewhat of a closet mystic.

HGJ: And what about the women’s movement? What is its significance for us today?

JSB: I believe right now we are in the third wave of the women’s movement—the spiritual. The first wave was about getting the right to vote which was political. Then came the social/economic/personal wave of the 1950s. All of this has happened in a relatively short period of time. Now is the time for us to get in touch with our greater self, call it what you will—God, Goddess, Universe. It is time for us to listen to that greater self calling us and heed its voice. It is all about being connected with something greater, deeper, bigger, and mattering.

HGJ: Life for Jean has been a series of transitions and though, by her own admission, she is a very private person, she wrote of her life/spiritual journey quite publicly in Crossing to Avalon. Born and raised a Presbyterian, her spirituality was reshaped from a traditional patriarchal one to one which honored and celebrated the power of the feminine, primarily due to a pilgrimage to sacred (Goddess) sites throughout Europe. In this book and subsequent others, Jean encourages women to share their stories and speak their truth, just as she has learned to do. She believes that a women’s circle is one of the best places to explore one’s self and the life path that is unfolding.

JSB: I do think that a women’s group that has grown in trust over time is one of the best and safest places to explore and share one’s spiritual journey. You know there’s always a risk involved in doing this. It has to do with the trust of being received, and it does require that the woman who takes that risk also does so with some wisdom as to what she is saying and who she is saying it to. When we are fragile and something is growing in us, it is easy to get knocked down. So sometimes the best (and safest) place to explore this is in therapy. But if you have a real sense that the group is truly a safe place, what can happen is profound. What is said in confidence is not only held in confidence, but it is known heartfully and not judgmentally. So you grow together as a group and you grow as an individual. I have been a part of women’s circles and led them since 1985.

If you go to the web site (www.millionthcircle.com) there are guidelines and principles for forming a women’s circle. It’s really meant to be a great help to people.

HGJ: And your future involvement with women, Jean, what does that entail?

JSB: On a larger scale, I am involved in a grassroots effort to bring about a fifth women’s world conference. The United Nations decided several years back that they weren’t going to have another one. And then last year, myself and some others helped get it back on the agenda and we are hoping that there will be one and that it might be in Brazil. Then there’s the “Gather The Women Conference.” In 2004 it was in Dallas. (www.gatherthewomen.org) That really brings together a lot of women’s spirituality as well as activism.

HGJ: Jean, if there is one spiritual truth you feel important enough to share with everyone from your own life experience, what would it be?

JSB: It’s rather simple really. It’s to be true to one’s self. In my life, there’s an inner self that has some high standards for me and it has to do with what I call “moments of truth.” In moments of truth we have a choice—and we actually do know what that truth is. When to do something or to do nothing is a choice. The activist in me has often come from that moment in which some part of me says silence is consent. There is a recognition that says this is a moment of truth, and I can choose and have a path that has a heart, integrity and soul to it. It’s those moments when you know that you can take a step forward or you can speak up or not. If you stay with that knowing, you often enter another period of your life that is not as well known. You don’t necessarily know what’s coming next, but you do know that if you don’t stay true to yourself, you don’t feel good about it. There’s that authentic note to it, that the more we listen to it, the clearer it becomes over time.