Documentary Film: “My Orange Garden” (2023)
*this short film does contain tasteful nudity, such as breastfeeding
Director: Anna-Sophia Richard
21 minutes, Germany.
Dear Dancers and Healers and Folks Who Wonder,
Do you know the divine nature of the feminine form, the feminine voice?
Sometimes we forget how holy we are as women.
A male of the species just cannot grow life in his womb and feed the baby from his breasts. It’s just not possible!
(Though if Elon Musk could make it happen, I’m sure he’d pay for a whole factory and some elected officials to get it done!)
As women, our voices and our expression, and our ability to move and create, is almost supernatural to those who live lives of complacency and habit and routine.
In “My Orange Garden,” an Iranian woman named Faravez talks about how she was arrested for singing in Iran. She demonstrates courage in doing something forbidden, because it is simply an extremely natural and human thing to do.
This injustice is becoming more and more common: women in Iran are arrested or censored for singing. They are not even necessarily singing about the government—the government just doesn’t want them to have voices or feel empowered.
As Faravez shares in this documentary, when women are oppressed somewhere, it impacts women everywhere. This is the same message Martin Luther King, Jr. offered the United States during the Civil Rights Movement.
Censorship happens in all kinds of ways, and along a spectrum. When someone wants to silence you, it must be because you have something enormously powerful to say. (Or it could just mean that the person doing the silencing has nothing important to say.)
A lot of women are silenced. It is nothing new, and it happens every day in various ways. However, we do have a habit of taking our freedoms in the United States for granted. Facing these battles of injustice is as important now as it ever was.
If we stay silent in the midst of our own government’s desire to censor us, and we remain complacent to a dictator-like system that is planting its seeds in our country, we could see ourselves being imprisoned or denied more rights like the women in Iran.
However, if we organize, we can find ways to establish greater equality in a fractured system, and exhibit leadership through the power of our feminine nature—which is not weak.
I hope you will watch this short film by Anna-Sophia Richard and be inspired, and also grateful for the liberties we do have and want to keep here on U.S soil.
I also hope you will join a new Substack newsletter I’ve created for women processing intense emotions. As a healer and yoga teacher, I will be offering guidance for women on helping to feel and process deep feelings using yoga practices and philosophy.
The new Substack is called The Paper Cup and will probably be more of my focus for the foreseeable future.
I also have a short story of speculative fiction where women turn against other women —in this case, mothers—to pursue religious agendas and pursue censorship of women’s rights. I’d love if you read it!
And, of course, you can also buy my book for young women (and women of all ages), to help understand the roots of patriarchal religion and reclaim our power through the healer called Yogi-Jesus. He’s not just for conservative folks anymore! I brought him some tea and sat him in a chair and talked to him a bunch. (He’s real sweet.)