The night I read my friend Karen's essay titled “The Rupture,” or “The Breach,” I couldn’t sleep from the impact it made on me. Her words plunged me into a moment of total recognition and inspiration, and I had a deep desire to project this comprehension into my present and my future.

Since then I have felt it very important to understand this experience. At that moment I could only write a very heartfelt poem, but I also realized that what the experience gave me was much more than that. Over time, comprehensions and searches shared with others regarding the theme began to take shape - at least in me - giving me a suspicion that this profound rupture is inciting a response that will become the binding element of an identity that will make us truly part of a whole, of a human race, going beyond the classical definitions. I intuit that a "we" is not only an explanation that is in accordance with the times, but something that could really develop into a new form of relationship among human beings who truly comprehend that we are a single species and that we exist because others exist.

Very synthetically, and in my own words, I will summarize part of what Karen wrote about the rupture and how that has affected me up to now:

At one point in human history, thousands of years ago, a break took place in our concept of the human race, a division appeared that had not existed before. Patriarchy arose, and with it a gap between the feminine and the masculine. This led all of humanity down a path of great violence, of men imposing their power over others, especially over women. It was a period in which the goddesses were displaced by male gods and the most spiritual and essential attributes were also displaced by an obsession with conquest, territorial expansion and “man’s” dominance over other species.

But putting all this aside, those original attributes, the inner mental and psychosocial sensibilities that existed during the time of the matriarchies, were blocked, and are now absent, though not completely lost. It is imperative that we rescue them and give them universal validity, because this yawning gap between the masculine and the feminine in our human species is preventing us from continuing an ascending spiritual process and, in particular, is not allowing us to progress in overcoming revenge.

And for this very reason, it is essential that we reflect on the enormity of the concept that we are a single human race. The feminine and the masculine are aspects of a single essence. I would almost go so far as to say that if we were more attentive to our internal world, we would see that we carry the masculine and the feminine “within us” in unequal proportions. If we could come to a balance between these two forces, which constitute us as a human race, we would advance in leaps and bounds, and I feel that it is in this direction that our future as one humanity must go.

*Nosotres - a term in Spanish for “we” that includes both the feminine (nosotras) and the masculine (nosotros)

ILLUSTRATION BY RAFAEL EDWARDS

Translation and editing by Trudi Lee Richards