We create spaces for Women of Color to be seen, heard and supported through their healing and empowerment journey.
We welcome allies to engage and support us. Together, we rise to positively transform the world.
“A woman is a school. If you teach her, you teach an entire generation.”
— Anonymous —
Who We Are—
Ways of the Rising Woman is a nonprofit organization led by a diverse group of women committed to dismantling systems of oppression within ourselves and in the world. We believe in shifting from domination to balance and harmony, in healing hurt and harm from racism and caste systems and all forms of discrimination and prejudices against women.
View Program
View Events
“I have been studying and practicing meditation and mindfulness since attending the women's retreat and will be starting a program to become a mindfulness teacher myself. I don't know if I would have taken the step towards this goal if I hadn't attended your retreat. I am so forever grateful.”
— G.G.
About Us—
We honor our ancestors, especially Women of Color who carried the load of burdens and suffered the most under the weight of oppression.
We realize that we enjoy so many freedoms that women before us were refused. We now have the responsibility to take care of ourselves before we have to take care of everyone else.
We choose to release ourselves, take back our power, and truly live free knowing that joy, happiness and peace are our human right.
We are reclaiming our wellbeing. Our joy is a revolution.
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame, I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain, I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear, I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise, I rise, I rise.
