This book helps me find a voice for the feelings I have that the traditional church treats women like servants. The church I grew up in was dependent on the women of the church to keep the pews full and the church suppers well attended, to run the tag sales and wash the altar linens. Women bring the children in to the church and teach the Sunday Schools.

When I was young women were not allowed to read the Gospel during the service or, heaven forbid, be a minister in that church. Many things have changed, but when women were permitted to be ordained in the church many people left the church rather than allow themselves to go to such a place.

The Sacred Feminine? I do not believe God/Goddess has a sex, but we are unable to imagine a being without. I believe that Mother/Father God/Goddess has many sides, many faces, and that none of them would turn away from the women of the church. But the hierarchy of men in the church often do, and point to Eve and the apple as justification. Forget that David had his general killed so he could have sex with that man's wife. Forget that Cain killed Abel out of jealousy. The sin that damned the race is a woman who ate an apple to learn something.

This book has been aptly reviewed by others who read it. I believe that telling what feelings it allowed me to put words to is the type of review I can best give.

“There had been so many things I hadn’t allowed myself to see, because if I fully woke to the truth, then what would I do? How would I be able to reconcile myself to it? The truth may set you free, but first it will shatter the safe, sweet way you live.”

“I had no idea the extent to which my ideas were really the internalized notions of a culture that put men at the center.”

Can’t even rate this. Such a roller coaster of a book. Would shout a lot of it from the rooftops and some of it lost me. But walking away with some massive lessons and new ideas.

It should be subtitiled: A woman's realization conservative Christianity has got it wrong and feminism has right. While I don't disagree with her premise it's tortured and self indulgent writing. It's only inovative if you've someone misplaced the last 40 years of social thought.

A beautiful story of breaking free from a conservative, oppressive faith practice to a contagiously liberating way of living and perceiving the Divine. And that’s what it’s all about, right?! Setting each other free<3 I hesitate to get behind the idea that “every woman will experience...” or “we all must awake from the system of the patriarchy” or any other generalization of the sort because there are so many variables in the world of things which diversely impact the feminine experience, and I don’t want to invalidate someone else’s idea of a fulfilled life. From a domestic standpoint, it’s easy to examine the dominant religious power structures and who benefits from them, and I think that’s what SMK was really getting at. But I absolutely can get behind this dive into ancient traditions of Female Goddesses and the mystical Divine Feminine. So much respect for SMK.

“For when we stop perceiving, assuming, and theorizing from the top, the dominant view, and instead go to the bottom of the social pyramid and identify with those who are oppressed and disenfranchised, a whole new way of relating opens up. Until we look from the bottom up we have seen nothing.”

Although some criticisms of the book are fair, I found the author's honesty and willingness to dig deep and risk everything convincing and inspiring. She clearly had a lot to lose by asking hard questions about her faith tradition, and asking them very publicly, which makes her journey interesting and more valuable to other readers.

A few of her discoveries and revelations will seem old hat to readers who are familiar with feminism and feminist critiques of Christianity, but you can't have it both ways -- for Kidd to look at all of this with fresh eyes, it helps that she seems to come as a novice to feminist inquiry. Her total self-ownership is then truly a result of her growing ability to trust deeply in herself.

It is true, as other reviewers have noted, that Kidd sometimes speaks of "woman" in an essentializing way. When she writes that "a woman" will experience certain life passages, it often sounds like she is saying "all women" will. But I wrote that off as a habit of phraseology rather than an ideological position, and it didn't ruin her general point for me. Certainly she'd agree that different women will take different paths through life.

I'd be very interested to know where Kidd has gone from here. She achieves a sort of reconciliation with her faith tradition, but she doesn't exactly rejoin it. After 15 years I am curious what else she has discovered.

I did not enjoy this book at all. I read this book directly after The Making of Biblical Womanhood, which has a similar beginning of a woman who all of a sudden realizes the evangelical church is patriarchal but then takes a completely different path to reconcile her feminism beliefs, historical facts, and faith. This had an affect on how I approached this book.

I had trouble with this book for a few reasons. 1. She imbues everything with meaning. That stump she stumbles across in the woods has meaning! I just don’t think everything happens for a reason. Sometimes you just find a stump and it means nothing! 2. Similarly, I don’t put a lot of value in the meaning of dreams. And she does. 3. She avoided truths that were inconvenient to her “journey”. I understand that the current church is patriarchal. I understand that the cultural context of the Bible is patriarchal. I understand how those things could cause women pain and why they would leave the church. However, I don’t understand why a person would go to the Ancient Greek gods who also had a pretty violent and patriarchal system.

I am sure this book is good and helpful for a lot of people. For me, it was a bunch nonsense that was almost unreadable. I will stick with her fiction!

Oh my. I need a hard copy so I can underline.

Much testing, much reflecting, much living must intervene before we can say, “my soul is my own.”
-Maclonna Kelbenschlag

We are not who we used to be and not who we will become.

To be empowered as women, eventually we must turn our snakes into lyres and strum our hearts out.

Was given to me during a journey through Greece in a small town in Crete. The combination of being in Greece and reading this book deepened understanding of my journey and the initiation journey of women.

So powerful!! A call to women everywhere, to stand in your own soul—not as the patriarch instructs—but as your divine feminine calls. I wish every person ever influenced by Christianity could read this book.

A woman's journey to her sacred feminine. While she is Christian, she is broad in her journey and therefore speaks to a much larger audience then Christians. She integrates her research and experiences so beautifully together. And like a good Third Waver she always brings it back to balance of both the masculine and feminine. This is a guiding and inspirational book for anyone on their own spiritual journey.

A traditional Southern Baptist wife and mother, Sue Monk Kidd had never really questioned her role as a woman in the church or society as a whole. Yet a series of incidents led her to realize all was not right, and that she needed to look for spirituality outside of mainstream religious institutions. Whereas before she was taught that authority was only in the Bible, she came to see her own experiences as valid- that she was her own authority. I found the book to be an inspiring source of ideas for developing one’s own personal spirituality- creating ritual, sacred spaces and concepts of Deity.

One thing I found refreshing about this book, is that Kidd does not bash men or blame them as a group for inequality. She acknowledges that both men and women are hurt by patriarchy- that men need the Divine Feminine as much as women do. Nor does she say mainstream Christianity is wrong per se, only that it has its limitations and needs to strive towards balance in matters of gender as well as between human beings and the natural world.

The main criticism I do have of Dance, is that I question the accuracy of some of the information on ancient religions and cultures she presents as facts. However this is a memoir, not a scholarly work so I’m going to cut the author some slack in that area.

I do not remember when I read this book before, but I know I have. My mom read it and gave it to me,urging me to read it. I am surprised that I did not remember more of what Kidd has to say since it resonates so strongly with me. Many of the authors that Kidd references are women who I have read in the past. Nelle Morton, Carol Christ, Rosemary Ruether and others have all been important to my spiritual growth.

Sue Monk Kidd is now known as the author of The Secret Life of Bees. Before that she was known for her Christian inspirational writings. This book in essence is the story of how she got from her Southern Baptist roots to someone writing goddess oriented fiction. I am grateful to Kidd for being willing to share her journey.


Kidd writes well and tells her story clearly and with emotion. She uses her sources and quotations well, so the tale does not feel like a research paper. She made some major changes in her life; many of which offended folks along the way. Kidd talks candidly about how her spiritual growth affected her marriage and her work as an author.

What I both love and dislike about this book is that it leads me to a lot more reading. Although I have read some of the authors she quotes I have not read them all and now I want to. I also would like to find more current writings on the subject of feminist spirituality. I am going through some personal changes and this all appeals to where my life journey is headed. Because this book resonates so much with me at the moment, I gave it five stars. It is wonderful.

I recommend this book to seekers, those who are interested in spirituality, but maybe not Christianity. Also to feminists who may not see a need for religion at all - Kidd may change your minds. I believe that Christians may find something here, but not those for whom the Bible is the only way God's message is sent to God's people.