What follows is an excerpt from the Grandmothers' first book, A Call to Power: the Grandmothers Speak  

 ... the Grandmothers surprised me by showing me my early years, especially my struggle to become a woman.  And as scenes from my childhood flashed before me, I saw and felt myself as I was then --- not a memory but a re-living. Ten years old, fearful and anxious as I went down the cellar stairs, thirteen, longing for something better to come to me as I swung on the maple tree and gazed down the road.

Reliving the pain and courage of those years now gave me so much compassion for my young self.  "When you were growing up you had to teach yourself how to become a strong woman," the Grandmothers said.  "The women in your mother's generation and those before her never moved into the power of their womanhood.  If young girls have not seen a woman stand firmly and comfortably in her power, the concept of a powerful female will be foreign, even frightening to them.  Feminine power has not been embodied on earth for a long, long time." 

When they showed me myself as a young woman I saw how hard I had worked at everything, and how tired I was.  In my attempt to become 'powerful', I had juggled graduate school, a teaching job, caring for young children and a husband, and nearly always did two or three things at the same time. 

And when I saw how I had jokingly referring to this habit as 'taking advantage of myself', I cried.  Too much striving, too much yang energy and the excessive stress that accompanied it had made me sick.  Over time I had developed chronic headaches, back pain and exhaustion. 

Living for years in endless 'doing,' I now manifested what the Grandmothers called "the yang imbalance."  This was why now I must journey so often for healing.  I so desperately longed to live a balanced life that when they said, "Your life will become a pleasure as the energy of yin fills you," I sobbed in relief.

I had spent my life trying to be all things to everyone, yet all the striving I had done to become 'powerful' had made me weaker, not stronger.  Over and over again I had tried on the yang model of power only to discover that it didn't fit. So when they said, "Because of the world's present excess of yang and its insufficiency of yin, woman is suffering from her own impotence,"  I knew exactly what they meant.

 --- Chapter 5, page 35, A Call to Power: the Grandmothers Speak,  by Sharon McErlane