The first time I saw Allison Russell, she wasn’t just performing, she was invoking.
It was January 2022, and she stood on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, singing Persephone from her debut album Outside Child.
“Tap, tap, tappin’ on your window screen
Gotta let me in, Persephone…”
I was transfixed. This wasn’t just a song. It was a summoning of grief, of survival, of something deeper than resilience. It was reclamation.
Because the muse isn’t just inspiration. The muse is a force of creation.
When we claim our muse, we don’t just find our way. We build the world we want to live in.
The Muse as a Creator of Culture
We’ve been told that “empowerment” means working within the system. That feminism is about “leaning in” and climbing corporate ladders. That if we work hard enough, we’ll be granted a seat at the table.
But what if the table was never built for us?
What if the system wasn’t broken but functioning exactly as designed?
The muse doesn’t settle for a seat. She creates a whole new table. A whole new mythology. A whole new way of being.
That’s what Allison Russell does. That’s what Ava DuVernay, Solange Knowles and Tarana Burke do. They don’t just exist within the culture. They shape it.
The World We Want to Find Our Way In
A world where feminism isn’t just about representation, it’s about liberation.
A world where we don’t just uplift women but ask which women are being uplifted, and who is being erased.
A world where we stop mistaking individual success for collective freedom.
Ava DuVernay said it best:
“We don’t have time to work on these -isms one by one… Until we are all safe, no one is safe.”
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza calls this system Kyriarchy, a web of oppression that upholds patriarchy, racism, colonialism, classism, homophobia and more.
It’s not just about gender. It’s about power. And dismantling it requires more than just good intentions. It requires creation.
The Muses Worth Listening to
The world expands or contracts based on whom we learn from. If we want to create something new, we need to listen beyond ourselves. Meet these muses who are shaping the world we live in:
- Allison Russell, healing through music and myth-making
- Kimberlé Crenshaw, the urgency of intersectionality
- Tarana Burke, MeToo and radical empathy
- Layla Saad, confronting white supremacy in spiritual spaces
- Solange Knowles, existing and thriving as activism
- Alexis P. Morgan, truth, justice and liberation
- Amy Walsh, culture-making and the business of change
- Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Kyriarchy and dismantling systems of power.
Your Muse. Your Myth. Your Move.
The muse doesn’t wait. She doesn’t ask for permission. She doesn’t apologise for taking up space.
She creates.
She builds the world she wants to live in.
So let’s make this real: Who are you listening to? Who are you learning from? Who is shaping the way you see the world?
Drop their names below. Let’s build this world together.
