An interWoven Awakening of Margot Greer
Read below to discover the awakening of the womxn, as we embark on this adventure and build a community of womxn like us, who see the world before us and vow to shatter the glass ceiling that’s held us back. We’re super souls, realizing who we are and reimagining the space we inhabit at large. Take your leap.
Awakening of the Womxn; An interWoven Awakening of Margot Greer
WOMXN (pl. noun): beings brought together by an inherent subjugation, flipping their status together in solidarity to connect with one another in brilliance and strength; spirits of soul who create life, spinning pièce de résistance.
“Everyone that exists is because of women. We create.”
— Margot Greer
Enter big scatterbrain energy in a realm of chaos. It’s a good chaos—the kind that makes you want to keep going, to keep discovering new people and things, to keep sweating your ass off as you book it down the street and turn your face up to the sky and wonder just how you got so lucky. Then suddenly, you’re splashed back into the cold pit of commitments and connections.
This is an energy that Margot Greer and I share. Ever passionate and sensitive to the frequencies around her, Margot is a womxn I see through the looking glass of possibility and into a land of womxn where vulnerability and strength thrive. Walking around in their glory and power, I see the awakening of womxn in the way they carry themselves, in their resilience to keep on going, to keep womxn alive in their brilliant puissance.
“I cheated death 10 years ago,” Greer said. “Ever since then, I've gotten this incredible new lease on life. I know what is important and what's not.”
Margot Greer is a business womxn and owner of the ethical hair company Woven. She’s a fiancée. She’s a yoga teacher. She’s an avid tea drinker with a fear of burning her mouth as she takes sips from her chai latte.
Margot Greer is also a cancer survivor.
“I had cancer, and that totally changes your perspective on everything,” Greer said. “When you're faced with your own mortality, everything changes.”
Diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 22, Greer fought for her life in a way she never had before. She was splitting from the inside with undisciplined division occurring within the smallest structural and functional units that made up what she is as a human.
After she lost her hair from chemotherapy, she struggled to feel normal in her daily life. It was another thing that was taken away from her just as she was beginning to learn who she was. Hair is something so intrinsically tied to who we are as womxn; it is a signifier of our femininity, the strands restlessly rebellious in their nature as they shapeshift into different styles and types, from pin straight to coiled curls, they are bellicose and beautiful.
That signifier of Greer’s womxnness was taken from her right as she was beginning to discover its powerful disposition. With the malignant growth of abnormal cells within her, she had no real control over what was happening other than the decision to do what she could to fight this attempt to break her by engaging with life only in the ways she knew would make her happy.
Thus, she took a step back and reevaluated life at large and her role within it. Consequently, Woven was born—an ethical, for-profit business that aims to help people, and womxn in particular, feel whole again. Woven strives to fill the gaps of their vulnerability with each strand of hair in the extensions that Greer sells. For every sale she makes, a percentage of Woven’s profit goes into a fund dedicated to providing free wigs to womxn in need—for free. She created strength from her pain and vulnerability.
“I can actually do something that makes me feel like I'm doing something important, that I'm helping people in some way,” Greer said. “That's all that I really care about—to have other people not feeling like I felt.”
For a long time, the question of her self-worth arose time and time again, from when her mother died to when she was finally cancer-free. She spent a lot of time shying away from others, hiding all of her perceived flaws, and disappearing into the shadows of a life she didn’t know how to take back for herself.
“Everyone that exists is because of women. We create.”
“I was not okay,” Greer said, bringing her chai up to her lips, hesitating as if to make sure she wasn’t going to scorch herself with pain. “On the outside, I was super bubbly and happy and no one would have known that I was so depressed. But in reality, I spent a lot of time really sad and secretly, really, truly hating myself in a way that I wouldn't wish on anyone.”
Bullied into compliance and a hateful vision of herself that was untrue, it took a lot for Greer to recognize her self-worth. A lot of her insecurity and low self-worth was triggered and exacerbated by an eating disorder she struggled with for 10 years. The journey to acceptance of self and body was both painful and beautiful, a skirmish battle within herself to accept the true nature of her being and soul, one that I marvel at as she sits before me in her power and compassion to connect with others and share her story.
“I'm ready for that to be out there,” Greer shared with me. “Not having to carry that load around is the biggest catharsis I've ever had, and it feels like I've won a massive prize on a daily basis. Really, it's fantastic not to feel that guilt and shame anymore. I feel like not sharing that isn't being as transparent as I want to be, and if I am to inspire anyone to be more vulnerable, that's how it starts right?”
This acceptance of self came in the form of yoga and meditation, a curative approach in her mind where she could learn to connect with herself. These forms of healing got her out of her head, flowing into her essence and soul, becoming pathways to her awakening of self-acceptance and realization. She started to see and feel her body, learning to love herself for the first time ever.
“It took me a minute to get to the point where I was like, you know what, I'm accepting the things that I can't change,” Greer said.
Existing within yourself, where the only feeling felt is one of being trapped, is terrifying; a feeling of being boxed in a narrative you didn’t even write for yourself.
There were a lot of times where Greer wasn’t happy or doing things that she felt passionate about, including her previous career in communications as an event planner. While the job was fine, she wasn’t challenged and didn’t feel passionate about it, as she wasn’t affecting real change.
Since she’s started running her own business with Woven, it’s completely changed her quality of life. At 32-years-old, she chooses happiness every day. She surrounds herself with the people she loves so she can feel secure and do meaningful things for others.
It was a transition from a kind of imprisonment to complete freedom—a freedom to do something that she really cares about by helping other womxn feel normal and as true to themselves as they can be under extenuating circumstances. It's powerful work, a labor that endeavors to inspire women in a way that she wouldn't be able to otherwise.
“It's so important to recognize that involuntary hair loss, and medically induced hair loss specifically, is not a cosmetic issue,” Greer said. “The people that come to me don’t try to find extensions because they want to feel pretty. They want to feel like themselves. It's just really, just truly, an effort to blend in—at least it was for me and for many, many women that I've spoken to. Being able to just go to the grocery store and just look normal means the world.”
A drastic change, such as the loss of one’s hair, is traumatic and painful, stripping away what society has told them makes them feminine, stripping away any normality they might have afforded themselves in the past. With insurance companies not covering the costs of decent solutions to hair loss from cancer or other medical illnesses and/or diseases, Greer is doing what she can to help womxn in the way she can.
“I aim to be present,” Greer told me emphatically, setting her teacup down.
This aim to be present is a constant reminder for her to engage and connect with the world around her and the people within it. There’s a certain commitment to transparency that comes along with that for Greer in everything that she does, allowing herself to be vulnerable. It’s not easy, but it’s definitely cathartic, and she loves it, because that vulnerability affords others the opportunity to go on and be vulnerable in their own rights, bringing to fruition a reckoning of acceptance, a beauty in the beast that is honest authenticity.
