It is a true honour to welcome these elders into the Radical Woman field this year - women whose life’s work has shaped how we understand power, womanhood, healing, and culture itself. They are not here to teach concepts, but to transmit lineage, perspective, and lived authority.

These are Radical Women. 

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Heide Göttner-Abendroth

Philosopher of science, founder of Modern Matriarchal Studies, and one of the world’s leading scholars on matriarchal societies — past and present. For over five decades, Heide has researched living, egalitarian, non-violent matriarchal cultures across the globe, radically reshaping how we understand patriarchy, history, and the possibility of humane social systems. Her work demonstrates that societies organised around care, balance, and shared power are not myth — they have existed, and still do.

Author of Matriarchal Societies and Matriarchal Societies of the Past, founder and director of the International Academy HAGIA, and a two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Heide’s work is both intellectually rigorous and world-changing.

Annette studied under Heide for three years. To have her speak into this course is a rare and profound honour. 

More about Heide:
www.goettner-abendroth.de
www.hagia.de

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Susun Weed

Herbalist, author, witch, and elder - Susun Weed is a living lineage. For over 60 years, Susun has reclaimed women’s authority over their bodies, cycles, sexuality, birth, aging, and healing. Founder of the Wise Woman Tradition, she has challenged medical patriarchy, fear-based health narratives, and the pathologising of the female body with fierce clarity and deep plant wisdom.

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Author of seminal works including Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year, Breast Cancer? Breast Health!, and New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way, Susun has educated generations of women, midwives, doctors, and herbalists worldwide. A High Priestess of Dianic Wicca and Peace Elder, Susun teaches that the witch is not fantasy - but a woman rooted in land, plants, cycles, and lived experience.

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Annette apprenticed on Susun’s land, receiving her green witch initiation and shamanic training there. Read her full experience here: Baba Yaga and Her Nettles 

Réjane Williams

Organisational psychologist, facilitator, and truth-teller.

With over 20 years’ experience working at the intersection of psychology, race, power, and systems change, Réjane’s work explores how racialisation, marginalisation, and socio-political trauma live in the body, identity, and workplace.

Deeply attuned to the realities of post-apartheid South Africa, she is known for her justice-oriented, contextually grounded approach to transformation — work that does not bypass pain, but knows how to hold it.

Réjane has led train-the-trainer programmes on race and diversity at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies and is currently completing her PhD at Wits University, researching the racialisation of Black senior professionals in organisations.

Her presence in Radical Woman brings a crucial lens: how collective trauma moves through institutions, relationships, and everyday life — and how it can be metabolised, rather than denied.

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