Just a week after my 47th birthday and I realize that it’s only in the last few years that I have begun to truly connect to what it is to be a woman.
Not what it means as a mental concept, but rather the embodied experience of it.
For much of my life, as for many of us, my wounded inner child and teen dominated my experience of my femininity (and my life in general).
When we are deeply wounded, we experience the World mainly from that lens. I feel like this is the case for most of our dysfunctional World. Wounded people wounding other people. Misogyny not only in men, but unconsciously in many women. The Shadow Side of the Feminine. The Toxic, aka, Wounded Masculine.
Within and all around us we are experiencing ourselves and our lives, reacting and interacting, from so much conditioning; internalized patriarchy, and overall woundedness.
As a Therapist, Coach, Entrepreneur, and woman, I have been on this journey many years, determined to fully become who I am and help others to do the same.
This entails peeling away so many layers of who I was told to be, believed I was supposed to be, and absorbed from my culture…the TV, magazines, peers, family, teachers. How I internalized all those blatant and subtle messages. What I thought I had to hide and cover, the masks I thought I had to wear to be accepted (the shadow).
Being a woman in this World brings with it great challenges…. And henceforth, great opportunities. I know that being a man, transgender, non-binary, or any other combination that we now have available😉 also has its own set of challenges which I cannot speak to personally but certainly acknowledge.
Today, I focus my reflection and sharing on the experience of being a Woman, and how we can ALL learn to Embody the Feminine.
The Water We Don’t Know We’re Swimming In
In the recent Summit of Sensuality hosted by the Somatic Institute for Women, several of the facilitators referred to this phenomenon as “the water we don’t know we’re swimming in”. This hit me hard because even now, in 2024, it is still the case for the majority, women and all genders. We do not realize the effects that living in this patriarchal society has had on us and our World.
Science Direct defines Patriarchy as “a system of relationships, beliefs, and values embedded in political, social, and economic systems that structure gender inequality between men and women. Attributes seen as “feminine” or pertaining to women are undervalued, while attributes regarded as “masculine” or pertaining to men are privileged.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/patriarchy
Read that again and really let it sink in.
The system that our entire World has been built upon, according to this definition, “undervalues” not only women but attributes seen as feminine.
I would say undervalue is an understatement. More like disregards, disrespects, diminishes and defames. This applies not only to what that means for how women have been allowed to live but also to the fundamental values and beliefs that are the very pillars of our society henceforth, how we all live.
More, faster, bigger, better, harder have been the driving force behind most of our personal and collective realities.
Whereas, what it means to embody the feminine: such as pausing, slowing down, and asking ourselves, what we truly need, how we feel, and what really matters to us… personally and collectively, have been not only disregarded but rendered almost impossible to even consider within the model of living that most of us have found ourselves caught in.
Compromise before we cum
Fiona McCoss, one of the remarkable women who gave a workshop at the Summit, made a statement that struck a chord deep within my psyche, awakening the sacred rage my inner teen and so many of us have suppressed for far too long.
She said, “Girls are taught to compromise before they cum”.
Here are some of my notes from her talk:
Let’s get honest about how we are wanting love, wanting approval, wanting validation in order to feel lovable and worthy.
How the “Maiden” can very quickly learn habits of over-giving, not knowing our own boundaries. We compromise before we cum. Like with oral sex, this pattern of being told to give before even checking in with myself, how that can go all the way to Motherhood, the self-sacrificing mother who becomes the martyr.
All these patterns we can feel through a woman’s life and can be traced back to the early stages of a girl who doesn’t feel able to advocate for her body, her needs, her pleasure, her sexual expression.
We were not taught to listen to or respect our own bodies, needs, or feelings. Instead, we were told to stop being so sensitive, so needy, so emotional, so bitchy, so prudish, so slutty, so whatever. We were taught to be “good girls”, do what we’re told, please men, please other women, please everyone. We were taught to look beautiful, at whatever cost.
We were taught that our worth was dependent on the outside. We were taught to abandon ourselves in order to gain approval.
We were consistently given vitally destructive messages about our sexuality, our value, our inherent worth.
The blatant abuse of the feminine
We have been shamed, blamed, and tamed for hundreds of years. We were even burned at the stake in some cases, simply for being connected to our innate feminine wisdom. To embody the feminine has been a precarious venture for hundreds of years.
Sexual abuse and domestic violence continue to be factors that large quantities of women deal with around the World on a regular basis.
According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 81% of women in the U.S. have experienced sexual abuse or assault.
https://www.nsvrc.org/statistics
1 in 10 women aged 15 and over in the EU have experienced some form of sexual violence.
Amnesty International
Do we see this? The implications of it? The devasting effects on all of humanity?
From Surviving to Thriving – from disconnection to choosing to embody the feminine.
As a survivor of Childhood Sexual abuse myself, I have struggled with numerous issues, including a deep feeling of shame for most of my life. I developed a wide variety of complex coping mechanisms and strategies that led me down some dark and difficult paths. Regardless, I have never stopped searching for myself, slowly recovering lost parts that got severed and buried along the way.
I have done immense inner work and training over the past years with amazing women mentors such as Maanee Chrystal, Marisa Ruiz, Elena Vander, Tara Brach, and many more. Through their wisdom and my own exploration, I am reaching a deeper level of understanding of the Feminine that feels incredibly healing. A newfound sense of joy, hope, and power is awakening within me. It’s like I am sitting up taller, leaning in further, and relaxing back more fully.
A new depth of knowing and a new relationship with myself and my body is emerging. I can feel myself connecting to my Womanhood in a new and exciting way. I am realizing just how deep the conditioning has been and just how much more of me there is to discover and recover.
When I was on the verge of adolescence, a second round of sexual abuse began in my life. During that time, I remember a “split” occurring within myself. I remember looking in the mirror and feeling like the reflection I was seeing and the one who lived inside were separate. It was very scary. It was like we didn’t know each other, like we were 2 separate beings.
I am aware of how all of this still impacts my life, especially in the ways I avoid myself. It’s as though my life and habits have been designed to keep me away from some deep, dark hole that I feared would swallow me if I stopped for too long. Perhaps it is the tenebrosity of that divide that has kept me away from myself. Or perhaps the intelligence of my nervous system that wanted to keep me safe.
Thanks to the work I have been doing to rediscover and embody the feminine, I am beginning to understand what happened then and feel safe enough to explore it. I am learning to be in my body, to stay in contact with the feelings and sensations that surge through me. In this stillness, I am moving towards wholeness, bridging the inner chasm that occurred all those years ago.
Now, I feel like I have the courage, the resources, the capacity, and the power to find my way back, to retrieve that Sacred, Erotic Innocence. And to forge my way forward as a whole, embodied, alive, sovereign Woman.
Fiona’s talk broke my heart open. Thankfully, my Inner Mother/Priestess/Healer, was there and remains here to reach in and fill that space with massive love and presence.
I am eager to discover myself as a woman. I am ready to recover the Maiden who was groomed and exploited into a whore before she had the capacity to understand what was happening to her. I want to rescue her, give her space to play and explore. I am reclaiming her sovereignty so she may see, feel, and experience herself, her body, and her life anew.
I want that for myself and for all women everywhere. I want us to feel safe enough, free enough, bold enough to embody the feminine once again.
3 Practical Ways to Embody the Feminine
- Slow Down. Go at a pace that honors your body, feelings, and energy instead of trying to keep up with the fast-paced grind. Taking one step at a time, at your own rhythm is more efficient than rushing.
- FEEL. Be Sensual – Take pauses throughout the day to simply feel your feelings and the sensations in your body. Connect to your senses (sight, touch, smell, sound, and taste) and the felt sense of the present moment.
- Ask yourself regularly, “What do I need right now?“. Listen to the answers that may come in the form of words, images, sensations, feelings, colors, etc. Try to give it to yourself.
May the Goddess awaken within us all and may she lead us back to ourselves in ever-deepening and loving ways.