I am a well trained Westerner. I attended a top public school in Indiana, where I worked my way into most honor classes. I then went on to Purdue University where I entered the highly analytical Business school. While I was not the top graduating student, I was one of those woman who suppressed her feminine side, suppressed my feminine body and desires in favor of developing the logical, analytical, puzzle-piecing mind. I applied all that I had in that pursuit.
In our Western world, this side of the mind, the more Masculine side, serves us well. Even as I finally woke up to the fact that I was a co-dependent living as a victim in my marriage, allowing myself to be manipulated and abused – I remember thinking that I just needed to know what steps to take in order to solve the “problem”. When I saw that my own marriage had died, I set my sights on figuring out the epidemic of abuse in our world…to research, read, analyze, etc. until I could put the pieces together and understand how we got into this mess.
Yet, as I started to wake up more, as I started to ask myself “what does it mean to be a woman, defined by the Feminine?” I started to learn that two realities can co-exist at the same time and both be equally valid. What I mean by that is I realized my feelings were just as valid and real as the facts and analytical work I read about…even if they seemed to be contradictory.
All this means to me now is that I do not see nor feel nor perceive the world the same way any more…I cannot approach my own life the same way any more. I hired a wonderful coach back in October who specializes in helping women really pull in and learn to listen to their deep, dark beautiful Feminine Wisdom. Wisdom that does not make sense logically – yet it does.
A few weeks ago, she challenged me to pull strictly into my body and my body only for a while. That while I was doing a great job and gifted even at pulling puzzle pieces together from things that are not visible in this world…and while I used my body to help with this… that I could go deeper. I could get out of my head more, I could listen deeper. I could see puzzle pieces – yet just take notice of them instead of trying to figure them out. She challenged me to live my life from my Feminine essence only, to Surrender to Her and knowing that He, my masculine body, my masculine essence and the Divine Masculine all around me would Hold me in that space, safe and sound.
Now as I sit at this precipice, god even as I think back over what I just typed, I can tell there is a war raging inside of me. A tug of war between my heavily trained and relied upon Masculine side and my sacred, holy Feminine Source of Being.
Mr. FixIt is rearing his sword, seeing the offenses that I have endured. He is pissed and he wants to let the world know. Well, guess that might actually be more of the Knight mixed in with Mr. FixIt. Together, He wants answers and He wants them now. He wants clarity and understanding from anyone He thinks He can get answers from. Even if those answers bring more questions or no resolution. Even if those answers bring about more pain and more hurt, or more confusion ~ He still wants to be let loose to address those men that have been in my life that have run away from me.
He feels my wounds, and He feels them deeply and He wants someone to pay. He has woken me up the last two nights, and when sleep didn’t come back to me easily – He unleashed His line of defense – letting question after question after tireless question run through my head. Try as I might, he would not be silenced until I gave into the confusion and war raging in me, letting out a few moments of all out kicking and screaming into my mattress – literally.
He feels my pain and He is not okay with it. It is scary to Him, and something that must be fixed. But of course, right? Isn’t that what we train the Masculine side of all of us to do? To look for what is next, to look for the next step, the next thing that will make this all better. To set up a course of action and to proceed on that course so that I systematically work this shit out of me in a matter of days, weeks or months, but no longer than a year.
He wants to know do I go back into counseling, and if so, who do I go to? Do I get involved in a support group…but no, He doesn’t think He can handle hearing other women declare their abuse to Him…this would be more than He could bare to hear and He might really have to let the heads roll. So no a support group doesn’t sound so good. What about somatic work with this or this or this person? What about going dancing every night of the week, even if I am tired? “We need a way to get it out of you,” He says to me. “We have to figure out this process, we cannot let this sit in you any longer now that we have found it. We must figure this out, and we must do it now.”
Meanwhile, I am tired. I am not sleeping the best, of course. I have a LOT going on inside of me right now…and it doesn’t help when I wake up and start thinking of all that resides in here. So I am exhausted from trying and failing to carry other people’s burdens for them. I am tired of keeping the secrets that reside inside my body. I want them out as badly as He does, but I KNOW I must go slow. If we try to go too fast, I am likely to break something, snap some muscle that doesn’t want to release that quickly or stretch that far just yet.
I am sad, and in pain both physically and emotionally. Yet I do not want to move. I just want to sit here and be. I do not know what the answer is, I don’t know how to fix this any more than He does…and I am okay with that.
I am okay for once, as scary and as terrifying and as uncomfortable/odd/different as it might be for me – I am okay not doing anything with what has been revealed to me about any of this. I am okay just being, realizing that in the end…in the end I am not broken and I do not need fixing. That I am still me, I am still the amazing, beautiful, strong and powerful Soul that resides inside this body…a Soul bent towards Love at all costs. For the most part, I am okay not trying to fix me…and the more I type this and sit in this I realize that is the difference I have been learning these last few weeks before all this hit – and thank God/dess for that.
Yes, a woman who starts to have memory recall of her sexual abuse…she is not broken and thus there is nothing to fix. That is just the society’s way of dominating ourselves with our Masculine and ignoring the ways of the Feminine. Not that there isn’t a time to start the work of healing, and that might mean having a more linear plan – or it might not. Yet there is healing in the just being, in the sitting and being with what is. And if I am going to be a teacher, a way-shower of the Deep Dark Mysterious ways of the Feminine side of life that balances out the Light…well this is all part of my descent to the Goddess.
The Goddess. Her ways are NOT logical or analytical. They are mysterious, they are weighty and full of motion in the stillness. She resides in the Pregnant Void of Everything. Therefore, Her ways cannot be questioned nor analyzed nor plotted. If I am to live being directed by my deep core which is the Feminine Core, I am learning I have to surrender to hearing from Her first. Cultivating my relationship to Her first, asking Her to share and show Herself to me.
This might mean I go very very very slow through this process as to allow Her time to be heard and held and comforted by my Masculine side instead of submitting to Him and His fixing ways. She, not just in me, but in the World, has been wounded and silenced for too many years and to demand that I figure out a way to “fix” everything right away, in a matter of weeks or moths even…THAT is illogical.
Just like my good man friend reminded me yesterday – that sometimes all men can do is just be right here with me, hold space for me, hug me, hold me as we both allow what is – to be what is. This is what the She in me is really yearning for from my own Masculine side.
She is asking for Him to forfeit His desire to fix, His need to control. To let go of His quest for answers ; instead, to soften His stance and His side of my body so that I can curl up in His arms, melt into His shape and His form…and just be there in that space, just like that. She does not want to be forced to come up into the Light. She wants to be met in the Darkness by Him.
She, as the little little girl, has just been discovered after all these years. She isn’t ready yet to come fully into the Light of day, to reveal all that She knows about me and the world after living all these years in hiding, in the basement of my body and my soul. This is as much for me as it is for She. I can sense that. The Light is too much right now, and so She is content to at least come out of the secret room where She was and to remain at the bottom of the stairs for whenever I am able to meet Her there.
Together we will rebuild our relationship, slowly and surely – pacing each other and harmonizing our energies together. We will remember to play and have fun along the way, to learn how to use Her Power to source My Strength in order to move towards just the daily things of life right now…the mundane things.
Yes, that is about all I can handle at this time. Focusing on the daily routines, using my Masculine energy – after first checking in with Her to see what She needs for the day – to work on a gentle “to-do” list of rather mundane and earthly duties. Cooking, grocery shopping, bills and taxes, organize the storage unit, follow up on my certifications and CECS.
Yes, the simple, boring tasks are brining me so much ease of mind and pain right now. While it takes me quite a bit of discipline to get going – I am finding the joy of being in the moment…stopping to heap over into a ball and cry and/or shout for a moment when the energy moves me that way.
Starting to once again dream about my outward expression of all this “work” I have been doing these last few years and allowing the dream to be given to me instead of driving myself forward so hard and so fast to launch my career.
Practicing maybe 5 minutes a day of going into the basement and just being with Her. Not insisting that She talks or gives me answers, but just being. Rubbing her back as She lays on the floor with Her thumb in Her mouth and Her blankie in Her hand. Being on Her level, waiting for Her to make eye contact and to move towards Me. I have found this is the way to approach a child who is new in the Dance space…this is the way I will approach my little girl.
This is a very different space that I find myself in. While I am a woman and while I am no stranger to deep and powerful feelings and emotions…I have a highly trained evolved masculine side that will take some getting used to this “new” way of living, of doing, of being. He has been okay with letting me feel and move my emotions within safe containers of space of time. But to allow Her to drive the show, to be the first point of contact for now?
I can feel His skin crawl at these thoughts I have written. I can hear that He and His desires to set a plan to move forward will not go quietly into the night. He certainly doesn’t understand Her ways and is not sure how to “apply” them on His side. Yet, He realizes He has been using me and my energy in ways that are no longer serving Him. He realizes He is so full of tension that leaves Him no energy for pleasure and fun. He ~ when He stops to be for just a moment ~ realizes He too is tired. Tired of trying to fix me and my problems – and the rest of the world – never getting to the end of them. All the while neglecting His own needs and desires, thus walking with a limp.
So with that, He is willing to move into this new space,
just as cautiously as She is willing to move out of Her old space,
to see what it holds for Him as much as for Her.
Yes, this will be a different way of relating to each other –
one where they both will have to break old patterns and behaviors that most certainly will die hard.
Yet, He needs Her to breath just as She needs Him to move.
| If they do not find a way to breath and move together, neither one of them |
will be able to go any where worth going.
Hmmm, I think this could be the start of a strange yet beautiful New Intimate Relationship…
| Art Credit |
