Women are wrong? How can this be?
There is something that lives in woman, deep inside her, that left
unidentified will control and limit her. Awareness begins as a spark and grows to a torrent. This is when she can choose freedom…
There may be resistance to hearing these words from women attached to the blame game, but I am taking a deep breath and sharing my experience as it has worked for me and trusting it has value for others …I am a woman strongly in her feminine aspect, I believe this is why I have experienced what follows so deeply. What I speak of is separate to each individual’s personal history and I relate this to the feminine collective, as uniquely experienced in woman. I have been ‘working’ as they say on myself for a long time- over 30 yrs, experiencing, learning and enjoying much. Sometimes I have made mistakes. I have felt wrong, dealt with it and learned from the consequences. Yet it seemed I had another place of wrongness inside of me that was something else again- a painful, bottomless pit of icky, yucky, uncomfortable SHAME ie. I AM wrong rather than I have done something wrong. It was like an automatic default setting I fell into. Recently I decided to take a good look at this monster, stare it into submission and learn what it had to teach me. What opened up was a new world of ease, openness and Self Love.
A journey of discovery
From sitting with this shame, sometimes for hours at a time (no easy task let me assure you!)
it became clear there were two things operating here – a belief in my wrongness and the feeling attached to it… Once I was fully inside this very familiar and very uncomfortable place I saw my belief often WASN’T TRUE. There was just this big, juicy pool of shame that now didn’t feel like MINE. I started looking at where this belief (wrongness) + feeling (shame) showed up in my life, and beyond what I related to my personal story I found this pattern everywhere in the simple to the vital and investigated still further.
I saw it in basic things like needing the right clothes, hair, shoes, accessories, makeup, nails, skin, look, size, shape to feel acceptable.
And in important things like my relationship – realizing that often when my man opened his mouth, my automatic default setting was to feel wrong and get defensive. It became obvious to him that something was not right. He reported great frustration in trying to relate to me from my shame pool, figuring he might as well go do something else instead. Really?
Unconscious belief in my wrongness would put me constantly on the defensive in my relationship and in my life, ready to collapse into shame or argue vociferously that I was NOT wrong, even if this was completely irrelevant to the issue being discussed. Too much of this angry defensiveness and self justification led me to feel powerlessness. Feeling powerless made me want to lash out at those I saw with power. I was ashamed, scared and angry and as I was coming to see, for no obvious reason. I refused to believe it was just me being an illogical, menopausal female.
After reflecting on my work with women over the last 15yrs it seemed that some degree of this innate sense of wrongness was a common, if not universal experience. It didn’t feel either necessary or healthy. It seemed to appear in all levels of the feminine: body, mind, feeling, psyche and spirit…
Where does this sense of wrongness come from?
It comes from the true feminine being lost and her inner truths dishonoured.
By a patriarchal society that devalues the feminine qualities of feeling, intuition, wisdom, beingness, receptivity, surrender, vulnerability, caring for home and family etc, that sees these qualities as weak or irrelevant.
From the desecration of ancient Goddess cultures where Spirit was earthy and embodied,
rather than an external perfection to be ascended to. And through the burning at the stake of tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of women, so called witches during the dark ages, removing their font of wisdom from our culture.
From the physical, emotional and sexual abuse perpetrated by unconscious patriarchal men and the lack of healing available to women wounded, often at a soul level.
t lives in the social, sexual, cultural and political repression of women that remains around the world today.
It lives too in the overt honouring of the Good Mother and Madonna roles vs the shaming of the Imperfect Mother, the Whore and the Invisible Older Woman. Rather than equally celebrating the roles of woman, mother and sexual being.
It comes from the lost understanding of the nature of female sexuality, limiting it to mechanical stimulation and arousal rather than a relaxation and awakening, so depriving woman of true connection to herself and her spiritual power.
It may even come from the fact that today we live largely at the level of intellect and knowledge rather than feeling or energy, leading us to judge the feminine qualities of darkness and negativity as wrongness, rather than experiencing them as mystery and magnetic attraction.
How does this overwhelming history impact us as women?
It makes us vulnerable to the marketing perception worth billions of dollars of cosmetics, clothes, hairdos, diet and beauty treatments etc that serve to fix our wrongness.
If we’re lucky we get to play in our shameful wrongness sexually, making all kinds of edginess and bdsm powerful play!
Yet there is much more than that – we are like the abuse victim who internalizes the shame of the act long after the abuse is over.
It leaves us disconnected from our feminine selves, striving to live the masculine perception of external power, yet feeling exhausted and unfulfilled within.
We miss out on the wisdom, creativity, play, pleasure and vitality of the feminine qualities focussing only on nurturing and giving to others, in the hope this will make us worthy of receiving.
Disconnected from our embodied truth and sense of self we say yes when we mean no. We say nothing when we mean yes.
It invites us to toughen up and tolerate bad treatment by others (and by ourselves), often inappropriately blaming ourselves for what is wrong.
Our ability to suffer in silence makes us hard and unavailable to others and to our own hearts. We develop a false strength, an ego based power that doesn’t allow us to take responsibility when we ARE in the wrong, as in feeling so wrong already there is great resistance to feeling more, denying us our compassion.
Our inner rage at this wrongness leads us to project our shame onto, and emasculate men in a thousand different ways, fatally damaging our relationships with them.
In this place we see our sisters as competition, often criticizing, shaming them and denying ourselves this inherent support system.
We neglect our need for pleasure as a necessary part of our wellbeing, cutting ourselves from this powerful source of inner radiance and use our pleasure in service others rather than ourselves. We suffer under rough or inadequate touch, rather than asking clearly for what we desire, leaving both giver and receiver lost.
And finally it leaves us THE VICTIM inside rather than the POWER PACK– unhappy, frustrated, scared, uncertain, complaining, not knowing and not loving ourselves, living small.
How can we create something new?
Like an abuse victim we cannot change what has happened.
Bringing to account those responsible at an individual level can help but much of this pain is beyond the individual, both victim and persecutor. Receiving blanket acknowledgment and apology is part of the healing. Yet we limit ourselves in focussing our attention only on the perpetrators as this does not fully resolve the attached shame and unhelpful belief patterns WE now carry within US.
But we can help to set ourselves free of this shame and disempowerment very much like the
movement out of cultural shame by people with disabilities, who are now very much a part of the everyday world rather than hidden in the corner. They have done this not with blame, as often there isn’t anyone TO blame but through empowerment in the individual, focussing on their abilities and strengths rather than their limitations.
By trusting in the power of the feminine, that still exists despite ALL efforts to sublimate it, we can move beyond this wrongness, this shame by meeting it head on, actively seeking it out, understanding that it is not ours, it never was. Acknowledging this victimhood with compassion, moving beyond its disempowering control and knowing that as we do so we are empowering both ourselves and our sisters from within. Join with the growing numbers across the globe who are reaping the benefits of integrating the feminine more fully into their lives
Reclaiming your POWER PACK
If you can relate to what has been spoken here join me in:
Setting an intention to see this pattern as it happens
Taking a moment to FEEL this yucky shame, of wanting to hide or disappear, breathing into it rather than unconsciously reacting from it.
Allowing it to nail us like an insect on a pin,
Like a stake into the wall of our closed hearts. I
f we can give birth to babies, we can do this!
Consciously breathe into the discomfort and feel it fully just for a moment.
Just long enough to see what it is- a feeling.
If it is yours own it
See where it is NOT you.
Then let it go.
This is freedom. This is self love.
This is Love birthed in compassion. For yourself, your sisters and those around you, giving the gift of a truly empowered and feminine YOU.
To experience more of where Annette is coming from join her
