feminism – Soul Reflection

Brutal

Ageing is brutal. I am determined to age gracefully, I look at the effects of cosmetic procedures later down the line and I know I don’t want that aesthetically, even if I could consider stuffing all those poisons into my body, which I can’t.

But these middle-ground years, before all those procedures take their hideous effects, my social peers are looking decidedly smoother and perter and younger than me.

Twinned with the bloom of my soon to be teen daughter, flawless, lithe and utterly divine, I am super conscious of my need for good lighting and flattering angles to find a picture that resembles who I remember myself to be.

Because I was pretty, not head turning beautiful, but enough to walk confidently through a bar and feel appreciated. I also used it, it was a tool, a manipulation, sometimes even a weapon. Before I discovered my greater passions of motherhood, health and truth, my looks were my validity in the world.

And so ageing is brutal.

Even though I don’t value my beauty through the same lens, it was still part of my history and my arsenal and to see it shift and change with Father Time, to catch that glance in the mirror and double take, because in my head I’m still twenty something, it’s hard.

I’m not going to lie. I struggle with it. Especially in the context of our society with the anti-ageing terrifying cosmetics that are marketed so intensely. I don’t subscribe to the philosophy of them, but it’s hard to hold the faith and trust when all around are justifying the distortion of our features as empowering.

I know this is false, in fact it makes me cringe and laugh to hear these ‘feminists’ claim they are spending their money, time and body because they’re the ultimate version of empowerment. It’s all backwards and messed up. I know this.

And I used to be pretty, young and fresh. Even without this insane pressure, I think I would struggle to lose what was once my superpower. Superficial? Yes. But part of my trauma survival, part of the fabric that got me to today, yes. I can’t deny it, remove it, change it.

I can only keep learning to love each wrinkle, each saggy bit, each pigment change. I want my children to know that ageing is so much more than visual, that is brings experience and wisdom and compassion too. And I want to represent all of that in the lines on my face, the sadness, the laughter, the life well lived and loved. Because, honestly, when I see an elderly person with all of that, they are nothing short of beautiful.

In the meantime I have to ride out the transition. And I’m finding it a little brutal.

First published on social media on 3rd June 2022

Radiant Glory

I am struggling with the continued dialogue around the toxic masculine predator. Whilst I agree that consent needs to be clear (though hopefully without killing every last vestige of romance and spontaneity), I believe there is a place for female accountability too.

I have stood as a disempowered woman who has said ‘No’, provided the body language of discomfort and rigidity and not been heard or respected. I have had a man’s hand at my throat for not fulfilling his needs; I have said ‘no more’ to the boyfriend I was leaving but he still took more; I have walked away from too many situations feeling unclean, unhappy and abused. And I have had a part to play in that dynamic occurring.

Yes there are the rare but horrifying psychopaths whose terror we would have no control over, but so many of the ‘me too’ stories are women asking for men to define the scenario, to be respectful, healthy, wholesome no matter what they are confronted with. We are again giving away our power by asking them to be solely responsible for holding women safely.

We are asking for men to be brought up to respect women, to do things differently, but why aren’t we asking for women to make this change too? In every relationship dynamic, we can never expect our opposite to make the change, we have to create the change for ourselves and perhaps they might follow our shining example!

Why have we been meeting film directors in their hotel rooms, instead of insisting on a space we are comfortable with? Why do we choose to drink away our inhibitions at frat parties? Why did I stay in the room when I ended a relationship, after I had said ‘no’ to one more time? Why did I not get up at leave, why did I not set my boundaries clearly, why did I not honour and respect myself enough to do what I needed to keep me safe?

We are asking men to respect us, but do we respect ourselves? When do we say ‘No’ with clarity, strength and follow through. I’m not talking about the ‘life in danger’ scenarios, I’m talking about the every day abuses that I hear women happy to rage about but refuse to take accountability for. Yes men have their work to do, but so do women. Should a man take advantage of a inebriated woman, absolutely not. Should a women be inebriated in a circle of people she is not safe with? Are we treating ourselves with respect as we stumble and slur? Are we treating ourselves with respect when we stay with a misogynist boss for the sake of our career? I can hear the thousands of excuses being hurled at me as I write this, the shunning of blame straight back to the men, the justifications for staying when your body was screaming to leave, the fears. I hear them all, I acknowledge them all, I honour them all AND still there is space to take back our power for ourselves, not from men but from the ether where we left it. We don’t need to lord over the masculine, we simply need to claim back the feminine in all its powerful and radiant glory.

Robert Moore lectured to the effect that the uninitiated man becomes an unwise aggressor and the uninitiated woman a victim.

Initiation (the supported process of shifting the psyche from child to adult) helped me find my strength, my clarity, my respect and my ‘No’. Not since my initiation have I encountered these myriad dynamics of abuse that I previously encountered daily, because my energy and perspective has shifted so significantly. It is in my power to deign to let myself become victim or instead to hold compassion for those who act out their wounds and place my boundaries firmly between us.

I will endeavour to raise my son to be a man of self respect and my daughter to be a woman of self respect. I know that if I achieve these aims, they will mirror that respect out into the world through their actions, words and deeds. That is also the choice I make for myself.

I stand in my power and say and act ‘No’ when I need. That is enough.

Like for Like

When I was a teenager, my mother and I would get into vitriolic arguments, on a not infrequent basis, and I remember very clearly reaching a place where I said to myself ‘I will not let her see how much she hurts me’. I quickly learned how to respond to pain with a cold, hard exterior.

She was no longer able to see the effects of her words and actions on my soul, as much as they still wounded me internally. I felt more protected, safe and in control when my shutters came down and I could bat away the slights.

I needed to do that then, I didn’t have any other tools and it was a question of emotional survival. But during the recent weeks of upheaval in my relationship, I have realised how ingrained that technique is in my psyche and how disconnecting and triggering it has been to my partner.

As my awareness on this grows, I’ve noticed how many people hold similar traits, how natural our defensive hard stances are in response to perceived attack. I observe how the current representation of feminism seems to echo this too. Our societal responses are cold, hard and super boundaried.

And I get it, I haven’t been cold and hard to my partner because he’s an innocent bystander, we have created a dynamic between us that ping-pongs back and forth between our defence mechanisms. It is understandable that we have wanted to protect ourselves, sometimes from real threat, more often from projected theories, but it has not helped us to grow, to learn and discover our heartfelt truths.

In these past weeks when I’ve been unable to even pretend to protect my raw feelings, when my heart has been cracked open, I have also been seen and witnessed with restorative love and gentleness. As my defences fell, so it allowed the whole structure of defences between us to crumble and for total vulnerability, total truth, to be revealed and explored.

The mirror of our souls is a tenant of my belief, that like reflects like, but that is easily forgotten when it feels so natural to create protection from harm. If my walls are up, I may be safe but I am also disconnected, so it becomes a choice to risk the pain, risk the vulnerability, in order to have the chance for a more magnificent life than one that is simply safe.

I Need A Man

There is a huge part of me that is sitting in anxious resistance to this title but I also know that now is the time to walk through this barrier and embrace a new paradigm.

I have spent 40 years of my life adamantly claiming that I don’t need a man to be happy or complete or to help or support me. It’s an added nicety that I’ve had one by my side for the last 13 years, who has fathered my children and kept food on the table (organic at that!) and a roof over our head. But in my head and in my speech I have still maintained that I have never ‘needed’ him.

In fact, in some ways that was a part of our success so far, the fact that I didn’t need him, but I did want him. Need is the ultimate vulnerability and hey I wasn’t going to give into that without a fight! My mother brought me and my brother up mostly single handedly from when I was 8 years old; she was fiercely independent, DIY-ed her way around the home and shunned the lesser skills of her masculine counterparts. She could do a better job and so often that was absolutely true.

But I have finally clicked. I don’t just want a man, my husband, but I need him too.

As much as I can take on most of the skills, often assigned to the masculine, there is one thing I absolutely cannot do for myself. I cannot create life.

No matter how I choose to conceive; in or out of relationship, with or without the actual presence of a man, naturally or aided, personally or anonymously, I still NEED a man’s sperm to unite with my egg in order to create life.

It was this flash thought that made me reconsider my stance on needing and wanting. In light of the energy of radical feminism, blanket equality and other passionate discussions on gender roles or otherwise, I realised how much my refusal to ‘need’ my man is damaging my relationship with him and with the masculine.

If I ‘have’ to need him in order to create life, I can either consider that need and minimise it to crude function or I can enlarge it to the more spacious picture of balance; two sides, two offerings, two parts to make one whole.

By allowing myself to need him, I can expand this idea into exploring where we can support each other within our own personal strengths and weaknesses; to be the yin to his yang and work as a whole unit rather than just as connected individuals.

All of this makes deep spiritual sense to me now.

How much have I been holding and carrying simply because I have refused to need him? Now we can share our loads with respect and harmony, acknowledging our united power and grace whilst balancing our souls.

I am curious to take this back out into the world and let myself openly need others too; to offer my willing vulnerability as a partnership in so many ways, with my children, with my friends and peers and, most significantly, with the masculine. Just because I can do and achieve something on my own does not mean it is the best or most enlightened way for it to be done.

Nature offers me constant visual reminders of the beauty, significance and necessity of duality and, as I choose nature to be my guide, I am proud to say how much I need my man.

Scapegoat

I have so much to say and I’m not sure how’s it’s all going to come out but it’s a real mixture of what’s tumbling around my head, heart and soul and also how that relates to the pertinent space the global media is reflecting right now.

I received a real lashing for a recent post (Weinstein et al). It hit me hard and I have taken some time to reflect on it. As much as I work hard to construct my opinions as solely mine and I endeavour to use ‘I’ statements to emphasise that, I have realised that when I post something on someone else’s social media page, it turns my I statements into a ‘you should’. It can feel as if I am telling someone that my opinion belongs in their space. So I have learned from that and will be more cautious about how and where I share my thoughts.

But the essence of that blog still stands for me and I have delved a little deeper into my psyche as to why I hold these beliefs which are perhaps in conflict with a majority. What are my reasons?

What comes up for me is the concept of the Scapegoat. Because not only I have created a scapegoat to escape facing my own issues in the past but I have also been heavily labelled as the scapegoat in my family of origin.

Being the scapegoat within my family dynamic has meant that I am the excuse for them to not be accountable and responsible for their own actions and parts within a story. If I am the person who is ‘wrong’ then that makes those labelling me ‘right’.

And the water is murky because as sure as some of what I’ve been accused of are downright lies, some rumours are carried in truth. Which, more than anything, gives them greater fuel. But what I have come to learn is that my truth and their truth are two very different animals. So whilst my behaviour may be judged by one to be sordid, or untrustworthy, neurotic or perhaps even a little bit crazy. My truth is that I can see the cause and effect on how these events unfolded. I can see the beginning of pain and woundedness that developed into acts of desperate love seeking, or unhealthy out-letting. Once I stopped believing the stories about me from them, I started to see how unhappiness evolves.

And truthfully, it has been the most extraordinary gift, because now I can no longer see ‘bad behaviour’ but only brokenness. I can no longer label someone a predator or an abuser because I see their desperation, their shattered spirits trying to find a way home. I know that being labelled the bad one only spiralled me into deeper despair and I can’t see how it is a solution to anything except the abdication of accountability for all parties.

Because not only have I been the scapegoat but I have also made others my scapegoat. I have been abused and I have abused. When I think of the #metoo campaign, I wonder how many of those speaking out have ever abused others in some form? How many people have used their power to manipulate a person or scenario for their own gain or safety? And why is sexual abuse the pinnacle of this discussion? Some of my experiences that have had no sexual overtones or physical violation have been far more damaging to my spirit than the more overt domination. None of it is right but perhaps neither is it simply wrong.

I cannot stand on a pedestal and say #metoo without also saying that perhaps I have left others uncomfortable, damaged, hurt by my own actions – from a place of unconscious woundedness maybe. But isn’t that the same for most?

Speaking out, speaking up, reclaiming our power is vitally important but with that comes the core piece of accountability and compassion. Where are our own wounds reflected in these others? How can healing really occur without understanding?

I am a scapegoat, I am an abuser, I am a wounded and healing woman.

Weinstein et al

I have encountered many ‘Weinstein’s’ in my time, from my own father to bosses, strangers, even those I thought were friends. From the ‘playful’ pinches all the way through to rape. I have experienced the gamut of ‘toxic masculinity’.

But I will not stand and make them my enemy. I will not make men an evil entity that need to be punished for their heinous behaviour. What I see are deeply wounded and damaged individuals who have had their innocent child hearts hurt and broken in unimaginable ways. They have become adults desperate for validation, for control and emotional ‘safety’ and this comes out in toxic, wounding and terrible actions.

I am not condoning a single thing that they have done as accountable, responsible adults. Do they need to be brought up and held to account? Do they need the awareness of their behaviour brought to light, do they need support, therapy, counselling? Yes to all this. And in the very worst cases, prison is probably the first port of call before any rehabilitation can be implemented. I am not, for a moment, suggesting allowing or permitting this type of behaviour but what I am saying is that by making these men into inhuman animals worthy only of our hatred and scorn we are only perpetuating this dynamic in our society.

As a global society we are failing our children. We have forgotten, disassociated ourselves from, the crucial attachment needs that create respectful, kind, thoughtful humans. These are the roots of the problems that we are witnessing today in our men and women. If our sons and daughters were raised with loving consciousness and presence, is it even possible for them to become the monsters that we vilify in the press? No, it’s like a law of science, we cannot provide wholesome parenting and create evil.

But just loving our children is not enough, I adore my children but that doesn’t stop me passing on my insecurities, my wounding. What will break my ancestral cycles is bringing my awareness to the psychological needs of my children and my own childhood, becoming conscious of what created my wounds and my anger and working hard to provide what I lacked, owning my mistakes and attempting to do it differently next time. Only by taking full responsibility for my own actions will I model that possibility to my children and my descendants.

So when I read the powerful hatred towards Weinstein et al, all I really hear is hatred towards ourselves. What I would love is to embrace the possibility that Weinstein’s willingness to enter rehabilitation might just birth a shift in his perspective that could create healing. What I would love to hear is how these moments of unveiling could push us to reflect on why men exist in this way. How can we create the changes in our world to bring forth the necessary shifts to our humanness? Can we learn from our mistakes or will we just continue to punish them?

Did Women Birth the Patriachy?

‘The job of the initiator…. is to prove to the boy or girl that he or she is more than mere flesh and blood. ‘

Iron John by Robert Bly

I struggle with the polarities of feminism and patriarchy. We are, not only, interconnected beings, but, more critically than that, the perpetrators of patriarchy have been birthed from the vaginas of women.

Women have been just as much of an integral cog in the creation of the ‘demonised’ patriarchy as men; we are a dominant and powerful influence on the children we birth and raise in this world.

This is what we can no longer ignore. We can no longer speak from the place of victim but must acknowledge our own accountability towards the state of our lives and the lives of our ancestors and our future generations.

When we raise our children we need to be deeply aware of the choices we make towards them, this is not about academic education, status, employment; this is about the psychology of raising a child. What creates a grounded, stable, kind, compassionate being? Our role as parents, mothers and fathers, is critical.

The deep truth is that it is not about gender, it is about love. Both women AND men are being abandoned by our current structure, where we place emphasis in all the wrong places. Women’s opportunities being suppressed, men committing suicide at horrendous rates, LGBT communities persecuted. This is not about feminism or patriarchy, it is about our humanity towards each other.

Our children need to feel deeply & soulfully loved in order to be able to walk into the world with kindness and compassion. And this is not as simple as saying ‘I love you’ and packing them off to daycare or nannies or school or extra classes. This love is not about who there are going to be in the world it is about who they already are – a soul, born with all the potential of total acceptance. We teach our children to hate, we teach our children to fear, we teach our children to create clear separate identities to each other. Parents are responsible for every generation that comes forth, it is the single most important job in the world and it’s time to take it more seriously.

It is time to focus on healing the wounds that prevent us from raising our children well, to be wholly accountable for the impact our own actions and choices create in the world.

I will not call myself a feminist when my brothers are being punished for acting out their wounds nor will I align myself with the patriarchy when my sisters are struggling to reach their power.

I will continue to advocate for emotional healing and natural parenting to be the only recourse to humanitarian living, to kindness.

To love.

“… It is easy to love the part of ourselves which resembles a radiant God but real love is to also to love the part of ourselves which is like an imperfect, lost, grief-stricken wanderer lying by the roadside. This wandering, grief-filled soul exiled in the broken world is redeemed by our love, and at the same time this lost wanderer is the one who will guide us home…”

Jason Hine

Marching Backwards

The #womensmarch didn’t resonate for me and here’s why:

Firstly, it’s called a ‘women’s march’. I want to clarify that I fiercely support the sisterhood of women and the power then can evoke when united, I understand that women need to rise, to shine their light and remember their innate wisdom to be able to gift to the world. I am behind all of that 100%.

I don’t understand why a march that is to unite people to stand up against their belief, in Trump being a disastrous president, excludes half the population. Surely that is counterproductive? And yes I understand that men went along too, but did they go feeling fully in their power? I know men that, though liberal, thoughtful and kind, would not wish to attend because they have had enough of the segregation that ‘feminism’ creates, they don’t want to attend a walk like this as a feminist but as a man, because that is what they are. Just like the women are women. It would have been so easy to create a march with an inclusive name – Humanitys March for instance.

And then what is the purpose of this march? To show their disdain and dissatisfaction with the morality of President Donald Trump…. and yet 63 million people voted for him, so they are also showing huge disdain and judgement towards 63 million voters. I am not a Trump supporter, nor do I like the majority of his ideals, as I’ve seen them expressed in the media, but I’m not going to sway anyone’s opinion by telling them they’re flat out wrong to have voted for him.

I might be able to understand them if I invited them to gather in small circles; sat together, broke bread together and listened to each other’s stories. In that scenario, I reckon I’d learn a lot, but marching with placards calling them liars and bullies (because everything labelled at Trump, also labels them), is just continuing the separation and alienation.

Some of my very favourite women rose up and marched and I honour them in their determination to do something and to stand up for what they see to be gross insults to humanity. I recognise their spirit, love and intention AND I don’t know how this march is going to change a single thing. I don’t know how this march does anything other than increase the unhappy feelings of inferiority/superiority, control or lack of, division and hatred.

People are shocked by the arrival of President Trump and what he represents, but only by understanding why and how he came to power will anything change.

#grassroots #meetthevoters #compassion #unconditionallove