The beliefs we have about ourselves, about what we should have
accomplished, about how we should behave, about what a mother, family,
or wife is determine whether we are satisfied with ourselves and ultimately
whether we love and accept ourselves. Many women feel frustration and
even self-hatred or at least disappointment surrounding their roles as wives,
lovers, career women, and mothers. They hold themselves to standards that
are based on rules. These rules are based on beliefs about what a woman
is.
Women do have a quest at this time in our culture. It is the quest to fully
embrace their feminine nature, learning how to value themselves as women
and heal the deep wound of the feminine.[i]
What is the deep wound of the feminine? For at least over 4500 years,
women, most particularly, woman's sexuality, has been the domain of the
men in their lives; whether it be fathers, brothers, husbands, lovers, or even
judges. I am not launching a feminist tirade, but it is critical to acknowledge
where we've come from and what the past was like for women who came
before us.
Each individual is birthed from the societal stew yet our lives are our own
expression and responsibility. Part of being an adult is to learn how to stop
blaming others and start manifesting ourselves, but this may be hard to do
unless we carefully examine what we believe, where we came from, and
how these two things relate to each other.
I use the illustration of the stew because a stew has distinct ingredients yet
they all influence each other either through dominating flavoring or in more
subtle ways. All the ingredients take up the properties of everything that is in
the stew. The properties from our societal stew linger in our minds acting
like silent partners - governing our lives (our subconscious mind).
Can you name something you did in the last week but now you have no idea
why you did it?
Or did you do something you swore you wouldn't do, but did?
When we take action and make decisions that later baffle us, it is often our
silent partner who made the decision for us. Our silent partner believed it
was acting in our best interests. It acted for our own survival, to avoid a
more painful outcome, or to support subtle - yet critical beliefs we hold.
Our silent partner is running around, behind our backs, shaping our lives into
something that we later say, "This isn't how I thought my life would be."
