It's International Woman's Day and, like most days that are celebrated, I am filled with mixed feelings about it all. I just can't help but see first the things that make us most alike and can connect us; then I see the differences. Maybe it's the naive child that lives on in me. But to appease the woman I have become and the trials I have gone through, largely because of my gender, I thought it would be a sort of purification ritual as well as a celebration of my womanhood as I feel myself transition into the archetypal crone.
For me being a woman started out as a dream of being a wife that would stay home all day and cook and maintain the household of my husband. Life decided I needed to start working at a young age and I fell in love more with working than I ever imagined I could a man. My dreams grew bigger, my heart exploded every day as I fell in love with my work, learning how to be better everyday and becoming hopelessly devoted to caring for patients. The fun I had was confusing to some, even me but I was in love. My career was my first love when I got married and my womanhood was challenged as I let my younger self down as a wife and mother. Being a woman began to mean that I could have it all but only at the fears, insecurities and disappointment of those I loved the most and eventually me as well. Being a woman meant being incredibly creative with learning how to navigate my sanity in the vast sea of disappointment. As my heart grew more and more broken being a woman began to mean that I had to learn how to put myself back together again and love with all of the broken pieces of my heart at the same time. For years, being a woman meant being punished for being sure of who I was and wanting nothing but to love people and how confusing that was to others. Being a woman, I later realized, meant that when you step in to your true power it can make the insecure forcefully pleasant or violent and the self-assured simply proud for you. Being a woman who wants secular success as well as success in love is selfish. Being a woman means you will be challenged to compromise your integrity, values, morals and even health almost daily for the sake of the male ego. Then one day, being a woman meant having a choice. Being a woman meant having a choice in how much I allowed pain and suffering into my life. Being a woman meant I was sensual and in love with every savory aspect of living and I could be a sexual being without needing to have sex. Being a woman meant that I didn't need to experience the act of sex to feel empowered, valued and loved. Being a woman means that you can easily confuse a man with this ability and how they respond to their confusion tells you everything you need to know about them. Being a woman has given me the opportunity to explore my creativity from writing to photography and countless things in between as I learn to appreciate the wisdom my choices (and lack thereof) had brought me. Being a woman means that I may have to work harder to prove myself and to be taken seriously but once I do it gives me a greater sense of pride than any appreciation, commendation or opportunity that is casually handed to me would. Being a woman has taught me that with age you can grow in deeper love or deeper bitterness and that we can choose love. Being a woman means I have a greater responsibility to use my feminine energy to nurture and compassionately care for those who are in pain because it's part of who I am. Being a woman showed me the honor and privilege of falling in love with a little human before anyone else could. Being a woman means I knew motherhood and a bond that lasts forever. Being a woman has filled me with pride whenever I feel my nurturing side co-existing with my creative and productive side. On the topic of letting go a male friend once told me that he believes women have to experience this lesson more often and on a deeper level than men ever could. What an insightful and beautiful truth! Something about the way he expressed it made me feel connected in a deeper and more meaningful way to all the other women that have ever existed. Being a woman teaches us the literal and figurative way to cut cords and the pain we go through each time. The biggest lesson I have learned as a woman is that if it wasn't such a profound and insurmountable gift then womanhood wouldn't even be a topic of conversation. It would just 'be'. We would embrace womanhood in all it's differences from manhood. Being a woman means we get to define beauty from the inside out... in all its forms. Womanhood is a delicate gift but society has a way of telling us that manhood and all of its ways are all that can be heard, respected and appreciated so women try to learn the language of men. Women become louder, more creative, more clever, more successful only so that we can feel more comfortable being ourselves. Being a woman means making a conscious choice to be uncomfortable almost every single day in order to hopefully feel comfortable in our workplace, home, on the street, or anywhere in public. Being a woman means being as uncomfortable as possible for our daughters, our nieces, and all the little girls that don't quite know the battle they were born into. Being a woman means that we are meant to bring the world together, not tear it further apart. When women step into their true feminine power they become a powerful and compassionate force that will help us learn to work together, cooperatively. What does being a woman mean to the other women reading? Message me or comment! Nothing like a professional photoshoot to help you embrace who you are and who you are becoming in all of our sensual elegance. Visit my friend Kim's site if you're in the Phoenix area! Good Vibes Photography Venus Retrograde officially began on March 4th this year but it entered the shadow zone January 30th. It began hitting me hard about a week before the 4th though. Maybe it's because my ruling planet is Venus (in Taurus) or maybe it's my imagination... Either way I feel as though my life was a particular way and then in the last week I found out I live in a giant snow globe and some unseeable force shook it up and I'm still floating in the air watching life happen around me but unable to touch or interact with any of it. Is anyone else feeling this way?
There are 4 main attachment styles with "Secure Attachment" being the optimum attachment style in parent/child relationships as well as romantic relationships. If someone has known one and developed one of the other 3 attachment styles this can make them more likely to disassociate or become avoidant or emotionally unavailable as well as develop addictive patterns.
You can develop a secure Attachment style while living and understanding the Law of Detachment. The video discusses this further. To understand the attachment styles and to find out your style as well as your primary caregiver's style visit: http://www.psychalive.org/what-is-your-attachment-style/ For an overview of the attachment style theory go here: https://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~rcfraley/attachment.htm For affirmation that you are incorporating the Law of Detachment in your relationships and every day life visit: http://www.chopra.com/articles/the-law-of-detachment I got married at 19 and had no idea what life was all about. I was doing what I was taught and had grown to think was best for me. Absolutely nothing turned out the way I was assured, the way I imagined or the way I wanted. Some things went terribly wrong but the one thing that went perfectly was the birth of our son.
Now my son is 20 and leaving for the Navy in the morning and I feel it's only right to write a little something to honor his courage because he's #1 on my list of heroes. Never in the years of raising my little man did I imagine he would grow into an even greater hero to me than he was as a child but he has. He has taken the struggles he has witnessed and experienced and is building his life and his future with the knowledge and awareness of how little control any of us actually have over anything outside of us. He too is making a very important and life changing commitment at a young age and has every intention of experiencing it and learning what he needs to from it. No one but him has made his decision. He decided what he wanted, researched it, planned it out, heard every positive and negative thing that was shared by everyone with an opinion (which, let's face it, has literally been every person he tells) and he adjusted his perspectives, goals and anything else around his new gathered information. Not once though did he let fears (his or his loved one's fears) get in his way. He talked about them, he formed intelligent questions around them, he did what he needed to in order to have the courage to face them. He knows his strengths and he accepts his challenges, never hiding from an opportunity for self-growth. This young man has taught me so much about love and living life to its fullest potential I feel inspired to write about it forever but instead I am going to stick to the main thing that has me most inspired by him now and that is to have the courage to do what you know to be best for you in your heart of hearts. End the agonizing over-thinking, the avoidance tactics, the passive aggressive tendencies that keep you feeling "safe", the self-doubt, the excuses and all of the physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual harm that comes with these things and find your courage. You can be afraid and have courage at the same time. You know this to be true! On that note and in my only son's honor I dedicate these words to anyone reading and I offer them with the intention that they are received (and acted upon) from a loving and compassionate place: You know that conversation you're afraid to have? The one that you imagine a thousand different ways? The one you keep preparing for? Or the one you are actively avoiding even though your mind and heart won't let go of? HAVE IT. When you see an opportunity, no matter how big or small or how nervous it makes you, TAKE IT. And you know that thing you keep putting off but you think about it all the time? Maybe it's the last thing you think about at night or it's the first thing you think about in the morning. Do it. There will always be reasons not to do something; do it anyway - do the thing. Let yourself feel. Halt judgement, self-criticism, blame, and anything unproductive and just let yourself truly and patiently feel. Share the feelings when you need to, keep them close to you when you don't. Be your own healer, nurturer and caregiver. Try not doing anything about how you feel and just feel. Reach out. Don't avoid it with excuses or bury your actions with fear of rejection. Just reach out with no expectations and see what happens. Say "I love you". Let it flow off your tongue. If the other person looks at you funny blame the limiting nature of the English language. Love makes some people uncomfortable and that's ok, those are usually the people who need it most anyway. Just love them. Don't think about what it means. Not everything has to mean something. Know that all love comes from a deeper understanding of one's self and the more we do to love, care and nurture ourselves the deeper we can love others and the deeper we feel love in return. Stop being afraid of the word or the feeling of "love". Use and act upon it daily. Be generous with it. Be generous with giving and receiving compliments. Get to know different aspects of love without expecting anything and it may surprise you in the most beautiful ways. It takes courage to accept and love ourselves the way we expect others to. Try it sometime. Stop putting off the rest of your life, dream big and welcome 2017 with the courage of a wild and innocent child. Take a deep breath, widen your eyes, open your heart, perk up your ears and stand tall; it's your turn. |
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