Reclaiming the Masculine and feminine
This one has been a hard one to write. A hard one to get out into words for fear of what others may think, however thats one of the biggest things that i personally, have been moving through this season. Letting go of how others perceive me based on something they heard or read or what they remember me as, without asking any questions.
I’ve also learned, through my own softening and connecting deeper, that the wisdom I carry is beyond me. Not an opinion, rather words and a knowing that come from my roots.
And some research and education that I have learned and explored along the way.
I’m here to create a rupture, because often, that is what we need in order to soften deeper into the possibilities that we carry.
The world, the powers at be, throughout colonization have created a divide in countless different ways. The ways in which we are talking about here in this post, is gender and how it has caused incredible chaos; having people question who they are because of the narratives surrounding what it means to be a boy/ girl, woman/man.
Seperation from self, which ultimately is a blend of both the masculine and the feminine, something that was known long ago. The world, colonization, has just done a damn good job at having us believe that they are seperate or different.
Playing on the belief and understanding that we are all connected, that our ancestors knew how it was before the white man came in.
A side note ↙️ of how else we are seperated, to cause division between us — believing that one argument or belief is better than the other or shouldn’t matter anymore because the world is on fire in another way.
>> by culture
>> by race
>> by politics
>> by belief on vaccinations
>> by the food we eat or don’t eat
One is not better than the other, each are important for their own reasons (unless of course they are causing actual harm to minds, bodies, souls).
Before we go any further, I want to acknowledge the real pain that the evolution that gender has caused to date … noting that rates are high for mental health and suicidality within these ‘groups’. An emergency shutdown due to the friction between internal truths of who we are and external realities of what the world/ culture teaches us to believe.
The experiences I cannot even fathom in regards to hate crimes, rights being taken or not being allowed to marry the person that you love and so much more. The hate that the world has put on you, the advocacy that has had to take place, I don’t know, but I can feel. I can feel in the sense that as a woman, I have been carrying generations in my bones that told me that I wasn’t good enough, as I was either.
So my heart is deeply with those experiences, and at the same time, I am here to share truths. The divison is real, the seperation is inherited. And gender (in the sense of possibilites, not biology) is a complete made up fallacy that has us believing we are different, incapable and unlovable.
We have division and a tension that arises when somebody says something about the confusion somebody must feel, a narrative that keeps people who are experiencing the heartache in a deeper rhythm of shame; deep feels of not being enough and the ones who say something against the narrative, guised as homophobic, misogynists, racists and beyond.
Again, those narratives being a part of all of the separation, regardless of your cause and regardless of whether any of those are actually true … which most of the time, they are not.
On one side of the narrative, we are experiencing a world trying to tell us that men (biologically speaking) can have babies, where they are trying to change the narrative from breastfeeding to chestfeeding as though its possible (without synthetics) for the opposite, biological gender, to provide this nutrition, naturally to the young (synthetics are a whole other story). We have children being exposed and questioning who they are because they are told too. And before we get our panties in a twist, this isn’t me saying that their are people born into the wrong bodies, that their are children who feel misplaced; it is me saying that mental health is getting deeper and deeper because we are disconnecting from ourselves so much earlier than we have ever before (in terms of technology, in terms of chaos, and in terms of what we are exposing our children too).
In my humble opinion, leading to a world that is so much more complacent and confused. Said from somebody who still has deep belief that more and more people “wake up” as more and more things in our world challenge and rupture what we know in our hearts, to be right.
On the other side of the narrative, we have what I mentioned above regarding the name calling, and misunderstanding because we also grow up in a world where our curiosity is diminished and where it is much easier to assume we understand people’s stance without actually asking the questions.
Made possible by the way that our systems work; having limited views based on culture (both within our families and broader societal narratives) and believing that anything outside of that is a threat.
Wild, how both the world and our own systems are working against us. Wild, how we actually need to do the work and be open to different, open to what feels right in our bodies as opposed what we are being told or what our experiences are.
Centuries ago, before the rupture that had cultures and certain colours of people believing that they were superior or better than, we had recognition, we had ancestors (beyond Turtle Island/ ‘North America’) who knew that we all carried both masculine and feminine energy within all of us.
You may know this through the term two-spirit, a term that can typically be misconstrued to apply only to LQBTQ community, but has roots in the recognition that we carry the energies within us. Not 50/50 or one over the other, but an integration, each individual person being different.
Masculine and Feminine energy, according to my own mentor are meant to describe that all things exist as inseparable and contradictory opposites. Noting that whatever exists, the opposite is always there.
According to my own make-up, I am around 65% feminine energy and the remaining 35% in the masculine. Not making one better than the other, just noting that I’ve needed to work a little harder to embody the masculine within me.
Next we’ll explore a little about what that means and what each energy embodies; both from a hurt perspective that has caused the generations of disconnection, and from a fully embodied perspective.
Through colonization and from a biological sense, men are framed on one end as hyper-aggressive, which has made it easier to portray men (especially, but not limited to those of colour) as a danger. On the other end, men can be depicted as passive and incapable of self-governance. Communal roles were ‘erased’ and the pressure arose for the men to be the providers, diminishing how the feminine provided in other ways. A shift to the head of the household, taking away, not only the role of a woman, but the role of children. The narrative of “listening to the man” both in the homes and broadly in our society. The stoic, ideas passed along to mask emotion, vulnerability, fear and beyond.
This of course, affects the biological woman through being made to believe that they were not a person at all.
On an energetic level, and what our ancestors were very aware of, the masculine energy from a wounded perspective (often caused by the colonial narrative, view or experiences) consists of aggression, the need to control (a big one I've worked through), being defensive or avoidant, abusive, insecure, a false sense of leadership. That power/ over dynamic that is still very much alive in our society, both amongst biological men AND women.
From a divine perspective, we are in our power, the getting things done, being able to be assertive in our opinions and views, our survival instincts because while survival can sometimes get a bad rap, our bodies are always protecting us, this is where we have discipline (or devotion) to what is important to us, boundaries, our confidence, the warrior in us that fights for what is right. The making of the moved that we need to make to catapult into what the world taught us we couldn’t be.
On the other end of the spectrum, the ideals of women staying small are reinforced through history when her rights were taken, when she was told to serve the man (and everybody else) before herself. There were hyper-sexualized versions of the woman that led to the ideals that sexual violence was okay because there was a lack in modesty that was expected by the dominant religion, or on the other end, a stereotype of being completely de-sexualized as her only role was to be the caretaker of the family, our entire being re-defined as staying indoors and maintaining the domestic order. We were taught to view our bodies as shameful or dirty, further disconnecting us from our wisdom, from our bodies.
of course, this affected the biological male as it re-inforced power structures through generations (ie: control), and/ or being less than when they didn’t live up to the ideals of what a man was “supposed” to be.
From an energetic perspective, a wounded feminine, the result of what has been mentioned above (and much more as this is only a snippet) feels unworthy, shame, insecure and because of this, stays stuck in trauma bonding (or in other words, staying in cycles of wrongs as opposed to closing the loop and rising above). They stay small because they are a victim to the atrocities that are very real, a push-over because its ingrained not to question or stick up for oneself.
A divine perspective of the feminine has us living from intuition, and the ability to go inwards as opposed to always focused on the outside world. She is able to receive as opposed to needing to control all of the outcomes, as I mentioned I held onto for so long, their is trust and wisdom because we are able to listen to ourselves, a collaboration with one another as opposed to the narrative of independence (recovering hyper-independent at my core), creation takes charge because there is a recognition that we are the creators of our lives, and that the path laid out for us is a linear path that has us feeling like deeper failures when it doesn’t work out for us the way the world tells us we are supposed to. We are able to move in flow, be the warrior in the sense of a leader and stick up for ourselves; and possibly, most importantly, we are able to be sensual. We can connect to our bodies, we can be soft, we can feel.
Why this topic is important to me? Why do I create a rupture in this sense here that challenges everything the world taught us?
As a woman who was once disconnected from herself because of the generational impact of a bunch of factors that were mentioned above, I was also once a girl who fought again the narratives of a woman who served everybody but herself; who took care of the man; who knew that the gross things she heard were not right; who did everything for everybody. An angry person in the continuation of the feminist movement (a whole other movement that has done some good, but also portrays some not so good .. maybe a blog for another day).
I’ve also, always moved a little slower. Memories of being told to hurry up, when what I now was just me observing. Of me feeling my surroundings as opposed to rushing like the world and everybody around me told me to do.
I knew, I felt (without realizing this) that something was off, and I, of course was challenged against this by everybody that I loved and so I stopped, and I disconnected deeper and deeper. In terms of mental health, in terms of sex, in terms of too much partying and beyond. I stayed out of relationships because I was not serving a man, ever, except for I unconsciously did through my sexual relationships. Proof that patterns continue to show up in ways until our awareness hits.
It was when I started seeing other people that I knew, do different that opened up this world for me again. Sort of sick of my own bullshit, I started paving the way and taking steps for a different life, one that felt right and connected me back to my roots, back to my feminine, back to nature and back to who I have always been.
Somebody who fights against narratives, just no longer in the angry way anymore - rather in empowering us to soften into our power.
Resources:
>> A blog post on the divide
>> The Breathwork training that changed my life and allowed me to come into this work on the deepest levels
>> Explore the rhythms of Bergamot Queen, the space for softening into your own power and becoming the person YOU are here to be in this crazy place we call life.
