These words came to me in the late hours of the night. I woke this morning and wrote them down feverishly and now I share them with you. I hope they spark a truth within you.
I used to thrive in the Masculine world. The accomplishments, career check points, and to do lists. I lived in that outward, expansive solar energy.
Accruing + Obtaining | Seeking Praise + Promotions
But then the little voice inside would say, “this isn’t quite right.” “we’re not very happy.” I chalked it up to transitioning to 40+ hour weeks, a long commute and the stress of working in the world of eating disorders and insurance agencies. Looking back, most of the women I worked with (my colleagues and clients) were desperately trying to live in this Masculine energy... to perfect it would mean succeeding at killing the feminine realm inside. The place of many wounds, darkness, emotions, fluidity, intuition— none of which are deemed important in our society. You can’t claim your intuition as a strength in an interview and yet it’s one of my strongest skills as a therapist.
And so the war begins with ourselves. The feminine is weak, sensitive, too emotional, gets invaded and disrespected. The masculine is powerful, untouchable, successful; or so we are told. I’m not here to say one is better than the other. The reality is we need both. But we are in a world in which we have rejected and abandoned our own feminine energies to survive. It shows up in the illnesses of women, the struggle to emote, the fixation on thinness and the rejection of softness, and the wish that our menstrual cycles would just stop arriving each month.
The little voice within me got louder. I realized I was losing pieces of myself every time I pushed down my own needs, every time I put work before my own health. I started feeling the call to learn more... I learned to hold sacred women’s circles, trained to become a birth doula and supported a woman through her first birth, went back to my love of astrology, and I now find myself studying Herbalism— returning to the plants and the ancient ways of women. Books fill my shelves... Women Who Run with the Wolves, Moon Time, Reinventing Eve, Deranged... books about reclaiming the wild woman within us and honoring the Divine Feminine.
And here I am, I have left the corporate world of mental health and have birthed my own practice and new way of working with womxn. One that embraces spirituality, intuition, + the Unseen.
Keep Shining,
Shannon ✨
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