I am quite fond of saying that we are (slowly but surely) reaching

a critical mass of the feminine rising.

 

 

With every woman who raises her hand and says

“Me too,”

 

With every woman who opts out

of hustle, striving, dieting, hypersexualization, shame,

– that endless battle of “too much” and “never enough” at the same time –

 

we are dismantling the intersecting structures of oppression that have held so much power over

our bodies, energy, resources, safety

for more generations than we know how to count.

 

But this work is not just about women and women-identified folx, and it’s not meant to be ours to do alone.

 

 

While we activists (reluctant and militant alike) are hard at work dismantling the power of

The Gaps (wage + thigh, to say the least)

The Isms (racism, capitalism, and the odd one out when it comes to isms, patriarchy)

 

we must also do the work of connecting with and magnifying the archetypal feminine that lives within us all.

 

 

In fact, perhaps, it is this work, done by each of us in our own individual lives and communities, that will be just as –  if not more – responsible for crumbling the power structures that we are no longer willing to engage with.

 

Because at the same time that we dismantle these oppressors,

 

we must also create the world in which we’d rather live and thrive.

 

While we hone our collective grief and rage into the warrior-weapons they are,

we must also think and act generatively about what is possible.

 

The feminine, beyond pertaining only to women, is a force within each of us.

 

The feminine is

complexity

non-linearity

compassion

softness

space

nurturance

creativity

intuition

 

And we can all cultivate these feminine characteristics.

 

Here are my suggestions:

 

-> Engage your creativity.  Write, draw, paint, make.  Make the way you did before you were told to be “productive” instead (whatever that means).

-> Rest.  Your value is not contingent on your ability to get things done.  Perhaps, even, with the spaciousness afforded by rest, you’ll have more energy and more ability than ever before.

-> Connect.  Reach out to someone you care about and offer what you can to them, right now, whether that’s pragmatic or emotional support.  And also, don’t forget to connect with yourself.  With who you are and what matters most to you, and how you want to show up in and for the world.

-> Be with the unknown.  The nature of the archetypal masculine is to make the unknown known.  While that is infinitely more comforting in our oh-so-Googleable world, forcing unknowns to reveal themselves can short-circuit important processes and opportunities.  Instead, get curious about what might happen in the realm of not-knowing, and trust that resolution will become evident in time…or it won’t, and you’ll be okay anyway.

-> Hold space.  Not unlike sitting with the unknown, holding space asks us to do the uncomfortable work of being with what we or others are experiencing – emotionally or physically – without trying to change or fix it.  Spoiler alert:  usually forced or externally-sourced solutions to our discomfort are inadequate, if not actually damaging.

-> Intuit.  Learn to trust the part of you that just knows.  See what happens when you stop looking for proof and just do what feels right.

 

This might seem like a simple list of possibilities, but I wonder what they surface for you as you’re reading them?  We live in a world of toxic masculinity, where men – and often anyone, no matter their gender identity – who connect with their inner femininity are often shamed and derided.  And so, in no way do I think that this work is easy, but along with our feminist activism and the uplifting of the dearly valued but often misunderstood archetypal masculine (blog posts for another day, to be sure!), I believe this is a part of the healing equation for our world.