My Femininity Wants To Soften. First, It Needs To RAGE.
My make-shift guide to the three phases of reclaiming the divine feminine within.
On the phone with one of my dearest friends:
“It’s way too often that I think to myself: I’ve had this ‘revelation’ before. I just forgot it. But it still feels like the first time,” I told her.
She’d just come back from a month-long meditation retreat. We both laughed. Knowing that despite all the work, all the times we’d gone deep into our psyche to excavate our traumas. Or deep into the human experience to realize, ironically, it’s not that deep. “Life is just walking back and forth, from here to there, over and over,” she told me with a laugh last night. And she’s right. And one of those repeated steps will be, again and again, the revelation that we are just walking. Or that we went through something tough.
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This morning, over coffee, I turned to my husband and asked:
“What would you feel if I stopped offering anything to our lives?” I asked him. “Like if I stopped working and earning any money for our house, and stopped cooking, stopped cleaning, and you had to take care of me and of everything and my only job was just to be around you?”
“I’d feel a much stronger sense of purpose and determination, that’s for sure.” He said. Without hesitation.
My sacred internal work as of late has me confronting something a little more superficial than I had planned. A coping mechanism to cover deep fears of uselessness, unwantedness, and un-belonging.
That I am overdoing it, all the time. Overworking, overfunctioning, overworrying, overgiving. Thinking I am helpful when often I am enabling the bad (lazy, self-serving, imbalance) behavior of others.
There is a scared little girl in me constantly looking over her shoulder. Constantly scanning for ways to do more, be more, accomplish more. I want to make him proud, of course. I want to be his source of strength and joy. But in doing so, as we are realizing now, I often am too controlling, I exhaust myself, I over extend myself to be helpful to the point I rob him of places to stand up or show up.
But together, Jake and I are unravelling this…The tension of a little girl who was the smallest and least powerful in her family. Who earned her love and affection by being helpful, subservient, reliably good. Who used caretaking as a currency to safety. Who now, as an adult, often finds herself in relationships (personal, professional, and familial) in which she must carry other people, do more than her share, and exhaust herself in order to rest.
We are unraveling. Through conversations like this, in which I question: who am I if I am not useful? Helpful? Working hard? Making him and everyone proud?
A stronger sense of purpose, he said. Not that I’d be a burden, or it’d be stressful. More determination, he said. Not that he’d feel overwhelmed, annoyed, or resentful. It was only me believing and living by the idea I had to offer more, more, more. Be helpful, push harder, do more to make him happy. When in reality, less was actually the key with both desperately wanted. In reality, my fear of rejection for doing less is unfounded.
His words were the honey I’d been longing to be poured over my tired, cracked skin. It was the salve I had secretly and frantically be searching for all along, my whole life, ironically through doing, doing, doing. Thinking that if I finally did enough and did it perfectly, that’s what I’d be told. That my very presence and nothing more would be what earned me the love and protection and safety and cherishing every woman wants.
I am dying to soften.
But before I do, I can feel the bubbling up of something more dangerous that needs to come out. Akin to a venom or infection in a wound that has to be extracted before the tender, gentle dance of healing can start…
And it’s rage.
Wicked, vile, beautiful, brutal, divine feminine rage.
I’ve been here before. I had moments in my 20’s when I had to explore my anger. At the turn of my 30’s I had to enact it again. I had to blare angry female singers vomiting on the loves they’d given their whole life to. I had to punch pillows. I had to make disgusting, painful art. I had to write letters I could never send. I had to have intimacy that was powerful, intimidating, heated, hateful. I had to HATE. I had to hurt. I had to tell people off. I had to rage.
It is liken to the realization that we are walking back and forth. Back again I have to walk into that fire in this season of my life.
What does that mean, feminine rage?
The interpretations are endless so I’ll speak for myself. It’s the anger I feel when my sexuality and sensuality is pressurized, expected from men who aren’t mine. The old man in the pharmacy that thinks because he’s old he can tell me what a pretty girl I am and I should entertain his gracing me with conversation. It’s the looks and comments on my outfit, that I picked out, that I love, that ‘would be better if…’. It’s the way I want to scream and cry still, years later, about the abuse I endured from my ex boyfriend and how much he convinced me to hate myself in order to save himself. It’s the hurt I never let out. It’s the expectations I never agreed to meet as a woman, as a creative. It’s the nausea I feel for all of us women having to be perfect, beautiful, well-mannered, caring, giving, and somehow be receiving all while working too much at home and at the office and in our relationships. I’m mad. We all should be.
Only when this anger is explored, expressed, beaten up and made love to, will the opening come for something softer to arrive. The storm has to come, fully embodied. Before I can melt.
For now that means:
Telling Jake exactly what I want, what I feel, what I don’t want, what makes me supremely uncomfortable in the world.
Listening to music that releases this locked part of me, and gives me permission to feel and express anger, frustration, defiance the same way men do (and get praised for as ‘strong’ and ‘brave’, by the way).
Crying, screaming, kicking.
Doing nothing. All damn day long.
And standing up for myself. Not taking the shame, blame, control, or manipulation of other people. Regardless of their relationship to me.
And what it will bring is:
The releasing of emotional chains that keep me quiet, people pleasing, helpful for the wrong reasons.
The freedom to express myself: make art with my body again that I can post wherever the hell I want and not worry about the reception of family, friends, colleagues.
The chance to let my husband be even more of a husband. And as you can see from my response, he’s already doing a damn fine job.
The opening of softer, stiller, totally worthy simply for being parts of myself. Meaning I can relax, not overthink, and just exist. Walking back and forth, actually feeling my feet on the ground with each step instead of worrying if I’m stepping too fast, too slow, too wrong somehow.
And finally, because I’ve been here before, I know it will turn into:
Making love to life again. Enjoying the little and the big moments with presence.
Owning and feeling my sensuality, and not feeling like I have to give it over to others who don’t deserve it in order to secure approval or safety.
Strong boundaries around my time, energy, and how I’ll be treated.
The light within me burning brighter, lighting up every room, with the safety and knowledge that I need to be nothing other than who I am.
If you’re in a similar season, or interested in exploring your rage as a gateway to your true sensuality, here’s my take
Step one: explore and express the rage.
Expect a lot of anger. Fist fights with pillows. Annoyance at all your coworkers. The grappling with memories of 3rd grade when you should have told everyone to F off. Feel fully the frustration, madness, blood-pumping desire to break things. Cry a lot. Eat a lot. Don’t even think about trying to look pretty or cute; explore the idea that doing so is a trap, a coping mechanism, a numbing.
Listen to:
Sofia Isella
BANKS
Fiona Apple
Step 2: allow yourself to collapse.
After the storm is always a quiet period of softness, have you ever noticed? This is the time to collapse. After you’ve expressed all the rage and anger, you will be tired. You’ll need sleep, tea, soundbaths, long baths, sad movies, fresh flowers, nourishing food. You’ll need to cry - but the kind of cry that’s a catharsis, a release, not a begging.
Listen to:
Cleo Sol
Lianne La Havas
Moonlight Scorpio
And finally, the healing.
After you’ve spent sufficient time alone, skipped a substantial amount of Friday nights out, gotten into such a good groove with going to bed alone, sober, quiet, that you really wonder if you’ll ever want anyone again. When you’re able to sit in a quiet room alone in the dark and feel totally full and held. Now’s the time to start making love to your life again - starting with yourself. Sleep alot, taste your food for once, eat slowly, dress slowly, explore your physical and non-physical self with pleasure, wonder, curiosity, laughter. Pamper yourself from the inside, not the outside. Put rose petals in your bath. Massage your breasts with oil.
Listen to:
Joy Crookes
Eliza
Amber Mark
What comes it is an embodied woman, full of her true self, giving new meaning to the term: full of herself. And while she likely will look and feel her best, sexiest, and most radiant, those energies will be protected, held, and appreciated rather than poached out like before. Don’t be surprised if your dating life, diet, creativity, and mental health improve. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself calmer, happier, and laughing at the absurdity that is life more often.
And don’t be afraid of what you have to kill off to get here. As much as we are soft Goddesses, so are we huntresses and warriors in our own right. We have it all. But we have to experience every part of ourselves to know it. And to own it.