Embracing the Divine Feminine Creature That I Am

 

"God made man stronger but not necessarily more intelligent. He gave women intuition and femininity. And, used properly, that combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I’ve ever met.”
― Farrah Fawcett

One of the things I have committed myself to is embracing myself.  Not just embracing myself, but truly appreciating, accepting, and loving everything about myself.  The past two years were about loving my body and everything about it.  And it really did help.  Once I stopped looking at my body to find and point out flaws—things just seemed to fall in to place.  My weight just kind of regulated and I actually like my body.  No it’s not perfect, but it’s mine and I’m grateful for it.  Somewhere along my path last year (I’m still tripping out that 2012 is now last year), I became acutely aware that I am a very strong woman.  And while I know this is such a stigma to say, but I can admit that I’m independent.  I’m tough.  I can stand a lot (and boy have I), yet I am still able to stand and keep going (a lot of times with a smile on my face).  As a result of this toughness, I’ve created this tough outer shell.  This shell prevents me from being vulnerable.  I’m so accustomed to being strong; that I have lost the femininity that makes me such an incredible woman.  So I committed myself to embracing my feminine energy.

Initially, it was a difficult journey.  I’m not a very emotional person.  I am much more comfortable with logic and reason—things that make some type of tangible sense.  I’m always seeking to understand things and people.  I am at ease with that.  But when it comes to emotions—especially what I call the heavy-duty emotions like anger, sadness, and Love.  I’m not comfortable with being vulnerable and when it came to embracing my femininity, I had to trudge through the muck and mire of all the notions I had in my head of what it means to be feminine.  It didn’t help at all when my favorite reader, Marc Victor, told me during one of my readings, “You have such strong feminine energy, but you’re not embracing it.”  In my mind, I heard “You are such a wimpy girly girl and you should stop trying to be a man.”  Don’t even ask me how I heard that as nothing about what he said sounds even remotely close to it.  But that’s what I heard AND I didn’t like it one bit.  So what did I do?  I did the only natural thing that makes any sense at all.  I resisted.  I thickened my skin and vowed to keep all that girly girl crap far away from me.  No more emotions for me (as if I was really letting them out anyway)! But because the Universe is so good at giving us what we need, it wasn’t working for me.  The more I resisted, the more off center I felt.  And I hate feeling off center.  I can’t function when I’m off center.  I need to be able to steady myself and so I went back for another reading and I told Marc Victor that I was having a difficult time with this whole feminine energy crap.  And yes I said it like that.  He laughed and asked me what did being feminine mean to me.  I was actually taken off guard because I don’t think I really had an actual idea of what it meant other than being weak.  In my mind, being feminine meant I had to be weak and I just don’t do weak.  I don’t respect weak, I don’t like weak, and I cannot get with weak . . .Point, blank, and the period!  

Thankfully, Marc Victor is so good at what he does, he said to me “Feminine energy is also very strong energy.  It is the reason you walk into a room and are noticed immediately.  It is the reason you are able to lead many without saying a word.  So what does being feminine mean to you?”  Told you he was good.  I think too often—especially now and especially for Black women—we are not taught how to be feminine.  We have to be strong.  We’re expected to be strong.  And we’re being strong while embracing so many different roles, but we’re not able to compartmentalize each role and act accordingly.  So the result becomes these hard, fixated, unmoving creatures that believe that is synonymous with being strong.  We think softening is a sign of weakness, when it really isn’t.  There’s a yin to every yang, and too much of either is not conducive to anyone. 

I practice yoga and every week I try to make it a point to go to a restorative yoga class.  There are some I know who say they hate that class because it’s not rigorous enough. But I think restorative yoga can be a more difficult practice because it requires the practitioner to truly relax, quiet, and release the chaos that is being held in the mind.   The same can be true of feminine energy.  It is much more difficult to stand in the softness of our emotions and express them in a healthy manner, instead holding them in and bulldozing through things (at least I know it is for me) in an effort to ignore them.  I’m early into my practice of embracing my femininity, but I’m really excited about it.  And I’m not doing it to catch a man.  I’m doing this for me.  I have recognized that it is entirely possible to be in love at all times and I want that experience.  I don’t need a partner.  I want to create a space where I am open and accepting at all times.  If I can’t do that with myself, how in the hell can I expect to do so with anyone else?  The simple truth is that I cannot. But at least I've made peace with the fact that I am a wonderfully divine, feminine creature.

“The hardest part has been learning how to take myself seriously when the entire world is constantly telling me that femininity is always inferior to masculinity”
― Julia Serano