It is within the chaos that a deeper, intrinsic order reveals itself. This is not the imposed order that we have become so accustomed to in a patriarchal, conceptualized world, an order that is not connected to the creative matrix. Rather, it is an order that emerges instead of being imposed. When we are connected to this emerging order we are psychically living from the incarnate feminine energy that has within it the possibility of transformation."
~ Marion Woodman
Regardless of our anatomy or gender, the oppression of the feminine in our culture has caused us harm. To adapt to patriarchy, most of us have cultivated and prized masculine qualities and suppressed and denigrated feminine qualities. This has led to both unhealthy masculine and unhealthy feminine patterns becoming the norm.
It often looks like an over-reliance on willpower and effort and a lack of access to softness, surrender, and love. It often looks like spiritual bypassing - using spiritual escape routes to avoid our relative wounds, our pain. Of course every person is unique and has different needs, but the above is why I’ve found that often folks need to open and heal their feminine before their masculine can be healed.
Healing our feminine for me is not separate from healing from white supremacy. Both patriarchy and white supremacy have had an enormous impact on shaping our psyches, as well as our institutions, and respecting indigenous culture and the wisdom of cultures of color and understanding how white supremacy has biased our minds and our hearts is essential if we want to be free. It's difficult for me to separate one system from the other at this point, so I'll describe what healing from the marginalization of both means to me. This healing asks us to become embodied - to learn to open to and trust our bodies. It means beginning to value and rely on their wisdom and beginning to see the limitations of what we once called “logic." |
It means connecting to the pleasure in our senses, learning to deeply allow and to move towards and trust pleasure, whether that’s erotic pleasure or the simple pleasure of feeling a gentle breeze on your skin.
It involves opening up stuck impulses, like the impulse to play or be silly. Slowly disinhibiting around how our emotions want to express, how we want to dress, what we want to say, and letting our feelings show on our faces. Finding safety in unapologetic authenticity. Feeling our feelings because we care, and because there is intelligence in emotion, not because we’re trying to get away from them. Making space for imperfections and flaws, embracing grit, discomfort, paradox, and what doesn't meet Western ideals of beauty.
It means recognizing and following the desire to rest - to really deeply rest. Softening with the parts of us that we have shamed and pushed away. It means opening to particular flavors of full-bodied power, vibrant, rich and juicy power. It means knowing ourselves as sovereign beings, setting our boundaries, making our own choices, and defining our reality without the need to reference the opinion of others. It means reconnecting to Mama Earth, through our senses or through ritual. It means opening to our interdependence, healing our ability to trust, connect, receive, and offer. It means learning to surrender to a power that’s beyond You. A power that courses through you but is not controlled by you. It means opening to Love and allowing it to work on and through us. It means valuing the dual world, and our relative persona.
Yes, this too is awakening.
Deconstructing patriarchy and whiteness blur into deconstructing cisness, ableism, fatphobia, homophobia, and so on. Limits are limits, constructs are constructs. And whether you want to wake up or heal, going beyond the ways in which our culture has defined who we are and who/how it is acceptable to be is essential (though of course continuing to acknowledge the deep harm caused by these constructs is also essential).
It feels important to emphasize that I love and value the masculine, separate from masculinity as defined by patriarchy. Healthy masculine is fabulous! But my own healthy masculine and true nature could not emerge without healing the open, seeping wound left by the rejection of my own feminine.
It means recognizing and following the desire to rest - to really deeply rest. Softening with the parts of us that we have shamed and pushed away. It means opening to particular flavors of full-bodied power, vibrant, rich and juicy power. It means knowing ourselves as sovereign beings, setting our boundaries, making our own choices, and defining our reality without the need to reference the opinion of others. It means reconnecting to Mama Earth, through our senses or through ritual. It means opening to our interdependence, healing our ability to trust, connect, receive, and offer. It means learning to surrender to a power that’s beyond You. A power that courses through you but is not controlled by you. It means opening to Love and allowing it to work on and through us. It means valuing the dual world, and our relative persona.
Yes, this too is awakening.
Deconstructing patriarchy and whiteness blur into deconstructing cisness, ableism, fatphobia, homophobia, and so on. Limits are limits, constructs are constructs. And whether you want to wake up or heal, going beyond the ways in which our culture has defined who we are and who/how it is acceptable to be is essential (though of course continuing to acknowledge the deep harm caused by these constructs is also essential).
It feels important to emphasize that I love and value the masculine, separate from masculinity as defined by patriarchy. Healthy masculine is fabulous! But my own healthy masculine and true nature could not emerge without healing the open, seeping wound left by the rejection of my own feminine.
When we’ve reclaimed what was discarded, we see what we relied on, that which seemed strong was actually brittle, lacking depth, or weight or stability. From this vantage point, it is possible to restore to health that which had the life and vigor sucked out of it for the sake of order and the domination of a few.
In fact, this rebalancing often happens naturally once that which was disowned is re-owned. It restores flow and surrender as our natural way of being. Awakening too can flow with much more ease when our tendencies to spiritually bypass are no longer needed, and our view is no longer obscured by the myriad conditioning we adopted, or were forced to adopt, from the systems of oppression we internalized.
Book Recommendations:
Leaving My Father's House, Marion Woodman Omega: Feral Secrets of the Deep Feminine, Maya Luna Red, Hot, and Holy, Sera Beak Soulcraft, Bill Plotkin Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, Brittney Cooper The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Sue Monk Kidd Womb Wisdom, Padma and Anaiya Aon Prakasha Earth Wisdom, Dolores LaChapelle This is Who I Am, Roseanne Olso The Body is not an Apology, Sonya Renee Taylor A Hunger So Wide and So Deep, Becky Thompson Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation, Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah The Way of Tenderness: Awakening through Race, Sexuality, and Gender, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel Love and Rage, Lama Rod Owens Pleasure Activism, Emergent Strategy, Adrienne Maree Brown |
All Photos this page by Katherine Savage
You cannot enter the formless state in matter... until you live love for that form. If you enter before the love is there, it is a dangerous escape from life. When you love your personal identity, the formlessness and form will become one continuum. Then you will love humanity, and not the old spiritual image of a God in heaven. Rather than projecting onto a disembodied spirit yearning for union with a God, realize that all is within, if you can endure the opening to the Spirit.”
~ Marion Woodman