Femininity is the great unhiding

I spent most of my life being a bloke. Well not really a bloke but a pretty good-looking chick that was funny, could chug beer like a champion, and was smart, strong and independent in a blokey kind of way. This is not a sexist post by the way, but I fear I could get caught in that because now I am the kind of woman who found out she really didn’t love being a bloke and really loves being a woman.

I first heard about the feminine/masculine dynamic at a seminar. It sounded cool and it looked nice, but until hell froze over there was no way I was going to get all vulnerable with my femininity any time soon. Some fucker would walk all over me. I totally misinterpreted it, it felt weak and scary and although I wanted it, I had no idea how to do it.

And now I know how to do it. I work at that same seminar teaching the part about the feminine/masculine dynamic and learnt how to utilise it as a mum and a friend, in relationships and as a purpose coach. I found it be more powerful than any other single thing I ever learnt. And now people ask me how I do it and it’s just this thing that I do, and I have hard time explaining it in words except to say in its rawest form femininity is pure vulnerability.

And that is why it is the scariest thing I’ve learnt how to do and why I resisted it for so long and why, now I can do it, it’s just this thing that I do. There’s no process. There’s no step-by-step guide to vulnerability. There’s no ‘how to embrace your femininity in 90 minutes’ kind of video. But it is the very thing that (for a woman) will give you everything you ever wanted (even when you didn’t know that that was what you wanted because you were too busy not wanting it because you never got it).

Vulnerability is nakedness in public. And not that I want us all to become nudists (I really don’t, even though I appreciate raw form, I like to see people’s souls not their bits which is often somehow more confronting). It is nakedness in public, and until you have done it a few times it feels awkward. And until you have done it a lot it feels like it will never just be this thing you do. But if I can do it, you can do it too. I know that for sure.

We do a million things to cover it up. We talk incessantly. We pretend outside that all is OK inside. We drink. We hide behind clothes and jobs and responsibilities and shit stories about our lives or the other people who we are making responsible for our shit stories. We act happier than we are or we don’t go out when it’s not OK incase someone who sees souls sees ours and hears it screaming.

I hear screaming souls. It took vulnerability to say that. But (almost) everyone who sits in front of me on my mandala-adorned couch in my studio at some point cries. And as they grasp for tissues and apologise I catch myself saying “I’m sorry, that couch does that to everybody”, but it’s not entirely true. I know they came to see me because they hoped I would hear them. And I did. Because I learnt how to sit there in vulnerability and make their fear OK. Sometimes I am great at it. Sometimes they are greater at hiding. I know this because when I am with my coach or my spiritual teacher sometimes I hide too. I feel angry, I feel confronted, and I feel like not being vulnerable in that moment. Usually I go there. Sometimes it takes a bit longer. But I went to see them because I hoped they would hear me. But for them to hear me, only some is in the listening. The rest is in the unhiding.

Femininity is the great unhiding. It is the ultimate embracing of all the parts of you that make you a woman and being able to live that, without apology. It’s the ultimate letting go – of being right, of understanding the meaning of everything, of the thoughts and the reasons and the incessant chatter, of what you think is safe, of who you thought you were meant to be and how that was, of judgement, of fear of being judged, of wanting men to think and feel like you do, of expecting other people to get you when you don’t get yourself, of the roles society crafted for you and you accepted, of the possibility of getting hurt.

You will get hurt.
Some things will not make sense.
Some people will not like you. Some people will walk away from you.
It will not always feel safe.
You may have to change your role. You will have to change the way you have done things before.
And sometimes you will have to stand naked in public and just breathe.

And I get it. I get why none of that could sell you on vulnerability, and why the promise that the ‘right dynamic’ would change my intimate relationships forever was still not enough for me put down the safe cloak of masculinity I liked to beat him over the head with whenever I got scared. So I figured out how to do it best first in the place that seemed the easiest for me. With the women who loved me anyway. And then with the people I worked with. Femininity gave me my magic. My purpose was in there underneath the incessant talking and the tough exterior and the party girl and the busy-ness. And until I stopped and connected with my body, and what I felt, I could not find it. Really could not find it. And then once I found it, the way it worked best was in the same place I found it. Rooted in the centre of my being, at the core of me. And I have worked long and hard at balancing the need to focus and be productive with the need to flow and allow. And I still fuck it up all the time. But if you asked me, I could say that most of the time I use my feminine energy to power me, and when I have gone too long without nurturing it, I find my way back there however I can (or I will, like you will, go so far under it becomes too hard to breathe at all).

So now I know what it feels like NOT to be there, because being there is just this thing that I do. And here’s the thing – if you are a woman, your most powerful energy will be your feminine energy and if you feel tired, tense, stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, uptight, angry, disconnected, sharp, busy or frantic most of the time then you need some serious lady-juice in the form of self-care and feminine connection. And if that makes you want to scream or vomit then you need it even more.

You will get hurt. And when you are open that can feel like the most painful thing of all. But then you can also feel joy at a level that was previously unimaginable. And all those feelings remind you you are alive.

Some things will not make sense. In the mind-sense way. But they will make sense in the core of your being where things just feel right. The power centre of feminine intuition. And you will not know WHY it is the right thing to do, but you will know for sure it is. And all will be as it should be.

Some people will not like you. They are not your people and your light scares them. That is OK. They will come when they are ready or they will never come and either of these is the right thing for them.

Some people will walk away from you. See above. These people are used to relating to you being one way and initially (or forever) may not understand why you are different. If they want the same things you do they will come. And if they don’t, read above.

You may have to change your role. If it does not work for you. If it does not fill your everyday with more magic rather than less magic. Your role is not to please everybody else. If this is your current role you will need to change it.

You will have to change the way you have done things before. I had to change the way I dressed. This may seem to be purely a surface thing but my overalls and boots were as much armour as anything. And beautiful things (clothes and earrings and scarves and make-up) remind me of my beauty. My inside beauty. On the outside. You will have to change the things you have always done, because if nothing changes, nothing changes.

And sometimes you will have to stand naked in public and just breathe.

The great unhiding. The most exciting thing of all.