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Making Peace with Being Woman

Inner Value

An excerpt from a book I am writing:

One thing I noticed in all the interviews I did with women about their relationships with their mothers is that to make peace with who their mother was is essential for their own wellbeing. It is as if our history lives on deeply inside of us, so that to expunge the demons of the past includes embracing them first. The wholeness of who we are includes and is in part because of this very past we most don’t want. We can’t get away from it by ignoring it if it dwells within us every step of the way. Which it does, really.

We are of and from our mothers whether we like the person they were or not. And those who most loved their mothers were most willing to see the gladness of their past. Ironically, sometimes this made it difficult to move on, too. Being stuck in the past is no better than trying to expunge it from the core of our cells. Neither attitude works, really. But to embrace it – now there is a different story. A happy one.

Therein seems to be the healthy way. The middle ground, as it were. To embrace our past is to include it gladly in our present, without clinging or pushing it away. The middle way of acceptance, embracing, seeing who and what we are in the continuum of life as it was handed to us. We can only start there which is here. When we accept gladly that which was given us to deal with in this lifetime we can most readily get on with the living of it. We can make the changes we need to from where we are, not where we wish we were already. Which is simply impossible at best.

What ground do we have to stand on if not the solid ground of where we are? Even if we are headed in some direction that will move us eventually to a different place, we must start from where we are. Peggy Tabor Millin, in Women, Writing and Soul Making, remarks: “Because feminine responsiveness does not make the splash or the money and success required in our culture, because it is not ‘out there’ and ‘in your face,’ women, as well as men, devalue it.” “By the 1970’s the Power Principle had co-opted the women’s movement, opening the doors to women on condition that they turn their backs on their roles as nurturers and responders and become competitive and action-driven. With few models for feminine power based on the synthesis of feminine and masculine, we went to where the power lay – into the world of the Power Principle.”

It is time – we are in great need – for feminine integration as part of power. We have to translate from the debased female to what it would look like to have that principle honored. All of this sounds so self-evident, yet with the imaginative power of our brains and minds we can imagine whole fantasies to distract us from the task(s) at hand – which we most need to deal with to become our full potential. Our Being. Of Life, free from the constraints we were handed as the straitjacket into which we were born.

What I realized after my mother’s death was a sense of being loved that I had never encountered when she was alive. Encumbered by the straitjacket of her time – religious and cultural – she never broke free to extend the love which she really was. She lived the norm of her times. But after her death, she has come through to me in myriad ways, again and again loving me where I had felt previously judged. It has been a most remarkable journey that continues still. I had not realized how very little association I felt in any way with any sense of a Divine Mother. In our time of patriarchal religions holding sway, the only reference to the Divine is masculine. Even the Holy Trinity, which holds the potential of including the feminine to be complete in its expression, has been stripped clear of any such reference and speaks only to the “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. A more complete version would be: “The Father, Mother, and Divine Beloved.” These reflect the major relationships with which we need to make peace, find consolation and “Divine Love” to feel fully safe in this world.

Peggy Millin, again: “Now is the time of redefinition of feminine power, a definition based on inner values rather than on outer roles and action.”

Fear

Pssibilities

I recently had lunch with an acquaintance who was lamenting her lot in life. She has to work for a living. This would likely not be a big deal, except for the periodic bouts of panic she has about not making it. Not surviving. Not making enough moola to cover the rent – or in her case, two mortgages.

I’ve heard this story a lot. Not the two mortgages part – but some variation on the terror that can grip the belly when the specter of homelessness starts to creep up.

For some reason or Act of God this does not happen to be one of my terrors. So, in some strange way, I feel uniquely qualified to discuss it. Not because I’m an expert from the inside trenches, but because I might be able to give another view on the subject. I also want to offer the caveat that I am most certainly not free of fear; and my own variation of demons lurk in the basement, periodically scrabbling up the stairs ready to pull out my nails and yank my hair.

Back to the safe territory of basic survival. I can say there has been only one time in my life I cavorted with this particular devil of doom. And that was when I cohabited with a man whose proclivity for lying only matched his ability to overdraw our credit card. I remember distinctly laying on the cold floor one particular frozen Spokane winter day, staring at the ceiling and realizing I really, really did not have any idea how I would pay the mortgage that month. In retrospect, this particular moment stemmed from one of my more sinister demons relating to deceit, but it tapped deeply enough into the survival stream that I do know how that one tastes.

Most of the time, though, where my mind goes with this element of earth life is more brimming with possibility and adventure. I recognize this is due to Grace and hope my sharing this stuff is helpful, not just a piss-button pusher. I remember the time in college, when I was living in the student health center – allowed to sleep in a bed there every night in exchange for being on call in what passed as the emergency room. I had scrounged a few dollars that month doing some ward clerk work, so I headed to the grocery store for my weekly shopping spree. As I stood there eyeing the possibilities, I did some quick math that told me the turnips were the best buy – pound for penny, so I bagged up as many as my dollars would cover and headed home. Now I know for sure that living on a bag of turnips for a week would strike some as being out there on the limb of barely surviving. But that’s the point, see? I didn’t feel that way. Not even a little. All this sort of living is just an adventure to me.

I have lots more of those sorts of stories, but the point here would be that if anyone – even one single person – can live in similar dire straits as your worst nightmare and come out of it grinning, there is some likelihood that you, too, could begin to see your circumstances in some slightly different way. Even trying this on for size could rank as a novel adventure.

Let me know how this goes for you.

Just don’t tag on any invitations for bungee jumping.

Anxiety

Conformance

Anxiety: lurking, deep, swirling, gripping, pervasive. Hard to get at. Hard to eliminate. Seems to be ever-present. So much in the background we hardly can say it’s a “thing” separate from us.

And that, of course, is its secret to lingering – far beyond its welcome.

As we deepen in our devotion to the Inner state, many notice a tidepool of anxiety lurking deep within. Far beneath the surface of self assurance and busyness is this place where we are scurrying around trying to make sure we never sink in too deep. It’s just too scary and uncomfortable there.

This anxiety has many faces, names and nuances. But it exists for all of us. Many would deny this. The busyness of their lives keeps them occupied enough that they haven’t really noticed it, yet.

But nearly everyone I know who has begun the Inner Journey stumbles into this pit sooner or later.

It is so intensely uncomfortable it feels like we’d do ANY thing to get out of the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

What I notice is that – right where we feel anxiety welling up — this is the place to go. To open. To be curious. Willing to see our own selves there.
It is good.

All of us – every single one of us – learned in some way in our lives that we are not completely OK just as we are. In some way – in some small or big way – we had to change to fit in, to meet our parents’ expectations or needs or deficiencies. We had to fit in to our culture or – gads – we would be a “misfit”. That statement, unto itself is terrifying. If we don’t fit in to society it spells not surviving. By whatever primitive means our minds operate around this principle, it speaks to the most basic of Garden of Eden scenarios. Being banned. Excommunicated. Removed from the garden of our most basic sustenance. Forever.

Very, very terrifying.

Underlying all this programming is a deep societal fear that IT (society) won’t survive if individuals are allowed to be different. And – this is more than fear. It is a recognition of a truth. Society, as it is, WON’T survive if individuals learn they don’t have to meld and mold themselves to the norm of the general trend.

The basic fear of all this devolves from the most basic lack of trust. A lack of trust in an inherent sense of order that might reveal itself and evolve if we each were allowed to follow the bliss of our hearts – rather than strive and struggle to conform to the norms defined for us by the society that already exists. Bound by traditions, religions, parents and corporations. It reflects a belief that somehow we are, at our base, not OK. Not OK. We have to be defined by some external standard to bring ourselves up to an idea of acceptability. Unlike forests, animals, stars and all other acts of nature – we are somehow deformed at birth and base. We don’t trust the basic goodness of life as it moves through US. Our minds believe we have to DO something – something different – in order to be “allowed” to live. To survive.

Forget the “lilies of the field” malarkey. We humans are different. We need cars and cell phones and designer jeans.

Really?

Stop here. Pause and take the time – right now – to just open in to the question: “What, in me, says ’No way!’ to the idea that I am perfectly, wonderfully fine – right now – just as I am?”

The answer to this question – and I encourage you to ask it often – will deliver you from such deep anxiety. It is worth the pause.