If you have been following me for long you know I am passionate about empowering women around the world. Empowering myself. Empowering you. Empowering your friends.
Yet, I believe the biggest change we can make will come through empowering our daughters, the next generation of women. I have three daughters and I feel incredibly passionate about their experience being more authentic, strong, and celebratory of their feminine nature than mine.
I spent my adolescent, teen and early adult years trying to avoid the unwanted attention of male teachers, male friends of my parents and early bosses. This made me feel ever so self conscious of my sexuality, any sensuality, and my affect on others. The message was do not let your energy shine because it draws creepy and sometimes flat out assaulting behavior in people you are suppose to trust! Unfortunately more women than not have similar stories of their youth.
As a young woman I also saw that power was solely in positions that men held– leading me to develop my masculine side through becoming assertive, honing my decision making skills, and becoming highly competitive. As far as I was concerned, why would anyone want to live in a disempowered place–and this was what it took to not be powerless. Many of you have had similar experiences in order to attain power and influence in the world. I just did it to extreme–like most things I pursued in those years I was using my successes to validate my worth.
I suppressed anything that hinted I was feminine in my work life. Upset and feel overwhelmed? Whatever you do DON’T CRY. Feel lonely and isolated? Work harder to get ahead, getting attached to co-workers makes it harder to become their boss anyway. Have a strong intuition that something is not right, stifle it because no one will take you seriously if you told them and worse they will stop listening to you in general. Feel enthusiastic and have a spontaneous idea, find some market research or statistic to support your idea or keep your enthusiasm to yourself.
By the time I had my first child I had lost touch with so many parts of me that my new role as mother was like landing in alien territory. Being spontaneous, unplanned, full of emotions, fully bonded with another human being was not natural to my ego and the role I had learned to play. During the next chapter of my life I began to unravel this masculine mask and re-engage my feminine self.
What I realized was I had become a good man. I never had role models of what it looked like to be a woman AND be powerful so I had traded my femininity for power. And I am not alone. Maybe you too gave up a piece of yourself to pursue something important. I have been hearing from women every day, from all different walks of life that this same pattern has been played out in many ways.
The real terror of this situation is by working so hard to prove ourselves capable of the same things men can do we have been teaching our daughters the same thing we were so appalled by– that being feminine is not a position of strength. You can be a woman these days, but certainly not a juicy, emotional, intuitive, creative, life giving female!
My new vision is to support young women becoming adults who believe in themselves–not just as a person, because that still denies their being feminine–but as the female person they are. Let’s help them not only endure their volatility and sensitivity but relish their femininity. Feminine strengths are missing in all aspects of our culture– education, health care, business, law and government. If our young girls enter these areas with their femininity in tact maybe each of these areas could find new solutions to our current problems. What are these feminine traits? Intuitiveness. Sensuality. Multi-tasking. Tribe building. Creativity. Relationships. Communications. Power sharing. Consensus building and many more!
I will explore ideas about how we can create an environment that helps our girls become women who celebrate their femininity, demonstrate their strength in our culture, contribute in big ways to our world and have a better chance at healthy relationships because they start with a heaping dose of loving themselves–just as they are!