One of the things still off in society today is that we’ve kept feminism and spiritualism separate.
We’ve marked feminism with attributes like fierceness, outspoken, strong, and we work to make our spirituality softer, open, more allowing. It makes us change when we hear or see something we wish to change.
Society has taught women to respond from an unequal platform. When I was young I was taught to be a ‘ nice young lady’. I was a late bloomer and painfully shy. In grade seven I was ‘voted’ the ugliest girl in school (so who got together and decided that was a good game?) I found out by a piece of notebook paper taped to the stairwell wall.
In grade eight after leaving school for a few months due to my parents separating (the second time of three) I returned to school and all of a sudden boys were interested in me. I had changed while living away and attending a different school. I had found my own style and grown up quite a lot. However, I didn’t trust their praise as just one year before they had devastated my self worth.
The gift from that experience was that I developed an amazing sense of humor that I could use to deflect and protect myself with. I was only 13 and had discovered that friends were fickle and popularity based on physical appearance was the standard.
Is it any wonder so many young girls today in social situations run themselves emotionally between powerless and spiteful indifference. In my 20’s and 30’s every single job I held I was at one point or another flirted with, passed over for a promotion to a male colleague, and when I worked my ass off and grew the largest territory of loyal clients they had, I was resented by my female colleagues. What?
Management decided one day to take my top performing clients and “remove them” to the non-commission sector, having no recollection (of stating at my hire) that ‘the sky is the limit here.’
Five long ass hard working years later they made up a new rule, can you guess? Yes, new ceiling limits in order to remove the best accounts that I grew personally so as not to have to pay me my percent age. Once again I learned people were fickle, superiors lie and make stuff up to line their own pockets and your appearance gets you unwanted attention and resentment.
But along the way I made some amazing friends, badass women who were fierce but sweet. They knew how to play the game and win. I studied hard and loved them for their acceptance and love of me.
I learned that sister solidarity meant the world to me and on dozens of occasions in my life I have dropped everything to race to help a sister out. I am fiercely loyal to my core.
I started quietly studying spirituality, starting with Shirley MacLaine books then moving on to Buddhism, meditation, self reflection, self love, energy, God consciousness and the Divine within all of us.
I began to understand that god lives within all of us and the validation we are so desperately seeking (in order to feel part of a tribe and a contributing member of society) actually needs to come from developing our own connection to ourselves.
At that point I fell fatally ill, spiritual awakening is not for the faint at heart.
After eight months of slow recovery nothing in my life felt the same.
That’s when I created my company Dragonfly Services (dragonflies in Native American lore are the symbol for transformation) and I swore from that day forward I would never work for someone else again.
I would never feel powerless or less than because I was a woman. I would never feel trapped in a fish bowl with other fish who just weren’t all that nice.
But what I want to address is what I still see today. We women shift between feminism and spirituality instead of consciously embodying both. We are either fierce in what we won’t tolerate or allowing and trusting of our own spirit.
Our feminist is masculine having been born from an imbalanced patriarchal society. We got a double dose of father and very little nurturing mother. Society has been our father figure and spirituality our mother. Unfortunately in most schools and work places dad (society- masculine energy) governs and for girls and young ladies this tells a very imbalanced story.
We as women need to bring our spirituality into our feminist living. We can be so incredibly effective when we first check in with our feminine, our deep and sacred spiritual nature and ask to follow her wisdom, our souls wisdom deep inside each of us, before moving into male-like action.
Our inner male is powerful and very accomplished. He gets things done but if we are not also consulting our spirituality, our mother, our divine essence within for guidance on the path ahead, igniting the energies of love and compassion, awakening our muse and creating from outside the box with insightfulness, then we are missing half of our balance and working only from action, control or force not fluidity and insight.
Our inner masculine is a warrior but he needs to be unified with his spiritual cause first, otherwise he is just a warrior without direction that eventually creates conflict with all the other masculine warriors searching for their cause.
Can you see how that plays out in schoolyards and the workforce?
Where bullying is birthed, and sexualizing women, and shaming the feminine in the workplace becomes acceptable common practice?
And if we are not careful, we mistakenly unleash our fierceness calling it feminism but it is really just angry women unleashing their masculine fathers out into the world as Warriors for retribution. The Warrior mistakes his sacred purpose as justice.
When we learn to connect deeply within ourselves first we learn that no one holds any power over us unless we allow them to and instead of being angry and demanding masculine to change (which it cannot) the feminine can instead shape-shift into conscious creation, breaking status quo and birthing new balanced experiences.
Women are starting transformational companies (all over the world) serving the world on their terms, building communities that unite rather than divide.
I’m not saying don’t get angry, I’m saying tap into it, go deep, where does it take you?
Were you voted the ugliest girl in school then pursued inappropriately (or passed over) in the workforce? So what do you want to do with that? And how do you want to pave the road ahead for the girls who walk behind you.
Me? I coach women on how to create a life with Soul, to live in daily and deep spiritual practice customized for them by them. I teach them how to Light up and tune in to the Universe’s sources and play outside the box.
Once you understand and connect to who you really are, it’s impossible to live inside a box ever again and it’s impossible not to be great.
We’re not mad anymore, we’re insanely effective in our own lives and how we influence and inspire others. We stand together as a sisterhood. Some of my clients are lawyers, some teachers, inventors, students, future beings who are going to build stuff, create stuff and knock the shit out of the patriarchal imbalance. Not because they’re mad but because they’re connected to themselves, their own wisdom and guidance and they’re not afraid to use it anymore, to stand out and up, to be brilliant and live life on their own terms creating their own exceptional experiences.
It took 30 years for that particular brand of a-ha to reach me but when I realized that the little boys and girls in grade seven who voted me the ugliest girl in school where really just scared and insecure and needing to bond with each other to try and feel safe in a tribe, I understood. It wasn’t personal, it was less about me and so much more about them.
And what about those money hungry managers who revoked my biggest accounts? I realized the power they were flexing over me was really how they felt from the top shareholders flexing over them. Again it wasn’t personal and what I learned was that no one can take your skills. No one can take your creation process from you.
Today, I am what I call a conscious entrepreneur. I run my own business with a small but mighty team who are first and foremost committed to their own daily sacred practice of balance and inspiration, then to their service to the world.
I do stuff because I want to not because I have to. If it’s not inspiring we don’t do it. Period.
I live from a place of gratitude and hope everyday, always learning, practicing deep connection to myself first and service to others second.
It is liberating. It is real. It is possible. And it is available.
It is my belief that we do not change the societal norm by playing within the structure the very same imbalanced action created, just as Einstein said, “you cannot solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it.” You’ve got to think outside of that construct, trust yourself over anyone else, make up your own rules, and follow your own dreams.
One person aligned with their own inner wisdom is so much more powerful and effective than millions who fight the construct.
So let us each go forward, feeling inspired, balanced and aligned, connected to our inner spirituality, our feminine wisdom, and when the inspiration comes, let us activate our masculine Warrior, and take inpsired action.
Just people, honoring themselves, then honoring others.
Imagine that world?
I do, all the time…
It’s always about the love,
If you want to study with me personally, be sure to check out my private session work available and my new course Healing: Mind, Body & Soul
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Originally published at medium.com