Birthing the Feminine

My story

Hard Beginnings

I had another psychic friend come over last night who, as she always does, called me on my shit.

I was feeling frustrated about work opportunities, resources, and direction, wondering when I was going to get “more answers” and when things were going to become clear.

She took one, long, look at me and said:

“You know you’re totally embodied in your masculine right now, right?”

…Crap.

I did know that. I wanted answers, I wanted action, I wanted to know now. I’ve been so used to; so conditioned to feel that I can only succeed when embodying my masculine, I completely forgot She was even there, within me.

Getting Curious

Because I have been so afraid in my life — so much fear in my family, so much fear in myself, so far from safety and a feeling of rest, I have always been action-focused. Control focused. Output focused. I knew I had a strong relationship with my masculine; I was always the one girl on the snowboard trips filled with sweaty boys; the one girl on the late night drives to smoke weed and hang out in unoccupied parks. I was a gymnast; where being tough was in and power gymnastics was in style. How hard can you push? How much can you endure without complaint? How much power can you exert?

I felt empowered from this place; embodied in a way that made me feel guarded and strong. Like a warrior, or a knight. I refused to wear “girly” clothes, wearing only jeans and graphic tees — realizing truthfully that I felt quite unsafe in skirts (and having that reflected back by the catcalls and random yells I would get from boys and men the occasional times I would opt for non-pants). I had no relationship with my femininity — to be feminine meant I was asking for it, I was trying to be sexy, I wanted sex. That was my only understanding of what it felt like to be feminine; my only option. Be safe and a little bro-ey, or be served up like a defenseless snack in the wild hunger of the world. Shudder.

It wasn’t until my body completely shut down on me from 2021–2023 that I understood I had to put an end to this non-stop doing, this intense embodiment of the masculine and rejection of my feminine. My body was crying. I could no longer produce anything. No ideas came, no inspiration, no desire for creativity. The autoimmune condition that had manifested made it hard for me to do any of what I was used to and how I defined myself began to slip away. I couldn’t exercise, I couldn’t tax my brain with high levels of output, I couldn’t “achieve” like I used to.

With nothing left to “do”, and on the brink of torture in my own mind, I finally gave up. I surrendered. And started listening.

Desolation Sound

I was at rock bottom in February of last year (2022). I made this video to express I would no longer be doing energy forecasts — (the giving feminine in me knowing only how to give to others by still producing content but not to myself to allow healing to occur), and that I would be taking an extended break. With YouTube off my plate, I had nothing to accomplish. I had no job, no bills to pay (thanks to the grace of my uncle who was letting me stay in his cabin), nowhere to be. I had nothing to produce. For a writhing, wriggling week or two, I felt stir crazy. I listened to audio books and reached out to their writers for help and counsel. I cried. A lot. I had no clue what to do with myself, and other than journaling my woes and toying with the idea of painting again, it was with severe discomfort that I started to move into a space of receptivity. It didn’t feel feminine at all. It didn’t feel beautiful. It felt awkward, and clunky, and so so so uncomfortable. It felt like all I was doing was sitting around, watching the trees in snowstorms, resting, wondering when this was all going to end. What I didn’t realise at the time was that I was preparing my body and mind to receive. I was at the epicentre of the birth of my feminine. No way was I going to go from 30 years of constant masculine-in-action to embodying and witnessing the divine feminine within me expressed. I had to start small. I had to start slowly. And so I listened, I rested, I rolled around on the floor in some semblance of yoga. I went for walks out in the freezing cold and took many, many baths. I mourned. I cried for the version of myself I was losing without yet understanding that what I was experiencing in these months was that my feminine within was beginning to stir.

I continued along the bottom like this for a long time. And looking back in those groundhog days of feeling like “nothing” was all I could put on my resume, I was starting to play with the feminine. I had the time, so I began making more elaborate altars in the cabin in which I was staying. I did start to paint again, and made the most impactful vision board I have ever made with watercolour — one whose images still resonate so deeply I still have it up a full year later. I began to learn how to tend for myself, how to care for myself, and how to be receptive to the messages of my body. Finally, (months later), I began to thaw.

Running Waters

I am still in the early phases of exploring the feminine within myself. You can see it in my videos on YouTube — I’m shy to embody my feminine more fully, opting for neutral colours and backgrounds that don’t give anything away. My body language is still predominantly masculine, having learned to assert myself and express confident and dominance in a way that I felt would force people to give me the space to speak and be heard. What is different, however, is my desire to dance with Her. There is a deep yearning for connection between my feminine and me, between the softness of her skin and the stillness deep within her core. I have a desire to get to know her now. We speak, and although we are still friends, (sometimes more) and not yet lovers so intertwined you cannot separate us, she is present.

This is how she shows herself to me:

Her energy to me is the flow of a river.

I know I am a waterfall, personally; the culmination of fluidity and power, charge and expression. I am a rush. But She feels like the quiet, fluidity of water moving in such a way that shapes banks and smooths rocks and has continuous movement.

Her energy to me feels like listening. It feels like hearing the sound of the trees, the whispers of the forests, the conversations of the birds. It feels like taking that generous, giving, nurturing side of myself and putting her in right relationship with nature, so that she too may absorb and become absorbed by the rhythms of the natural world in union. Femininity feels like the feeling of the forest system in conversation with itself.

She feels to me like open arms. Like the way a mother opens her arms to her child when she sees them — a welcoming, an opening, a receptivity. A greeting of all life and the way it shows up. The hugging mother doesn’t not comment on her child’s appearance, or ask where they have been before they are worthy and deserving of a hug. They are simply received, simply loved. Femininity to me feels like that receptivity of life. To allow.

I still encounter a lot of fear when it comes to embodying my feminine power. We have been so so conditioned to understand receptivity, listening, absorption, mystery and stillness as weak — as things that can be overtaken, squashed, manipulated, soiled. Slipping back into my masculine is still a daily occurrence, one in which I meet with more frustration than grace. It takes conscious effort for me to let go. The blackness of potential is terrifying to me. I like to know. I prefer control.

Truthfully, I’m still afraid of raw feminine power. Not because I don’t want it; but because I so desperately to. It’s been so rarely demonstrated in her full expression: presented in this current paradigm as witchcraft / trickery or as a plan for manipulating the masculine world. The women who seem like they’re in their power in the eyes of the current masculine framework are only in their power in relation to how they can support the dominant, masculine driven narrative. The women I have seen fully in their power, truly embodied in their feminine selves, are terrifying. In the best way. Their power scares the crap out of me. The raw power of the feminine is so impossible to define — so impossible to articulate or box in or pin down that it feels like a cloud of mystery that will swallow you whole. These women are walking visions, carrying their sovereignty like a diodom thought to be lost and destroyed thousands of moons ago. I want this so badly for myself: Energy and truth so crushingly beautiful and yet feels as foreign as a written language with no alphabet.

How do I access this? How do I achieve?

The answer lies within the process of embodying the feminine within myself more wholly — I don’t achieve anything.

I open to it.

I am patient.

I allow.