What is Feminine Reclamation?
Feminine reclamation is the heroine's journey: It’s about what we can find, feel and heal within ourselves.
Feminine reclamation is about finding and collecting the scattered pieces of yourself to reconnect them and make a whole. It’s about knowing and owning yourself, who you are, and what you most desire. It’s about claiming the feminine superpowers that are your birthright.
So, what has scattered these feminine pieces of our very selves?
I point to the overemphasis on masculine traits and depreciation of feminine traits:
Competition between women and other women, and between women and men
The loss of connection to our bodies and our emotions
The loss of our eros (our life-force and creative energy)
The good/bad dichotomy (or the Madonna/Whore split)
Our constant external focus; not prioritizing our own self-care and pleasure
Does any of this sound familiar to you?
You work full time and do 90% of the childcare and household chores. You are constantly arranging and executing activities for the kids. You micromanage your partner because he can’t be trusted to hold up his end. You nag, bitch and complain at everyone to get anything done. You want and expect your needs to be met, but don’t know how to make requests in a way that can be heard. You don’t think you have time for and don’t prioritize self-care. You either don’t follow or have completely forgotten your own passions and pleasure. You feel bitter, irritable and disappointed. You struggle with anxiety and depression. You've either gotten or think about getting a divorce, you numb with substances or other addictive behaviors (e.g., excess shopping or social media), when you hang out with other women all you guys do is complain, and you have a sneaking feeling you may be manifesting diseases that plague you because it gives you a really good excuse to not have to do all of the things!
That's the story of many modern women. But, how did we get here?
Embodying masculine vs feminine energy
We have been in (and have been encouraged to be in) our masculine, external energy for the past century. This is the ‘girl boss’ energy. With a focus on drive, chase, and capture. The feminist perspective has been: compete with men, be better than men.
While, at the same time, we have been oscillating between our wounded feminine energy. This is the ‘super-mom’ energy, characterized by martyrdom, over-giving, over-caretaking, and controlling/manipulative behaviors.
Being in the externally-focused, masculine energy, we are constantly focusing on to-do lists, scheduling, keeping everything in order, paying the bills, and micromanaging our partners and kids. We’ve been too focused on work and making “masculine money” to support our households. We've been too much in our heads and not in our hearts and bodies, and have not had enough focus on pleasure and self-care. But holding this kind of energy for too long is exhausting for the female body! So, then, we oscillate into the wounded feminine energy characterized by the “poor me” attitude of victim consciousness, fit-throwing and emotional dumping, blaming, shaming and manipulating - all in hopes to get what we are deeply craving and needing: care and love.
Loss of connection to our bodies, emotions and eros
We've been trained out of feeling our emotions and connecting with our bodies since the moment we were born. “Don't cry; be still; be quiet; have an ipad/phone; just take this pill; have a glass of wine.” We’ve forgotten how to really feel our feelings and let our emotions move through us. We’ve forgotten how to alchemize our emotions, turning discomfort into growth. We’ve lost touch with where our emotions live in the body - much less where our pleasures lie!
We live in our heads rather than in our bodies. Vigilantly planning, organizing and tracking. But our bodies keep the score! Our bodies hold our wounds and grief and disappointment. Our bodies wear it in our tight hips and jaws. In our sore backs and shoulders. And in the lines on our faces. Our bodies are begging to dance with abandon, like the little girl in the tutu that lives buried deep under our adult conditioning.
And you know that pull to dance with complete abandon? That’s our eros, our vital life force, crying out; buried deep within. We’ve been programmed to choose to denounce our eros or be labeled a whore. This is the Madonna/Whore split created in our adolescence. Choose one: “good girl” or “bad girl”. Each one judging the other - while secretly wishing to be them. We’ve forgotten we contain both simultaneously. (Actually, we contain multitudes!) You can’t be a “good girl” if you look/dress/act like that! This conditioning causes shame around our feminine desires and embodiment.
So, what can we do?!
How to Reclaim: Tools to tap into our Feminine Superpowers
To heal these wounds, we have to take a holistic approach. Head, heart and hands. Employing both our inner masculine and feminine. Mind, body and soul.
First, we need to learn to mature our inner masculine. This lays the foundation for our feminine reclamation. We must become our own “good father.” A good father holds boundaries with love. We can do this by creating containers for ourselves and by employing discipline around our self-care practices.
What does this look like? Creating and holding boundaries around non-negotiable time for self-care. We must create more alignment with our time and priorities by literally scheduling on the calendar time for taking care of our bodies, health & wellness, beauty, fun, pleasure, relaxation - whatever will fill us up until our cups runneth over! And, then, we must act as our own guardians of this time.
Ask your husband to watch the kids for one hour each evening (hell, go for two!), lock the door, hang a “do not disturb” sign on the door knob and luxuriate in WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT! Hot bath, painted nails and blow dried hair? Yoga and meditation? Whatever fills your cup! Just make it a non-negotiable.
Second, we need to get out of victim consciousness. By maturing our inner masculine traits, we are sourcing our own inner strength from within. Understanding and harnessing this inner power allows us to free ourselves from the chains of victimhood mentality. This is true empowerment! The feminist revolution was all about taking power away from men. But, feminine reclamation is about owning our shit and taking responsibility for making our own lives better.
Creating boundaries around time for your own self care is a great first step. Now, look at the other things in your life that you can radically take responsibility* for and own them. Your feelings? You own them and are the only person who can change them. Your happiness? It's up to you to find!
*This does not mean “carry the weight of responsibility” in a martyred way.
Once we’ve laid this foundation, we can begin to tap into our eros - one of our feminine superpowers. Eros is our creative energy. Our life-giving energy. It is the vital life force that flows through us; that which births all things. As the name implies, it is also our erotic energy. We must free this energy from the taboo and bring it out into the open to play.
Our eros is not the over-sexualized, performative eroticism that is outwardly focused. Tapping into our eros is about tapping into our own pleasure. What it is that we desire and what feels wonderful for us. What makes us come alive with energy and passion. What we are energetically aligned with.
My gauge for this is my FUCK YES! feeling. It's time to get quiet and get real with yourself. What in your life is a TOTAL NO that you are still doing or putting up with? Hate doing dishes? Maybe it's time to ask your partner to take on that chore. What in life is a FULL YES that you are denying yourself?Belly dance classes? Watercolor painting? What do you really want to birth (besides children)? Make a list of your no’s and yeses. Your pleasure matters. Your pleasure is a superpower!
Our next superpower is alchemizing our emotions. To do this we need to remember to feel all of our feelings. We need to allow our emotions to exist and to honor them. Feelings need to be witnessed, sometimes just by ourselves and sometimes in communion with others. This creates emotional alchemy; the ability to transform discomfort and pain into growth and change.
No more repressing our feelings! No more glossing over things and just saying it's okay, I'm fine. By witnessing and accepting our emotions, we can transmute them. This doesn’t mean over-indulging in emotionalism. This is about taking responsibility for the emotions we are feeling rather than blaming outside sources.
The next time uncomfortable feelings arise, take 30-60 seconds of quiet to really feel your feelings. See how they change and move through you. For more on this, see my article about Feeling Your Feelings.
Another feminine superpower is embodiment. It’s time to get out of our heads and back into our bodies. Sensual movement is a key tenement of femininity. Our bodies not only want to be cared for and adored, they want to allow our emotions, desires, dreams and hurts to move through them. And if we are not allowing things to move through us, they are likely being stored as pain in our bodies. (Many women feel huge releases of emotion when they begin movement practices.)
So many of us are carrying stuck energy and traumas in our bodies. Your tight hips might be sexual repression. That tension in your shoulder might be from shouldering all the weight of responsibility. Tap into what your body wants and then intuitively give her what she wants! Belly dance, twerk, do yoga, writhe around on the floor like a toddler having a fit if that’s what your body needs - move that stuck energy out of your body!
Embodiment is also about allowing the woman we desire to become to inhabit our bodies now. We literally manifest the future we desire by physically living it in the present!
Get clear on who you really want to be. Do you truly desire to be a badass weightlifting warrior woman? How does this version of you dress and act? How does she behave on the daily? What habits does she have that allow her to be that badass? Now start dressing, behaving and being that future version of yourself every day. One day soon you’ll wake up and realize you can bench press your 10 year old.
Community is also a superpower. We need to develop positive all-women's spaces and true communion with other women. It’s time we drop “commiseration culture” and develop circles where women lift each other up. It’s time to end the jealousy, envy, and the tearing down of other women. It’s time to heal the Madonna/Whore split and allow women who we once judged to open the permission field for us to find new ways to embody our own womanhood.
The next time you find yourself judging another woman, ask yourself: What is it in her I wish I could have/be? Can you allow that woman to give you a permission slip to try that characteristic on rather than judging her for it?
Now get out there and reclaim yourself, beautiful!
For a deeper dive into this subject, read Dr. Kelly Brogan's The Reclaimed Woman: Love Your Shadow, Embody Your Feminine Gifts, Experience the Specific Pleasure of Who You Are
