This was me, 10 years ago, in my great big director job, managing the creative direction of over a million images a year, accountable to continuous process and creative innovation and increasing output quotas, leading creative teams struggling with the decreased creativity and increased production demands due to budget realities, firing off morning emails with my coat still on and before my butt hit my chair in an industry experiencing massive disruption and rapid change.
At home, I was a wife, a mom to a teen, the main breadwinner for the family with a career that had once been my joy, but now had me crying into a glass of wine every Friday night.
I could not get out of my director mode, organizing and bossing everyone at home. I was criticized my partner, from whom I desperately needed more masculine support, causing him to pull even farther away from me. I was hard on myself, and constantly worried that I wasn't doing enough. I never believed that I was enough. I lived with almost constant tension and anxiety of survival mode at work and home.
I don’t think I fully exhaled for years.
I had a recurring dream of living in a beautiful, grand home with lots of room for guests and parties. But there was always with a secret stairway that lead to a huge attic, where rain water poured through holes in the roof, rotting the support structures, with hundreds of scampering rats chewing away at the decay. I would wake up in an anxious panic, knowing that I could not hold it all up by myself.
I was invited to attend a workshop by a life coach friend. She handed me a worksheet with questions evaluating my satisfaction. I glanced at it, winced, and slid the paper across the table and back to her. “If I answer these,” I whispered, “everything comes crashing down.” My ground felt shakey- despite a beautiful home, a husband and a well-paying job. I didn’t completely understand why.
I had all the things, right? So why did I feel so at risk?
Now I know why- I was operating from forceful masculine energy all day long. My inner masculine is a bully: Criticizing me and never satisfied, doubting my abilities and worth, demanding that I try harder, pushing way past my health and comfort, dismissing my feelings, ignoring my needs and disconnecting from my body.
My inner-masculine bully had me in a constant hustle to survive.
We all have an animus- a masculine energy within. Many women only really know a toxic version of the masculine- the kind that is rooted in fear, scarcity and the need to control. The kind that is, unfortunately, easy to find in the world. And when her own masculine energy embodies this toxic character, she will over-function to survive, constantly push herself to do more, deny her needs, dismiss her desires, ignore her discomfort, neglect the care of her body and nourishment of her soul.
She will create a relationship with the masculine in the world and with her man using this toxic template for relationship with masculine energy that does not provide for her.
She will live in a environment and a relationship where she doesn't expect her needs to be met and her desires to be honored. She will believe that she has to do it all on her own without help.
She will live in a world that doesn't FEEL her and, therefore, will not provide support for her.
The feminine within must be felt to thrive. She must feel herself and she must be felt by the masculine. When her inner-masculine feels her, honors her, erects boundaries that protect her from the toxic masculine within and without, and creates a life for her where she will thrive, she will accept nothing less from the world or a man.
Once I saw how I saw I was creating a life with my toxic template of the masculine, I started to heal my feminine by creating a new relationship with the masculine- starting with the masculine within me. I started to re-vision my inner-masculine, evolving it from my bully into my champion. A champion that would create a life in which my natural creative feminine energy could feel supported, honored and protected. An environment in which I could relax, flow, thrive and creative what I love to create.
I have been journeying towards healing my wounds for my entire adult life. Recreating my relationship with the masculine, starting with my masculine within, is, and continues to be, the most healing, inspiring empowering and life-giving journey of my life.
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