Shadow slayers out!
‘The global rising tide of the feminine energy is the gaining strength of women’s voices, not only in the economic space but in the breaking of silence.’
Hello, nice to meet you, please come in,” I told this perfectly elegant society woman entering my home. She closed the door behind her gently, crumpled and started sobbing uncontrollably on the floor. I rushed to lead her to my sofa to begin my “hidden work.”
My counseling sessions of more than three decades have brought me face-to-face and soul-to-soul with so many people. They find their way to me from around the world always upon the recommendation of a friend, or someone who has had their own private, confidential sessions with me. While I have male clients, too, majority of them are women. Through them, I have come up close and so personal on various topics ranging from sexuality — infertility and sex, financial crisis, extramarital affairs, marriage, life paths, miscarriages and abortions, LGBTQ relationships — to spiritual paths and past life issues.
“I am outside your door now!” A text message came in. When I opened my front door, I found a powerful woman in her most vulnerable staring at me. She stayed for a couple of days. Now, I am literally hiding someone from an arrest scenario brought on by corporate politics.
I looked up from my chart to face this successful global woman CEO who was smiling and exuding confidence when I had met her. “You must really begin to heal that abused past…” I began when her face contorted and she broke down sobbing. She then recounted how her father had raped and abused her. And we began the long healing journey of friendship.
We can all get lost in the sea of alluring images and stories of empowered women on television and on social media — women who have perfect goddess bodies, women who have choices over makeup colors and power over men in the corporate world. Women who get to choose how many children to have. Women who decide where they want to go and travel. Women who seem to have it all.
But behind almost every successful and powerful woman is a shadow slayer. Such journeys to personal power always begin from the shadows defined by doubts, fear, even abuse. They traverse through healing journeys, and the intense desire to toughen up to face the world. Then to a decision to meet oneself and show up for the work to heal, learn and begin self-actualizing. It is a decision to be the main player in her life, and stand up for her rights as a human being.
The mantra today is that the surest path to women’s empowerment is through economics. But what also has been arising in the global gender movement is the need for healing and a shift in consciousness that must happen in women’s hearts and minds. Women will only begin to look to increasing economic means when they have gone beyond their deep scars and fears, when they find in themselves the courage to break their own mindsets often molded by cultural and traditional norms. Only when a woman reclaims the deepest and truest part of her spirit can she then take a step forward.
We are at the tipping point, riding the tide of a very important change happening in this time of rising consciousness and greater emphasis on personal evolution, inclusion and collaboration. If both men and women are to truly live with gender equality, both sexes must understand the rise of the feminine energy, and not just be happy with rising statistics of strong, able women emerging in the economic and leadership spaces or cooperatives, corporate boardrooms or the political space.
The feminine is manifesting itself as the constructive and transformational force it is meant to be: awakening women to their own power, and men to the connective power of their emotions and gentleness. Men, too, must step up to fix the imbalance by harnessing the power of their hearts for more compassion and intimacy, by becoming receptive to new ideas, and being comfortable in releasing primitive control and machismo ego issues.
When we know our true value as women, we can allow our men to push forward, secure in the knowledge that we value each other’s judgments and are working as a team towards our shared goals. Empowerment is being able to stand out and be heard when needed, to say what needs to be said, to stand for what one believes in from public pulpits, boardrooms, offices, family rooms and the bedroom.
The global rising tide of the feminine energy is the gaining strength of women’s voices, not only in the economic space but in the breaking of silence. The 2017 social media phenomena called #MeToo spread virally as a stand against sexual harassment. In one woman’s stand, so many have come forward to give voice to their personal stories of harassment or assault. It is followed locally by #BabaeAko, another counteraction to the rise of misogyny led by no less than top leaders who degrade women. While it is being spun as a political movement, it is first and foremost a clear indication that the imbalance is out in the open and women, shadow slayers all, have come out to make their stand.