When do we become women? Who shows us the journey? I found I have stumbled and fell into so many parts of being a mother and a woman and even now at thirty-six years old I find I have days where I still feel like a girl.
I started to ponder recently when is it that we become a woman. I remember at intermediate (middle school) watching a video on good old VHS about periods and one of the girls on the video said "I'm a woman now" in relation to her period starting. That moment stuck with me. Was that the defining moment of becoming a woman? It did not feel that way for me.
I met my husband when we were both twenty-one and we married at twenty-four. I became a wife and that did not make me feel any more like a woman. We had our first child at twenty-six and I birthed the mother within me yet still that was not it. I still did not feel like a woman. I still felt like an older girl.
When I look back over my life so far, I can see why the pieces were missing. I did not feel like a woman because I was stuck too much in my masculine energy. The masculine is the energy of constantly doing. Achieving, competing, providing, winning. I was good at that. The only times I really stopped doing was if I was sick or sleeping.
It is ironic that as I write this blog today, I am at home unwell. I had to take the day off work and move events and clients around to allow myself the time to recover. Up came all the old beliefs and stories about rest and stopping. What will people think? Will they think I am being lazy, unreliable and flaky? Will they not come back?
This resistance coming through is my masculine energy. My desire to provide for my family and to keep doing. Creating results and supporting others. It is interesting as I thought I had grown past this only to have another layer provided to remind me to make it a daily practice of slowing and moving.
Today I shed the badge of honour I have carried about how people can always rely on me. That I am super organised and always stay with plans. That I always show up. To be human is to be both sides of those beliefs. To allow the universe to also guide me with divine timing. To trust the unfolding of how it is all happening for me not to me. To trust if it is not today then the day it does align will be magnificent.
This is womanhood. Listening deeply. Surrendering to the needs of my body. Not forcing but flowing with. I know soul modes gifted me so much of this and with every soul cycle I get the chance to go deeper within to heal more of myself and in turn share to help others to do the same. Today I am in a fully-fledged bear mode which is one of the four soul modes. It is when our body desires to slow and move with the rhythm of life. It is also often when we feel the exhaustion of our labours if we have pushed through and not taken the time to have replenishment. A bunker down of energy and a need to slow and do the deep internal recovery and restorative work.
Soul modes gave me full permission to tune into my needs on a soulful level and to flow as a woman. You can find out more about soul modes in my blog or check out my videos on my feel it to heal it Facebook page.
I am off to have a day of rest. A hot magnesium salt bath, candles, books, hot teas and soups. This is a delight for my bear mode!
xx
Julia.