I’ve begun to notice, primarily in myself, that there is a massive amount of resistance inside of me to the idea of feeling weak. I believe part of this is because I’ve always fallen into the “strong female”, “ass kicking” stereotype, not divorced from my emotions but experiencing them, as they relate to men, in a very balanced and detached way. However, despite this, there have been times in my life, when I have genuinely felt on the back foot with men, and by the back foot I mean dependent. Despite my best attempts I have found myself relying on people in a way that I never thought I would. This is not the loving, balanced, reliability of sharing your emotions but the neediness I’ve always looked down on in other women and sought to distance myself from.

However, part of this journey is allowing myself to feel negative emotions as they arise within me. I found this surprisingly easy when it comes to heavy weighty emotions that I can tie to instances from my past and surprisingly difficult when it comes to letting another see that I am not the golden one at all times. I had tied my idea of success and strength in relationships to the lack of a “need” for a man and yet was perfectly comfortable letting myself need other things in my life, even when it made me weak.

What I’ve come to realise is that the ability to accept this neediness comes from a place of strength inside of you and when you deny that experience you are essentially denying your own strength. You are equating yourself with your emotions and you are refusing to trust in the base line solidity to carry you through. I notice this a lot in other people, that this backlash of an idea has arisen as women have gotten more independent, that we now need to be “strong” and any admittance of vulnerability is a mortal sin. However, like men, we are human and we have emotions. Women have typically been comfortable in this domain but have maybe divorced themselves from it in the last number of years. However, it is not necessary that this should be problematic. Rather than irrationality it is an availability to the deeper realms of life and it is only through the full embrace of femininity that we can realise our true power. As long as we are denying our feelings and making them evil we are victims and we will experience life through a victim identity and experience the consequent fear. Of course it is true that men are often dangerous and volatile but I would argue that this is so because they are cut off from their true nature, which is neither of those things. Through the redeeming power of the feminine, man can be returned to his original state of oneness and non-division. But in order for a woman to hold space for a man, she first has to have been able to give herself that sense of self compassion and forgiveness.

Rule Number One: Put your own oxygen mask on first.

Then kick ass.