Feminine Power and Mom

 

As we won our race to the moon and planted our flag, our culture lost touch with her feminine power. 

Our mothers or grandmothers worshiped at the altar of Wonder Bread® and other processed foods, drank their pulp-less Tang®, and fed their babies scientifically derived formula.

 The prevailing culture defined this as the standard.

Like a giddy teenager, Mom fell head-over-heels in love with science and forgot Mother Earth beneath her feet. So enamored was she, that she threw out the baby with the bath water.

As science made incredible advances in wiping out disease, our mamas neglected their immune systems and in doing so quieted the internalized wise mother.

 Simultaneously, and throughout the ages, men have been threatened by the mystery of the feminine.

They longed for the feminine, yet didn’t understand it.

 Because of this intense conflict, some men have done destructive things out of their fear. This institutionalized fear has sent powerful messages into the culture about the danger of acknowledging and supporting the feminine.

Historically, men have burned women at the stake, denied them voting rights, the right to own property, and tried to control their bodies in various detrimental ways.

But the greater instinctual truth is that men love women. They always have.

 And what they love and want is for women to succumb to their power—the power of the masculine. Man’s desire to acquire, control and, ultimately, dominate feminine power has succeeded admirably over at least twenty-five centuries.

 

And oo ahh, witchy woman, we know it is in a man’s DNA to seek out and gain entrance into the female. It is written in their genetic code. It is the way he spreads his seed and propagates the species.

Let me break it down even further:

 That which was longed for, and held such a mystery, has yielded a significant threat to some men. To compensate for the power that women have had over men, men have tried to take back and then control that power.

Not surprisingly, the culture has perpetuated that lie by advancing the concept that the only real power is masculine.

When the feminine powers of receptivity and nurturing ally with the masculine powers of will and problem solving both energies are enhanced. In outdated ways of thinking, the gifts of intuition and problem solving have been deemed non-scientific at best—suspect or crazy at worst.

 In response, women adopted an “If you can’t beat them join them” mindset. Women learned to compete in a man’s world by buying into their value structure.

To break through glass ceilings and succeed in a man’s world, women learned to act like men. They put on suits and sought control and domination at the forefront of the power game.

They learned to roar! They adopted the male version of power as if it were, all along, their own.

And roar they did!

 

But herein lies the rub. Women have been mimicking men, acting like men, imitating them. It has in some respects been a lie, as many women, and a good number of men know.

Women have been someone other than who they are at their essence, suffocating something very precious at their core—their worth as women.

But not all was lost.

 Over time, and because of their intuitive nature, women began to awaken from their slumber, to feel the deep conflict within them that had lain dormant for so many years.

They realized something wasn’t quite right, something that could no longer be ignored.

Ironically, however, to express some of the frustration they felt, much of their woundedness was unconsciously visited upon the most vulnerable and tender of their charges— their daughters.

These daughters, who now carry the same lie, unconsciously, within themselves.

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Adapted from Katherine Fabrizio’s book Daughters Rising: Rising From the Hidden Messages of Shame, Guilt and Self Doubt Passed Down From Mother to Daughter