In a recent email, a man signed off “take good care of yourself.”
I reflected on his words. I was raised by an aggressively feminist single mother who hung an imposing Rosie the Riveter plaque on the wall as I grew up, depicting a wartime-era woman flexing her bicep with the slogan “We can do it” emblazoned across - signifying how women needed to step into the masculine role of factory work during WWII.
I emotionally and financially supported my precarious family unit from mid-teens, moving out at 17 to be fully autonomous, independent and estranged. I’ve managed on my own since then, through a plethora of countries, universities, successes and hardships.
What a triumph, people have said. But the deepest layer isn't often seen.
I sat on the beach a few days ago and watched as a woman asked her husband to rub sunscreen on her back. He did so with care and love. This morning as I awkwardly tried spraying sunscreen on my own back, for a strange, brief moment, I voiced in my head “Can you help me with the sunscreen?” to an invisible partner. It was one of those simple moments which puts my life into perspective.
I lug my own heavy bags and belongings until my lower back aches, I am the only one to protect myself when crossing dangerous roads in foreign countries so my shoulders are normally held in tension as if wearing armour. If anything in my world needs to be done, I figure out how to do it. The life I was raised with and have now cultivated has made me resilient, and I have funny little practical habits like always carrying a tiny measuring tape and safety pins in my bag.
But you know what? I would love it if I could simply take a big breath, melting into the knowingness that there is someone else I could trust to carry some of the load, easing my tension. Someone I could turn to for advice, and to open that jar for me instead of sitting on the floor for 15 minutes using all my might to pry it open myself. Someone who I could fully trust to guide us in the right direction when we’re trying to catch a flight, and someone to be my anchor when I’m feeling lost or upset.
The most amazing I’ve ever felt was when I was able to completely and unapologetically surrender to my feminine nature. Especially with a man. Animating my own masculine, as so many women do these days since we stepped into a masculine energy during the “feminist” empowerment movement, is actually totally false. It’s all just defensive, protection mechanisms ingrained in us from not having a healthy feminine mother or having an unhealthy or absent father. Or perhaps simply the current societal conditioning. I saw this grossly exaggerated in Australia, with women proudly acting like men - not even in a healthy masculine way but in a shadow masculine way where they became harsh, abrasive and lacking any essence of their most integral feminine nature. I hold Aussie citizenship so am legally able to comment on this 😉 I’ve seen this in all countries I’ve lived in to varying degrees.
It’s trendy to say “I can do it all myself, I’m a strong woman, I don’t need a man and in fact, men are pretty useless.” My mother exemplified and vociferated this, and the world is scarily going this way. No, we don’t NEED a man to live. But it’s healthy and normal to WANT to feel safe in your feminine essence as a woman and perhaps - if it’s meant to be - allow space for a man to step in and be the steady, strong and protective complement. It’s called Polarity.
I’ve spent years cultivating a new mindset around polarity. Polarity is the beauty of men in their healthy masculine protecting women, and in turn women in their healthy feminine nurturing men. I’ve experienced this in my own life with men I dated, when I melted into my feminine. God, it felt good!! And in turn, the men stepped up and felt better than they’d ever felt as they’d never experienced a woman receiving their masculine energy before - without defensiveness, competition or “I can do it myself!” reaction. It felt like Union in the way it was meant to be.
Lots of women reading this at this point will say: “But there aren’t any good men left who are in their healthy masculine!” I won’t disagree. Generations of shadow conditioning, parenting our boys often without healthily masculine father figures, and mothers entirely separated from their own feminine essence or who over-coddle without teaching them the value of earning, working hard or helping out with chores around the house to cultivate their sense of manhood — all create adult men who don’t feel seen, respected or safe to embrace their masculinity.
However, most men have the latent ability to step into their masculine if the woman in their life opens space for them to do so. Otherwise, when a woman animates her own masculine energy out of distrust of he partner’s masculine energy, he has no space to express his masculine side. He is squashed. We have a generation of squashed men who lack purpose, direction and the desire to step up as a man because of this unhealthy dynamic. This is why it’s so important for women to remember it actually feels good for men to step up into their manhood!
I remember when I lived in Sydney, I asked an older man I dated if he could please pick me up from my house for our date. He commented how a woman had never requested he do this before (even through 20 years of marriage!) as Aussie women are aggressively “DIY,” typically offended if a guy suggests something like this which would make them feel “weak.” He said he absolutely loved that I asked and was pleasantly surprised at how amazing it felt to be asked. For every date thereafter, he insisted on picking me up because he loved being my knight in shining armour.
In their deepest core, all men want to be our knight. We just have to open space for them to do so through surrendering and letting down our own masculine armour. It takes the deepest kind of courage to do this, when so many of us women have been let down and taught not to trust the masculine. It feels foreign and uneasy at first. But then when you make it a habit to allow yourself to fold into feminine surrender, it’s the most beautiful thing you could ever experience as a woman. And, the amazing way polarity works is that by default, healthy, protective, strong, masculine men will gravitate towards you as you exist in the polarity of your beautiful, natural, unguarded, healthy feminine energy.
Comments