Honoring our inner darkness in sisterhood

I have just been back from the forest where everything seemed so deeply turned inward and the energy of the Earth were calling me to deeply listen to the subtleties of my inner world.
​ Down into the root of my complex nature.
No matter how much I know that place and its changing landscape at every season, in winter I always get an initial uncontrolled feeling of «wow! will life be fully back?». Nearly doubting for a moment that lymph will start to raise up again in few weeks.


​ I've smiled at me to see how this unconscious fear was mirroring that sense of no hope I sometimes experience in the depths of my inner darkness.
These last couple of months have been such an amazing roller-coaster of light and darkness for a lot of us.
Despite the pain, I've seen such a beauty in those deep process, (more difficult to see that beauty in my own one!) and the great humble courage to go through it.
Not an easy task though, especially when surrounded by the very unreal, fixed, glamorous, glittery image of femininity our society and culture offer us since we are in the womb of our mother.
How to hold with love this extreme vulnerable place of our deep darkness without judging it, denying it, wanting something different for it,
without shame so to allow it to disclose to us its powerful gifts ?
How to sit in that hot cauldron and let it cook us until our inner invaluable alchemy distills its unique precious gems?

In the last 12 years I've been part of a lot of women circles. Sometimes there's a sense of diffused love and complicity. A lot of laughing and incredible ancient joy emerge. Sometimes not. Sometimes a deep sense of mistrust and fear inhabitate the space we share. Judgmental unexpressed energy permeates the air. A feeling of « being the different one » start to occupy feeling, emotions and thoughts of everybody.
Sometimes it is named, sometimes it's awkwardly hidden.
​
I believe those are the moments where some of our darkness emerge not only individually but also collectively and mirror how patriarchy has been playing with us since immemorial time. Something bigger than us is playing through and beyond us.
I feel those are beyond the most precious opportunities to grow in the consciousness of how important is to face that darkness together. To deeply realize how strongly the inner patriarchal voice is speaking within us and to bow to the amazing potential of transformation contained at his core if we dare to stare into his eyes. 
Beyond the aggressiveness  of his words, his voice is unveiling the amazing potential creative power abiding us
and of which he is  terrified.  

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​​How to do handle with tenderness those painful places with other women looking at us, without feeling less, without comparison, without feeling judged or in danger? Without wanting to hide or to escape or to show up differently of how we really feel?
​How to transform that feeling of being stared at, into a place of conscious resonance and deep listening?
​
​I believe this is not just an individual process but a collective one.

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It would be naive to think that women's circles are a patriarchy-free zone.. how could this be possible?
Patriarchy is in our cells, deep inside of our genes.
It's written in the way we look at each other as women.
In the way we judge each other.
In the way we don't support each other.
In the way we are jealous of each other. In the way we compare with each other.
In the way the younger do not support the older because she's old and the depth of her wisdom doesn't match the fast pace patriarchy is suggesting her to run.
And in the way the older don't support the younger because she's too young and beautiful and might succeed where patriarchal beliefs made her fail (what failing and succeeding mean in Patriarchy is part of the story).

​But I believe deeply that
​together we can weave a different story.

​The more I am working with women, the more I'm realizing how much resistance is still very present in many people  (women and men) and environments, (including the yoga and more in general the "so called" spiritual world) to think about spaces "just for women". In these last years I've heard often sarcastic comments on my work and my interests. 
I've been censured to speak about so called "women topics" in mixed context because "I was excluding men".
I've heard a lot reflections about the fact that women spaces create exclusion. Separation.  And that in doing that we forget that at the level of the soul there's no gender. And we are still playing the war of sex.
I am very touched by those kind of statements which sounds to me an additional way of the patriarchy to turn things upside down and prevent any question to crackle his polished surface..
I do like to believe that at the level of the soul there's no gender. But this is just my belief. Genderless soul, in the sense that the Feminine and the Masculine have met each other fully acknowledging the vibrant reality of the other. Not denying the two forces within, but fully embracing their unique vibration to become One.
In the sense of the Androgyny of the Origins.  
But on the incarnation level, here, down on Earth, can we really transcend those forces without questioning, reconnecting and soaking the unique way they play within us (no matter if we define ourselves as men, women or transgender. I don't believe there's one way or a right way.. the dance is unique for each one of us and this is what our culture deny)? 

As an incarnated woman, what it feels clear to me, is that
it is so hard to really understand what it means to fully embody womanhood today.
Especially once we realize how the concepts of Feminine and Masculine we refer to, are strongly rooted in the patriarchal culture. When we realize that the conscious and unconscious ideas we have around
the concept of womanhood dwell into the patriarchal cradle

​What it feels clear to me is that we need to co-create spaces where we feel SAFE
to start to unpack our vulnerability with no shame.

​Our deep darkness with no shame.
To share the deep wounds that mark our individual and collective women's bodies (physically, emotionally, mentally and even spiritually).
To celebrate the hidden dignity of our joy of being who we are as women,
beyond what is considered acceptable, decent, proper or virtuous.
To get closer and closer to those space of untamed wilderness we still fear
of the Deep Feminine inside of us.

This is why I think it's so important to come together in women's circles. 
To unravel the fake story we have been told about the Feminine and the Masculine inside of us. 
The fake stories of youth and old ages. 
Of menarche, menstruating, motherhood, menopause. 
The fake story abour our desire. 
To realize how we fear our own power and authority. 
To realize how we don't trust ourselves and each other because we don't trust the Feminine inside of us. 
To realize how we fear it,
​ as patriarchy has surreptitiously taught us in so many ways.



To remember that the sacred bond of sisterhood is a medicine,
no matter how challenging it might be, that can heal all that. 

We come in circle to be able to tell to each other the stories we wouldn't be able to say about ourselves in front of men. 
To realize how many of our fears, anger and pain can't even be shared with an open heart in front of sisters. 
To be able to use words with less censure (and maybe hopefully no censure at all!) about our beautiful unrespected bodies. 
To name our blood loudly. 
To reclaim fully our sexuality. Our pleasure. Our erotic being.
To share the more or less subtle aggression we have suffered in this very incarnated dimension as women. 
To realize our disconnection to our bodies that patriarchy has transformed in exterior container at his own taste. 
To remember each other how to celebrate our untouchable integrity beyond what might have happened to us.
NO wrinkles. NO fat. NO hair. NO real smell of our cyclical nature. NO blood. NO cellulitis.
How many NO, sticking insidiously on our real bodies ?
On our intuition and instinct. On our real voices. On our way to freely imagine ourselves. 
On our deep nature and her own unique rhythmical pace of apprehending the world.
A pace that doesn't match the linear understanding of time and life we are all immersed in.
That has betrayed the ancient knowledge where life-death and regeneration are One. 

The more I've been working with women in the yoga/ spiritual/self-development world, the more I feel the deep need to find ways to touch different kind of people, different environment, and to find a way to bring these topics to men.
And to whom don't recognize themselves as part of any gender.

I believe there's no exclusion in women circles.
But a loud voice reclaiming the nonnegotiable need to create safe places to remember our real essence.

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