This is the sixth in the series, WomanKind, on reclaiming the feminine.
Does the question, “What is your relationship with feminine power?” make you feel uncomfortable, ambivalent, angry, excited? When feminine + power exists in the same sentence, I’ve had to look at all the ways I’ve personally set down my power, consciously and unconsciously and how cultural conditioning has reinforced and sought to disempower women.
As I’m journeying deep into the feminine for the first time in menopause, power means total self acceptance; tuned in to my intuition, my deepest knowing. When I accept myself, I can easily accept the other without judgement. To be fully present for myself and the other IS power; an act of love and a lifetimes work.
A Native American quote joins the womb and heart to this self-knowing power, “At menarche a woman meets her power. In her cycling years she practices her power. At menopause she becomes her power.”
When we meet woman who rest easily in the awareness of their menstrual cycle or moon-time if they are menopausal, it’s infectious, contagious and calls us to remember and bring in all the times we set down our power from menarche to menopause. We can’t give power away, no one can take it from us, we can just remember the times we set it down and call it back home.
As a woman you are coded for power, and the journey to realizing the fullness and beauty of that power lies in the rhythm and change of your menstrual cycle…a consciousness that dignifies women and holds all life sacred. (1)
How we inhabit power comes from a deeper understanding of how we express a healthy balance of masculine and feminine qualities. In the book Wild Power: Discover the Magic of Your Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power by Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, feminine power of the menstrual cycle can be understood through the two Vias; Via Negativa and the Via Positiva.
The Via Negativa is the out breath, descent into emptiness, the void, the liminal space where we are asked to just be with whatever arises. It is the dark, feminine, non-doing of the premenstrum, and menstruation – or if non cycling, the dark moon where we meet the “power of encounter”(2). She is a force and source of creation; she can be our undoing or our salvation.
The Via Positiva is the in breath, the ascent into fullness, the light, the bright “masculine power of agency”(3). It’s where we get SH*IT done using all that we have encountered with the dark goddess in the Negativa.. The world loves us as we skyrocket into the time around ovulation or full moon and glow in all our beauty and talents.. When the Via Positiva and the Via Negativa are in harmony we can experience union of the true feminine and masculine that exist in all of us – the pure consciousness of unconditional love. Oooooh la la
As the product of second wave feminism, my generation of privileged middle class women growing up in Australia in the 80’s and 90’s seemed to exist solely in Via Positiva. We felt we had to run at the same pace as men, be productive 24/7 amplifying many of the conditioned distortions you see in the charts above. Busyness, exhaustion and burnout came with the territory. It was seen as a status symbol.
The Via Negativa was hidden behind a masculine mask and never acknowledged by me…until now. In the disharmony between the two Vias, the body keeps the score: hormone imbalance, irregular menstrual cycle, mood and digestive problems, nutritional depletion, medicalisation and disconnection from our own menstrual cycle power. Never is this distortion more apparent than in the amplified symptoms of peri/menopause.
When we celebrate both our masculine and feminine qualities – softer, sensual, switched on – we plug into 2 phase power and in the process reclaim our wholeness. Power naturally flows through us as a primal, wild, beautiful and instinctual force.
I’ve put this chart in my office to keep reminding me of what a regenerative planet could look like; healthy, fulfilling partnerships, leadership, and societies. My desire is to model for my daughters and other women, equanimity in masculine and feminine, to carry the flame and help other women do the same.
Notes:
1. The charts are take from the book Slow Sex, Inner Traditions Bear and Company, Rochester, 2011 by Diana Richardson shared with me by the lovely Leah Alexander of The Rose Temple.
2. The Vias originate from Greek philosophy and within the context of the menstrual cycle are original to Red School.
References
1. Alexandra Pope, Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, Wild Power: Discover the Magic of Your Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power: 2017, London, Hay House, p xv
2. Alexandra Pope, Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, Wild Power: Discover the Magic of Your Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power: 2017, London, Hay House, p32.
3. Alexandra Pope, Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer, Wild Power: Discover the Magic of Your Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power: 2017, London, Hay House, p32