Reuniting with the Feminine, the Work we have to Do

(In breaking with our mothers, we break with our femininity)

"There are countless women of the sixties and seventies who so deeply resented the patriarchy which had destroyed their femininity and that of their mothers that they lashed out against that patriarchy, but in doing so they identified with the masculine side of their own psyches. In some cases they turned into the very thing they most feared -- the witch side of their mothers, or in Jungian terms, the negative animus.

…the natural feminine way to feminine maturity is through the body. This is essentially what the ancient initiation rites were about. The rites grounded the girl in her own body which was then recognized as part of the feminine cosmos – a vehicle for fertility the container which made her one with the Goddess, through whom life moved eternally.

In our society, however, we have no rites and there are few older women who can initiate us into our own femininity. Most of us, men and women, are unconsciously identified with the masculine principal (the conscious value system of our mothers) with little or no consciousness of our own feminine instincts. So we flounder.

…In such situations, the genuine masculine principle is not present. ...Where the masculine and feminine are undifferentiated, the act of union is merely an identification...She may believe she is an androgyne, an independent woman, but in fact she has given up on ever being a woman and unconsciously decided to be nothing instead. …[She is] polarized against her mother and ultimately against herself and her own feminine nature; plus against her man whom she has made into her mother. Such a woman may end up in despairing conflict or in conflict which manifests as disease, or she may go on driving through life on her phallic broomstick hating or fearing every man she meets.

To be fully differentiated in the full feminine, in relation to the mature masculine: we need to make that rite of passage. We have to pay in blood. Every rite of passage involves a death and a rebirth. The price is the sacrifice. Part of that sacrifice is giving up of old securities and illusion. ...The masculine principle (in men and women) is not a healthy ego strength but ruthless will power….giving up that driven-ness is part of our blood sacrifice. And it begins to feel like giving up life itself when an individual has lived life in a frenzied round of goal-oriented activity, leaving no room for loving. As Jung says, 'Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and there the will to power is paramount, love is lacking.'

… instead of being terrorized by her aloneness and her feelings of abandonment and rejection, she can use this time to work on herself. One of the things she will surely face is her own inner killer – the overdeveloped masculine in herself that kills her femininity (and put a bullet through the heart of her King Kong animus) [in dreams].
…
First I believe that femininity is taking responsibility for our bodies, so that the body becomes the tangible expression of the spirit within. For those of us who have lived life in the head, this is a long, difficult and agonizing process, because in attempting to relese our muscles, we also release the pent-up fear and rage and grief that has been buried there, probably since or before birth. …it acts at first like a wild neurotic creature that hasn’t known love. But gradually it becomes our friend, and because it understand the instincts better than we, it comes our guide to a natural, spiritual way of life.
…
Secondly, femininity is taking responsibility for who I am – not what I do, now how I seem to be, not what I accomplish. When all the doing is done and I have to face myself in my naked reality, who am ? what are my values, needs? Am I true to myself or do I betray myself? What are my feelings?

Working on these questions day after day is what I call differentiating the feminine.”

from Addiction to Perfection, Marion Woodman, chapter, The Myth of Ms.


If you don't mind the Jungian jargon, I highly recommend this book, published in 1982 by Inner City books, Toronto.

While is is on the surface a study of her analysands with eating disorders, at the base of it is the identification with the negative animus or unhealthy masculine priniciple, and our disconnection with our female bodies.

have a great Sunday,
Jenn

Menopause as a rebirth

Why am I writing about birth on my menopause blog? because once you've been down into the deep shadows, and spun your chrysalis/cocoon, and hibernated for a while, the ascent is like a new birth, a second life. And this involves a 'labour' phase.

There is not one day, or one moment that will demarcate the arrival but you feel the fragility of new wings, gossamer things, shiny in the sun. You feel the old self peeling away, the old attitudes, the old passions dying and the new ones being born.

If you are still in the 'bug soup' phase, where your will is hiding somewhere down around your ankles like pants without a belt, look up, and know that in the darkness wing buds have sprouted. A new you is on the way.

Your energy will return, you will be flying back into the light. Have patience.

A friend writes that her partner is in the 'throes' of miserable sleepless nights and overwhelmed with everything stressful (may I suggest homeopathy? it helps). I know it's a hard phase to go through, but it's just the labour pains. It's all about travelling into the labyrinth of the birth tunnel, and soon you will be up and out the other side.

It is a rite of passage. It is difficult. But it is worth hanging in there. Get the medical help you need, whether it be acupuncture or herbs or hormones. Read up, get knowledgeable, talk with other 'elders' who have been there.

Note that this is an important time, just like menarche and pregnancy/birth: it is a major phase of your initiation into your Self. It has been ignored, and women have been kept in the dark about it's momentous changes and the growth it brings. It is worthy of ritual.

The menstrual cycle in women is our stress barometer, according to Alexander Pope, a woman who writes wonderfully about this in The Wild Genie, and A woman's quest. So it is perfectly normal that during menopause, we start to notice what stresses us even more. We are finely tuned beings, built for ecstacy, joy, serenity and enjoyment. We cannot tolerate being out of balance anymore. Our bodies and our psyches seek balance.

Heed the messages for rest, and more rest. Slowing down is imperative. Don't wait for a major illness or accident to do it for you.

In the middle of transition during childbirth, it is not time to get up and run around, or pretend you don't know what is going on. Stay focused on the new woman being born. Stay with your center, with your new self arriving, stay in the present as much as possible.

God's little birthing machine is turning herself inside out and being reborn.

Maybe that's what Christmas is heralding this year, your own Hallelujah moment!

trust your inner tuning,
be well,
jenn

Descent into Menopause

previously posted at musemother on Tuesday, September 11, 2007

For any of you interested in a Jungian approach to menopause, I recommend reading Descent to the Goddess, A way of Initiation for Women, by Sylvia Brinton Perera. She analyzes the myth of Inanna, (before Ishtar, middle-eastern) in psychological terms, and describes it as a story of modern woman's quest for wholeness.

Perera's theory is that we who are 'daughters of the father', well adapted to a masculine world, have repudiated or repressed our full feminine instincts and energies. And that in this 'stripping down' or descent to the underworld, we find healing.

The story of Inanna is a fascinating on its own, as it is the oldest written myth (on clay tablets) of a feminine divine power, known as Queen of Heaven and Earth in ancient Sumer (5,000 years ago.) I read this book through the worst year of my peri-menopausal descent, which I described to myself as the 'bug soup' stage, when the feeling of melt-down, loss of power and energy, mild depression, weeping, and general upside-downness, took over.

Here is a short excerpt from the book: "The basis of women's experience of childbearing and of all blood mysteries that create and maintain life is that Nothing changes or grows without the food of some other sacrifice. ....the myth of Inanna's descent and return is centered on this archetype of exchanging energy though sacrifice. ...She needs to sacrifice her dependence on the patriarchal gods to find her true home in the feminine ground of being.

"What I have seen in myself and other women who are successful daughters of the collective, often unmothered daughters of the animus and the patriarchy, is that we suffer a basic fault. We do not have an adequate sense of our own ground nor connection to our own embodied strength and needs adequate to provide is with a resilient feminine, balanced yin-yang processual ego....there is a deep split, maintained by loyalty to super-ego ideals that no longer function to enhance life, a loyalty that keeps the ego alienated from reality....thus we need to undergo a descent to the underworld levels of the dark goddess (Erishkigal), back to ourselves before we had the form we know, back to the magic and archaic levels of consciousness ...back to the body-mind and the preverbal tomb-womb states, searching back to the deep feminine, the 'dual mother' Jung writes about.

On the way down we shed the identifications with and the defences against the animus, introverting to initially humiliating and devastating but ultimately safe, primal levels. (awaiting rebirth). ...We feel as if the old meanings are loosened, as if we are suspended out of life, without energy.

What helps: "Creative improvisions, touching, holding, sounding and singing, silence, breathing, nonverbal actions like drawing, sandplay, building with clay or blocks, dancing, ... maternally nurturant and companioning behavior....the descent to the earth, the darkness is the yin way. Like Inanna, we must submit, going into the deep, to allow the transformative mystery to take place."

I know, this is heavy stuff, and written in Jungian jargon. However, read between the lines. Some of us have some deep healing to do, some of us can benefit from therapy, and some of us just need to loosen up and play more. Less book knowledge and more body knowledge. Less ego ideals and more feeling ideals. Less 'overarching boss of everything' mode, and more 'tend and befriend' mode.

This is just a hint of what the transformative process is like. It's not everybody's journey, but enough of the women I know have been through burn-out, depression, divorce and major health challenges in their mid-40's, for me to recognize the truth of this part of the journey. For me, it started just before my father died, and it's taken me from age 47 to 52 (about 5 years), to come up for air. But now, I feel the cocoon splitting open, and my damp wings are scintillating in the sun. My energy has returned, and I feel closer to the Queen of Heaven, than to the Queen of the Underworld.

have a compassionate self-care day
musemother

Feminine Mysteries and Menopause

Long ago and far away, women knew their place in the universe. In a far off mythical land (that may actually have existed), women knew that their bodies were part of the creative plan for the universe. Young women were initiated into the 'mysteries' of creative spirit through various religious ceremonies.

Rituals centered around the cycles of women's blood, when they were fertile, when they were not, when they were in phase with the moon; the success of planting and agricultural crops all depended on this relation that women had with the moon.

Menopause is the third of the three initiatory phases for women. The first being menarche, the second pregnancy and birth. In menopause, something sacred and mysterious also happens. The women stop being fertile, they stop menstruating, they hold their blood inside them.

Scientists may see menopause solely as a bodily function, but menopause also has a spiritual and psychological function. It is a journey of moving inward. The problem is that “most women have …forgotten that such a place exists", according to Kristi Meisenbach Boylan in her book The Seven Sacred Rites of Menopause (Santa Monica Press, 2000).

"For the past quarter of a century they’ve practiced self-denial, self-control and self-discipline to the point of having very little self at all.” Their inner lives may have atrophied as they worked hard, raised families, and done volunteer work, running themselves into the ground with being too busy to take care of themselves.

“Once she has given all that she has to give, the outward will convince her to give more, even if it means giving up breathing. That is why women break down around the time of menopause, not just physically, but emotionally and mentally.”

She says there are many stages of peri-menopause, and they are all about getting to know yourself from the inside, and learning how to draw boundaries so that your energy is not sucked dry. “Once a woman masters the ritual of holding the blood within, she intuitively knows when to release her spirit and gifts to the world and when not to. She learns this from the wise-woman who she is now one with.”

The cessation of menses is a liberating time, but also a time for grieving. Maternal instincts may unexpectedly surface, the biological clock has ticked away. This is a necessary loss that must be grieved. However, the good news is, she becomes electrically charged by holding this blood within. New ideas, new projects pop into her head left and right. Depression lifts, anxiety passes, she is sharper mentally, physically and spiritually than ever before.

“It’s as if they suddenly wake up and remember that they left something simmering on the back burner. This is when the menopausal moth emerges from the chrysalis as a butterfly.” (but in my experience, what comes before is the bug soup period, the messy meltdown: fuzzy thinking, hot flashes and insomnia, lack of focus, lack of confidence, feeling like jello).

Now, in her butterfly phase, she learns to speak it like it is. An older woman can tell it like it is until it hurts. And she develops an intolerance for injustice. She sees the truth, and gets her power back. She learns the ability to say NO and mean it.I think you will enjoy this book, which uses the myth of Avalon as a metaphor for the withdrawal into inner realms.namaste,musemother

book link: http://www.ipgbook.com/showbook.cfm?bookid=1891661132&userid=3E92D4DA-803F-2B7A-7005BFB6C66E0F2C

link to the Independent Publishers Group page for The Seven Sacred Rites of Menopause