I never thought that one day I would be sitting down writing this post.
Never once did I think that I would be shifting my practice to working with women.
Why? You might ask.
Well, my upbringing taught me that women were not meant to be trusted. Women were “b!tc#s”. They were here to manipulate you to get what they wanted and leave you in the dust. Women were here to belittle and make you feel less if they deemed so. They were downright evil.
Now before you start shaking your head to agree, or maybe even disagree, keep reading.
Here’s the thing. Men didn’t really show up for me either. I have been abused, assaulted, ignored, and tormented by them. Just the idea of abuse and assault in there may make you think I should feel even more disconnected from men. But I didn’t, because they hurt me less than the women in my life…the hurt, emotional and mental abuse, the manipulation that I endured for decades was far worse than the “short bouts” I experienced with men.
However, I was given the opportunity to see.
When I met my first boyfriend, now my husband of almost 20 years, I was given the opportunity to feel what being a HUMAN was like. When I say being human, I mean being seen for who I was. I was respected, I was loved even with all my quarks and scars, I was trusted, and I was challenged to grow. I was given the opportunity to be me, Amanda.
My husband has told me that I started my healing journey way earlier than I give myself credit for. Now that I am writing this out, I am publicly stating he was right (as I grit my teeth a bit😉).
I didn’t realize that from the age of 19, I had someone who was willing to allow me to be who I was. I was also challenged to not be someone I was not. I was challenged to stand up for myself, to grow, to relinquish the victimhood that I lived in for so many years.
Now, this did not happen overnight. Oh no…there were milestones over the past 2 decades, some small, some large. But where I am right now, this is what I have learned.
- Running away from women was me not wanting to address my own wounds, my own trauma, my own hurt. Stepping into a space where I learn to see the depths of women meant I had to remove the perspective that I built over the decade. That meant addressing the pieces of me that were protecting me by saying “women were b!tc#s.”
- Believing that women were evil shut the door to understanding that the “evil” I was seeing was coming from a space of hurt and pain. I was not aware of my own perspectives that were keeping me locked down and “safe”. How could I even begin to understand that someone else could be doing the same?
- Women have been fighting battles for years, decades,…even centuries. The fights have varied depending on the times. I would argue no battle is the same because our experiences are not the same. Take that how you will. However, I see us fighting for ourselves, yet ignoring who we are. We want equality (yes I want equal rights just as a man would), but that does not mean that we are equal to men. Our women’s “intuition” is different than their (men’s) “gut feelings”. We were not put on this earth to be the same being. But when we have been fighting for so long to be just like men, I would argue we have lost the beauty of what it is to be women.
- In general, we do not talk about “certain” issues. We yell, we scream, we label, we run away from conflict, name all the reactions. We do not seek deep solutions. No, we look for band-aids. Guess what, band-aids need to be changed when puss or blood soaks through. If you don’t get to the root of the infection, it will continue to spread and remain unresolved.
- Women’s health and wellness issues have little space in today’s society (my husband and other men may argue that the male space is the same, but I am speaking from my experience and perspective…and that is one of being female). To reference the band-aids comment from the point above, we find short-term ways to address the various events we go through in our life cycles. If you have a difficult menstrual cycle, here’s your birth control pill; menopause is rough, here’s your hormones; you don’t like your body, here’s your procedure to snip, tuck, and suck whatever you don’t like out.
Yal…I am done with all of this. After working on my demons and seeing the hurt that myself and so many other women have carried, I cannot and WILL NOT stay silent anymore.
I am grateful to have found my voice, to heal the connection of who I am and who I was meant to be, and be comfortable to continue exploring that. Understanding this journey is continuous.
It hurts me when I see others being stifled, when I see other women being put down, ignored, shoved into a box, or even they are shoving themselves into a box, that was never meant for them. As human beings, we are meant to be individually unique. We may have similarities, but we are all meant to be different. The world that we are in today is shoving us more and more into boxes that I will no longer tolerate.
Women were never meant to be reduced and defined by their shape, their weight, their looks, etc. Just like men, we (women) have the ability to be strong and powerful (i.e. wolves), just as men have the ability to be soft and vulnerable. It’s time to find balance.
And that is what I am offering to women…balance. To find balance is to first find yourself. If you do not know who you, yourself is, you will not be able to find TRUE balance (i.e. think about the mother juggling a job, kids sports, family events, PTA, and claiming she has balance and yet is unnerved and/or stressed whenever you speak with her).
I know what it is like to say “I have balance and I know myself”, but inside be slowly dying inside. I know what it is like to put on a happy face and play a part, yet beating my body up by binging and purging. I know what it is like to say I love my body, yet be picking it apart, bit by bit in my mind.
It is time to end this internal dialogue and practices that keep us disconnected from ourselves. This dialogue that keeps us unbalanced, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
Stay tuned as I will be launching women specific services, programs, and events to help you begin your journey.
Remember, any small step forward, is a step forward. Its when you do not take a step, you are remaining exactly where you are at. I can guide you, but I cannot push you. You are the only one that can initiate the step.
Will you?
