Excavating the Feminine
“The task of releasing the feminine from the tyrannical power of the driven, crazed masculine is long and arduous. The process is just as difficult inside as it is outside.”
Marion Woodman
In her book, Descent to the Goddess, Sylvia Brinton Perera discussed our need to “return to the goddess” and recognize where we, women, have become ‘daughters of the father’. Not necessarily meaning our own father, but rather, where we have adapted to a masculine-oriented society and in doing so, lost or rejected aspects of the feminine including our instincts, bodies, creativity, intuition, and emotions.
My ‘aha’ moment came when I read Sylvia’s words, “We women who have succeeded in the world are usually ‘daughters of the father’- this is, well adapted to a masculine-oriented society- and have repudiated our own full feminine instincts and energy patterns, just as the culture has maimed or derogated most of them.” Her words caused me great discomfort. I reacted against them and thought to myself “I’m not like that.” I picked up on the fact that she used the word “usually” so perhaps I was an “unusual” one, and her statement wasn’t referring to me.
However, my resistance to entertaining her ideas showed me that she was shining a light on something that I did not want to see about myself. As I thought about her words, I realized that I actually had disowned many of my feminine aspects in my pursuit to achieve the patriarchal standards that had been set upon me. I'd been putting all of my attention into fitting a certain physical image and in being successful in the business world. And along with all of this, I was also putting a tremendous amount of energy into being the supportive wife and the perfect, doting mother. In my feeble attempts to achieve these unattainable standards, I'd lost any form of a healthy relationship with my body. I'd shoved my intuition, emotions, and creativity into my shadow. I realized that I learned to disregard or even to be ashamed of my intuition, which is incredibly strong. This deep source of wisdom is not respected by the patriarchy because it isn’t rational and quantifiable. It is “nonsense” or “crazy” or worse, yet, demonic.
With great humility, I realized that I needed to exorcise the patriarchal standards that I had unwittingly ingested. This "inner patriarch" was holding my inner feminine hostage, and its weapons of choice were shame and self-doubt. I realized that I needed to find the true powerful feminine, rather than the patriarchal version of what a woman should be. So, I began the process of emancipating my inner feminine. It has been painful and is still a work in progress. In order to free her, I've had to go into my shadow (those aspects of myself that I do not want to see) and recognize where I hold unconscious patriarchal values. It is not a process for the faint of heart.
I have not done this "shadow-work" through simply "thinking positively" or rational analysis although they have played their part. But rather, my route into my shadow has been through working with dreams, synchronicity and the imaginal, which will be explored in further blog post.
I first came across this piece of fresco at the Archaeological Museum in Athens a few years ago. There are thousands of antiquities in the museum, many with much more prominence, but it was this one that caught my eye. It’s called The Lady with the Pyxis (box) and is from the 13th century BC from the Tiryns citadel in Mycenae, Greece. It depicts a divine woman taking valuable gifts to a deity. The Mycenaean women were known for their femininity and their beautiful hairstyles. Mycenae was known as the city of gold, and it is near the place where Hercules performed his twelve labors. For me, this image reflects what the process of reclaiming my femininity has felt like- an excavation into my shadow to find those parts of myself that have been long ignored. I recognize that finding these aspects of the conscious feminine, or the goddess, are a gift to myself and to others. It also feels that this image reflects what is going on culturally, as people are fighting for the feminine to be seen and valued, whether it is by shaking patriarchal beauty standards or refusing to have our voices ignored any longer.