The Lies We're Told

Perhaps it's because I'm getting older.  Perhaps it's because I'm becoming less tolerant.  Or, perhaps it's because my eyes and heart have been opening wider and wider and I've become more discerning.  Whatever it is, I'm no longer willing to accept the messages that are fed to women, men, and children about what it means to be a woman in the culture we live in.  Whenever I sit in front of the T.V., (yep, I still love to turn my brain off every now and then) there are countless advertisements telling me what a "beautiful" woman is supposed to look like, what age women are supposed to allow themselves to look like, what women are supposed to desire and that women are ultimately objects of someone else's desires.  Ever since I was a young girl, I questioned why boys/men were allowed certain privileges in our culture that were not available to girls/women.  I can distinctly remember how uncomfortable our Catholic parish priest was when I asked him why young girls were not allowed to participate in the mass as 'altar girls' and that he could not come up with a good answer.  As I became a young woman, I began to question the roles that my parents agreed to play in their marriage...my father as the financial provider who was not required to help out at home and my mother as the home-maker whose efforts were rarely acknowledged nor appreciated.  Whenever I flipped through magazines, I was constantly reminded how inadequate I was as a female.  My hair wasn't thick or glossy enough.  I didn't wear the right make-up.  I didn't have the right clothes.  I spent countless years trying to be the type of woman that was modeled for me without realizing that even that woman didn't really exist.  No wonder I ended up feeling angry, sad and depressed.  No wonder I closed myself off to the world.  It wasn't until I discovered yoga and meditation that I started to consider the possibility that who I was might just be good enough, without all of those additional distractions.  Over the past 15 years, I've been exploring therapy and self-actualization processes that have helped me to recognize my unique gifts and personal power...as a woman.  And I love that I'm getting older because I'm reaching a point where I'm no longer interested in apologizing for being female nor for offering the gifts of the Divine Feminine to the world.  If you've had enough of sitting at the bottom of the hierarchy, join me in creating another way of seeing and being in the world and in manifesting a world that does not recognize hierarchies or control over others.  It starts with acknowledging all the aspects of yourself - physically, emotionally and mentally - and accepting them for what they are...as gifts.  Blessed Be.