For many of us women, we thought we were done with the fight against inequality, the fight against repression and the overpowering of women, but we're not done. Perhaps this is the final fight, the final unearthing of the patriarchal shadow rearing its ugly head, revealing to us the unfinished business of our times. The threads of unconsciousness that continue to hold us back or in the very least, create obstacles for us to truly flourishing as human beings.
When I was a teenager, I experienced boys, several years older than me, openly commenting on my developing body. It was humiliating and at the same time, I wasn't sure if I was supposed to like this attention. I struggled as a young woman traversing this landscape trying to figure out if this was a guy's way of wanting to get to know me, or was it just them wanting sex or was it to simply humiliate and demean me. It was all very confusing at the time. When I was in my twenties, living in Boston, I endured the cat calls from the construction crew as I made my way to work each morning. I also endured the business conferences where there was one guy after another inviting me to his hotel room.
This was the wilderness that myself, along with many women have had to find their way through, searching for a different consciousness, a deeper truth to what it means to be a woman. To discover our true power that doesn't look at all like the power that the patriarchy has exhibited all these years. My fight has been with the consciousness of the collective feminine and transmuting the feeling of victim hood. I've had to dig deep to transmute this through this lifetime and beyond. The hardest part of this journey, was not the fight. I was good at that. I didn't have to find my voice, it was alive and well. But what I hadn't done, was to put my sword down long enough to feel the pain, grieve the loss and despair of the hurt and humiliation and shame. That was the toughest part for me, was to feel.
But with what is going on right now in our political arena, I'm happily picking up the mythic sword, polishing it once more, and slashing away at the bullshit to uncover the truth and herald a time for justice. And what feels different to me this time, is I feel this is a turning point for humanity. It's not just the women fighting, it's the men too. Because men have been hurt by the patriarch and the abuse of power just as much . While we as women, have had to overcome the patterns and overall consciousness of the archetypal victim, men have to overcome the consciousness of the archetypal abuser. For the men who've never resonated with the abuse of power or demeaning women or treating them as unequal, or being thought of as the aggressors or the perpetrators, how do you think they feel when despicable behavior gets summed up as a "guy thing" or "locker room" talk among men?
I'm inviting men to feel their fury, not because we as women need them to fight for us or to protect us, but because this is their fight too! How many men have been reluctant to stand up for something different for fear of being called a "pussy"? Or how many men have held back their power because they've only experienced the shadow side of the masculine and they know that's not who they are? This is their journey and I can only imagine it's as difficult of a journey as it has been for women to overcome being the victim.
Like with any shift in consciousness, there is the final push. Many of us spent years complaining about smoking being allowed in public areas, and eventually the shift was made. And here we are, years later, having a hard time believing that it was ever acceptable to begin with. This is what I'm hoping for with the issue of abusing power and demeaning women, that eventually the cultural norm will be different and we'll look back at this time with the same disbelief as we feel when we imagine what it was like when women weren't even allowed to vote.
So thank you Donald Trump for playing the shadow role so, so well. You have stirred the souls of many and unleashed a fury that is sure to bring change, reawaken our inner warrior and create a stronger bond among many that has no more tolerance, no more willingness to step around or turn the other way when it comes to this type of behavior.