Restoring Balance

Like many people, my thoughts are mainly taken up with the imbalances and intolerances we’re experiencing all over the world. Here in the UK millions of ordinary people are looking for change because of inequality, feelings of disempowerment and financial insecurity. It’s become socially acceptable to direct the resulting frustrations onto people with opposing political views or other ordinary people with even less power over their lives than them. People in power have been manipulating dissatisfied people for millennia, but we live in a world now where media and conversations are online and immediately transmittable, heightening the sense of not being safe and needing to put those fears somewhere tangible.

As a woman who grew up in a depressingly underfunded part of East London in the 70s through to the early 90s, where I never felt it was safe to let my guard down, I’ve been reminded about the undercurrent of anxiety and helplessness. There was also the sense of community that was at the same time self-protective and fixed in how it was acceptable to think and behave. Boys were expected to be aggressive, sexually and otherwise. Girls were expected to be whatever boys wanted us to be. This wasn’t my experience in my immediate family, however. My dad has always been comfortable showing all types of emotions, and my brother is sensitive and prioritises other people’s feelings. They were shaped, however, by the socially acceptable identities of what it means to be a man.

My mum was sexually assaulted and abused throughout her life. I didn’t know this consciously until I was in my teens, and even then my brain has never allowed me to remember the details. I know it started when she was very young. I know it was lots of different men. I know it had a huge impact on her ability to trust people or feel safe and secure in herself. I know it’s shaped how important it’s always been for me to create a life that’s very different from my mum’s experiences. Even before I knew consciously what she’d been through, it affected my nervous system. I could feel how little she thought of herself, how anxious she was, and how complicated and confusing it felt for her to be her loving and generous self.

She was a brilliant mum. She always knew exactly what I needed to hear to help me feel better. She was also deeply unhappy and insecure. This lead to poor decision making, sometimes putting myself and my brother in danger. I worked through the traumas and lack of feeling nurtured I experienced a while ago. I realised that this wasn’t something my mum was able to do, and that’s why the cycle of hurt and insecurity continued. She didn’t have the tools, the knowledge that she deserved to be happier, or the trust in her abilities that would have enabled her to realise how much power she had to made her life better, and consequently everyone who loved her. I don’t blame her. What she did do was help form me into someone who is comfortable being different, able to stand up for myself, and most importantly advocate for other people. I do this through writing, teaching qigong, meditation, acupressure, and other self healing practices, supporting creative self-expression, and energetic coaching. Because of my mum’s experiences, it’s always been important to me to understand people and why we behave in unhelpful ways, and how we can build better self-acceptance and inner security so that we do less harm to ourselves and others.

So, back to my original point about restoring balance to the world we live in. My feeling more and more is that feeling safe and secure is the key. The world we live in doesn’t make this easy, and that’s by design.

Women are taught through ancestral baggage picked up by and passed on from our mothers and grandmothers, from perpetuated societal norms and marketing, that we’re not good enough. Not pretty enough, thin enough, hairless enough, fragrant enough, feminine enough; and we’re sold thousands of products to ‘improve’ our existence and correct what’s wrong with us. By the time we realise what’s happening, we’re already so far down the rabbit hole of precoded belief systems that we can struggle to step out of the norms we’ve created in our life and the shame we hold about the way we look or how confidently (but not aggressively) we come across. Women often find it harder to stay sure of ourselves and our convictions because we’re conditioned to constantly check that we’re not hurting anyone’s feelings, and our own wants and needs are given lowest priority. This keeps us feeling under threat, sometimes because we are.

Women can feel like we’re fighting a losing battle in areas of life where we need to speak up and be taken seriously because we come up against assumptions that we know less than men, are less rational and authoritative, or are just seeking attention. I’ve encountered this in many areas of life – school, work, with medical practitioners, family members, education professionals. Social ideas of success and leadership means following a masculine model of order and fixed structure, but feminine leadership is characterised by flexibility, creativity, connection and compassion. We can see this again in most areas of life. Bureaucratic systems of government and social regulation follow strict orders and procedures where the proof of success is boxes ticked rather than meaningful impact made. The mainstream school system is a prime example.

Thousands of women choose or are forced out of necessity into becoming self-employed because we need the flexibility of working around family duties, need extra money because of wage plateaus at an existing job, or most frequently dissatisfaction and frustration with jobs that don’t value us or fit our needs. There is a crossover of being put in positions where we take responsibility for other people’s needs and happiness and having higher emotional intelligence because of our particular biological make-up, and leaves us open to manipulation.

Everyone is different, but physiologically and evolutionarily it’s a necessity that the birth givers are the ones who have a better understanding of what other humans are thinking and needing. The fact that this is both about keeping babies alive and being aware of dangers from others around us means women have honed our instincts so we’re better able to perceive threats, and find ways to keep ourselves and our children safe. However, we’ve been socially conditioned to ignore our instincts and trust what more knowledgeable, physically strong and authoritative people are telling us since they started burning witches.

‘Witches’ were the women in tune with nature, with their instincts, who flexibly used their compassion to heal and help people who were sick or in pain. Through their feminine leadership skills – compassion, connection, creativity and flexibility – they used their intelligent wisdom to benefit others. It’s very well known how many women were discredited and killed for daring to know more than ‘important’ men. The fragile egos of power hungry men have been destabilising the natural balance of feminine and masculine in the world for thousands of years. Men benefit from the softness and supportive power of femininity, and women benefit from the protection and steadiness of masculinity. (All humans contain both masculine and feminine, society has assigned positives and negatives to both.)

When men and boys are given space to be their whole self, not just the socially accepted idea of what it means to be male, they are able to experience the softness and flexibility of the feminine energy within them. They can relax the pressure felt to be hard and tense, and build resilience and playfulness that in turn makes them less threatening and aggressive to women. When women and girls are accepted as whole and worthwhile beings, they are allowed space to understand their own needs and feelings. They don’t have to smile and perform prettiness on demand, and can bring their natural gifts to the metaphorical table. They understand their power and are allowed to shine and thrive equitably, maintaining the balance and harmony of humanity and nature.

I believe it’s important for us to feel safe and secure in ourselves, that’s how we shake off feelings of being under threat so that our nervous system can relax. When we feel threatened, we become intolerant and reactive (just ask any self-aware PDAer*), and grasp at anything we believe will bring stability. The reality is that confronting the passed-down beliefs and ideas that keep us feeling unsafe and unhappy is painful. It’s easier to stay in a self-protective bubble and blame people who in reality have no power over making our life one way or another. But pain is a message that shows us where there’s a blockage, something that’s stuck and harming us. If you really want self agency, I’ve found it’s essential release these blockages and to question everything you believe. That’s where my creativity, compassion and flexibility come in handy!

Connect here if you want to know more about creating inner safety and security, and letting your natural power shine:

https://www.facebook.com/RestoreBalanceRuth

*Pervasive Drive for Autonomy (or pathological demand avoidance), a neurotype were the nervous system is fragile and in constant fear of threat – more about that another time.