I've always felt out of place for being overly feminine. As a kid, I was the only girl in dresses, frilly socks and Mary Jane shoes while the other girls ran around with sneakers and jeans. As time went on, I did my best to tuck this embarrassing quality of mine away. But as with anything we try to suppress, my femininity found ways to seep out. It got to the point where the suppression of my femininity felt more painful than allowing myself to own it. Over time, I’ve come to not only accept my femininity, but to embrace it as a gift.
We live in a highly masculine-dominant society so it’s no surprise that I’ve always felt out of place. We value things like action, hard work, and rational thinking—all masculine qualities. We tend to overlook the value of feminine qualities like rest, intuition, and nurturance. Just as we cannot have day without night or inhale without exhale, we cannot have masculine qualities without feminine qualities. We need both, within each person and in the greater world. It’s a balance, not a war between the two forces.
We also need to nurture whatever constitution we are born with. For some reason, I was born with more feminine qualities. For that reason, I need more rest and stillness than the average person. I need my environment to be beautiful and harmonious. These things feed and nourish me, so when I do take action, it’s inspired action that comes from insights and creative ideas that were born out of the stillness. The world would not benefit from me getting up each day and working myself to the point of exhaustion. Being in my feminine nurtures me and fills me back up. It’s a nourishing force that we all need to lean into more. Though masculinity and femininity have nothing to do with gender, most women have more feminine energies, so when we are not operating in our feminine, we tend to feel the health implications much more. Within this action-oriented world that we have sadly gotten accustomed to, we need to carve out small moments of nourishment and care whenever we can.
Masculinity and femininity
Masculinity is described with words such as action, dominance, logic, protection, initiative, focus, and strength. Femininity is described with words like receptiveness, intuition, flow, magnetism, nurturance, creativity, and vulnerability. These qualities complement one another and form a balanced whole. We call upon different energies at different times and situations when they are required. For instance, if I’m balancing my books, I need both focus and logic. But when I’m creating a marketing campaign, I tap into flow and receptiveness to receive the ideas I need. Not only would logic not serve me at that time, but it would hinder my creative process. In an ideal world, our masculine and feminine energies dance together harmoniously. We easily move between the two and we honor the qualities that want to emerge at any given moment.
Why we need more femininity
Because I have a million things to do, I sometimes find myself feeling stressed and rigid. That’s when I know that I haven’t been operating in my feminine. It’s easy to forget to honor my feminine qualities because we exist in such a fast-paced culture. Through thousands of years of living in a patriarchal society in which productivity is revered and rewarded, we have become almost machine-like. We forget that rest, joy, beauty, pleasure, and play are the very things that fill us up. We forget that we need these things like we need food and water. When we constantly strive and push towards a goal, we constrict our bodies and cause our stress levels to rise. But when we relax, we enter receptive states in which creative ideas come more easily. We take initiative when it is called for, but we also allow things to flow. If we can operate in this more balance way, our work becomes more effortless, and we are less likely to burn out.
Finding wholeness within
The interplay between masculine and feminine energies is a beautiful dance that leads to wholeness. It’s an integration of two very vital aspects of life. Unfortunately, our denigration of the feminine has led to an imbalanced society in which burnout and stress-related disorders have become the norm. If we want to turn things around, we must honor our need for nourishment in whatever form it looks like. Whether it’s rest, stillness, beauty, joy, pleasure, or play—we ought to reach for these things as often and as intentionally as possible. It is our birthright to feel whole and happy.
Femininity: A Nourishing Life Force
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