Читать книгу The Courage to Be Yourself - Sue Patton Thoele - Страница 12

In what was for me an eye-opening conversation, a dear friend was telling me that her adult daughter only seemed to relate to her when she needed something. “It's as if she freeze-dries me and puts me on a shelf until she needs something. Then she takes me down, reconstitutes me with her tears, and fully expects me to help her.” I answered, “And you do, right?”

She moaned, “Yes. . .” and we laughed in recognition.

As I reflected on our talk, I realized that over the last several hundred years, our society, both consciously and unconsciously, has attempted to freeze-dry feminine energy and power, stow it safely in a corked jar, and bury it in the remote recesses of a dark cavern. As well as trying to silence women's intuition and wisdom, society has denigrated the Divine Feminine qualities of cooperation, inclusion, receptivity, and compassion, to name only a few, by relegating them to the second-class areas of servitude and sacrifice.

As sad as I am to admit it, the attempts to bury the innate spiritual qualities of the Divine Feminine were certainly successful with me. For many years, my sense of spiritual and personal power lay dormant, and I felt no sense of connection to the Divine Feminine or to the divinity within myself. Although I tried to act out feminine values by loving, caring, and supporting others, my service sprang mostly from fear and a sense of obligation rather than flowing freely from my heart. I did what I should do and neither embodied the values, spoke with the voice, nor radiated the joy of the Divine Feminine. She was asleep, freeze-dried in my heart, buried under mounds of false beliefs, societal injunctions, and visceral fears.

From talking with friends and working with clients, I know that my barren experience was not unique.