Can’t believe I’m going to blog about the “V” word. But validity came up for me big time as I was writing the book, A Quiet Revolution: the return of the feminine.
It’s a personal memoir about the most important revolution that hasn’t happened yet: the revolution of attitudes and values within every woman and man alive; the revolution from fear, control, and materialism to love and sharing, community and compassion; the return of the feminine and the value structures that will save the world.
But because I wrote it as a memoir, I doubted its validity. Oh, not the validity of the message, or even the book itself. What I wrestled with was whether my personal story has any lasting, cultural significance. Ah, hell. That’s not it. What I really really wrestled with was whether my story had any significance at all.
Because underneath all that lay an even deeper, more haunting concern. Who was I, as a woman, to write about myself and think it was important? What was the big deal? The big story? Okay, so there was a little abuse here, a little rape there, a dollop of sexual discrimination and a lifetime of acculturation into a whole mindset that isn’t naturally my own… so what? I got through it and became relatively successful. And besides, isn’t that pretty much every woman’s story?
And then it hit me. Duh. That’s the whole point.
In a world where your core essence is invisible – hidden even from yourself – it’s difficult to operate with supreme confidence. I don’t mean arrogance. I mean the sublime confidence that comes from having unshakable faith in one’s own value; not because of anything; not because you’re educated or wealthy or have made it onto Oprah. But simply because you exist; because you are you.
Men have it.
We call it male entitlement and grumble about it. But we also admire them and envy them for it. A journalist friend of mine brought this unconscious stature of the male home to me not too long ago. We were talking about sexual discrimination in general terms when he said, “Jesus, I’d just be happy if women stopped automatically moving aside for me in the grocery store, fumbling with their carts, saying ‘sorry’ all the time.”
“What?” I asked. “Women do that?”
Bruce looked at me grimly. “All the time.”
We move aside automatically – in the grocery store, in our jobs, with our spouses… worst of all we move aside in our own minds until we don’t even know who we are anymore. Is it any wonder women are plagued with insecurity? That most of us – even the most successful of us – continue to struggle with issues of value and validity?
How can woman exude natural, unconscious confidence when her very soul goes unseen? When her innate sweetness and gentleness, her loving heart, her compassion and concern for others is considered inappropriate and ineffective for operating in “the real world?”
That’s a big question. But there’s a short answer: she can’t.
There’s a tagline at the top of this blog: one woman’s life and heart is every woman’s. We are connected. What happens to one of us happens to all of us. Quantum physics agrees. Shamans and mystics agree. Our hearts – that feminine intuitive counsel – agree that this is how the world really works, despite all that we’ve been taught to the contrary.
My story of awakening from invisibility – automatically moving aside from my core essence and values to not only make room for the masculine, but to take up the masculine baton and live his story as my own – is every woman’s story. And yet it is a story of awakening yet to be told; a revolution that hasn’t happened yet because not all of us have rubbed the sleep from our eyes. Most of us still dream the dream of the Great Sun, the Masculine: running around, laboring to boil the seas with our brilliance and intellect; blinded by the need to have things and accomplish great deeds in order to be somebody.
I am somebody simply because I exist. I have value simply because I am a woman. It’s a shared truth that gives us all hope.