Conversations with the Feminine

Dear Embodied Feminine,

I love it when you choose to visit me. I feel a stir deep inside of me the moment you walk into the room. It is like a part of me lights up every time I experience you, speak with you and spend time with you. There is something about your presence that helps me get in touch with something within me that is soft and gentle.

When you come over, you help me feel my own femininity. I can stop being so masculine. I have been conditioned to “be a man” for so long, that sometimes I forget what it is to “just be”. And when you come along, I feel something meIt inside. I don’t need to ‘be a man‘ when I am with you. I can be feminine. I can be agendered. I can be!
I feel like I can cry, I can feel, I can laugh, I can nurture, I can care. And I feel calm when I am with you. I feel like I will be understood.

I know that this is actually about me. But I look to you because you bring to me a part of me that I deeply long for – the feminine in me.

I have always been afraid to be ‘feminine’. I have wanted to feel feminine many times in my life. When I am in touch with the feminine, I have access to my wide range of my own emotions. I think I come alive. And I have always wanted to feel – to feel pain, to feel jealousy, to feel envy, to feel possessive, to feel protective, to feel nurturing, to feel like a caretaker, to feel like a mighty wall, to feel like a little sponge soaking in everything, to absorb, to flow, to share, to ponder, to reflect, to grow, to feel little, to feel like a baby and receive care, to feel stupid, to feel humbled, to feel inspired, to feel intimate, to feel sexy, to feel oneness, to feel love…to feel everything.

I want to feel. And I feel all this when you are around. 

And when you leave, I can feel the buzz of feeling all of this, even if it is shortlived. I feel alive. I feel seen. I feel loved. I feel like me; a different version of me, that I haven’t allowed to come out too much.

And when it has been a while since I have met you, I find myself going back to become the patriarchal masculine man again.

I lose my ability to feel. I don’t feel much when I look at our world. I don’t know why that is so. What is it with being masculine that makes us so hard-hearted? The softness goes away. The empathy and sensitivity to life goes away. I know I have been that way for a long long time. But it is difficult to be that way. I don’t feel vulnerable. I don’t feel intimate. I don’t feel hurt, jealous or envy. Just hard-hearted and sometimes aggressive. Tough. Stoic they call it? 

There is a weird sense of duty that I feel when I am a man – to be the one who runs the show – to be a robot that has to flex its muscles! Sometimes it feels like I am in a competition with all the other men around, to prove that I am the best. It feels like it is my job to prove, my job to win. But, that also feels robotic, as if I have been programmed.

Macho!

I find that word strange. It is a feeling actually. It comes to me sometimes when I access ‘masculinity’. I feel ‘Macho’. But it is a horribly machine-like feeling. It feels programmed too. It doesn’t feel fully human. It feels like I am hollow and merely following orders when I am macho.

Who gives these orders?

And I look around to see many many more macho robots – all hollow and dead. They are all following orders and instructions. They have strangled the feminine inside them and they look to suffocate everything feminine around them.

Who has given these orders? Who has trained them all?

The largest army in the planet is this form of Mutilated Masculinity. ‘Toxic Masculinity‘ some call it. They are all made into soldiers – trained to suffocate and strangle life. They mute everything that is alive. They want to control everything that is gentle, tender, soft and flowing. They kill everything that nourishes, nurtures and brings joy to the heart.

And strangely, they also kill every man that tries to disobey these “orders”.

Well, killing doesn’t look like murder every time. Often it looks like shaming & humiliating, diminishing & disrobing, mutilating & violating, not just the body, but the very soul of a person. It is a very masculine thing to do. And the drug of “macho” perpetuates every time they “kill” the feminine – both within and without. A very potent drug.

Do you know a man that can actually feel? Do you know a man that is not “drugged”? Do you know a man that has access to his soul?
I know many men who can feel limited and programmed feelings. They can feel for their family and kids. They can feel for their friends and beloved.
But can they “feel”, when it comes to the unknown stranger living down the road?

They often can’t feel much when it comes to just another human being, especially one that is different from them. Difference and diversity seems to overwhelm this dead and depleted masculine. Obviously then, they don’t feel humanity. They cannot feel anything beyond the programmed thoughts and emotions rooted in macho-ism. They have been reduced to machines – designed to prove that they are mighty and strong. They can’t grow. They can’t nurture and nourish their soul. They often can’t even feel their soul. They are dead. They have been drugged and killed inside their moving bodies.

I was forced to be masculine too. I never wanted to be one. I wanted to be feminine. I wanted to be a feminine man. I wanted to be alive and feel life within me. I wanted to grow and nurture life all around me. I wanted to care. I wanted to support. I wanted to feel vibrant and vivacious.   

And look how you fulfilled all my wishes, my dear Embodied Feminine!
I feel all that I wanted to feel when you walk in. You bring to me my own feminine. To my mind, that has spent many years in the prison of masculinity, you show me how to rehabilitate myself off toxic masculinity. You show me how to bear compassion in my heart and a tear in my eye. You show me that I am not weak when I am keeping my opinion aside to allow the other to cry. You remind me that I can stop trying to prove to you, because I have nothing to prove. You already love me. I have nothing else to achieve.

You show me how to be the feminine man, I always wanted to be.

I had forgotten. And when I see you, I remember.
I re-member, I re-collect and I re-learn how to be me. The more I am me, the more I feel alive. I feel sensual, I feel grateful, I feel joy, I feel the ecstatic quiver of life within me.

You bring my feminine to me, my dear goddess. In this part of my journey, you are my teacher. And I bow down to you with a heart full of love and a soul full of gratitude.

Thank you for your light,
The Feminine Man