“When you feel you are being moved by the creative spirit, you are in fact being moved by the divine feminine.” --Teri Degler
We’ve all done it one way or another. Whether it’s dieting to try and look like the models in magazines, dressing to avoid objectification, silencing our opinions to seem easygoing or downplaying our accomplishments – all women have limited their greatness, toned down their beauty.
No wonder it’s so hard for us to know our worth as women.
I dream for each of us to know the BLISS of being in a woman’s body, falling deeply in love with ourselves, and knowing our internal beauty.
FROM PAST TO PRESENT
Like many girls, I learned to put a lid on my feelings and the actions they might lead to, to avoid being seen as bitchy, unstable or easy. In relationships, torn between a deep desire for love and the fear of losing myself and squashing my needs for the needs of another.
Like most of us, I looked at women in magazines and media and wanted that unattainable standard of beauty.
I tried to look and be perfect. By the time I went to college I had an eating disorder and no more menstrual cycle. I obsessed over my appearance and my diet, spending years feeling empty and suffering in silence. For years I looked for validation outside of myself, desperate for someone, usually a male, to tell me I was okay, worthy to exist.
But after a while, it stopped working. I had to turn within to ease my suffering and find my truth.
Fortunately I found recovery programs for my sugar addiction and codependent tendencies, which cleared a path for years of engaged spiritual practice and divine feminine studies that showed me I had value beyond just the way I looked. Secret #1 is just that, spirituality.
The more I explored trauma healing, women’s studies, spiritual practices, and myself as a divine feminine, the more I learned to embrace all of my feelings. I began to understand that all feelings—especially anger—played a role in healthy functioning, psychological well-being and survival. I gave up being “good” and “nice” in order to be accepted and loved. I chose to be REAL and transparent.
Honoring your feelings allows you to be fully expressed and leads to a state of BLISS and healing. It’s your path to truth. Feeling “not good enough” melts away and is replaced with welcoming, nurturing warmth, compassion, and unconditional love. Judgments fall away and you surrender and accept the moment exactly as it is, without trying to change it. Embracing and “being with” all that is exactly as it is brings us to secret #2: honoring your emotions.
My first experience of feeling fully accepted was during a meditation with music, a tribute to the Mother which gives birth to all life. I noticed that all the voices saying “I should be” or “I wish I was” fell away. And then something happened.
I experienced myself not as loving but as love itself, not as compassionate but as compassion itself. The noise in my head faded away. My breath was breathing me and ALL of life was calling me to see the truth of what I was, a limitless, expansive, blissful embodiment of love and perfection—nothing to know, do, be or remember. My beauty as a woman sourced from deep within, body held sacred, soul awakened. That’s secret #3: surrender and step into stillness with compassion.
This poem emerged from that state
The Awakened Goddess
There once was a time when the goddess reigned supreme
In this place she was held in such high-esteem
I was she and she was I
But something unforeseen happened and we had to say goodbye
From that day forward a deep longing lived inside
To find her again and never leave her side
I prayed, I chanted, I danced and I cried
And promised to never, EVER again hide
She yearns and longs to deeply to express
And to feel and enjoy EVERYTHING under her dress
The years of conditioning left a big hole
But today my awakened goddess fills my soul
I’ve finally stopped worrying whether I’ll say something clever
Instead I look inside and seek her great pleasure
Now we joyously play, love, chant and danceI thank god and goddess for this great second chance
My invitation to you as woman or man
Is to awaken the goddess within you AS SOON AS YOU CAN!
Lara Eisenberg, M.A., Ed.M., is a Body Mind Psychotherapist, Yoga Therapist, Somatic Experiencing Therapist and Awakening the Feminine Coach. She helps women restore their body-mind connection, cultivate embodied self-love and awaken to their true feminine essence and sensual self. To help you restore your body, heart and soul and awaken to your feminine bliss, she has created a FREE GIFT of 7 Steps to Reclaim Your Feminine Essence and Soul’s Desire here. You can follow her on Twitter or Facebook