Reclaiming The Wholeness Of The Masculine/Feminine

Following on from the 'man, reclaim your balls' post ..

(yes, she's off again 🙄 .. )

but, I want to make something clear, just in case it has in any way been missed ..

I'm really passionate about the societal transmuting of all that is good in men into something knocked off kilter to become warped, misshapen, hurt, damaged, lost, dangerous.

I’m equally passionate about calling women to rise above the old paradigm, to use their instinctive wisdom, their enormous courage and their emotional intelligence to pave the way to a new dawn in human evolution.

I believe TOTALLY in a man's and a woman's committed expansion into the fullness of the masculine/feminine. This is such important stuff. There can be no blaming now; no ‘yes buts’; no desire for retribution – but only growth from this mish-mash of a mess we made before we knew better.

I see how mothers especially (because I've unconsciously done it myself, even though with the absolute best intentions) have, in striving so hard to protect our sons from the macho machine (as I think of it), that we panic and overcompensate by getting between a father and his sons to act as a kind of filter, rather than trust that they have a journey to do of their own (just as we ourselves did) – to take everything they are gifted:

- from the female; the doting, loving and often confused by the emotional shut-down of men mothers who so wish we could protect them from all the macho bullshit we see from our emotionally grounded perspective; and from fathers who so often seem to be acting from a place of never having grown up (unsurprisingly, perhaps, in so many ways, when one considers the cultural messages that are shoved down their throats) and who may or may not be trying to be present, loving, equally committed – and work it all out for themselves. This is not something we can do for them. With the best will in the world, a woman can’t model masculinity. This is the very foundation of the mentoring project Mentors: Boys2Men - in other words EXACTLY where it came from.

- from the male; men/fathers - sometimes dented, hurt, damaged, broken, confused, lonely, spiritually disconnected from the depths of their most precious hearts, maligned human counterparts to our own experience; from the place of their own profound loss as they struggle to make sense of all the stupidity that has underpinned their moulding from boys who started out so full of sweetness, innocence, intelligence, ambition to live a fulfilling, creative and passionate life and then got chewed up by that macho machine I refer to in other writings to come out with great chunks of his beautiful human self that he's been taught to disown 'missing'; from the place of maybe having been badly let down by his own father, almost certainly for the exact same reasons; from the great tragedy and loss this emasculation is for every single damn one of us. (Isn't this the most challenging call to women? To find it within our hearts to at least understand this - even if it must be from a safe distance (and all too often, it must!) - as we struggle ourselves with the consequences of this terrible mass lynching?)

I’m a mother of sons.

Believe me when I say I know intimately the pain of trying to navigate this most challenging of responsibilities in a still predominently patriarchal system equipped only with the incompleteness of our own experience, our devotion and our intuition. I don’t know the answers, but I can tell you that I know this:

We must ALL come to the table with our own vulnerability, our confusion, our pain for our ‘mistakes’ and our learning, to contribute to this discussion! If there were room for copping out from stepping fully into our feminine power in the past, the state of human evolution at this time leaves not an inch for it now!

What I believe is happening in this massive shift is this: we are all being powerfully called to raise our game.

The call ..

To women

• to restrain ourselves from 'man-bashing' and generalising, ie: jumping ship entirely (or perhaps throwing the baby out with the bath water!) in the culturally 'encouraged' rush to blame everything on men. Can we do this? Without losing sight of why and how this has come about and while maintaining compassion for ourselves for the level of threat to personal safety that a man rushing just as fast for the big guns can be? Can we refrain from retreating in frustration, or from running headlong into blind, defensive attack (perhaps with embittered sarcasm – ultimately the rather unpleasant passive/aggressive substitute for speaking our truth as we instead shift responsibility for our own evolution, even though it grew from our uneasy, unwelcome, historic disempowerment?

• to step out where need be - even if only while we renegotiate; even if another sister who's not quite ready to step up alongside us but instead chooses to sidestep her own call to rise and instead offer up her body or her service for the much quicker, easier (at least in terms of emotional/spiritual challenge) but ultimately more short-sighted fix of bedding another's all too eager, maybe temporarily abandoned man (or more accurately perhaps, the boy who must grow into the man before we can move forward in creating together a new model for a better future); to the filling of the space we vacated with a man who is equally unwilling to respond to his own call to rise (perhaps not much of a loss anyway!)

• to step away from behind the (albeit easy to understand) inclination to fear; to cower; to feel powerless; to resentment; to bitchiness about the 'failings' of men to meet us half way and step into their vulnerability - defences (weapons / fists) down - to renegotiate, speak up calmly, honestly, boldly and from the feeling place that's been rendered so unfamiliar and terrifying to them. We (women) have the EQ, the communication flexibility, the insight, the skills to entice them out into this unchartered territory of the heart that they’ve been so forcefully and unwisely made to shut off (but then, weren’t they led by men who were equally in the dark, and taught to discredit/discount the wise voice of the feminine?). We need to come out from behind the half-shut door and the fear – not just of the power games of men, but of our own power, and step up to the table, with boldness, confidence and conviction; to let them know we are here now, and we are ready to co-create a new, better, more balanced way; that nothing is going to intimidate or lure us away from this most urgent call in human evolution

And to men:

• to come in from the playground – where bullying, dominating, threatening, fighting, killing, cheating, ‘pussy-grabbing’, playing the ‘I’m much tougher / smarter / richer / more successful / more powerful than you manhood(winked)’ game is so rife

• to come out from behind the suits and the boardroom tables and the war-rooms – where deliberately complex, mind-numbing, confusing language, greed, the desire for control and more more more protects them from being real, from accountability, from personal (and all the offshoots of it like relationship, ‘professional’, corporate, governmental, environmental ..) responsibility

It’s my belief that we're (all of us) being called to rise like at no other time in his/herstory! To overcome our conditioned responses.

We MUST step up together

– yes, in different ways and with different challenges. But ultimately,

for the same goal!

With love,

Trish Brennan

❤️