What does it mean to be a woman?

How were you welcomed to puberty?

Were you one of those lucky girls who had a loving Mother who was close to you and shared all of her wisdom and guidance?

Or did your Mom simply have “the talk” with you one day?

In my case, I came home from school to find a pamphlet and a box of sanitary pads on my bed.

The pamphlet was titled “You’re a Woman Now”.

In the pamphlet were diagrams of female anatomy, and directions on how to use “sanitary” products.

It was cheery, upbeat, and superficial.

I felt so empty and sad and alone.

Becoming a woman felt so profound to me.

What had been presented to me on the occasion felt entirely insufficient to prepare me for crossing that threshold.

The sense of shame and embarrassment about the feminine experience that were portrayed by this experience impacted me for a long, long time.

Throughout my youth and adulthood I longed for someone who could share with me and help me to understand what it truly meant to be female.

None of my friends seemed to know or talk about it.

They were as lost as I was.

It was a time when women were trying hard to be like men.

We wanted to leave everything that defined femininity behind us.

And yet I felt an instinctual, almost primal, need to talk to a wise adult woman who could share with me how to access feminine joy and power.

I knew somehow, deep in my soul, that if I could learn this, that I could rise up and take pride in my female being.

Years later, I had stumbled through multiple bad relationships with men, my self esteem and hope for real intimacy declining with each relationship failure.

I came to a point of despair in which I viewed romantic love, what a woman hopes for and dreams of with a man, as no more than a fantasy.

It felt like a cruel, hard, heart-breaking world for a woman.

Then one day that wise woman I had been looking for finally showed up!

She taught me, baby step by baby step, how to access feminine energy, feminine power, feminine joy.

Slowly, slowly I rose up.

Steadily, surely I climbed.

I learned the essential importance of feminine energy and how to use it to create a beautiful life for myself, to build deep and lasting romantic relationships, fulfilling relationships with my family and friends, with my community, with the world.

We women are good and powerful.

We are the keepers of relationships.

We are the feminine energy of the universe that creates and sustains the world.

It was not until I learned these things that I truly became a woman.

Until then I was stuck in an adolescent kind of life and love, searching for a way to grow through into adulthood, with no path and no direction.

For many years I stumbled in the dark.

It was my dear goddess guide who shone the light on the path.

Now I can say, with confidence and joy “I am a woman now”.

What does it mean to you to be a woman?

Please write and share!

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