Inner marriage. Reuniting & honouring all the pieces of me

In recent years I’ve read beautiful writings about the awakened man apologising to woman for her suppression and abuse. In particular I think of this one:

“We have burned you at the stake, bought and sold your bodies for sexual pleasure, barred you from religious and political office, relegated you to subservient chores, forced you to hide your faces and even cut off your organs of sexual pleasure.

Although I may not have done these things personally, I am aware of the forces in the masculine psyche that are responsible for dishonoring the feminine…

I commit to treat your heart as the sacred temple it is, and I commit to celebrating the feminine in my intimate relationships as well as in my relationship to all life.

I honor your pathways of spiritual awakening, and I commit to the celebration of feminine spirituality. I honor your deep connection to the earth.
I honor your intuition and your ability to feel.
I love the beauty of your body.
I honor your capacity for peaceful resolution of conflicts.
I honor your capacity to listen to your body and its needs for food, rest and playtime.
I honor your sense of compassionate justice.
I know that together we can co-create in bringing forth the wisdom of sufficiency” ~ Based on the Manifesto for Conscious Men

These words ring deeply in my heart and every cell in my body. But more and more these days I contemplate the incompleteness of it and recognise how important it is for me to own my piece in both the suppression of the feminine, and the wounding of the masculine.

For years I longed to meet a man who would honour the feminine aspects of me that I felt had been shamed and suppressed for many years, I was frustrated when partner after partner fell short in some way…where I felt unseen, unheard, and not honoured.

But the truth is I was never going to meet a man like this until I was willing to truly look inside. Until I was ready to ask myself some tough questions. Do I see these things in myself? Do I honour these parts of myself? Do I really truly see and love the beauty of my body? Do I honour my connection to the earth? Do I really listen to my body and it’s need for rest and playtime?

For so many years the honest answer is No. For so long I didn’t value rest, I didn’t listen to the wisdom of my body. I didn’t value or respect my capacity to feel. I didn’t honour my heart or body as the sacred temple that it is. It’s only when I have began to truly honour the feminine within me have I attracted a beautiful man in my life who is ready and willing to walk this path of healing, growth, love, play and service together.

So this is just a little reminder that this love thing, is completely an inside job people. While seeing the divine in each other is of course a beautiful and pivotal part of this journey to reunite masculine and feminine to work together, this only becomes possible when we are ready and willing to explore this marriage inside of ourselves. Are we ready to love and accept ourselves as we are, and to honour completely the divine feminine and masculine?

Acknowledging that inside each of us we have the essence of both masculine and feminine is the first step if we want to stop projecting our wounds onto our loved ones. Working on these parts of ourself with loving compassion and awareness to remember what it is to feel at home, whole and reunited with every piece of who we are.

To me it also feels like a key step in owning our wholeness is to also acknowledge it’s not just the feminine essence that has been suppressed and dishonoured. Our masculine is hurting too, both the inner and the outer. Carrying the weight of the feminine wounding, the guilt of past acts, so much shaming and blaming. But more than that our masculine has been tempted by the promise of love and adoration only to find in moments of revealing himself authentically & vulnerably he has been shamed, manipulated and dominated by the feminine nurturer who chose fear over love.

Some years ago I sat in a cacao ceremony where as a group we were guided to work with our inner masculine and feminine and invite them to come face to face. What I experienced in this journey continues to touch me today because I feel how true it is. When I saw my version of divine feminine in all her glory – she was this beautiful strong but flowing woman radiating love and purity and by her side was a black panther, beautiful but clearly powerful….

At the time I understood how distinctly separate I was experiencing my light and shadow, that’s a whole other story but what touched me most is the mistrust I saw in my divine masculines eyes, the protection he had around his heart and the heaviness on his shoulders. Because time and time again he had been wounded. He had opened himself to this promise of love and purity and then at his most vulnerable the panther had struck and mauled him, beating him into submission or destroying him completely.

I’ve progressively been laying down my sword, the sword I once wielded against myself and against the masculine (inner & outer). And I’m blessed these days to have a beautiful man walking with me on this path, a man who continues to do his own work, and can own his piece in the past, who can express his heart ache over the suffering and suppression of women & who chooses to now rise together. Together we choose to work through relational wounding when it arises, we actively choose to not get stuck in blame and shame, we choose to do it a different way, to cultivate trust, gentleness and intimacy and to focus on love and gratitude. And we choose to practice forgiveness when one of us forgets and falls.

The time of finger pointing, blaming, shaming and turning our backs away is done. It’s time to sit together. To be willing to do our own inner work and talk to each other with openness about our hurts, accepting responsibility for our own feelings and be willing to listen without defending, attacking or closing. I truly believe that when it comes to our core relational wounds there comes a time where the inner work needs to also transform into work in real time relationships with loved ones.

So I am eternally grateful for relationships to some incredible men who have helped me see and heal so many old wounds that continued to play out in my life so unconsciously. Like many I found it difficult to see the person standing before me as they are, instead I saw them through the filter of my past experiences, and my past hurts…with old wounds triggered and my desire to protect myself strong I lashed out at them. I forgive myself for these acts because I won’t let shame and guilt weigh me down. But I’m clear on the laying down of the sword, and I’m clear that I need to remind myself again and again that there is a new way of walking this path together that is only possible when I’m ready to let the other come close enough to join.

Have you ever considered where you still wield a sword? Against pieces of yourself? Or against those you say you love the most? Are you ready to lay down the sword?

Reach out if you need any support in this process. I work 1:1 with women and in small groups to cultivate Emotional Freedom. Through yoga, mindfulness, movement, nature, cacao and community we learn a new way of Intimacy, Wholeness and Juicy Aliveness.

Much Love <3