Embracing the Feminine

There are some definitive moments when I consciously moved from the androgenous into the feminine space. It was less like embracing and more like being an aggressive driver of a dodgem car.

I was 30 when I started to wear ‘pretty’ clothes, or clothes that flattered the figure. That’s not to say I have never worn them before, but I made a conscious decision to enhance my figure with clothing. That is, I wanted to change my outer image from tomboy/sports person to feminine and attractive. Yes. I wanted to be seen as attractive. I was going to manipulate my image. I felt a certain dirtiness in doing this. Its the same fear of 'wonderbras' that I have had. Pretending you have something you don't.

I bought my first pair of jeans and they were tighter than any pants I’ve worn before. I bought a pair of semi high heels and tops that fitted into the figure and didn’t cover my bottom. Wearing these things all together was a challenging experience. I was self conscious and embarrassed and knew that I had to do this to myself because I had daggers of judgement towards girls who dressed like this every day.

I had to embrace what I disliked so that I could stop to dislike it.

My problem with women started when I was born. My mother’s stories were that my father wanted a boy child. I was strong from the moment I was born. Small but strong, flexible, always awake, hardly eating, good natured, observant and climbing everything.

My father used to hang me from the door way with just my fingers curled into the frame at 6 months old.

I wanted to be a boy. I thought I was a boy. I wasn’t emotional. I disliked pink. I hated dolls and dresses.

I resented bras and bows and fluffy fancy things.

Women were weak. They cried and were dramatic. They were victims, shadows, manipulators, trappers of men, using their intelligence to trap and fool men.

Why did I think these things? Just watching the interactions of my parents, of the world around me. I had so much hate towards females in general.

The silliness, the giggling, the talk of boys, the concern for their hair, the preciseness of their pencil boxes.

It didn’t help that I was considered ‘plain’ and had a figure that was described as ‘straight up and down’, that my thighs were so big from running I couldn’t fit into normal sized pants and had to wear sport clothes, that my face was freckled and my mother adored clear beautiful skin, where my hair was wavy and brown and my mother loved thick black curly hair, that my mother thought the perfect waist was one you could put to hands around and actually, I didn’t have a waist. And so forth and so on.

I used to go swimming at 6 – 7 am twice a week and have competition on Sunday. I used to go to athletics training twice a week and have competition on Saturday. I used to jog for 45 minutes every morning that I wasn’t swimming with the local surf club. That was when I was 8.

In my thirties I took a shot of vodka, then another one, and then I went to my first belly dance class with my good friend Mitra. A class that changed my life. A class I was so afraid of – to move the body freely. To move the hips. To shake the shoulders. To let the hair be free. To embrace the female body with its curves and beauty.

I felt my feet pound the floor to the drums – and it was awakening the female power from below. My feet pounded on the door to our great Mother. My hips moved in circles – winding, calling, and invoking the snake goddess of dreams and darkness. My arms and hands moved out into the space around me and felt the energy of light. I became darkness interacting with light. Light was my medium.

I went home to Australia and made my peace with the black and the white. I gave my tears of sorry to the despair, and I gave my bowing and forgiveness to the arrogance. I took the earth into me and felt her release her floodgates of love. She had always loved me. I just didn't know it. I had to release my own hates and unhappinesses. To feel the Mother's love, you have to let go. You have to clean the inner self.

I moved here, to Catalonia, to a place that is blessed by the Virgin of Montserrat. The virgin of the serrated mountain. The Black Madonna. Its where I have come, to place my roots down into the earth, and to make a home. My first home where I can leave my things and travel to other places without selling/giving away all of my possessions as I have done three times before.

The Mother Earth – the continual healing, the continual giving, the continual renewal – without end. We scream at her, and she gives us food. We hit her, and she gives us sunsets of such beauty we think we will die. We destroy her ornaments and she gives us flowers.

Its time to grow up. To stop the tantrums. To turn to her and embrace her with love and gratitude. For everything thing the Mother represents. For everything the female represents. For everything.

And this does not mean we are against the Father. Not at all. It just means, we are for the mother. When she is strong, and has been awakened, we can allow the sacred meeting of the father and mother to take place within each of us. The light, the darkness. The rational and the irrational. The waking and the dreaming. The mountain and the valley.

Thank you to my mother, thank you to my Grandmothers, thank you to my sisters, thank you to my father, thank you to my first female friends, thank you to Mitra, thank you to Sevika, thank you to Sarah, thank you to Geir, thank you to Anders, thank you to Jett, thank you to Katrine, thank you to my brother, thank you to Albert, thank you to Elizabeth, thank you to our dear Mother and thank you to Ordinary Sparrow for helping to bring the clay into some sort of identifiable shape with a master’s touch.