This weekend, I called one of my regular clients who had been very sick a few weeks ago.
Back in January, she was sicker than I had ever seen her and had asked me to come and visit her at home.
She herself said she has not been that sick in 15 years.
When you are very sick with the flu, often a virus is asking you to change your consciousness about something important in your life.
One of the issues we discussed at that time was her work.
She has been wanting for some time to make a change.
I had helped her through both of her pregnancies and also with her two babies once they were born.
It has been very rewarding for me at the soul level to work with her through these various stages, and I can well remember how, before her first baby was born, she had pondered the idea of opening a second business.
At the time, I just laughed. I knew her baby would be her new business, and that handling more than that would be difficult to impossible.
When he was born, although indeed a bundle of joy, he turned out to be far more work than she had ever imagined.
Now, after her second baby was born, weaned and matured, she has been considering leaving her business and had gotten up the courage to bring up the subject with her husband.
“What will you do?” he asked.
That single question gave away everything.
It is telling how often a simple question or statement can uncover our core beliefs.
Even though she has been getting up at 4 or 5 a.m. to attend to her babies, feed them, clothe them and get them off to school, driving them from home to school, dropping them off, picking them up, playing with them, listening to them and attending to their every need 24/7, the idea was there that she would not be “doing anything” should she also give up her business.
In our culture, often what is valued most is the male role of providing. Making money – that’s what appears to create value, self esteem, and meaning in life.
The feminine role is supporter and enhancer.
We women do the background work for the providers and protectors.
However, because so much emphasis is put on getting and spending in our culture, many of us women go into the male role hook line and sinker.
Its only when being so yang completely burns out our adrenal glands and depletes our hormones and brain chemistry do we often stop and ponder what it really means to be a woman.
In fact, you can be assured that if you are a woman and you are in a slight state of panic, you are being too yang – pushing too hard, trying to achieve too much.
Now I am as ambitious as anyone, but I have had to learn these lessons the hard way.
As women, we have to embrace who we really are.
That means that we are meant to embrace our cave woman as well as our higher spiritual self and ponder what it means to be the one who supports others.
How much value do you put on cooking, cleaning and keeping up your home?
Is the only part of being a woman you truly value how you look – your curves, your weight, your appearance?
I believe the farther we get from who we really are, the more unwell we will be.
Our soul longs to embrace and value our femininity.
When I was growing up, my mother did not have a job outside the home, although she has since had many “real” paying jobs.
I thought to myself that I wanted to do better than my mother.
Now I only hope I can do half as good a job as she has done.
In my older years, I have grown to have humility about what it truly means to be a woman and not a man, and how difficult it is for women to push and how sick it makes us, both physically and at the soul level, when we over work and do not listen to what our hearts are really longing for.
