How I quit giving my power away to men (by surrendering)

I had the immense pleasure of receiving deep and profound healing recently. There are elements of my wounding that I have done so much work on and at some point, several years ago, got the message that I had done everything I could do for myself and needed someone else to assist me.

Because so much of the wounding that I carry in my spirit and my body come from ruptured relationships with the masculine, it seemed most reasonable that it would be from the hands of the masculine that I would be most fully liberated - at least that's what Source showed me, and after sitting with it, it made sense.

I had hoped that partners could do it, but often, those wounds were activated, but not held in the way that my spirit so longed for.

So, I have been in a prayer for a very long time. Seeing the vision of what was possible and calling in the help I needed. As a healer, I hold space for others and have often had it reflected to me that the container I offer is powerful and deep. Maybe it is because of this that it has been hard to find the person who could engender the trust necessary to allow me to fully surrender. I've had many powerful healing sessions, but few can go deep and no one has been able to access the deep wounding that I have been searching for. I was starting to doubt that anyone could have the gift and skill to find those places in my subtle and physical body, and then thoroughly release the tangles and toxins that have been stuck there for, apparently, lifetimes.

So, it was with humbling and almost overwhelming gratitude that I found myself being held and healed by the loving hands and heart of a good man who heard the cries for help (literally) from my spirit and generously offered his gifts to free me from the pain that have kept me from being fully embodied.

As I surrendered into this deep healing, I witnessed so many pieces coming together and have realized that it is likely that these are pieces many women carry within them, too. I share them here, hoping they will serve an awareness that can help you to access deep healing within your body, mind, and spirit, too.

What came through most powerfully was a vision of myself as a young girl, full of powerful life force energy. I was innocent, and full of strength. I saw how I channel so much Shakti and how, as a child, that potency was not empowered. I was not taught how to work with my power. I was taught, not so much directly, but unavoidably and constantly from my religion, my culture, TV, movies, music . . . that there was something shameful and inappropriate about my power, and somehow it didn't belong to me. As I got a little older, my life force energy was projected upon and fed upon by ignorant men who, growing up in the same imbalanced culture that I did, saw my life force energy, my Shakti, as something to feed upon or judge, objectify, and take as an entitlement.

I saw how many times, because of the messages I got from so many places, I gave that part of me away to the masculine – partly because I knew I needed protection – longed for it, actually, and thought I needed to trade my power for safety – and partly because I was taught that my survival and value depended upon placating and fulfilling the desires of the ignorant masculine that did not know how to treat it as sacred. I didn’t know how to treat it as sacred. Over and over again, I offered these precious parts of myself up, hoping someone would care for me/this part of me in a way that would bring a sense of wholeness, not realizing how ridiculous that was. I actually saw a vision of my spirit as a sad and helpless child offering her most precious gift up to strangers, not realizing what I was doing. Not realizing I am the one who needed to care for this part of me, to cherish and protect it. That vision has brought so much shame I couldn't bare to really fully see it.

By the time I realized that my Sacred Feminine energy, my life force, my power to create IS ACTUALLY SACRED, I felt ashamed that it had taken me so long to recognize it as such. And, as shame will do, it created a disconnect from the deep wounding that had been etched into my mind, my body, and my spirit. I moved forward, learning how to honor myself and how to start cultivating my Shakti to nourish myself and all I create. I learned how to start treating myself, my body, my offerings, and my gifts as sacred – I’m still learning, in fact.

And eventually, as I learned the true costs of shame, I started to dismantle the layers that had been built to keep me from seeing all that I had allowed to take place and all that I had done to myself because of ignorance and a disconnect from the sacred feminine. I did SO MUCH FUCKING HEALING with plants, ceremony, ritual, meditation, prayer, traditional therapy, shamanic soul retrieval, and my deep inner practice to remove trauma from the subconscious, Subconscious Success Repatterning. It has all been immensely helpful. It’s all been essential, but what I realized after years of healing from within is that there are elements of myself – physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually . . . that I cannot fully see or access on my own. I need a mirror to trim my hair and see what I look like from behind, and so is the case for other aspects of my healing and self-care.

Now, here I was on this massage table, feeling the vibrations of sound and witnessing the detangling of so many years – lifetimes actually – of feeling defensive and alone, needing to carry everything and unable to trust.

I saw the role I played in innocently offering precious parts of myself to men, who couldn’t possibly know how to hold it in a good way. I saw how it perpetuated so many expressions of the same old stories. I was able to see it with not just eyes of compassion, but with a full embodiment of compassion towards myself, towards those who played a role in teaching me this twisted view of myself, and towards those who saw what I had and fed on it in the many painful ways they did. I found forgiveness for all of it.

I saw my magic through the eyes of the uninitiated and ignorant masculine - witnessing my magic and, being taught to conquer, hunt, and posses, simply did what was natural – served himself without having a clue how it might impact me, and often leaving the empty shell of me behind to look for the next conquest.

I saw how I have done the same thing to the earth – seen something amazing and delightful and just assuming it was mine to take. I saw how the human instinct is filled with this entitlement: land to develop, fruit from the trees, coal from the earth, fish from the sea . . . Slave labor dyed clothing made with chemicals that poison the earth, purchased on Amazon - just $13.99! "I have to have those leggings!"

And it needs to stop. And shame is the veil holding all of the wounding that is keeping us from truly seeing.

It is time to see the roles we are playing in our own exploitation – where we give away our power because we think we have to. It is time to see the ways in which we are doing the same thing in our relationships and to the world around us. All of us are complicit on some level.

So, while I am still just in almost disbelief at finally receiving the miraculous gift of being liberated from deeply embedded wounding all glued together with shame, the work, in some ways, is just now beginning.