Healing steps & processes
My experience is that not every woman will resonate with her identity as a woman on every step of her healing journey, as not all aspects of healing are necessarily related to being a woman.
However, it is important to recognise that there are likely to be threads & influences which are woven throughout her story to a greater or lesser extent.
There are a number of practices that we had previously largely lost in our culture which can help us to explore, acknowledge & re-connect to our womanhood:
To honour
Through talking therapy, connecting to nature or the creation of rituals & ceremonies, we can mark the inner paradigm shift which happens at crucial life stages:
menstruation,
matrescence (becoming a mother)
& peri/menopause
Whilst these involve seismic emotional, physical & spiritual changes at all levels of our being, I also believe that we should include with these the processes we go through when considering how we choose our jobs & careers, our sexuality & gender identity, whether or not to be in a long-term relationship, whether or not to have a family (& what that might entail in terms of fertility issues), how to parent our children & how to be a female elder in our society.
Working with cycles
I strongly resonate with Alexandra Pope’s & Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer’s re-education of women around our monthly cycles & also the seasons of our menstruality (in their books Wild Power & Wise Power).
This involves becoming aware of the changes in our thoughts, emotions & bodies during our monthly cycles, so that we can work with our energy levels at different times, honour periods of both activity & rest & connect to a deeper level in ourselves, other women & our connection to the Earth & the Moon.
They make the comparison to the mycelium network, saying that menstruality is like this underground network of fungi, which is a system of hidden power built on dynamic interconnection that makes life possible.
For some women, depending on their age & experience, connecting with her monthly cycle will involve grieving for an experience of herself which she was not given as a young woman & finding a new way of relating to her body as she ages.
At the current stage of what Pope & Hugo Wurlitzer call the ‘Quickening’, or perimenopause, I am very interested in their idea of menopause as an initiation – of going within to meet ourselves & what we haven’t yet healed in the next stage of conscious evolution. As Jung said "in the second half of life, we step into our big feet".
Embracing all our emotions
I agree with Karla McLaren in that I believe that our culture has a conflicted relationship with emotions & that they should be seen & respected as distinct healing forces.
When we categorise & label emotions into what is good, bad, acceptable or unacceptable, we prevent the natural flow of energy within ourselves & an understanding of emotions as important and specific communications.
A large part of healing involves learning how to be mindful & accepting of each emotion as it arises in us; it takes time to unlearn how we have been largely socialised to respond to many of our feelings, ones which we feel now as well as those which we may not have allowed ourselves to feel for many years.
I think that it is especially important to explore shame & anger with women because there are many ways that we have been taught to be people pleasers & ignore our own needs & feelings.
The emergence of anger, rage & perhaps even a connection with what is wild & ancient within us can be an important step in our recovery.
“If you avoid conflict to keep the peace, you start a war within yourself”
Cheryl Richardson
Nature & spirit beings
For some women, coming to therapy or having some healing sessions will involve a spiritual element. This could involve a sense of listening to their own Soul &/or beginning or continuing a relationship with a spiritual being or beings.
From a shamanic perspective, we can have many relationships with different spirit or nature beings & these can have greater or lesser significance at different times in our lives.
We can ask for help if we have a situation or difficulty that we’re facing as well as do a shamanic meditation or drum journey to meet & dialogue with a particular being.
These beings can offer important guidance & support & be a crucial part of our awakening, healing & change.
Some women may find that a connection with the Divine Feminine or Mother Earth, in whatever form she takes for each person, is at the heart of their journey. This is “everything that keeps a woman powerful & grounded in herself, complete in herself, belonging to herself & yet connected to all that is” (Sue Monk Kidd).
