Woman Wonder

I spent most of my life feeling estranged to woman. 

The story I tell myself is, women negatively triggered me. 

They seemed to have the overwhelming ability to make me deeply sad and ragingly mad. 

My relationship with my mother I tell myself fuelled it all. A complex and complicated woman with a life filled of trauma. Trauma she owned and we shared. Addiction, abuse, adultery, and death. 

I always preferred animals, nature and guys. Only when necessary, woman.

For over 30 years I lived in unconscious awareness of what it meant to be a woman or to have, woman in my life. The awakening has been a slow 7 year process of realising women were not my problem. 

I was. 

And I was a woman. 

30 years of mastering the habitual act of judgement, blame and shame. Everything I saw out in the world was what was being reflected back inside of me. 

I was not only estranged from women. 

I was estranged to me.

Then…

Came my involuntary transformation. A phoenix arrived to burn everything to the ground, leaving nothing but ash to nourish new ground. 

So uninvited, but so perfectly timed. 

I discovered I was going to have a daughter. 

I was making a woman. 

In that moment, a match was lit and with it went all my shit. 

They say, your children choose you. It makes sense. 

She is one firely little lady, who knows her mind, heart and soul better than anyone else I’ve come to know. 

She saved me. Honestly it's true. She really did. 

I had become an unconscious suffering victim, perfectly digitised behind the mask of deflection. Everyone else was the problem, not me. I was “happy” right. I was healthy, married to the man of my dreams, had a career and was a mum to a wonderful little boy. 

Yet I felt overwhelmed, empty, exhausted and oh so alone. 

I had no idea how our emotions are little sparks of light. Important informants sending continuous observations that are deeply connected to your needs. I’ve come to learn that if you attach curiosity and openness, they bring you insight. Like a candle or beautifully burning incense, they can bring joy and delight.

This was not the case for me at the time. The feelings and thoughts were sparking unsafely all over the place . As I suppressed them down in the relentless nature of motherhood and busy life, I was unsafely drying up parts of me, like dried feelings falling to a woodland ground. 

I was a fire risk and I knew it but ignored it. 

When things die and the heat with pressure keeps coming. 

You can feel the fear of time. You know. You just know the blaze is coming. 

As the pregnancy settled in, the hormones unlocked the blaze and it surged right through me.

And out into the world too. 

It was wild and uncontrolled. It was painful. So painful.  

Everything was on fire and everything was burning. 

My concepts, emotions, limitations, fantasies, stories and lies. All pulled from underneath me, purging all I had and leaving me with nothing except the thought 

“I am ok but I would prefer to die if tomorrow if more of this”.

It was 15 weeks of morning sickness. I call it the time of my involuntary transformation. 

The daily dance between wishing to die and the strange sense of peace and quiet as all my stories were replaced by my nausea and continual vomiting. 

At some point, I had the arrival of new thoughts. Like seedlings sprouting out of the ash. The continual knowing that life still comes. Life come to rescue me when I needed it the most.

I was desperate, cause honestly no one else was there and no one else really cared. 

It was just having a baby and it was just morning sickness. It’s “normal” right. That's what everyone kept telling me. 

It was up to me to grow something helpful. Where I felt seen and held. Thoughts of love, kindness and care spouted so politely in my mind. They were soft, slow, warming and illuminating. They were thoughts I had never reflected towards me before and they were making me feel better. 

Course I said I love you to others but honestly. Never to me!

Then I realised. 

This softness in me. It  was my woman talking.  

This kindness was my woman too. 

This ability to care for myself, especially in the tough. 

This was a gift I had inside of me. 

A gift I’d only given outward, never inward. 

Then I started to play with this sense of curiosity and wonder. 

What was my womanhood? 

I started to think of woman I had learnt about in history, I started to see stories of heroism and grace. I started to track back my relationships and see souls who along the way had taught me ways of womanhood. I had misjudged them at this time. Thinking, they were their gifts, not mine. 

Then I remembered. I was doing the most important job in the world. 

I was creating life. 

My baby darling girl. 

I was a womb, man! 

I was the source of life. 

I was a creator. 

Everything I’d ever needed was the very essence insight of me.

I had the been given the greatest gift and I had not seen it through all the stories I’d told myself. The lies, on top beliefs, on top of more stories. I’d forgotten what was true and what was my ABSOLUTE TRUTH. 

My nature. My life. My peace. My bliss. 

I was a woman! Yes a woman! Wow. Truly I was a woman! 

Thats when it all started flowing. 

I saw the sparks, I saw my power. I saw my interconnectedness to men, to nature. We were all whole, together. 

And so...started a journey. 

A pilgrimage of commitment to self discovery. 

To learn, to share, to connect. 

A journey of self discovery. 

I realised my impossible dream was to creation the conditions for life to thrive. 

As all life begins within a woman, it made total sense to start in wonder at the source. 

This little book is my path so far. The inspiration, ideas, lessons and insights. 

The things that have opened my heart, mind and soul. Helping me to embody ways to harness the power of light, using it as a force for good. Tending to it, so it can be safe and warm and wonderful for me, our communities and the world in which we share. 

My hope is you discover something in here that sparks your wonder in what it means to be a woman for you too.