August 2013 – unabashedly female

August 26, 2013

Unveiling Untruths about being a Woman

Coming to live the truth of who you are is not about becoming more of something, nor is it about fixing anything. Coming to live the truth of who you are is about stripping away the untruths that you came to believe about yourself.

I’m creatingÂ a complimentary guide for womenÂ and in doing so I decided to reach out and ask friends, colleagues, and readers to share their answers to this question:

What were you told/taught about what it is/means to be a woman
that you’ve since discovered is not true…and why?

I want to know, because I am clear that even though somewhere we KNOW these things we were told are not true, in our everyday world we are faced with the constant messaging that they are…and so as one friend wrote:

“Thank you Julie for the thought provoking question – my comment here would be – most everything that was shared here resonates with me – these things are not true – the confusing part is – we – or society lives or pretends for the most part they are true and hence we get confronted with them on a daily basis – we suck it up and quietly endure – or NOT!!!! : )”

There’s been such a great response, and women have replied that they are really appreciating reading the responses, that I thought I would ask you, my loyal readers, the same question. You never know when something you share will spark an important insight for other women!

There are a couple of options for sharing your responses:

I’ve included the original questions and comments from both my Facebook page and my personal page here. You can respond directly in the threads if you’d like, and you can read the responses.
You can also reply here in the comments, sharing the untruths you’ve come to see.
And if you’d like your comment to remain private, you can send me an email at juliedaley (@) gmail (.) com or send me a private message on my Facebook page.

Please feel free to share the question with other women you know who have something important to add to the conversation.

I’ll be collating the responses into a downloadable complimentary PDF.

Post by Unabashedly Female with Julie Daley.

Post by Julie M Daley.

This one caused my heart to break open, because it is one that took me a long time to heal in my body:

[that women are] “NOT made in the image of the divine.”

As if this could ever have been thought, and taught, to be so!

I do know that it is helpful for all of us to become aware of this strong messaging we are bombarded with not only when we are young, but also on a daily basis.

While we may not resonate with all of the responses, reading them can help us have more compassion for ourselves, for other women, and for all people as we come to realize that both women and men (and of course young boys and girls) are being conditioned to believe so many untruths that keep us from living the truth that already resides in our own souls.

Thank you for sharing whatever you can! By naming what is untrue, we come that much closer to knowing and living the truth of our beings as women in this world. What we bring to the world, just as we are, is deeply needed in these times.

August 20, 2013

In My Skin

I’ve come here to live in my skin. Not to hide away from life, but to shimmy right up to this ever-so-thin layer of dermis so I can truly touch and be touched.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To relate to life, caressed by breeze, by sun, by dew.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. It’s the only thing that separates what I sometimes believe is me from what I sometimes believe is not me. It’s a tender line, isn’t it? This thin skin â€“ a membrane so thin it defies rationality.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. A soft wrapping around the tender-most flesh, it gifts me with what many only speak of in hushed tones – one of the most joyous experiences of life – that of being touched, deeply, reverently consciously.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To know the true intimacy of life is to know the sublime interaction that happens here. It is so simple, yet so profoundly mysterious. We can describe these bodies in scientific, physiological terms. We can say, “Oh yes, I know how it works.” But when we touch another with our whole being, our whole awareness, at the point of connection there are no words to describe it. Nothing we can say can capture this moment of exquisite intimacy.

I’ve come here to live in my skin. To be alive, fully and vulnerably, is to offer this skin to the world. To do so is to allow yourself to be touched by what greets you.

Iâ€™ve come here to live in my skin, yet along the way I learned so well how not to live in my skin. Each of us has moments when what we experienced was too much, too painful, or too frightening to feel the immensity of the sensations of those experiences.

Over these past many years, Iâ€™ve been taking this long journey back into the body. Along with many things, one thing Iâ€™ve discovered is that sometimes what I long to say can only be said through my body. Sometimes, there is no way to say with words what the body longs to say. It must be said with touch, with movement, with song or dance.

Maybe thatâ€™s our journey, to come back into the skin. We are here in bodies.Â We are alive in these bodies, in this skin that was created to know the sublimity of touch and sensation and life.

Why are we alive if not to fully live in this skin?

August 5, 2013

Weather Report for Today: Hips, Hands, & Heart

“Movement never lies.
It is a barometer telling the state of the soulâ€™s weather to all who can read it.â€
Martha Graham

The truth is close at hand. Just move and you will know it.

Today at dance, a different teacher played the music and guided us through our two-hour practice, a teacher I’d not yet danced with. As with each 5Rhythms teacher, he played a unique blend of music and guided us in his own unique way. And as has always been the case, my dance today was another unique expression of where I am, right now, a as a soul, dancing with another 149 other souls, to another unique soul’s musical selections.

I think back over my eleven years dancing the 5Rhythms as a moving meditation practice and how my soul has moved over those years. If my thousands of dances had been recorded and put into one long stream, it would be a long weather report showing the changes in the state of my soul over the years – and there have been infinite state changes along the way.

When I first started dancing all those years ago, I felt called to it – even though it freaked me out to dance, freeform, without steps, in a room full of strangers. I kept showing up, week after week. This taught me so clearly how we know where our soul wants to move even if we fight it or fear it.

Yes, I felt embarrassed often. Yes, I even felt like I might die of embarrassment – and I didn’t. Something pushed me to go. Something without words. It was instinct. It was knowing. It was intense.

Eleven years later I can’t imagine not dancing. I can’t imagine not knowing the people I’ve met through dance. I can’t imagine not having come to know myself so much more clearly. I can’t imagine not being more deeply awake in the cells of this body. I can’t imagine NOT knowing that this powerful joy is possible to know on a regular basis.

Joy comes even when my soul is in the middle of stormy weather, because the joy comes from movement itself, not from being ‘happy’.

Movement is like that. It shows us what’s up inside. It shows us how we are unfolding.

Creative expression is movement through the body. Whether we’re moving the pen across paper, brush across canvas, feet across the floor, the body loves to move and the soul loves to express. We are creative beings by nature.

But here’s the thing.

Anyone or anything that tells us our expression, movement, disposition – basically the expressions of who we are – should be all sunshine and blue skies all the time doesn’t know a damn thing about weather.

Being human is not always sunny and blue skies – not if we’re truthful.

When your hand is moving across the paper or your feet across the floor, don’t stop your soul from moving the weather at hand – or foot. Let your soul pour rain onto the paper, or dance a dark star-lit sky across the floor, or move strong confident wind across your vocal cords.

We are nature. Why should our movement and creative expression be any different than the weather?

It only is when we try to control it by hanging onto it, forcing it, or telling a big story about it that we stop the weather from rolling out across the plains of our lives.

Let your expression move and you will come to know clearly, and beautifully, exactly the state of your own soul and a profoundly grateful joy.Â Our hips, hands, and hearts know what’s going on inside and they’ll be the first to report the weather if you’re willing to move.