So Beautiful. So, so beautiful. And yet…
Why don’t we feel this way about our own beautiful, sexual female bodies?
About the same time I took this picture, I came across this article by Eve Ensler, Over it. If you haven’t read it, do. And, after reading that post by Eve, I came across this one, and these words jumped out at me:
“Vagina is the most terrifying word, the most threatening word, in any language of any country I have ever been to. Even when the vagina is worshiped in theory, as the yoni is in India, it is denigrated in practice. It is more reviled and feared than words like plutonium, genocide and starvation. In many countries the word for female genitalia is so derogatory or disgusting, it cannot be spoken in public. In a few places, there is no word in the language for vagina at all.”
A Big Fat Lie
There is a big fat lie of a story in our world, a story that says the feminine is evil, bad, not to be trusted.
We could ask, “Why?”, for the rest of our lives. As Durga points out, dwelling in the negative robs us of our power:
I had secretly followed the “Goddess of Negativity” into her empire. She is a goddess of illusion, seducing us to complain about our life circumstances. She walks into our nights and grows in our dreams of worries and fear. She rules the space. She is a master of pretending to be something different.
She brings up stories and secretly turns optimism into negative magnets. She is a possessed collector of experiences we refuse to consciously digest. Instead we pin them on a fame wall inside a forgotten room of ourselves, and then we leave forever, leaving it alone and unprotected. Negativity knows these rooms and turns our secrets into fearful memories. And because we have left this room to her, she owns our power.
Staying in the place of wondering why keeps us locked in undigested places where we don’t know why we are stuck…
I know I’ve stayed in this place of “Why” for a long, long time. And, remarkably, I don’t move forward when I wait for an answer. The only part that would want to know is the part that does take it personally, because it is the part that believes it is separate from the whole of life and wants to stay separate.
This part doesn’t consciously want to stay separate. And, it’s desire to continue to stay in the illusion of the big fat lie comes from wanting it to change, wanting others out there, most certainly men, to acknowledge it isn’t true. Yet, they can’t tell me what is true. That’s just giving power away, again.
If someone else could tell me how worthy I am, then that same someone else could also take that worthiness away by simply stating something else. I no longer have any willingness to give another person permission to tell me what I am worth.
The only truth is the truth of life, known by way of my experience.
Only I can know what is true, and I can only know that by living what I want to know. By being it, by paying attention, by realizing I am not simply an object but a soul with a female body.
I am unlearning the lies I was fed, by paying attention to my experience, and by feeling the wisdom shared by others to see if it resonates with me. I can no longer take others’ words as truth, and I can feel for resonance with their words, as I did with Eve and Durga’s words.
The Power of Creation
The only truth is the truth of life, known by way of my experience.
Only I can know what is true, and I can only know that by living what I want to know. By being it, by paying attention, by realizing I am not simply an object but a soul with a female body.
Can I settle down into my body and begin to be aware in these cells that are the vagina?
Can I come to know myself without this story of evil and disgust?
How long will I continue to tell this story? It is buried deep within where I don’t have to feel its effects on my body, my heart, my psyche.
In reality, this place within my woman’s body isn’t even really a vagina. It is simply life.
The word itself carries so much.
Can we reclaim the word and not get lost in the word?
Can we be in the body, really BE in the body?
Beingness is love. Simply being in the body, is being the great love that we are in this female body, without the big fat lie.
This female body holds a great power. It is time to once again know this power, love this power and live this power, for it is not power over another, it is the power of creation and life.
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I’d love to know your feelings and thoughts. Please share them here in the comments.
This post is part two of a three-part series titled, “Begs the Question. You can read part one here.
Loved the way you addressed the issue. I wonder why ‘taboos’ like speaking of a woman’s vagina is rarely discussed in society or public.
“dwelling in the negative robs us of our power” True. I suppose the whole purpose in life is to live in Non-Fear so as to remain connected to our true power.
Look forward to your next post with great interest.
Thank you for sharing your comment here. You ask a good question, perhaps one with no easy answer. And, I can see that we don’t wait for someone to answer it, we simply begin to speak of them in a way that is true and wondrous, befitting the vagina’s sacredness.
Julie
Oh my gosh Julie! So many responses to this lovely post of yours…
I have really been playing with the same questions of, “Can we really be in our bodies AND can we make it more than ok to be in our bodies in a really powerful, sensual way?” The deep sacred feminine has been showing up for me in terms of finding beauty in the every day “mundane,” finally claiming my creative self, connecting solidly to the Earth through dance and other physical pursuits and loving my sensual nature.
I think it’s scary for us who have bought into the Goddess of Negativity and praised her as our idol, no doubt supported by a very patriarchal system and F-ed up media machine. This female body indeed holds great power and it’s our mission to own it and spread the word. Posts like this one give us permission to come home to ourselves and I am so grateful!
xo,
M.
Beautiful, Maira,
Thank you for sharing your feelings. I’m so glad you are coming home to your wise, female sensual instinctive self and body.
Love,
j
Dear Maira, just be writing this, just by questioning, you are creating space for women (and men) to question the status quo as well. You create space for us to be in our bodies and to be open to what that experience is like and to cherish it. Thank you. Keep writing, please!
Warmly, Lisa
Thank you Lisa! May we all question the status quo and cherish what we find, most especially in our bodies.
Correction to my post above: “Dear JULIE” (oops!)
julie,
there is so much richness here. i love you so much for showing up how you do.
how DO you lean into your beingness? and what’s it like there for you? in that place of power, of life, of creation, of existence? … will you show us, in video? there’s a way that i know if people see you + your beingness, that will be a game changer.
with so much respect + awe,
rachael
I’m pondering over being locked into needing an answer to “why?” and how I personalize the lie and stay stuck in separateness. And I’m pondering the paradox between desiring change and living into my own truth and seeing a tiny flicker of realization that maybe I’ve had the order wrong all this time. I do know this – your wisdom resonates deeply with me, in all of those supposedly unspeakable places.
so much of your gorgeous post resonates with my soul, and i cry for the once-me who thought – who really thought – her body wasn’t about listening or feeling or touching or tasting or knowing or creating in response to the world, oh no. once-me thought that my body was here for the pleasure of others . . . and my soul was here for the same reason. now-me wants to lash out and lash out vehemently against those who led me to believe this nonsense (and more), but the only thing that makes sense to now-me is to know differently and live differently . . . and encourage and allow other women to do the same every chance i get. even if it’s only by my example. big responsibility, and one i’m willing to take on. i will own my own power from now on. me, this soul with a female body.