Over the course of my life in general and more intimately over the past few months, I’ve observed the degree to which I identify with my masculine nature. It’s been my tendency since early childhood to live up to expectations of my father and society’s masculine-oriented expectations of success. In many ways, I’ve walked what I felt was the ‘more respected’ path, often dismissing my own feminine desires as ‘wimpy’ and ‘unworthy.’
I'm aware that it’s not the case that this rejection of my feminine nature resulted from being violently raped; perhaps it’s more likely that incident was predicated from my conceding to our cultural belief in feminine powerlessness.
With this awareness, I’ve been experiencing some anger and loss and am seeing part of the path before me as a quest to heal this feminine wound. In my quest, I’ve been resonating deeply with the Native American Flute. I made a bamboo flute last year and fell in love with the process. This past December, I happened to express my interest to my dad and he decided to run with it. He's quite skilled as a woodworker and though he knows little about music, he's been spending the past month crafting native flutes. I visited this past weekend to take part in the process.
As I move into this space with greater respect for my feminine nature, I'm profoundly aware of those places that I have, in the past, plowed through life only desiring an outcome, how I mistook this moment as unworthy compared with product or result, how I severely undervalued the power in simply being with what's before me. As I embrace these more flowing aspects of my nature and allow my intuition to take precedence, I'm beginning to understand the power inherent in the feminine.
It feels timely that I'm creating flutes and also a blessing in many ways to have my father by my side. I'm grateful for being shown this way to embrace the balance of my wholeness.
I'm anticipating some sweet flowing music.
What a lovely idea - I wish I could make stuff like that!
Posted by: Carolyn | February 19, 2009 at 07:53 AM