As women, when we get involved in a relationship (it doesn't matter if its with a man or another woman), the nurturing aspect of our personalities kick in and we focus all or most of ourselves on making sure that the relationship is given whatever it needs to grow, we're not adverse to giving up our careers or our dreams if it means that the person we're involved with will be happier and feel more content and safe in our love for them. Whatever focus we may have had on ourselves slowly diminishes as the other person and the relationship become more and more our central focus in life.
If there comes a time when the relationship is no longer viable, and we have to leave it, we can become bitter and resentful. Even if we don't actually think about it, the feeling is there that we no longer know who we are as individuals, now we have to "start all over" again and find ourselves.
Granted, this scenario is not limited to only women, there are many men out there who also experience their loss of focus for the same reasons, and of course there are women who may not fit this particular mold and have no idea what I may be talking about. Yet, as a general rule of thumb, this is my observation of how women tend to lose their identities in their desire to make a relationship work.
The feminine and masculine reside together within each of us; in order for us to find and embrace the power within ourselves, we must find the balance between the two natures and allow them both equal expression within our lives.
My ability to see beyond the facade of things, helped me to understand that there was something important for me to learn about the goddess, it spurred me on in my meditations, piqued my curiousity enough for me to do some hard research, and made me acutely aware of the feminine principle in all of life. Little by little, the goddess appeared in all of her glorious (and not so glorious) forms, each encounter brought me closer to the understanding that all of these identities existed within me.
I had spent nearly my entire life (since I was 12 yrs old) looking for God and trying to understand who He is in relation to myself; it didn't cross my mind until late 2003 that I had only been looking at half of the picture, that there was a feminine essence that needed to be understood as well.
I have felt Her there for a long, long time, always sitting in the background, patiently and silently waiting for me to see her, always loving me. This is the love that I have looked for in my lovers & partners, it is a soft, gentle, and nurturing love filled with patience and understanding. One day while hiking on Mt. Humphrey in Arizona, I stopped to hug a tree ... the tears flowed from me as I felt an immense, yet serene and gentle love envelope me ... in that moment I realized that all of my heartache had been born because I was looking for that love to come from another human being & as long as I continued to look for that love from another human, I would likely be continuously disappointed. That was September of 2003, it is now February of 2007, I have been living with the goddess energy since that moment, trying continuously & consciously to understand her and myself. Now I see that my experience on Mt. Humphrey that day was a glimpse into myself, into the goddess within me; the love that I felt enveloping me when I hugged that tree was my own love being returned to me.
The key to unlocking our power as women lies in our ability to embrace the goddess within us. We have to become comfortable being ourselves whether that means acting silly like a child, giving orders like a mother, or sitting silently in our age of wisdom. Societal standards often dictate to us how we should act, what's appropriate or not in public, because we have been raised in this mode we often don't even realize that we are lost to ourselves.
If I ask you the question: "Who are you?" What would your answer be? How much of your answer would include someone else? We spend so much of our lives taking care of others, or being dependent upon them, that it becomes difficult to identify ourselves without saying that we are someone's mother, wife, sister, daughter, etc. We have lost sight of who we are as Women, we have lost sight of the power that we carry within us as creators, nurturers, and destroyers.
I believe in a Supreme Creator and because of my Christian foundation I call the Creator ~ God. I know that God watches over me and is helping me to understand who I am in connection with all that is Divine ... in connection to everything both on this Earth and in the heavens above. I do not consider the goddess to be greater than God, but rather another aspect of God ... the feminine aspect of the Creator.
So, how can I know God if I only know one aspect of the Creator, how can I know myself if I only know one aspect of myself? The masculine has subdued the feminine for so many aeons that things have been thrown off balance in the world of Energy.
In order for things to return to a balanced state of being, women must step up and into their power. This doesn't mean that we become Amazons, or overthrow our male companions, we simply have to remember who we are as powerful human beings. We have to begin the process of standing up for ourselves without feeling guilty that we might be hurting someone's feelings, or that Jack or Jackie will have to fend for themselves while we do whatever it is that we find necessary to rebuild our identities as the goddesses we are.
Our power lies within us, not in some external counterpart. The love we seek can only come from within ourselves, no-one else can fill the void. We can only hope to share our love so that it will be mirrored back to us ... just as that tree on Mt. Humphreys did for me.
Most people only know the masculine side of God, the words written by men were meant to conceal the power that now lays dormant within the female population. Have you ever considered that God the Creator of Everything may not be a man, nor even masculine; that "He" is quite likely genderless ~ neither male nor female. Afterall, being one gender or the other would naturally impose limitations, wouldn't it?
There are still a few indigenous cultures that hold females in high esteem, recognizing them as the ones whom life is dependent upon. Yet, even in some of these cultures, the women have begun to forget who they are as the modern world seeps into their livingrooms and kitchens.
It is time for us to reclaim our power as women, to deny the roles assigned to us by a patriarchal society while still embracing the gentleness that is inherent within us, to learn how to stand in our power and be strong without worrying about being a "bitch". We don't have to burn our bras, and we don't have to go to work in the corporate world, we can stay at home and raise the kids, cook dinners, and tend to the daily chores. Standing in your power means knowing who you are as an individual (as well as your identity that describes you as someone's mother, etc.) and not being afraid to BE who you are ... act it out, be whoever you want to be, do what you want to do, make yourself happy. Embrace the goddess within you and you're life will change, it will become your own.