Category: WOMEN AND SOCIETY

A Martyr at Work: perfection serves no purpose 

~ womeninlivingness

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been in competition with myself: do more, be more, do better, be better.  

Be the best you can be.  

What’s wrong with that one might ask? 

While it felt good for a while and I got a lot of recognition for it – being the reliable one who could always do anything I was asked to do and to a high quality, I’ve come to realise that it’s just not it. It is like a beast that is always hungry for more, no matter how many times a day I feed it, it keeps coming to the feeding station. Continue reading “A Martyr at Work: perfection serves no purpose ” →

Repose: taking a back seat in the front row

~ womeninlivingness

I have recently completed a program called Stillness and Cycles with Sara Harris from Follow Your Flow. It was 6 weeks of finding out everything and more about our cycles. Each week we attended a presentation, discussion and an Esoteric Yoga session, charted our cycle every day, learned about the cycle on a physical and energetic level, and kept a daily journal of body awareness and observations of each phase.  

The program has taught me about repose, and I have had a physical taste of what that really means.  Continue reading “Repose: taking a back seat in the front row” →

Unfolding Sacredness

~ womeninlivingness

Long before becoming a student of Universal Medicine, when I was in my early 30’s, I embarked on what I called at the time my ‘healing journey’. Abuse had featured heavily in my younger life and I longed to understand WHY (?)  

It was not that I set out with these intentions exactly, but I had a deep inner knowing that the abuse was somehow still running my life, that even though I had moved thousands of miles away and started a new life in another country, the abuse continued to be the leading character in my life and I had had enough of sharing centre stage with this life experience that I couldn’t seem to shake even when being far from the scene of the abuse.  Continue reading “Unfolding Sacredness” →

A Successful Woman

~ womeninlivingness

Attending a women’s group has been a great support and valuable learning for me; it is something I cherish and look forward to. Just before the last women’s group, I came across some old notes that I had written from a women’s group a few years back. On the top of the page I had written a question: what does it feel like to be a successful woman?  Continue reading “A Successful Woman” →

A Frozen Shoulder: Thawing my Resistance to my Inner Quality

~ womeninlivingness

Three days ago, I woke up with a frozen shoulder; I was unable to sleep the prior night or get out of bed. This has happened before, but this time, with the help of my amazing practitioner, Jenny Ellis, I really listened to the message being offered up. I came to understand the message along with fixing the actual physical pain. And this is what I discovered… Continue reading “A Frozen Shoulder: Thawing my Resistance to my Inner Quality” →

Women, Ageing and ‘the shelf’

~ womeninlivingness

What does the shelf mean to you?

For us it is the thing that has us in its grip from an early age as women. There is an unspoken contract that says that by a certain age we need to be partnered up and having babies.

It is so embedded in our societies that when we choose not to abide by these rules we are required to explain ourselves.

So who made the shelf and what keeps it on the wall? Continue reading “Women, Ageing and ‘the shelf’” →

Going with or Resisting our Natural Cycles

~ womeninlivingness

‘I am in a 60+ year old body and yes, it is starting to show signs of ageing, but the me inside this body feels sparklier and more vital than it ever has; regardless of what is going on physically – the connection to my inner self is deepening and expanding exponentially – I put this down to acceptance and appreciation of the innate qualities I have and express.’ ~ Judy

We have created such a weird construct in society in which we impose stops, negativity and ‘no gos’ on our natural cycles (ageing, menstruation, menopause, dying … to name a few) and this leaves us in a quandary and no man’s land in terms of our relationship with, and acceptance of, ourselves, our bodies and life.

Continue reading “Going with or Resisting our Natural Cycles” →

The Women we ARE

~ womeninlivingness

Reading about other women’s experiences has helped me to learn about how women can support each other. This level of awareness has offered me the opportunity to appreciate the simplest of ways we as women can be there for each other. Recently, I witnessed such appreciation on a most practical level.

I was sitting in the waiting room of a Medical Centre on a Saturday afternoon filled with many ill patients waiting their turn to be seen by the doctors. I noticed that most of the patients were women sitting with their sick children for hours, way before I had arrived. The children looked tired and exhausted and the mothers were doing their best to support them as they waited patiently to be seen by the next available doctor. There was an urgency in the eyes of the various women and a sense of relief when their names were called out from the front desk.

Continue reading “The Women we ARE” →

Are Women Really Like That?

~ womeninlivingness

During a shared walk, a friend of mine mentioned that her son had visited with his new partner the previous evening. They had chatted for a while before the couple left and my friend, much to her horror, recollected that all the while, she had found herself running an internal dialogue about the attributes, physical and otherwise, of the young woman.

My friend was deeply shocked and explained that she had found herself engaging thoughts such as “her chin is a bit saggy”, “her complexion is sallow”, “her hips are bigger than her breasts” and “she is shy”. From there she had jumped to her own physical attributes and had made self-directed and critical comments such as “I’ve never liked the size of my hips, they’ve been the bane of my life”, etc. etc.

Continue reading “Are Women Really Like That?” →