I had heard from some women that I spoke to about having Esoteric Breast Massages, how nurturing and deeply honouring they found the sessions to be, so I was very much looking forward to a series of Esoteric Breast Massage sessions with a Practitioner who had been recommended to me and one whom I felt drawn to because of the deep stillness I could feel in her presence.
Continue reading “A Woman Stepping Out – my Journey with the Esoteric Breast Massage”
I recently entered into a relationship after many years of avoiding relationships and it was an absolutely amazing experience for me.
My first date with this man was lined up to be for one afternoon after work. We had arranged to meet for dinner. As I was preparing to leave work I felt a little bit of nervousness, but when I got into my car this passed, and as I drove towards the restaurant I felt a deep settlement in my body. I felt much more of a woman. It was a truly incredible experience as I hadn’t ever felt anything to this depth within myself before. All feelings of nervousness were no longer there and there was just a feeling of absoluteness, knowing and grace.
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.
In a recent conversation with a female friend we were sharing our appreciation of another. This may sound like a normal, everyday thing to do, however there was something quite spectacular and revelatory about our conversation…
As we shared and reflected about this person we discovered that there was even more to appreciate. This person was making an ever-growing amount of choices in their life that were supporting them to feel (in their own words) more like themselves than ever before.
Continue reading “Women – is There More of Us to Appreciate?”
I can pinpoint the exact moment that I first encountered women’s breasts being portrayed in a sexual way. I was about seven years old and was in the little village post office, come newsagent, come hardware store, come sweet shop, in the very rural part of North Yorkshire where my family lived. I was having my usual quandary as to how best to spend my ten pence. I could either get a little white paper bag of 10p’s worth of sherbet pips or I could get 10p’s worth of assorted 1p sweets. Invariably I went for the latter, as I loved the whole process of choosing ten different sweets. Black Jacks, Fruit Salads and Outer Spacers were always a non-negotiable part of my mix. Whilst pondering the almost magical assortment of different boxes and jars of sweets, I looked up at the top shelf and saw the front cover of a ‘girly magazine’. I distinctly remember the photo on the front, not of the woman’s face, but of her bare breasts and the fact that her arms were above her head.
I remember, even as a child, not caring about what I wore. Often what I did wear was really just to hide my beauty and I used clothes to make me look ugly. One time I remember choosing glasses similar to my Dad’s, which did absolutely nothing for me. As I did not care for what I wore I got all the hand-me-downs from relatives, friends and boyfriends. On reflection they did not support me at all in being me or as a woman – they were more masculine, very simple and completely random.
Continue reading “Me and my Wardrobe: Bringing out the True Beauty in me”
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.
I went shopping the other day for some nice warm vests or sweaters. I have been having some trouble finding one as I find the fashion at the moment very ‘baggy’ for women. With that I mean that it is very wide and does not show much of our bodies. I would find myself wondering often if the clothing I had in my hands was really a size S or that it was tagged wrong? (It would be the first one – really a size S.)
Continue reading “How We Dress … Why having Pictures does not Suit us”
Looking back I see that for most of my life I have oscillated between being fiercely independent and very needy of others.
This erratic pattern was founded on a bed of hurt, feeling unsafe and believing myself to be lesser because I am a woman. As a result, I detached and distanced myself, becoming ‘unavailable’ to the rest of the world and at times holding others to ransom for how they had ‘failed’ to rescue me.
Many a conversation amongst women has been about Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS). PMS is fairly common although exact statistics are hard to find as some symptoms of PMS are unreported. Women’s Health Concern (1) state that “One in three women suffers discomforting symptoms in the days before their period. For one in 20 the symptoms are bad enough to more seriously affect their lives.” Premenstrual Syndrome can have various symptoms (2) including irritability, tiredness, depression, mood swings, night sweats, bloating, anxiety, breast pain.
Continue reading “Premenstrual Syndrome – Prozac or making new Choices?”
