Word flow/ Journey of Young Women notes 1

I am stripped, bare to the bones and the bones are not strong. That is how I feel right now. A wobbly child with squishy-bowed femurs who has been holding herself up with Muscles and Will till now. Turns out the strings of attachment to others, the meanings and purposes, business and work, stress and hedonism have kept me dancing but now the strings are cut I feel like a puppet on the ground, unsure how to move myself.

I feel lost, so far into the woods now I don’t know who I am or where I want to go. I have memories of the past, when I felt driven, where it seemed obvious to me where my purpose was (I suspect mostly – to escape, react against what I was not?)..or maybe the adventure itself was enough to fuel me. Can I have that again?

—–I was following a quest thread :  to find  love, to find a man (or many) who loved me, and then to find someone I could truly love. And I found it! I found him and we married, in a ritual of magic in a sacred place. I declared my choice for a life of Art, Truth, Courage and Love. To create a life of fullness, freedom, and enjoyment. But now – I struggle to embrace it. I look for the flaws. I try to destroy it. WHY?

For years I was Seeking – and when I found him, I knew, and I lost that sense of needing to look and call for a man. Instead I had to fight and be fierce enough to step forwards into a whole new world — and I did it, I left behind everything for this life, because I knew I  would always regret and wonder if I didn’t.

But now I’m faced with fears and hurts that have lingered inside my for years. I can no longer just run and change and flow. I have to stop and look. And I see – the girl-woman of squishy bones and crippling doubt and pervading sense of worthlessness.  I can love my man – I know what love is, and despair at the vast chasm between the way I love him, and how I love myself. I long to love myself the same way as I love him. No man, not even a soul-mate, not even a man with vision and determination to fight for you, can fill the hole where self-love should be.

I DO have moments when I feel love and fullness – when I feel the Queen. So I know the quality of what I want to feel – just maintaining it! But the more I step into being her – the louder the cries of something small and broken inside me. I can’t leave behind the Girl.

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When I signed up to do the Journey of Young Women, and I saw the invitation to write introductions, I was filled by a huge wave of emotion. I discovered how much I feel like I am no good, not a nice person, not a valid person. That I am a “failed girl” who is destined to be a failed woman. a failed non-mother. a failed potential. I have nothing to add or share, because I have no daughers, how dare I claim to be a mentor to girls? To even start learning? I am afraid of girls. I am afraid they will alway dislike me, that I don’t know how to talk to them, that they won’t be my friend — a huge chunk of bullied fears and a sort of defensive aloofness and resentment. The sense of being  a “failed girl” runs all the way through my life — the wrong hair, the wrong body, the wrong activities, the wrong plans, the wrong way to marry, the wrong way to be with men. An endless dissapointment unfolding. When I spent time in the reckless underworlds I felt at home – because the underworld is where I belong. In the shadows, out of sight, weird and different. I yearn for and yet deny myself the friendship of women. I feel inadequate and unsure how to pursue them. I’m waiting for the betrayal or the rejection. It’s awful!

I even feel a resentment at learning how to do this! Where is THAT from? The answer – I don’t want to learn how to faciliate other girls on this journey – I WANT it first, for me! I want to start with helping myself on this journey. Is that ok?! I want to heal my own scared hurting relationship to other women and girls – and my own femininity. I want it very badly but I have no idea how to start. I am heartened to see other women on here share their fears, their vulnerabilities and hurts. I’m hoping for a safe, transformative space, where truths and fears can be spoken, where i can be strong and magnifican and broken and small too. Where I can be real, so I can foster that in others.  I want to reconnect to magic, to learn to see and nourish my own beauty – to see it as it expresses NOW, not when I look back at photos in 5 years. I want to be in touch with my deep wisdom and more than that, to start to TRUST myself again.

Some of the starting point ideas for myself/girls

– I want girls to see the beauty they are expressing as they are expressing it NOW, not just when they look back at photos 5 years later and finally see how young/beautiful/magical they were.

– I want to learn to love my own beauty and expression of soul. The movement and embodiment from that inner place, not the external appearance

– How to be sexy-confident-magical – to have the guidance and oppurtunity to ask and learn and do magic that I didn’t have

– to share how the biggest prison is from the inside our minds and attitudes- and how do we escape?

– how to hold what is precious and find/nurture true beauty – to celebrate yourself

– crafting your own rituals, honoring your own journey, tuning to your own instinctive wisdom

– following a call to adventure, the heroine journey, the possibilities to live a life less ordinary

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 The Failed-Girl with nothing to say

Young one, I see you back there. I know you want to hide away but I miss you, I need you. Please come back to me.

“you hurt me. you hurt me when all i wanted was protection while I played, and explored. You hurt me and you took away what was precious. I don’t like you. you don’t want me. leave me alone.”

How did I hurt you?

“you told me I was wrong. You told me I was loud. You told me to be quiet and you told me to pretend. pretend to be a nice girl, a good girl, to speak nicely to the grown ups and keep yourself small. Every one thought I was shy. But that’s because you didn’t let me be crazy!!”

I thought you were shy too. I thought we didn’t want to spend time with  others

“But I did! I wanted to be SEEN I wanted to be ENJOYED and I wanted it to be ok to love nature and trees and create traps and monsters and laugh at cartoons. I wanted friends and I wanted to play. I want to kick things and break them and see how they work…..Listen to me Listen. I have a lot to say actually. I have a lot to say to you and you don’t need to try and have a conversation to draw it out you just need to ask and then to hear it. You DID fail, as many people do, fail to keep alive the most important parts of your being, to nuture art and life and not let go of the magic. You stopped trusting in your sense of vision, when really you just needed to expand it.  There is nothing wrong with ‘failing’ – can’t you just accept how much you loved drawing and writing, weaving stories and writing lengthy journal posts. You carved out creativity when you weren’t supposed to – in school note books, when you were in your office job… but now you have a big fucking chance to claim it and create when you CAN. You rejected the life with small boxes to create in and chose something epic and huge – and you are even  encouraged by your lover and your friends.

you failed to protect the importance of your art and longing for life. It was too easy to sacrifice it for the external approval and goals. You and many others! Well, you succeeded at all of that, achieving what came from the outside –  and now you can try being someone else. Now you really can actually just create stuff. From the inside. From the soul realms. It HAS to start with trust and you have to get rid of judgement and expectation. No one is telling you to stop drawing comics and do your homework now. No one is telling you science is more important that art, or that you can’t write well because you are also good at science. Be someone else for yourself now. Turn up in a new way. And stop pretending you don’t know how to do magic or you can only do it if it’s for the good of other people! It starts with you, it starts with us.