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I’m not one to focus on being broken (because I don’t believe anyone is), but there’s something that happens to many women that feels a lot like being broken. It can occur when they have children, get a divorce, burn out from a demanding job, get really ill, or more naturally when they hit late 30s/40s. 

An unrest happens within that calls for a recalibration. 

And unless you know what’s really happening, you can a) feel like you’re losing your shit and not really understand why or what to do about it, and b) the tools that you reach for to address it have the potential to cause more damage than good. 

What is happening is a whisper for wholeness. A pursuit of integration.

You are being shown that something internal has been out of balance, and it’s time to restore your own natural state of being. (This is not the same as your usual way of being that you learned along the way.) And likely, your masculine has been in overdrive, and your feminine is under-nourished or acting out. (And your masculine is exhausted, and your feminine is pissed.)

But first, a clarification of what I mean when I say masculine and feminine. Whether man or woman (or non-binary), we all possess both energies, in varying proportions:

The masculine (or yang) energies represent doing, action-oriented, goal-focused, production, achievement. 

The feminine (or yin) energies represent being, creation, feeling, life-force, intuition, nourishment, surrender.

When these energies are out of balance with the masculine getting more focus, we feel tired. Burnt out. Our adrenals suffer, we likely drink too much coffee, and then wind down with alcohol. We feel attached to the outcome more than enjoying the ride. We link our identity with what we achieve, or whether we win.

When these energies are out of balance with the feminine getting more focus, we feel unsupported, unstable, like we can’t get momentum. We are probably doing much less than we’d really like to, but feel frustrated at a lack of progress. We change our minds often, and can have the tendency to feel powerless. We second guess ourselves because this isn’t really the way most of the world functions. 

The cold, hard truth.

Westernized women have become conditioned to fit in and compete by enhancing our own masculine qualities and underplaying our feminine qualities. To conform to the societal standards of production. To make people comfortable by not being so emotional. And in doing so, we are denying ourselves, and in the greater extreme, killing ourselves. 

We need both. 

The life-force, intuition, creating feminine needs the structure and support and production of the masculine. The feminine births the thing, the masculine comes forth to make sure it stays alive. The need is not one-sided. The masculine needs the feminine just as much as the feminine needs the masculine.

This is true for anything sustainable you are trying to create by yourself, or with others. 

When these energies are balanced within ourselves, we can be unstoppable. Inspired, focused, nurtured, and sustainable. 

The pendulum will swing. 

In order to become fully integrated, where you understand and appreciate both your masculine and feminine, and have them represented in the right proportions for you, we often need to swing the pendulum one way or the other. It’s not always extreme, but the pendulum has to swing so that each part can see itself fully, and to heal the parts that have been locked away. 

Think about it, if you’ve spent most of your life doing and achieving and ignoring your feelings, in order to be a person who can do and achieve and have feelings, you may need to put some attention on your feelings while you get it back in balance. 

If you’ve been tired for a long time, it’s gonna take some time to recover from not being tired. 

You’ll get to know new parts of yourself. You’ll get to find new ways to interact with yourself that feel so much more like you. You’ll find compassion and acceptance to replace the judgement and criticism. 

Act like your life depends on it. 

Acknowledging all of who you are, and living from that place, makes the outside reflection of that inevitable. Your life will line up with who you really are. It can’t not. This, in and of itself, is an incredible gift.

Here’s what I do know. If you hear the call to recalibrate – if you feel the nudge – and you choose not to listen, the recalibration will happen anyway, but likely way outside the bounds of your preferences. 

When you choose it, you get to reap the full benefits. Full internal power. A sense of self you are proud of. Peace. Contentment. Freedom.

Are you feeling the call to recalibrate? Are you choosing it, or is it choosing you?

I’m an entirely different human than I was seven years ago. I’ve been thinking recently about what I wish Me v2.0 had told Me v1.0. These are all the things I wish someone had told me a long time ago.

You are the reason that everything in your life is exactly as it is. You created all of it. 

It is not the fault of anyone or anything else. Not your job, not your money situation, not your current relationship (or your lack thereof), not your past relationship, not your kids, not the guy who cut you off at the intersection, not the the moron who runs the government, not anything else but you. 

When you’re done blaming everyone and everything else for your life not looking the way you wanted (including God, the patriarchy, your mom, and public schools), your life will be right here, waiting for you to re-create it. 

Do you have any fucking idea how much joy and love and fulfillment and fun you are robbing yourself of? 

Do you?

You. 

You, who has been influenced (subtly or not-so-subtly) by what other people want for you and from you. You’ve been getting your sense of value from what other people say you are, what other people think you’re good at, what other people need from you. You love feeling important, so you sell your soul to make yourself feel that way. And as you know, it’s an empty high that never gives back. And the withdrawals bring a horrendous hangover. (Remember when you took on all those extra projects at work, Rach, when you wanted to prove that you could take on anything thrown your way, you wanted to demonstrate your skills in building a business, and you wanted to be important? Remember how good it felt to be so important, and how taken for granted you felt after the projects were complete?) 

You, who hasn’t been willing to do the thing that is right for you because you can’t look around and see who else has done it that way successfully already. You know you know. You at least know you want to try. And everywhere you look, people are trying to tell you you’re wrong. You secretly wonder, “What if they’re right? What if I really don’t know?” You let them win. And it eats away at you every single day. Until you can’t imagine how you ever had the nerve to think you could do something that hadn’t already been done. (Remember the time, Rach, when you were graduating from high school second in your class, and you weren’t going to go to college? You were going to sail around the world…even though you didn’t have a boat and you had no clue how to sail. Where did that woman go?) 

You, who want so badly for something different, but can’t stop clinging to what you knew about yesterday. Your addiction to the past is keeping you from today. The what-ifs, the that-was-so-amazing, the I-don’t-ever-want-that-to-happen-agains. All of these haunt your present by keeping you small, keeping you in what you’ve already known, keeping you in the land of the predictable. (Rachel, do you remember how long you clung to the story that you couldn’t because the circumstances of your life was hard? Do you remember how badly you didn’t ever want to feel so burnt out again, so you resisted and resisted finding a way to do it that suited you because it was easier to say your life was hard because of X?)

The mindfuckery that you pull in your head and your heart is insane. 

In the ways you simultaneously know exactly who you are and pretend not to know anything about who you are. You’d rather shrug your shoulders and say, “I dunno,” than stand proudly and own your answer. 

In the ways that you want for the moon and tolerate standing in shit. You want it all, yet you are frightened to step out of where you are. You’d rather control the known than the unknown. You don’t know how to keep yourself safe amidst unpredictability – you don’t know who you’ll be when your world is uncertain, and that is actually what scares the shit out of you. (It doesn’t help that you don’t think a hot mess is very pretty; upholding the image of who you think you should be is really your own private version of jail.)

In the ways you decide and then make yourself sick wondering if your decision was the right one. You go with your gut and then look around you and point to all the reasons that was wrong. Or, you use your brain, and it feels off in your gut. The fight that goes on within you is the biggest time-wasting, energy-draining, soul-sucking activity you participate in (except for the daily checking out with wine or Netflix or social media that exists to help you avoid feeling this inner battle).

In the ways that you treat others better than you treat yourself, and then proceed to wonder why no one treats you like a queen. It’s all you’ve ever wanted: to be valued, to be appreciated, for people to show you that they care about you as much as you care about them. But the truth is, you’re so busy showing everyone that you care, that you can’t even see or allow when people are trying to love on you. You don’t even know how to let it in. It is fucking everywhere; you just have to let it in. 

You have been raised on flawed premises, but woman, you are not flawed.

The way you have been taught to do life has you losing before there’s any chance to win. No matter what you’ve learned up until this point, here is what fucking matters:

• Life is not meant to be done alone. (Just because you can does not mean you should.)
• Living fully – laughing until you pee yourself, brought to your knees with grief, loving the people in your life for just who they are, rage at something (anything, really, at least once), being with every single moment as if there is no other – that is why you are here. Nothing else matters.
• The things you do to create those moments in which to live fully are more fun if they are things you like doing. (So do more of the shit you like!)
• Making it hard to demonstrate that you are a warrior doesn’t serve any purpose other than making it hard.
• Go first. Do not wait. Be bold. Share yourself, and ask for what you want.  
• Let go. Your biggest enemy is thinking you need to know how it all happens. Let go. And then let go some more. And then let go even more.

You are brilliant beyond words.

You have magic to make.

You have gifts to use, love to give, and love to receive.

And I swear if you could see that – if you knew it would all work out for your highest good – you would not live in the insane asylum of your mind/body/heart/reality for one more minute without making some really important changes. 

You’ve got this. I’m here to help. 

Last week, an opportunity fell in my lap that I wanted so badly, I could hardly contain myself. (If I’m being honest, I knew it was coming, as I’d seen signs of it in the months prior, but I didn’t really know how much I wanted it until it was offered to me.) It was big. It was juicy. It was expensive. And I knew it would be life-changing. Every part of me knew it was right. 

I had no idea how I was going to pull it off. But that didn’t stop me. 

I said yes. 

Living the big life can’t be filled with lukewarm feelings about my choices. Meh is no longer an option. I felt the f*ck yes*, and decided to follow it. 

This used to scare the shit out of me. 

I used to be in the habit of using my brain to decide whether I was going to do something or not. Did I have enough money? Did I think the return would be enough? Was I going to be on my period that day? What would other people think? What were chances that I’d be successful at it? 

So many questions, aimed solely at keeping my ego safe. (That’s the part of you designed to keep you confined to known experiences, the part that knows what to expect.) These questions weren’t designed to support me in having the thing I wanted; they were designed precisely to TALK ME OUT OF IT!

I used to ask for some time to think about it. And the longer I thought about it, and the more questions I asked myself, the more times I weighed the pros and cons, the more I ended up saying no. The more scared I got. 

I didn’t say no because I didn’t want it; I said no because I was scared that it wouldn’t work out. 

It was a self-fulfilling prophesy. Until I learned to back the energy of my yes. 

Yes is expansion.

Yes is motion.

Yes is receiving.

Yes is energy with somewhere to go.

In order for your yes to flourish and materialize, it needs support. 

Like I mentioned above, I have no idea how I’m going to pull this off, but I’m walking towards yes. My calendar is cleared for those dates, my suitcase is out, I’m doing the prep work, and taking all the action I know to take to allow this to happen for me. 

And I’m not entertaining no as an option. 

Does your excited yes often turn into a very rational no? 

If this has happened to you more than once, it’s not just that the opportunity turned sour, or you changed your mind about wanting it. Somewhere your ego convinced you to stay where you are. 

Let’s tackle your yes together! No more meh decisions for you! I’ve put together Claim Your Yes, a coaching program designed to help you ride the energy of yes and support you to get all the way there. If this is you, reach out and tell me what you want to say yes to, and I’ll share details from there!

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*There’s an often-cited author named Mark Manson who lays out a pretty solid argument that anything less than a f*ck yes is a hell no. (I don’t agree with all of it, but I do agree with pursuing the things that you are a f*ck yes to!)