Episode 12
Boundaries, Stress & Beyond Saying “No”
the fully nourished podcast | Episode 12Listen on Apple
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Youtube
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen on Google Podcasts
Transcript
Welcome back to the Fully Nourished podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Ash, Functional Nutritionist and Integrative Health Coach, coming to you with a scientific and spiritual exploration of what it looks like to awaken our feminine radiance by becoming deeply and fully nourished in a world that wants to dull us down. You ready?
As a reminder, everything in this podcast is for education and inspiration only and is not intended as medical advice. Please talk to the appropriate professional when necessary, and please use common sense before making any changes to your diet and lifestyle.
So today's episode is about boundaries, I guess we can say. But, it's not going to be your regular hoopla about boundaries. I just had some questions that came in that I thought were really interesting. I love all of your questions. So many of you send some amazing questions. And I'm like, you get me like, you just get me, we get each other. These are things that I think about. As we're out there, and random as they are, this is the type of stuff that gets my wheels turning. And in talking about the past two episodes are actually three, you know, I shared my story with burnout. Then I kind of did this dual episode where I was just talking about how we as women are starving for nurturance and we didn't really learn the skills at no fault of our mothers. Our mothers were just kind of running under these generational spells. I think in a lot of ways, our moms did feel like they were breaking certain generational curses, or at least they tried to. But I think what ended up happening is there was just so much societal input from media and radio, and there was kind of an organized effort to get women out of the home, whether that was physically or mentally and emotionally, because they felt like they were missing out. I think that led to a lot of hurt for us and a deep down feeling of being abandoned in a way but also a lack of sense of self. And so it's led to a generation that has a really tough time holding our boundaries steadily and strongly with confidence. That has led to us burying a lot of the physiological cost of that.
But before I get too deep into that, I would say that as much as our sexuality and libido probably plays into this conversation, it might come up, but I feel like that really deserves its own episode. So if you find yourself being like, Well, I wish that she would have talked about, you know, the sexual part of it, or the libido part of it, I think that deserves its whole own episode. So let's just dive in!
Exploring Two Important Questions
There's two amazing questions that are really gonna get your wheels turning. I would encourage you, you know, for me, and I know, this is true on my side of things. I think as women, a lot of times we can react in a certain way. We tend to be very reactive, if something challenges our belief systems or challenges our, I guess I should say, our sensibilities and goes beyond what we can comprehend. But we have to remember that everybody lives a different life than us. I have a completely different experience than somebody else. And yeah, it's going to shape my life, it's going to shape my belief systems. I'm going to do my best to try to take on other perspectives and understand the reason why people do what they do and believe what they believe. But at the same time, there's going to be some aspect of me that's just going to be like, “What the heck are you doing?” And that's natural and normal, that's part of the human experience.
Me and my husband always like to say, we're all so different, but we're all very much the same. And that's usually in relationship to how whenever we pull into a new RV park, because I live in an RV, for those of you that don't know that, and it's just a well known thing that everyone is going to be in their rigs, everyone's going to be in their coaches, and they're going to peek on the person pulling in and they're gonna watch them back in, they're gonna watch them set up. And it's just, it's like, sometimes there are things that happen that are funny, and I'm not being mean by laughing at them. It's just a part of the human experience where we're all so morbidly curious. We watch each other as if we're all just kind of like animals in an exhibit. In reality, we're all kind of going through a very similar experience. And as different as we are, we all are very much the same, and driven by the same things.
So this is why I loved these two questions that came in because they really just get your wheels spinning and there's no immediate obvious answer. They’ve kind of gotten my wheels spinning as well. Both of these questions were in response to one of the most popular episodes so far, episode five, which was really me taking male physiology and comparing it to female physiology and really diving into what feminine and masculine energy actually is. It's become so over spiritualized and over weirdly hyped, it's become this almost woowoo thing. And I just wanted to bring it back down to the nitty gritty and say this is something that you can look outside your window and look at and see in nature. This is not some weird spiritual science. This is just the natural order of things. So if you haven't listened to that episode, go take a listen when you have a chance, but to dive in.
First question is, “Hey, Jess, I absolutely loved your newest episode, I think it is the best podcast episode I've ever listened to, thank you. As someone who also left evangelicalism, I resonate so much with the spiritual side you bring and would love to hear more of it in the future. And also be interested in hearing your opinion on the kind of hyper wild women that's becoming so popular, ie Yoni sunning, and women only festivals, where everyone's naked the whole time, etc. That doesn't resonate with me at all. And I've been feeling that it's a product of what you're talking about, where we always tend to go to extremes, rather than living in nuance and balance.” So I think if you don't live under a rock, and you're on social media in any type of way, you know exactly what she's talking about, right? These kind of, like, hyper, how did she say it, she's a “hyper wild woman,” and like, yoni sunning and festivals. And it's not resonating.
I can relate to this. I can see that stuff, and I can appreciate it. I don't think it's, you know, honestly, like, it doesn't offend me at all. It doesn't irritate me, it's just kind of one of those things that I say like, Haha, and I think on a more personal level, I'm sick of seeing people's asses. I really think we should know less about each other. And I really don't want to see you naked on social media. I just don't care. I also don't like that it’s desensitizing people to the beauty that is the female form. I think what happens is, we forget what real bodies look like, we forget what real beauty is. It's stuffed down our throats so much that we just kind of become completely desensitized, like, the only thing that's worse than feeling something is not feeling anything at all when you look at something that is supposed to be beautiful. And I just am sick of seeing ask cracks like to be honest, I just don't want to see any more asses. So that's, you know, I just want to give that disclaimer, if that's the personal bias I'm coming from. I'm not judgmental of women like this, I think everyone is allowed to live exactly how they want to and operate exactly how they want to on social media. But my thoughts from a feminine perspective, and is this true feminine energy, I would have to say no feminine energy - part of it is mysterious, right? It knows its vulnerability. And it knows its weak points so intimately, that it protects those at all costs within the center of itself. And it only unfolds or only softens, or it only surrenders to those that are most worthy.
The True Meaning of Softness and Surrender
You know, I think one of the worries in our society is that if you say no, or you are really clear about where your boundary is, you're going to come off as bitchy, or you're going to come off as rude, or you're going to come off as not very nice. I have always been a big believer that there's a big difference between being kind and being nice. There can be kindness and fierceness at the same time, you can be kind to someone while still holding up your boundary and saying, No, this is where I end and you begin, which is what a boundary is. And so I think that right now, when we think of softening, or softness or surrender or surrendering, you know, when you look at those words, “softening, surrendering, opening,” these are active terms, these are not passive terms. Even the term submission which, as torn as you might be about that word, submission is an act, an actual powerful act. So I would say surrender, softening, submission to me, they paint a completely different picture in the English language. The meaning of them gets pretty lost because we just equate all of those words with weakness, but I don't equate any of those words with weakness. In fact, I think that some of those things are harder to do than any type of trying to be strong or trying to force yourself down someone's throat or be aggressive or be super proactive.
And so I think I might understand where women are coming from when they are sharing themselves in this way on social media. This want to be seen and understood and validated and have parts of themselves be seen and understood and validated which are absolutely okay desires. But that is part of the power of the feminine as we do have certain vulnerabilities. We do, we can deny it all we want, we can try to completely change society so that we don't have any vulnerabilities or we perceive that we don't. But that's just cold, hard facts. We as women are more vulnerable in some ways than men are. That's just the way of the world. That's the order of things. And so part of our power is knowing where limitations lie, and knowing where our boundaries lie, and knowing what is going to impose on my boundary.
I want to define boundaries really quickly because I feel like the meaning of boundaries has gotten lost. In our current society, there's so much talk about boundaries. I think sometimes that I think I thought two weeks ago, I was thinking like, what is a true boundary, because you're starting to see the term boundary just change where now it's something that I can impose and enforce upon you. And that's not a boundary. A boundary is a line between one place and another place, or one person and another person, right. So boundary is really where I end and you begin. Once your actions start imposing on my identity, or my sense of self, that's where you've crossed the boundary. It's my job to say, “No, get back on your territory, this is my territory.” Once we violate our own boundaries, meaning once we stop maintaining, I don't want to say “strict boundaries,” that's not the right word, but more confident and fierce boundaries, once we start allowing people to encroach upon our own identity, our sense of self, who we are, what our purposes, what our belief systems are, that's when we start to actually allow our own boundaries to become violated.
This can be a vulnerability, because once we start to make a habit of violating our own boundaries, or allowing others to continually cross the line over, and you just kind of allow them to think that your territory is their territory, what's really happening is we're starting to soften and open up and become vulnerable to people that are maybe not super safe to do that with. And so I see social media as a extreme example of this, where the deep desire to be seen and to be heard and to share all the things that are beautiful and good and truthful, which are deep desires that we as women have, we start to share them in places that are not necessarily safe for us to share. And we become vulnerable with people that are not safe to be vulnerable with. And going back to our nature, right, understanding our nature, one of the parts of our nature is that we need to feel safe. We need to feel safe at all times. We need to have stability and safety. And our body knows when it's in a vulnerable state. It's going to have a very hard time feeling safe when we are being vulnerable with someone or something that it is not safe to be vulnerable with.
I can't speak for all women, because we are all raised differently. We all have different cultural backgrounds, and that might actually impact what our perception is of what is safe and what is not. But I think what's happening is a lot of women are not recognizing that they are sharing in a way that has social consequences, or even physiological consequences for them. It puts them in a state of unnecessary vulnerability that their body is sensing on some type of level. And you know, the hyper-wild woman as I will call it, just because the question phrased it that way. I think no matter how much a person that's, you know, let's see, say like spreading their legs to the sky, I saw that fad going around, I think that was last year, it was like it was just like, whole yoni to the sky - I'll just put it that way. And I was seeing people with their legs spread, and like a little starfish or like a little star, just and it's like, if that's something that you do for your health, that's incredible. And you can talk about doing it. But why do you need to show me? Is that something that really does need to be shown and modeled? Maybe that's what some women are convincing themselves of. It's just like, I'm going to show and model it. But is it really something worth putting a vulnerable part of yourself out there for the world to see?
I think a lot of times with social media, our body knows that once we hit post, we've lost all control over where that thing ends up, right? Like that picture, or what we're sharing could end up anywhere is on the internet forever. I think deep down, maybe whether we consciously know this or not our body can sense and know that there is kind of a line of no return and I'm sharing something that maybe will never be able to be unshared. And so I think the question is not if the behavior is right or wrong, or is this type of stuff feminine or masculine. I don't think it's very feminine. I think there is a kind of aggression to this oversharing, that feels very masculine to me, almost like this is who I am and what I do, and you have no choice in the matter but to see what it is that I do, and I stand for. And to me I don't want to see that. There are some times when I feel like people are violating their own boundaries, and they're also violating the boundaries of others as well. I really do think that one of the biggest lies that we as women have been told to believe - some of us still believe it - is that we can do anything and everything. Like we are capable of doing anything and everything, which in part is true, right? Like, we can achieve and just about anything, we can accomplish just about anything, I would say that's true for most human beings. But there are always physiological and social consequences for our choices. And we've explored in this podcast up until this point of, you know, what does true femininity mean? What is it? And it's mysterious, right? So we're still exploring together.
But I think what we can all admit to each other is true femininity is extremely powerful, it is an extreme force to be reckoned with. And understanding our nature and really understanding our power gives us immense influence over society as a whole, how society is shaped over time, because we really are the ones that are nurturing. We are nurturing, we are mothering. And this is the backbone of society, period. Women shape kings, women shape warriors. They are the only place where some very powerful and masculine men feel safe enough to soften up with and to come into right and to feel enveloped in that softness, that is their safe place to land, and women to women, you know, I think this is really the power of us having strong women that really love us around us to be strong support systems. Because true love sometimes really, really hurts. When you love someone and you have to tell them the truth, there is nothing more excruciating than doing so on both ends. One of our vulnerabilities as women is that we are prone to emotional behavior or emotion driven behavior that is not founded in a place of logic, like if this is safe, or unsafe, or is this best for my future, my what what my desires are. But we kind of are reacting out of a place of, we have a hole inside of us that we need to fill, that kind of soul-deep hunger, and we will do certain things or engage in certain behaviors that we think are going to really fill this soul-deep hunger up. And in reality, it leaves us more hungry, it almost leads us further from our sense of self of knowing who we really are.
Taking Responsibility for Vulnerability
I've kind of gotten off track of, you know, what I think about this kind of “wild woman” behavior. But I think it's kind of a mask for something deeper that's going on in a lot of us. It's so important for us as women to always be, you know, letting our behavior teach us not guilting ourselves about our behavior or shaming ourselves about our behavior, or wallowing in regret about our behavior. But we should be asking ourselves if our behavior is leading to physiological consequences, more stress, more feelings of vulnerability, more of feelings of lack of safety, putting us into a fight or flight response. And is it leading to us being nourished? Is it leading to us feeling super filled up? Or is it leading to the opposite?
I'm a big believer that so many women overshare on social media, they'll share that they're going through something extremely traumatic, they'll share about anything and everything. I think every woman has a different level of comfort. So I never judged women for their behavior. However, I know, at least on a personal level, how incredibly vulnerable it can be to be posting yourself online as it is, and then the things that women are sharing, whether it's their own naked bodies, or their children's naked bodies, or the really traumatic things that are going on through their life and they're sharing, they're actively hopping on share on social media, using it almost a venting or an outlet to process what they're going through. These are not healthy behaviors. We need to hold each other accountable. And I'm just going to come out and say it like this is not healthy behavior. This is not women that are trying to fiercely protect themselves and fiercely protect their families that are understanding their nature, there is so much power and beauty inside of us. But it's wrapped up tight and must be we must choose to soften, we must choose to open, we must choose to surrender. And we only do that with the people that deserve it. The rest of the world can think I'm a “bitchy woman,” I don't care. It's not my job to be spread thin for everyone's enjoyment. And of course, this discussion goes beyond, right? Like I kind of wrapped it into boundaries as a whole, whether we are posting a picture of our yoni on social media, or we say yes constantly to our mother in law, when we really mean no. We are, in fact, taking a role in those feelings of stress that that induces later on. We need to take some personal accountability and responsibility for our behaviors.
If our behaviors are resulting in physiological consequences, then the behaviors are not good. That really is the root of what femininity is, it's really this very self contained power, this self contained, almost chaos, in a way, there's all these moving parts. And there's all this energy just kind of culminating. Because femininity, it takes really small things and makes them big, whereas masculine energy does the opposite. Masculine energy takes big things, and makes them really small, so that you can focus and prioritize. And so in male physiology, the use of energy is different. Whereas we really have this kind of self contained energy. And we have to allow ourselves to go through the flows of life, where sometimes we have to really turn inward into our vulnerabilities, in order to eventually be able to turn outward and pour out. I've talked about this before how birth is a great representation of that. Or even the female orgasm is a great representation of that, right? Where like for nine months, you're taking in energy, you're building this life, building this life, building this life, and then all of a sudden, you tip over into this transition, and your cervix starts to open up. And now you give birth to that life. And then you nourish that life afterwards. There's a process to it.
Same thing on a smaller level with a female orgasm, right? Where you build, you build this energy, build, build, build, and then it just almost spills over. And there's this transition that takes place. So the feminine experience and feminine energy is more about this, moving inward and moving outward, moving inward, moving outward, we have this kind of flow or rhythm to ourselves. In times of moving inward, it's so important for us to feel safe and not vulnerable, or we're not going to be able to stay in that place for very long, because we're going to constantly be worried about where the danger is. We're going to have to continuously hop into our masculine energy to protect ourselves, right, because our masculine energy, just like jumping into our fight or flight state is there for us to jump into when protection and provision is required, we are fully capable of jumping into masculine energy. And then when we're done, moving back into our feminine energy that is normal and natural. That is the part of ourselves that needs balance where masculine energy comes in for protection and provision.
But what happens for a lot of us is we make certain choices that make us feel very unsafe and open and expose our vulnerabilities. And then we have to, by some of our own choices, stay within our masculine energy, because now we have to protect this thing. And we feel very entitled to protecting it. We have to take some personal accountability and responsibility that some of us have decided to share something with someone who is unsafe in the first place. That is, of course, to not put the blame on anybody. This is not about blame. This is just about women talking to other women about how we do need to take some accountability, and understand that all of our actions have consequences. A lot of times the consequences are on us ourselves. So it goes so much farther than just picking on individual behaviors. But I think this overall wild woman phenomenon, I think it's almost like a shadow feminine, or it could even go more into the masculine, where there is some type of validation needed or some type of manipulation occurring, which is what we can do when we're really tapped into the shadow parts of our femininity.
You know, we can really use our bodies and our beauty, whether that's internal or external, to manipulate others and some of us like it, but that's only up to us to decide for ourselves where that is, where our line is, what it looks like to cross that line. And that's going to look different for every single woman.
Revisiting Some Cultural Examples
So next question. She mentions women who are in certain tribes, and this is coming from one of my podcast episodes where I was talking about women being much happier in societies where there's often less available, less social media, less comparison, all of that kind of thing. But she brings up a really good point, she says, “Just out of curiosity, the women who are happy in these tribes are still happy today. What do you think of the polygamous nature of it, that when she hits a certain age, and another younger wife gets brought in? I do understand that they are happy, I see it as well, the little studying that I've done in that area. Perhaps it's my growing up in a monogamous society that makes it so threatening to me. I'm a bit nervous myself about advocating for such a natural womanhood, that we bring that back as well. As far as I understand, in polygamous societies, half the young men can't marry. It leaves them forming gangs and violent. Or, the men in power that are married, make soldiers out of them to give them a purpose. But then we've just made half the population of our young men disposable to us, it doesn't seem right, either.”
So this is something I have thought about, but I haven't thought about too deeply. So this, this answer is kind of just off the cuff in a way. But first of all, I don't necessarily think that other cultures, as traditional as they may be, are completely immune to behaving in certain ways, and having their own kind of generational spells that just get passed down. Where just because it's always been done a certain way doesn't mean that that way is the right way. And so I think when it comes to the idea that yes, when you look at a lot of these traditional tribes that still exist to this day, they live in ways that we can't really comprehend. Usually, if we come from the Western world, there are a lot of I think, cultural norms and beliefs that maybe differ from ours so much that it makes us hard to see from that perspective, but I would be curious to know more of the dynamics of the situation. Like, you know, one guy in the tribe that's powerful, he has many, many wives, and some of them are younger, and some of them are older, right? Some of them have been with him since the beginning. And some of them are much newer to the situation. Is this more of like a sister wives situation? Like, how are they living? How's the dynamic between all of the women? Like, is it more Sister Wives, where there's just constant drama, and they're all kind of sharing the same man, which just seems like an absolute nightmare to me. But that's just, that's just my perspective on that, or is it more like, “I've done my time, I've been the youngest hottest wife, I'm over it, now I've done my duties. And now I just get to chill with my other sister wives. And I'm gonna just like, we're just gonna gossip and we're gonna raise our kids together. And like, I can just be completely separated from the men over there.”
I think some of us kind of underestimate that different cultures can be really hard on women. We as women do have a lot of vulnerabilities and so we don't quite comprehend this, I think, as modern women where in a lot of places in the world, and even historically, husbands offered a form of protection that unmarried women didn't have. And so then I would ask another question about these people that are more polygamous in nature, like what does the term wife mean to them? Because I think in our world, or at least my understanding is that when somebody is married, they are really like two halves to a whole. And so they're there as a partnership as a team. There's intimacy there, on not just a physical level, but a spiritual and emotional level. But maybe that's not something that they believe or is important to them. Maybe them having multiple wives is more of a socioeconomic status, or, I know, like, in some societies, it's almost like a way for a man to show off his generosity. But at the end of the day, for me, I always think of a man that wants to have multiple wives, I mean, he can't really be doing the job that well, because if he's doing the job well, he would be focused on one wife. Anybody knows that when you do something and you want to do it well, you really have to focus. I just don't, I really can't picture a man - having understanding of how men operate - they're just not multitaskers, like, we can be honest there. They are really good at focusing and then, you know, building the vision, focusing on what needs to be done and building the vision when their testosterone is balanced and they're in their masculine energy.
I just don't think a man that has multiple wives would be able to focus very much. Jennifer, who asks a question, she says, “I don't think I'm comfortable with this type of natural womanhood.” We should ask ourselves, is this natural womanhood? Is this something that makes us feel feminine, safe, empowered, taken care of? Or is this something that really violates who we are, our sense of self, our identity as a person. And again, there's that speak of boundaries, right? Where a boundary is really just a line between one place and another, of the line that separates me and you as a person. And once what you're doing starts infringing on who I am as a person, that is what that is the boundary being crossed and violated. And it's my job to either hold up the boundary, like set the reminder when it's worth it, when it's worth expending the energy, or just remove myself from the situation.
I don't think every woman has that opportunity, right? Because sometimes we are born into cultures where it's just the way that it is. And that's what's accepted, because that's the way it's always been done. But I think there's always those free thinkers that maybe think outside of the system as it is, and think this is probably not the best way to do things. But it's also hard to be that person in any society. So this is a great question. And I really don't know the answer to it. But also, I love the point that she made where she said, “as far as I understand that in polygamous societies, half the young men can't marry, it leaves them forming gangs and violent, or the men in power that are married, make soldiers out of them to give them a purpose. But then we've just made half the population of our young men disposable to us, it doesn't seem right, either.” And I think that is a perfect, like the greatest statement. An answer to the question is, it doesn't seem right, either.
A New Vision
That has kind of been the theme underlying this whole podcast, all the episodes is, I make no claims to know the answers. These are just kind of conversations and things I'm trying to start. But by no means am I finishing them. We're just getting started. This is a conversation we're starting to have as women. But I don't think that the way things have always been done should determine that that's how we move forward. And I think a lot of us, we get scared when we think of whether we could possibly operate in a completely new way. We can't even really imagine it because it's hard to imagine. And so as women, that is our job to hold the vision. When we get together and we meet our minds together, we are holding a vision and a new vision. That's what a vision is right? Something new. We are using our imagination to paint a completely new picture, what that looks like. Once we do that, then everybody can step in and start to uphold the vision.
But first, we need to have the new vision. And that can be really hard for us to wrap our minds around, especially in this society, where usually the way things are done, people really are in a state of learned helplessness. And so we kind of just sit there, even if we aren't really cool with the way things have always been done. We are in such a state of learned helplessness, you know, sometimes by our own choices, but very rarely, all by our own choices. The system is much bigger than ourselves. And so we just don't know what to do next. Like we just think, well, this is just the way it is. And we kind of get to this place of acceptance. But as women, part of our femininity is this fierce benevolence, right? We're fiercely out for the good of all that exists. And we want a different future for our sons, for our daughters, for our nieces, for our nephews, it's our job to hold the space.
Here we are just like posting pictures on Instagram. Like we have so much more to do here. And we are wasting so much of our power. So going back to this question, you know, when she mentions, well look at what it does to the men right? Like we have these men that are married to multiple wives and then we have all these men left without what a powerful feminine force brings, which is safety and grounding and divinity to a man. You know, the feminine energy really is the place where the masculine energy can connect to God or a higher power. And when you take men away from that, they become aimless, they kind of lose their purpose. Masculine energy is designed to provide and protect for the feminine energy and if it can't do that purpose is lost. That is why there's such extreme loyalty to the masculine, and a man truly in his masculine energy is incredibly loyal to all that is physically weaker or more physically vulnerable than he is. And so to me, a man being married to multiple wives when there's plenty of men missing out on having at least one wife, that's just straight gluttony, right? That has to have something to do with some type of social status.
I don't know enough about which tribe she's referring to to do research on it. But in some of these more traditional tribes, there is kind of an imbalance of power. I think women a lot of times do operate as a type of social status. Because throughout history, you know, it's like, our mystery and beauty and parts of us that are not visible to the outside, are always so alluring, right? It is a way for men to feel like they're more powerful, and of course, to the masculine, which does absolutely value his place in society, of course, having a wife that or a woman that is beautiful, and powerful, and self contained, and capable, is usually something that they can and should be really proud of. I want someone to be proud of me, and proud that I have surrendered or submitted or softened to them and chose only them to do that with. To me, that is natural womanhood.
But I would expect only that and more in return, right? Like, I think that it's only fair, that if this is something that I desire, then I have to offer that same thing in return, and even more so. And this might be an unpopular opinion, I guess, you know, at this point, you probably know that I don't care. But I think women these days, especially in the Western world are incredibly entitled, they believe that they can behave however they want to, with no consequences at all, and with taking no personal responsibility for their own behavior. And then on the flip side, we are incredibly, for the most part, extremely disrespectful to men and have extremely high expectations that we do not hold ourselves to or follow through on. That's, of course, not the case, in all cases. But I think there kind of is this lack of accountability, and understanding that me taking accountability for my actions and my behaviors and how they've contributed to where I'm at, doesn't take away somebody else's part to play in it. It doesn't mean that somebody else is blameless in the situation, it just means that I'm now taking accountability and taking responsibility and empowering myself.
So I think when we ask ourselves, you know, what is natural womanhood? That's what we need to define for ourselves. I think we are allowed to decide what that looks like for us and what we want from that and kind of build a vision and hold a vision there. I think that's up for us to individually decide. But whatever we expect, we need to be willing to give in return, and own up to our side of it. But to answer your question, Jennifer, I don't necessarily think that a polygamous society where a bunch of women are married to one man and a bunch of men are completely womanless and wifeless, is a very fair society. I think we could probably do better than that as human beings. So that's just my opinion. And so to me, that's really what boundaries are, is understanding where I end and you begin, and we will hold those up together. And it will be a team effort. A lot of that really does require us to build a strong sense of self as women to be able to fiercely hold those. We do need to know who we are and what we stand for, and what defines us and what our purpose is.
And that will lead us to being able to have more what I call Vitamin N in our life, which is saying no, which means that we're opening space up for something else, right? When we say no, we are saying yes to something else. And Vitamin N just means saying no more. We have such a hard time saying no because of how we've been trained over time. But it becomes so much easier to say no when we understand where we end and somebody else begins and understanding who we are as a person.
Episode Links
In this episode, I mentioned:
Connect with Jessica:
Have Sunday tea with me! Sign-up for my Sunday newsletter where I share what’s on my brain from the nutritional to spiritual: https://www.jessicaashwellness.com/email-subscribe.
Join the Fully Nourished community! Follow me @jessicaashwellness on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessicaashwellness/