Episode 10
Hungry For nurture - Part 1
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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 it's fall, it's finally fall. And I'm sure I'm not the only woman in your life mentioning the fact that it is fall. But I feel like it's so interesting, social media is just so interesting to me, because it feels like it helps bring the human experience together, like all I see is just pumpkin everything and fall stuff and people going all out for Halloween. And in a way, it does make us feel less alone, because we're like, Hey, we're not the only one that kind of loves this stuff. But then at the same time, it makes you feel so alone, because you're like, how do these people do all this stuff, I just like kind of just need to get the basics done. And once I'm done with the basics, I only have a little room for the rest.
There's something incredibly weird about it. I don't know, it does add some life pressure for sure. I choose to ignore it. But I can't imagine how the people that can't ignore it, I mean, man, I would be stressed. I'm satisfied just adding a little bit of pumpkin puree to my morning Espresso, or maybe doing the occasional little pumpkin pie smoothie, where I just added some pumpkin and some cinnamon and some roasted sweet potato in there. And little banana, little milk, little protein powder, yum, yum. But I'm completely satisfied, just doing a few basic things. And it still makes it feel like fall, it's still fun. But it's not like an extremely stressful competition that I really did not sign up for. I really don't want any part of it but we do love fall. I love the weather right now. It's just perfect. It's like the perfect low 70s, need just a little sweater when it starts to cool off. It's just perfect. And it's not going to last very long. But it's it's good. And I'm going to really savor it while it lasts.
Developing a Strong Sense of Self
So switching gears. In the past week, I have gotten really real with you guys about my soul deep burnout. You know, I went through this “hermit chapter” as you ladies so lovingly called it. And it really was, my goodness, you know, in a way, like the dark night of the soul. I just needed a break, I just needed to take a step back, it wasn't like I was accomplishing anything, or I was planning and plotting behind the scenes, I really just needed a break. I needed to slow down and let my brain just turn to mush for a little bit, as a lot of us do. And, you know, for me, what I recognized and I talked about two episodes ago is that burnout really just strips away the parts of your identity that are not the core of who you are. And it kind of just snaps all that we're attached to and leaves us with what we feel like is nothing, like we're at our lowest lows.
But then all of a sudden, we realize that it is this process that's helping us develop a strong sense of self. And I know you're probably like, why is this? Why is this nutritionist talking about a strong sense of self? But what I have learned over the past couple of years is the physical stuff is never enough, which is why you see these people in the wellness industry just continuing on the same cycles over and over. And at some point, they start searching for more, to focus on physically and nutritionally and keep fine tuning and fine tuning and getting more restrictive and more restrictive. Because they're not going deeper. Their body is calling them to go deeper and forcing them and trying to give them the opportunity to go deeper, but they're not going deeper. And that's what's so dangerous about never slowing down and going, going, going going going and never skipping a beat and always producing and always trying to accomplish something and always reaching towards the next goal. When you never really slow down and let your body just come to a halt, you sometimes have an artificial sense of your reality because you're in such a physiological state of the hormonal function. You're requiring more cortisol and more adrenaline and more blood sugar manipulation to keep you in that state and functioning in that state. It really does do a good job of warping your reality.
I realized this myself and then in Tuesday's episode which, we're experimenting with something new, where we're splitting episodes kind of down the middle. And we're trying to do Tuesday episode and the Thursday episodes. This is the first week we're doing that. But in Tuesday's episode, I talked about what I think is the missing piece in the “trauma healing space.” I put quotations around that, because I feel like healing trauma has become like the new fad kind of phrase or statement. But really, you know, I summarized how a lot of women are becoming aware that their stress patterns are not healthy, they don't have healthy behavioral patterns, they're constantly reacting to every little thing, instead of responding in a normal calm way. Every little thing is forcing them into a fight or flight state, or they're staying in this chronic state of fight or flight where everything that happens is, to their body, this life or death situation.
The Missing Piece
And so then you see what's popular right now, which is like, go talk to a therapist, or go start working on your wounds, or go start, you know, working through your trauma. So you start to just dig up this junk, dig up all of this old stuff that is absolutely impacting our patterns and our behaviors, and maybe not serving us well. But we're almost forcing the body to process things that it may or may not have the energy to process. And so I believe that really in a big way, the missing piece of healing our trauma, or why so many people are almost feeling like they're getting worse, is because they're forcing their body to process something that it doesn't have the energy or the nutrients to process. You know, processing trauma and processing our experiences is a very physical process. It's not just emotional, it's not just spiritual, it's not just psychological, there is a huge physical aspect of it. I think that gets overlooked a lot. And so people are kind of separated in their minds, and they look at it as two different things, like getting healthy and getting nourished. And, you know, focusing on your metabolism and supporting your body with the fuel it needs is something completely different than the psychological or emotional side, but they're really one in the same. They both feed into each other, you know, our body is one. And if something is moving emotionally or energetically, it is absolutely affecting the physical structure, because as we have explored up until this episode, you know, energy begets structure. Then the structure really impacts how the energy is created and generated. So one cannot exist without the other. I talked about this in episode two.
What a lot of people see is as they start to really focus on cellular nourishment and cellular metabolism, or the way the body generates energy using the fuel it has, what they find is they get to a point and then they start hitting more walls. Maybe they find a lot of balance, and their hormones start to shift when they start to eat every couple of hours or focus more on blood sugar balance, or balance protein and carbs, or maybe start to eat things like the raw carrot salad, or really finding fibers that work for them that helped bind and carry some junk out of the body. You know, when they start to focus on food as nourishment, rather as food through the lens of restriction and survival. There's a lot of shifts that take place. I've seen the power of becoming fully nourished and nourishing your body appropriately for your biology. It's actually incredible and insane the things that I have seen happen.
But what a lot of women experience is that it only takes them so far, which is normal and natural, right? Because then the body gives us the opportunity to go deeper. And if we don't, it's just going to keep kind of gently nudging us in that direction. Because it's my belief that the body really is there to guide the core parts of us to who we really are. And so you kind of see this thing happen where women as they begin to nourish themselves, they get out of these kind of survival based eating patterns. Maybe they ditch the restrictive eating, ditch keto, ditch low carb, ditch veganism, maybe they stop intermittent fasting so hardcore.
A lot of times when you stop running off of stress hormones, it can almost feel uncomfortable because what's happening on an energetic state is that a lot of us are switching out of this more masculine energy, right? Because when there's so much adrenaline pumping through our veins, and our body is constantly accessing cortisol to be that glucocorticoid that is a glucose manipulating hormone. That's what that means. And what cortisol does, and adrenaline does, and glucagon does, all of these glucocorticoids are glucose regulating hormones. Their job is when the body is under stress, the body is under pressure, let's get blood sugar up as quickly as possible. And whatever needs to happen needs to happen. So if that's not from our liver, and our liver doesn't have enough stored glycogen, what happens is our body is going to pull from the tissues and the misconception is that the body is always going to pull from the fat cells. And that's not always the case.
You know, some people are more genetically predisposed metabolically predisposed to pull from the fat cells, which is why you see some people that are under stress are incredibly skinny, they have a hard time keeping their body fat on. But then you see a lot of people have been stuck in more of a parasympathetic or like a frozen, I don't want to call it parasympathetic. Because it's really that dorsal vagal response, that frozen response where their body has been in a state of fight or flight for so long, it can no longer really sustain fight or flight. And so it goes into a more dormant, conserve energy, frozen mode. And that is a place metabolically, where we tend to store a lot more fat and eat through our muscle tissue, we're more predisposed to be in that kind of state where we may be actively eating through our muscle tissue while putting on fat because of the way that our stress hormones are functioning. And that really does come down to both the thyroid and the adrenal health and the individual. It's just going to depend, but they can be both the same state where somebody is going to maybe burn through all their body fat to the point where they can't even keep enough body fat on to stay comfortable, to stay warm.
Then of course, the opposite can occur as well, where we just keep gaining and gaining and gaining weight. But sorry, for that little tangent. What I'm saying is, when women start to nourish themselves, well, they start to see kind of the system calm down and change in a way and start to move from that masculine energy, that kind of high testosterone high adrenaline state, to a different type of state. And for a lot of us that can come with some discomfort, because sometimes our body starts to detoxify things that it previously did not have the energy or the time or the focus to detoxify. Sometimes we can go through really uncomfortable hormonal shifts there. Sometimes it could just feel like we're extremely tired, because we're so used to the feeling of adrenaline and cortisol, we don't even know what our body and our kind of natural state feels like. And we're actually like, wow, I'm really exhausted, like, I need a lot of rest to be able to function here. To me, that's all kind of a part of the recovery process. But for some people, it can almost lead to a little bit of a deep feeling of burnout. Or you can be a couple years into your journey and you can also experience some states of burnout. Because as your body invites you, you know, as you start to change on a cellular level and you become more energetically sound, you can start to really process. Deep wounds are your body's outlet, at least inviting you to start processing certain deep wounds that you carry. And in the processing of those big experiences, big emotions, it can feel like we're almost burned out, because we are utilizing so much energy to work through all of it.
Afraid of Everything
And so I feel like a lot of this is really still very misunderstood. You look around and you see women kind of starting their journey of healing their trauma, or they're actually just stuck in this vicious cycle of healing trauma, you know, kind of just tapping it out and practicing their somatic tools and coping with their stress and trying to actively force their body to calm down, you know, get that vagus nerve activated, like activate now, you know, and we're trying to fix ourselves. And there's just some, like a very big gaping hole here. I feel like there's a very big disconnect, because these same women are, especially I feel like in the wellness world, everywhere you look, women are afraid of everything, like you are seeing wellness influencers right now in crisis, like they are just getting more and more afraid.
I can't imagine if you live in a reality where everything is a danger, right? Every toxin, every chemical, every light bulb, every single thing in your environment is out to get you. You are under attack, you're gonna stay in a constant state of fight, a constant state of flight, and you're going to be afraid, you're going to be driven by fear, every part of your reality is driven by fear. And no matter how beautiful the aesthetic, no matter how many affiliate codes you put all over it, we still need to see it for what it is, which is that so many women right now are really struggling with fear, they're afraid. They're afraid of everything. And it's leading them to want to control every little thing in their environment, right, the only thing that they feel like they can do is just start to control everything and control it more and more and like just start to nitpick and and get down into the minutiae of everything in their environment. That's what they feel like the only thing they can do is, because they're so focused on the physical.
They're so focused on, you know, I'm still not feeling 100%, or I'm still struggling with XYZ thing. So it must be something in my physical environment. It must be a supplement that I'm not taking, or it must be the fact that like, oh my gosh, I was exposed to blue light for two seconds the other night and oh my gosh, my melatonin has been wrecked for days. But in reality, what's actually going on is their fear is depleting their body, it's keeping them in a state of fight or flight. And then on top of it as they try to control every little thing, I mean, it's just like tightly gripping your way through life. It's such an energy suck. And it's that fear, that vibrational and energetic state of fear, which, you know, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the kidneys are the place that we store fear. And I find that interesting, because that's really like where the blood is cleansed. That's where we detoxify heavy metals. And then we're wondering why we can't balance our hormones or why our guts are still a wreck, or why we continue to just be on this vicious cycle of kind of what I like to call “whack a mole,” where it's like, oh, thyroid issue, whack a mole, whack those symptoms down, and then oh, I got adrenal issues, and then whack them all. And like, oh, no, I have autoimmune issues. Now whack that mole. And we just keep focusing so much on the surface level, not recognizing that there's something really a lot deeper going on.
When you look at women biologically and physiologically, really, we desire complete safety and stability, we crave feeling safe, we crave feeling taken care of, and I don't want to hear any of that like, well, I don't, that's not what I want, deep down at the very core of you, like women to women, let's admit to ourselves, that that is really what we desire, there is nothing weak, about having a need to not be abandoned, and to have safety and have stability, there's nothing weak about that. And in fact, that is actually a part of your nature, it's a part of my nature. We need to start having the conversations of this is impacting us metabolically, this is impacting us on a metabolic level. And if we are feeling unsafe, if we are feeling a lack of stability, if we are in a chronic state of fear, no amount of perfect nutrition, or perfect supplements, or perfect wellness routine is going to make us feel better, or help us overcome what we're going through whether we're having physical symptoms, or more emotional symptoms.
But when the body is stuck in a state of survival, the types of hormones that need to be created are not going to be conducive to building muscle, to staying lean, to growing hair, to renewing our skin, to having that kind of plump, youthful glow, to making progesterone, to having strong fertility, to having balanced cycles. Being stuck in a state of survival and lack of safety is going to impact us on a very physical level. And so there are a lot of us who know this, there are a lot of us who recognize this, right? Whether we're stuck in that state of freeze mode, where we're kind of constipated, our digestion is really sluggish, we're really bloated, we gain weight, when we look at food we feel like we can't eat a carbohydrate, we feel hopeless, we feel kind of just numbed out, we're not really connected to our experience. Whether we're stuck in that state, or we're stuck in that fight or flight stage, we're just kind of erratic out of control, you know, ragey.
And, you know, we can bounce back and forth in between the two, right? Because that is usually a sign that we are in an imbalanced place in and of itself, where we're jumping between being numbed out, depressed, frozen, and then just like in a state of survival, and then back into that frozen state. Whereas in a functioning imbalanced nervous system, we would remain in our parasympathetic state. We would remain in that kind of rest and digest and connected and present state that I talked about in the last episode. Then we would jump into this fight or flight when we need to be in a state of survival. But for a lot of us, we're just kind of operating either in fight or flight or freeze mode, and we feel like we can't get out of it. And so we're taking the current advice, which is like, you know, deal with your trauma, heal from your trauma, heal your trauma, heal your nervous system. Then we're doing all these modalities. We're talking it out and talking about our problems. And we're wondering why we're not getting better. Some of us are wondering, why do I feel so much worse?
Mother Hunger
I'm not here to tell you what the answer is. I'm here to just kind of present the facts and present my observations and the things that I've learned, and you get to make your own conclusions. And so today's episode, I wanted to bring up something that I think for a lot of us is important for our process that we have no clue is important for our process of healing. I call it our generations-deep mother wound. When I sat down to kind of outline this article, the first thing that I wrote down was breaking or recasting generational spells: a generation of hungry daughters starving for nurture. And the reason I wrote this down is because originally, a few years ago, I read a book called Mother Hunger by a woman named Kelly McDaniel, and it was a really fascinating book. I recommend it a lot to women because I think it's an important aspect of our relationship with nutrition. In our relationship with food and our relationship with our own bodies, and we kind of overlook how impactful our relationship with our mother was for our relationship with ourselves.
After I read that book, I really just started to think about all of the different facets of that beyond what she had written, this kind of idea of being hungry for a mother, and what that really means. And it led me down to just expanding upon a lot of, of some of the ideas and putting my own observations in there. I was inspired by the idea of Mother Hunger. I don't necessarily agree with everything that was in the book, but I was definitely inspired by that idea. And, you know, I hear a lot about women starting to call out and say that they're healing generations of trauma. That's kind of the new, newer thing, where when women start to become aware of their how their experiences shaped them, then they start to go down this rabbit hole of, oh, maybe I'm not just dealing with my patterns, but I'm dealing with imprinted patterns that have been imprinted upon me.
For those of you who don't know, or maybe have just never thought of this, you know, my grandmother, when she was pregnant with my mother, I was in her body. Because as my mother's womb was being developed as a fetus, I was within her womb, I was within her ovaries. And so a lot of people kind of overlook the fact that we have both physical implementations on us, right, our grandmother's hormonal state and nutritional state was absolutely passed on to our mother, but also imprinted upon us. And then our mother's nutritional state, and hormonal state was imprinted upon me and my future children as well. You see this a lot in the research, you know, this kind of multi generational impact. It's not just mother to child but grandmother to child. I remember reading a paper once that sometimes the granddaughter's hormonal function and mitochondrial function reflects the grandmothers more than it reflects the mothers and I find that just incredibly interesting. But then you also see like in Bruce Lipton's, The Biology of Belief, you see, there's much more to it than that, you know, the mother's emotional state, the grandmother's emotional state, absolutely impacts. It's the idea of epigenetics, you know, where our genes get turned on or off based on the environment that we're in, what we're exposed to, etc, etc. And he talks about concepts like the need for community and the power of loneliness, and how loneliness can impact the system so dramatically.
You know, all of these works, and all of these thought processes kind of led me to this idea that, Oh, my gosh, you know, it's my opinion that we as a generation, I look at our generation, you know, I'm a millennial, but I know that there's, there's most of the listeners of this podcast are millennials and a millennial age. But we have some young ones, and we definitely have some older ones as well. And I think you can all relate to the idea that our generation, and the ones that are coming even after us millennials, and the ones that came before, we are all trying to compensate and heal from multiple generations of abandonment, and a society that celebrates mothers abandoning their children.
Emotional Abandonment
I'm not just talking about physical, I'm not talking about physical abandonment. I know that is something that some of you have struggled with. But I'm talking more about an abandonment in the form of emotional abandonment, or just the abandonment that you feel when a mother is not present with you. And like I mentioned, you know, for us as women who carry this biology that's so sensitive to safety that's so sensitive to stability and being taken care of and needing that to be in the fullness of our femininity, because our body really does revolve around the biological purpose of reproduction. And that requires a lot of safety and being taken care of right. There's a vulnerability to that. There's also incredible power and strength as well. But there is a vulnerability to that nobody is invulnerable, right?
And so that makes me wonder, as women who have experienced a society that really encouraged and still encourages, and we'll dive into what I mean by this abandonment, emotionally, how has that impacted us on a metabolic level? And do we even comprehend how it has, because I don't think so. If you're like, I don't track like, you're losing me, stick with me, please stick with me.
So if we look at our nature, right, as women, we really are communal beings. I think sometimes we have disconnected from that, because our experience with women, you know, not all women are in their feminine energy a lot are in their masculine energy. So of course, this is going to lead to them being very competitive, and seeing you as a competitor, seeing you as a threat. If a woman is in fight or flight mode, she is going to be more fighter, flighty, you know, she's going to be ragey and cagey. And she's probably not going to be the best of friends. But she's also probably not going to have your best interests in mind, because she's so caught up in her own hormonal juju, that she can't even comprehend. Showing up in a real true, vulnerable woman to women respect to respect type of way. And I think for a lot of us, we kind of carry that idea where it's like, well, I'm not a communal being. I don't need community because like every woman I've ever been friends with has hurt me and pierced me to the core. Unfortunately, that is a very common thing that we as women are dealing with. It's very hard to have real female relationships nowadays.
So when I say that we as women are communal beings, I mean it in that way. I mean, when we're talking about real, true, intimate and vulnerable female relationships that allow us to grow as people where we see each other, we allow each other safe places to vent. But then also, we also help each other rise, and we help each other see each other clearly and call out each other's strengths, and help us work through our faults gently. But we are communal beings, as women, and we do require really strong, raw and real relationships with women to be able to develop a strong sense of self. Because remember, it's very difficult for us to see ourselves clearly. We require others, specifically other women, to see ourselves more clearly and shift our perspective of ourselves. For a lot of us, we have a difficult time seeing ourselves clearly. But when we have another woman there that has our back, and is there with us and realness. And she's there to, you know, look us in the eye and tell us the truth. She's there for our good and we're there for her good. What can happen is something amazing, and it can help us develop a really, really strong sense of self. There is something very important about being with other women who share in the feminine experience, and holding space for each other, being just able to just be in each other's presence and just be a woman. I think about traditional societies of old how, by the time you were born, you would have already been in a relationship with a lot of different women in your community.
I talked about this in my live q&a this past week for Fully Nourished students. But I was watching this, I think I did find it on Tik Tok. It was this video where this Native American man was talking about how, when a baby is born, the first thing that they do is they pass the child to all the women of the community as a representation that every single woman in that community just became a mother. I think of the beauty in that because to me, that is so amazing. It takes this phrase, it takes a village to a whole nother level. Because here these women are sharing which our current society would call in the “burden.” But I would say sharing here in the opportunity, and the honor and the pleasure of acting as a mother figure in this small child's life. I think for the daughters, especially how incredible that would be.
You think of all of the pressure now that is on mothers in our society. Because really, if we're being honest, our original relationship with a woman or our original feminine relationship is with our mother. And because we no longer have this kind of community oriented society, what we're seeing is that now, the relationship with our mother completely shapes our sense of self. It is the first female relationship that most of us will have. I say most of us because I know that's not true for all of us, and our relationship or lack thereof with her mother is going to impact us immensely. On a sense of self level, it's going to really radically shape what our sense of our self is. Because when we're born, you know, we have a basic biological need for nurturance to the point where if we don't get it, we will die. But what a lot of people don't realize is another basic biological need is the need for presence from a mother emotional person who provides a sense of safety and security and stability. Having a mother that is there with you, both physically and emotionally, and not just physically there, but miles and miles away in her mind.
So when we're small, that basic biological need is really for a presence, to really define who we are in the world. And that nurturance - we need it for survival. But then as we grow, that really shifts to now we have that mother need for guidance as well. It's not just nurturance. Now, it's not just presence. But there's also the aspect that we need guidance from a mother, especially today, in a society where we don't have a community of women who are kind of picking up each other's slack, we want to say it that way. Nobody's perfect. No one can do it all, right? Which is why we are designed to be such communal beings and meet each other. But now there isn't an extra need for mothers to provide us these things. And that guidance, you know, that sense of safety, that sense of stability, that sense of I am here with you, and I see you that is so imperative for us developing a strong relationship with ourselves, because it completely shifts our perception of ourselves.
If we are abandoned, we believe that we are not important, no matter what the meaning behind it was, a lot of us attach lots of stories and patterns of behavior, because of this core need to be nurtured. And this relationship with our mother, you know, not only is it shaping our sense of self, and who we are in our importance in the world, but our mother's relationship with herself, you know, her relationship with how she takes care of yourself, how she talks about her body, how she looks at her body in the mirror, how she approaches food, how she eats, you know, what she says about food, how she just takes care of herself in general is going to really largely shaped what we think about ourselves, and how we approach nourishing ourselves, how we approach our own bodies, and how we approach nurturing, nurturing ourselves and our children.
So taking it back to that deep fear that so many women are feeling right now. There's this deep sense of like, I can't get out of fight or flight. I'm so afraid of this thing, but I'm not sure what it is. I'm worried I'm overwhelmed. I'm feeling so incredibly burdened, and I'm trying to control everything. Is it possible that so many of us there's something deep, deep down that we can't put our finger on? Because this is a part of it. And I know this isn't true for all of us, right? Some of us did have very emotionally present mothers and were the mothers that we needed for guidance and teaching us about our bodies and for teaching us about life and relationships and all the things that are really important, the raw, real gritty parts of life. But I think a majority of the women that I talk to in my generation can admit that that's not the case, a lot of us carry this gaping hole. It's no one specific person's fault. Of course, as women, it's so important for our sense of self to be able to take personal responsibility and accountability for the things that we contribute to that's a part of our growth process. We absolutely need to do that. And a lot of times right now, especially with a climate where the world is, I think that there's a lot of accountability that women don't take, and that can really lead to its own types of problems.
But I don't think that this is specifically anyone's fault. I think it's really how we've moved as a society that has left this gaping hole for a lot of us. You know, if you look at the past three generations, we have had more emotionally absent mothers with what's been going on historically. And this was why I talked about the past 100 years in episode six, because I know I'm not speaking for everyone, but there were a lot of mothers who were checked out numbed out. They were what I like to call and refer to as being under spells, almost operating in this just kind of going-through-the-motions type of way.
If we look at what's happened over the past three generations, of course, there was this push to get women out of the home and into the workforce, and that you don't want to be home with your children. You don't want to be doing any of those things. You want to be out and have a career and you don't need a man. And you know, then you see what was happening in the 60s where it's like the first round of what I almost see as like antidepressants. You know, a lot of women were on tranquilizers during that time. The 60s and 70s were run rampant with women who were just completely numbed out and checked out because they were on their tranquilizers. And then you see the uptick in microwave meals. Convenience options came in, where now mom doesn't have to be at home cooking meals and nourishing her children. Because now you can just go to the freezer section and pop it in the microwave and dinner's ready in two minutes or less. And this is not a judgment. This is not an argument of well, this is what was necessary. This is what would have had to happen. I know everybody's situation is different. I'm just kind of making an overarching comment on how this is really the kind of mentality that slowly has seeped in, that has gotten us to the point where we're all just like, I feel like I've missed out on a lot.
I think a lot of us really wish we would have been taught about our bodies, we wish we would have been taught about womanhood, we wish we would have been taught basic, necessary skills like cooking, and how to clean and how to fold a fitted sheet. You know, these are things that we should have been learning that are important that we want to be able to do. And so many of us, those things are so far away from us that it's feeling like this uphill battle to learn how to cook for ourselves and create a healthy meal and get into a routine where we take care of ourselves. Why does this feel so hard?
We Demolished Feminine Power
I listened to this quote that I heard in a video by Teal Swan, and the video was labeled, “We Demolished Feminine Power.” And this video, the quote that she said, summed it up perfectly. She said, “It’s the era of the woman does everything and what’s the point of a man? We did not gain feminine power, in fact, we further demolished feminine power and now women have now found themselves in a position where they’re expected to be what a man is and provide what a man provides and at the same time as somehow providing what a female provides. That is destructive, not only for women, but for men. So right now, we’re living through a crisis, honestly, for both masculinity and femininity because of it.”
That's really it, right? Like I mentioned in my burnout episode, and I talked about my burnout, how, you know, there's this push for, for young girls, where it's like, you can be anything and everything you want, but there's almost this underlying undertone of like, you better be something great, right? Like, you can't possibly just want to be content with your life and at peace and be a mother and you know, cook and nurture something else. Like that's not enough, right? There's that undertone, underlying or society. But then at the same time, little boys are being taught that they need to just be strong, and get a good job and suck it up. And even though we see people outwardly saying like, you know, men should share their emotions, more men have emotions. Well, of course, they have emotions, but they're also just different than women. And what feeds them doesn't feed us, we're not the same.
I talked about this physiological difference in episode five, everyone loved that episode. And so we see women in the past 50 years kind of have gotten caught up in the storm, where they have just been going, going, striving, striving, because that's what has just been beaten into them from the moment they're born, right? They can be anything and they can be powerful. And they can be this and they can be that not at one point is somebody asking them, “What do you truly deeply want, like what feels good in your body?” Because Honey, your body's going to let you know what you're feeling. And if something that you're doing is working for you - where's that type of teaching? Where's the teaching about our feminine nature and our hormones and with the physiological cost of pushing ourselves beyond our body's limits is really going to cost us and even more, what is it going to cost our children?
I have a mentor and I talked to her often. And she is a mother and she has a lot more wisdom and experience because I don't always feel so competent talking about these concepts that are things that I have not experienced, like I am not personally a mother yet. So I always make sure that I'm talking to women that are wiser than me that have the experience that I don't have. She told me something that is going to stick with me forever. And she said, “Jessica, there's nothing more painful to a woman and to a mother than to see your child struggle, or be in pain, and have it be because of you.” I thought man did that hurt to hear. I felt it viscerally as a woman and I don't even have a child and so I can't imagine the type of pain that is.
I think on one side, how many of us are really trying to nurse the wound of “I'm not good enough and it's never enough” that a lot of us carry and we don't know why it's never enough. We don't know why we strive and we push and we accomplish the way that we do. There's just this deep, almost core part of us that is driving us to do it even though it's hurting us, even though it's physiologically costing us, but then on the flip side, I think we're going through this place where a lot of us carry so much rage, and anger and bitterness as well. And you know, I love how in Traditional Chinese Medicine that is often, you know, the liver and the gallbladder. I wonder just how many of us are struggling with all of these detoxification issues, right, because the liver and the gallbladder is so paramount in removing broken down hormones and chemicals and the xenoestrogens and metabolites and just the general metabolic waste our body gives off.
Or, how many of us just have this pit in our stomach of rage, and sometimes it just pops up and we're like, “Where's that rage coming from?” The same mentor I was talking about, she always reminds me that rage is just a message from the body that your boundaries are being crossed, whether you're crossing your own boundaries, or somebody else is crossing your boundaries. Anger is a form of protection. And it tells us a lot about ourselves, which is why suppressing it is just so physiologically powerful. It impacts us on such a physical level. But I think a lot of us do carry rage and anger on a deeper level, possibly due to that mother wound, possibly due to that deep, deep hunger that we have, that we can't get to the bottom of.
But I also wonder for our mothers and our grandmothers, how maybe the pain that they carry, and the shame that they carry, you know - I've loved to see this rise of the “Karen” archetype over the past decade where you see these women just going absolutely insane, like chasing people in their cars and like ticking cars, and you know, just cussing out cashiers - they lose their ever loving minds. All of a sudden something triggers them and they lose their ever loving mind. And I wonder too how many of these women are just in such deep, deep pain as well from their choices without even maybe understanding why or being able to connect to why.
Episode Links
In this episode, I mentioned:
Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton*
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