the voice, nor radiated the joy of the Divine Feminine. She was asleep, freeze-dried in my heart, buried under mounds of false beliefs, societal injunctions, and visceral fears.
From talking with friends and working with clients, I know that my barren experience was not unique.
WAKE-UP CALLS
The Divine Feminine is issuing wake-up calls. And the most important of those calls are the ones stirring within our own hearts. Such stirrings may come in the form of little nudges to invoke a female power or deity while praying, intuitive flashes that we have the courage to voice and act upon, acts of kindness, love, and wisdom that effortlessly bubble from us, feeling intensely connected to nature, joyous bursts of creativity, or soft, silent whispers that come during dreams or meditation.
As we pay rapt and respectful attention to the whispers of the Divine Feminine within, we can usually find the courage to restructure our values around a core of compassion and connectedness toward both ourselves and others. Waking up to the Divine Feminine within our souls and then heeding her gentle pushes and pulls empowers us to live the expanded vision of self we are being shown. The invitation has been sent. With courage, commitment and intention, we can become our true selves: authentic, heart-centered women, light-bearers in our beleaguered world.
CHAPTER TWO
COURAGE: YOU HAVE IT!
I have met brave women who are exploring the outer edges of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and with a courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words.
GLORIA STEINEM
Are you often filling the wants and needs of others without having your own met? Do deadlines and difficult people leave you feeling frazzled? Do you feel overworked and under-appreciated? Do you grapple with self-limiting fears? Are you more an enemy than a friend to yourself?
Despite the tremendous changes of the last fifty years and the new vision of ourselves we've been given, many women will still answer “yes” to the above questions. Often we are caught in a tangled web of emotional dependence, afraid to express who we really are.
EMOTIONAL STRENGTH AND SELF-ESTEEM
Emotional strength flows from a healthy and hearty sense of selfesteem. Emotionally strong women know themselves well, honor their strengths, nonjudgmentally work on their weaknesses, and treat themselves—and consequently others—with respect, understanding, and kindness. When a woman is emotionally strong, she is able to be gentle with herself and call upon her own inner core of strength as her main support even in the midst of chaos and failure.
For the vast majority of us, emotional strength and high self-esteem are attributes that we have worked diligently to attain, not ones that came easily or automatically. Courageously we build, balance, and stabilize our internal ego structure by overcoming one tiny—or tremendous—fear at a time and embrace a new vision of ourselves one insight at a time.
Uncovering, strengthening, and allowing our authentic self full expression is an ongoing, eternal process, a dance with our soul.
WHAT IS EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCE?
Emotional dependence is the opposite of emotional strength. It means needing to have others to survive, wanting others to “do it for us,” and depending on others to give us our self-image, make our decisions, and take care of us financially. When we are emotionally dependent, we look to others for our happiness, our concept of “self,” and our emotional well-being. Such vulnerability necessitates a search for and dependence on outer support for a sense of our own worth.
Being emotionally dependent puts us at the mercy of our fears and other people's whims, and severely limits our freedom to be ourselves. Although our minds often know better, when we are emotionally dependent, we feel that others hold the key to our wellbeing, that they must know better than we do what is good for us. Or, we may believe that we must give ourselves away in order to gain and hold someone's love. That belief makes reassurance a necessity rather than a nicety.
Before I ever heard the term “emotional dependence,” I knew that, in some mysterious way, I turned my life over to other people. It didn't really matter who they were—my parents, husband, kids, friends, coworkers. If they were happy with me, then I could be happy. If they approved of me, then I felt worthwhile. If they granted permission, then I believed it was okay for me to do or be something. I looked to others for approval before feeling confident enough to take a step or a stand. I wasn't myself; I was whoever I thought the person I was trying to please wanted me to be. Since I wasn't a mind reader, no matter what form I pretzeled myself into, I wasn't able to please everyone all of the time. But I tried. That's emotional dependence!
Denying or sacrificing ourselves on the altar of others' expectations— or what we perceive to be their expectations—leaves us with no self. Without an awareness of our self, the courage to express who we are, and the willingness to experience the discomfort and exhilaration that follows, we are not truly living. We are existing merely as mirrors, reflecting other people's lives. Until we are able to be our unique and beautiful (and, sometimes, ugly and mundane) selves, we cannot truly love either ourselves or others, and love is what life is all about.
Why do so many women have trouble maintaining emotional strength? As many researchers have shown, women have a deep need for emotional connectedness and intimacy. In fact, one of the premises of Carol Gilligan's book, In A Different Voice, is that women's voices are easily silenced by the culture because of their need for copacetic connectedness. This desire is not all bad, since it is what makes us such wonderful lovers, friends, and mothers. But when the need for connectedness is not balanced with the need to be our own person, we can become emotionally dependent, losing sight of ourselves and all our capabilities. We become afraid of anything that seems to threaten our relationships with others. Being disconnected can feel life threatening and is, therefore, terrifying to us. Out of our terror we often do exactly what we are afraid others will do—we abandon ourselves, littering the sides of our personal life-road with forsaken desires, goals, talents, and dreams.
Fear—of not being loved, of abandonment, of being thought to be selfish—is the main thing that keeps us vulnerable and bound in the chains of emotional dependence. Therefore, our two most difficult challenges are to truly believe it is okay for us to be ourselves and to learn to live with, move through, and heal our fears.
For many years, I was run by my fears. For example, I was deeply afraid of rejection or of offending anyone and would go to great lengths to avoid disagreement of any kind. But very few people who knew me would have said, “Wow, there's a woman who is really afraid!” I hid it well. And so, I was to learn, did countless other women.
Unfortunately, many of us have allowed fear to block our awareness of our inborn strengths. I myself used to be a master at doing that. Although other people perceived me as a strong and independent person, I frequently felt I was only playing at being grownup. Others saw me as successful and mature, but inside, I felt buffeted by other people's moods. I knew that I hadn't taken responsibility for my own life, and I was afraid to do so.
Even though I had a master's degree in counseling and had been in private practice for several years, inwardly I felt I was “just a wife and mother.” Sure, I had performed the work of an adult person, leading groups
