Chapter Summary

What Is Empowerment?

Knowledge of self is the most important gift we can give ourselves. Take time out from chasing around like a headless chicken, as the world would have us do. Dive into the waters of your consciousness, and know you cannot drown no matter how deep you go. Empowerment is freedom, true freedom, and freedom is a scarce and precious commodity these days. It’s gold; the more you have of it, the richer you are, and it’s a wealth far more rewarding and substantial than anything the material world can ever offer. 

Intro

I hope you find this book enlightening and exciting. I hope it proves to be a guide book for navigating your own ups and downs in life. It’s the book about being a woman I wish I could have read decades ago; it would have saved me a lot of trial and error. I would have made more informed decisions and had a much richer understanding of myself. The modern Western lifestyle isn’t particularly kind to anyone, but it is definitely not kind to women. In understanding the ways society lets us down, we can stop blaming ourselves, and start creating changes in the way we live, what we tolerate, and how we shape our lives. In seeing how we let ourselves down, we can learn to restate our value and set better boundaries – change always begins with that one individual step. Hopefully then, our daughters and grand-daughters will be able to look back on our current compromises and limitations with a mixture of ridicule and horror, thankful that the world isn’t like that anymore for them.

What are Hormones?

Basically, hormones are biochemical impulses. A signal is sent out, triggered either by an external event (e.g. being chased by a dog), or an internal event such as a women’s monthly cycle, and that signal has an effect somewhere else in the body. These signals connect the brain and nervous system – they are literally the mind-body connection. 

Patriarchy 

So much of what we do is predicated on the internalization that men are more important than women. Look at social media, and the overwhelming message from women is one of seeking approval; the overwhelming message from men is one of stating their dominance. By overturning that idea within yourself, by accepting yourself and loving yourself, and knowing your value, you are changing the fabric of our culture. You may lose friends over it, because a woman who is not seeking approval nor allowing herself to be dominated is a threat to the status quo. But you will gain the heartfelt gratitude of the woman of the future for clearing the way. 

Stress

Let's start with the bad news. The more research I do, the more it seems to me that it's next to impossible for women not to live with some level of stress in our current circumstances. Modern lifestyles practically guarantee burnout, given all the responsibilities we have to juggle, and the lack of support we receive from the wider culture. The good news is that we do have the power to change that, and it's vital that we do, not just for our health, but also for our daughters, and all subsequent generations.

Depression

So now we’ve got a clearer understanding of our internal landscape, through learning about hormones, and a clearer understanding of our external landscape, through examining the patriarchal structures, it’s no surprise to add these two things together, and come up with our next topic, depression. Depression is something of a taboo, it’s seen as a failing, but I prefer to see it as a healthy response to an unhealthy situation. I believe our natural state is bliss, and depression arises from the way the well-being of the individual is under-valued in our societies, and the lack of channels for pure unadulterated joy that our society provides.

Relationships

You probably remember that men produce more testosterone and women produce more oestrogen, we learn that in school. But do you know what that really means, in practice? Bearing in mind everything we’ve learnt about hormones so far, about how much they provide the unconscious direction and focus for everything we do. This means, quite literally, that men and women have different drives and focuses. Not only different in fact – opposing. Like gravity and levity, night and day, we are quite literally the yin and the yang of humanity. Just the fact that this needs exploring shows how out of balance we are.

Monthly Cycles

Tracking your cycle is a vital tool for staying in touch with yourself, and understanding your mood changes better. It fascinates me that this rhythm goes on in our bodies for decades, and most of us pay it little attention. If you are anything like me, you will have a vague notion about how your moods and energy changes every month, but until I got into hormone research, I genuinely couldn’t have told you anything specific.

Raising Kids

What I can write on, rather than proscribing parenting methods, is my experience of how it felt to be a mother of small kids, how the world treated me. Mothering itself was a joy – being a mother, less so. A whole heap of unexamined baggage the world has about what a mother is hit me in the face, and a lot of time I felt like I was wading through garbage. Yes, I signed up gladly to loving my kids, educating them, nurturing them, tending to their needs. I did not sign up to becoming a second-class citizen though, and I couldn’t work out how to extricate the two.

Menopause

I think what happens in menopause is that women stop being able to trade in their fertility, which is the only currency men readily give to us. So suddenly, with that source of power removed, we are forced to confront the question, “What is our true value within the culture?” And most women come to the conclusion, not very much. This is what makes us angry. It’s not our hormones. It’s the long-denied but finally unavoidable fact that what we have to offer is taken thanklessly, if at all.

The Spiritual Essence of Woman

To destroy the patriarchy, we cannot use its own tools against it. This is hard, because these tools are so inbred in us, we forget how else to be. We cannot seek to act against the patriarchy; we do not want to rule over it or to defeat it, because in doing so we will become it and we will perpetuate it. We must fight it with all the things it lacks. Compassion. Tenderness. Wisdom. Allowing. In a word: love.

Lifestyle Tips

Know that you are enough as you are. Find ways to feel whole, to remind yourself how beautiful you are. When you believe that you are not good enough just as you are right now, you will keep attracting situations to you that reflect that. When you know that you are perfect in this moment, then you attract in situations of a higher vibration. This isn’t to say that life becomes perfect and nothing bad ever happens. But that you can see the perfection in everything know matter how it makes you feel.