Examining the Feminine Wounds

 

 

“Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don’t belong. You will always find it because you’ve made that your mission.  Stop scouring people’s faces for evidence that you’re not enough. You will always find it because you’ve made that your goal.
True belonging and self-worth are not goods; we don’t negotiate their value with the world.  The truth about who we are lives in our hearts.
Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart against constant evaluation, especially our own.” – Brene Brown

Societal Norms have changed.  We have changed to fit that new Norm.  There are sub-divisions of gender we never even thought of when we were younger.  Women, my age, were brought up under the negative view of women through patriarchal eyes.  We have , slowly, some of us, tried to shed off some of those stereotypes that were deeply infused into our girlhood and on through.  For man, there has been a place of being stuck in all this.  Some have not grown through it all and matured.  We see Cinderella complexes all over the world, in our own world. 

We do NOT have to be the prettiest, the best, the good girl, submissive to men in our lives, the meek, the emotionally blocked, the Pleaser.  Neither do we have to be helicopter mothers.  Neither do we have to bandstand and be demanding.  Neither do we need to do it all on our own.  We simply need to be who we are, without all the conditioning (or as much as possible, for us). 

We own our feelings.  We have a right to them.  We have a right to express them.  We simply need to be authentic, not to make others comfortable, not to fit in, not to think that, as we have been conditioned, that some high and mighty god, that we are expected to be.  Our feelings are totally authentic to us; each of us the ups and downs of everyday flow.  We need to learn to acknowledge them and name them.  But, be careful in the naming because some of those names we choose might belong to Patriarchy.  Some might belong to fear.  We need to seek, with intuitive searching, the key trigger to all our emotions.  This will help us be more emotionally authentic. 

Can we do it?  Can we, in these moments of “whatshallIdotofillthisdreadeddeadspace” times, find a way to delve into our authentic emotions and find the WHY of all of them;  the good, the bad, and the ugly?

Try art journaling or doing a creation that explores what your feelings might be and what comes of the exploration?

 I started with a previously warmed up page.  I did a wash of white gesso over top but left an area where I was going to do the face.  

I used a wide-mouthed comb to make marks in those areas.  I let it dry completely.

I drew a simple face shape in charcoal.

To soften the charcoal lines, I used a Q-Tip.

My word for the year is “Soulnections” – Soul Connections, I decided upon through the Red Thread Creatives group. I left the page simplistic because my word will grow and be defined more an more as the year goes on.  

Cinderella Complex/Syndrome reference to look up: 

https://www.healthgrades.com/right-care/mental-health-and-behavior/cinderella-syndrome-signs-you-have-it-and-how-to-overcome-it

©Carol Desjarlais 20.1.22