The inconvenience of Honouring ourselves as women!!

I cancelled a workshop this month.

For the first time in my career, I chose to tend to my own wellbeing instead of showing up for others, at a time when I needed it more.

This might sound minor. But for a woman who has spent decades prioritising her clients' needs first, it was anything but.

So today I want to talk about something most women struggle with: Listening to their own needs. And trust me, as reformed people pleaser I have worked hard to get better at this myself.

Listening to our needs above the demands of others is not exactly celebrated in this world.

Whether you're a woman in business, at work or at home, there are always other people asking for things, and it's easy to make their needs more important than ours.

Truthfully, being a feminine woman who follows the pull of her body, her intuition and her cycles is deeply fucking INCONVENIENT!

Cancelling a client. Rescheduling an offering so we're not giving from emptiness or depletion. None of this is easy. And yet sometimes it's exactly what's needed.

Most of us have learnt to push through:

To work, parent and keep showing up during our monthly bleed.

To return to work mere months after giving birth.

To muscle on through the destabilising shifts of midlife - assisted by hormone therapy, purely so we can keep the pace the world says we need to move at.

And most of all, to pretend we're fine through all of it.

Because if we don't, we risk being seen as unreliable. Difficult, too much, incapable or overly dramatic.

So many women negate their own needs for this reason alone.. and most of us fear being labelled "that woman."

So instead we push through.

We hold fast. We suck it up.

And we learnt to live like men, in a world that rewards consistency instead of sensitivity.

As women, our biology is cyclically led — 29 day hormone cycles, a vast array of hormones, and the continual shifting through our seasons of life - from maiden, to mother, maga and then crone.

This is why I question the old paradigm that says we must force, hustle, strive and perform like men, who have 24 hour Testosterone cycles and are built to be steady, consistent and protectors of us.

Here's the thing, ladies..

WE need to be the ones who break this cycle and stop playing the game.

We do this when we choose something different for ourselves.

And stop buying into the guilt of what is expected, good or dutiful to do.

How? Start by listening to your body.

Honour what you actually need (that cup of tea, that extra sleep, that day off work, that less clean house).

And do it especially when it's hard or inconvenient.

Even when others don't understand.

Because its likely they never will.

If we as women aren't willing to tend to ourselves, to say no when we deeply need to, then we cannot expect the world to do it for us. And that means we also need to be in support of other women taking care of themselves - without jealousy, judgement or shame.

As I take some time to replenish myself, I've been contemplating all of this very deeply.

Next month I'm opening my newest journey ~ Wisdom from the Dark ~ and it's unlike anything I've hosted before.

Because I am not pretending to have it all worked out! We are going to be exploring some of the messy raw live terrain that I am still navigating in my own life, even now..

Which means I'll be there in the trenches with you, journeying through my own descent, week after week. And that makes this both terrifying and exciting, because I don't promise to have all the answers.

These days I'm less interested in telling women what to do, and more called to gather and move through things together, as a collective.

As such, I've made a few tweaks to the offering:

The Early bird rate is now the full investment, so there is no increase and payment plans are open. I've also pushed the start date back to Thursday 16th July.

If something in you is feeling the relevance of this post, or the readiness to honouring yourself without apology, spending some time exploring the gifts of the Dark feminine in July might be perfect.

Learn more about Wisdom from the Dark here.