Reviving The Feminine - A Journey Toward Balance
by Dr. Trish Whynot

This year my focus has been on integrating some new desires into my life, along with a balanced schedule that will support them. In the midst of this process, I realized that at the root of balance lies our relationship between our inner-masculine and inner-feminine. When they are working in partnership, we are in balance. Imbalance can emerge as ill health, unsupportive relationships or financial hardships. As I looked back on health, relationship and financial issues I have had in the past, I saw that the issue of imbalance was at the root of them all.

Getting to the root of an issue is about figuring out why things in our lives happen. The root of a plant is the foundation of its structure. It can't survive for long without its roots. Much of our adult lives are built on our perceptions from childhood. These perceptions are the roots-the foundation upon which the structures of our health, relationships, and finances are built. If you built your life on a wobbly, imbalanced foundation, you may have added many supports to prevent your structures from falling over. These supports become your prison. They prevent you from sharing what you came here to share with the world and divert your energy toward holding up structures built on foundations that are no longer serving you. Structures with balanced foundations hold themselves up. Having problems with the foundation of any structure will make your life miserable. Because this newsletter is discussing the foundation of balance, which can be obscure, I felt that the best way to explain it would be by sharing my perception of the development of my inner-masculine and inner-feminine relationship-viewing it from birth, to demise, to partnership, from a healing perspective.

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Everyone has an inner-feminine. I picture mine as holding my emotions, creativity, intuition and heart's desires. This part of me is vulnerable and needs to feel safe in order to express those qualities. When I honor and respect her, she shows me where I harbor emotion and brings awareness to my heart's desires. My inner-feminine is very creative, and even has creative solutions to my dilemmas. In order to honor and respect her, I must take the time to still my mind so I can hear her wisdom. Our relationship is fairly new and developing, since I ignored her for many years.

Everyone's inner-feminine has an inner-masculine partner. I picture mine as the holder of my knowledge. This part of me is resourceful, protective, logical, knowledgeable and helpful. He's confident and can always get the job done when I give him a task. When he's on his own, he's not always graceful and often forgets to enjoy the steps on the way toward his goal. His solutions to my dilemmas come from a databank of what he knows. He's a go-getter and will push me to the point of depletion, if I let him. Not because he's bad and wrong, but because he is accustomed to working alone. As I abandoned my inner-feminine, I really came to depend on my inner-masculine, causing him to feel extra pressure and responsibility. No wonder he could get so overworked and angry at times with all that responsibility on his shoulders. When he's on a roll and I don't intervene, he keeps volunteering my energy, whether it is volunteered to a project or to another person, and he won't take time to refuel without my urging. I have given him decision-making authority for much of my life.

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In my efforts toward balance, I have been consciously working on creating a new pattern where my masculine and feminine work in partnership, a pattern where I give equal value to both of their perspectives and then make my decisions accordingly. Sometimes I forget and give my inner-masculine full authority, but more and more I remember to engage my inner-feminine. When I consult my inner-feminine, she knows just what I need to replenish and just what my inner-masculine needs to feel safe slowing down. When my masculine and feminine are both engaged, I can see the value in taking time to acknowledge where I have been, where I am at, and where I am going. This helps me to decide what I want to take with me and what is no longer serving me. I must leave behind what no longer serves me to make room for my new desires. As old desires are put to rest, room is created for my new desires to grow and blossom.

In the past, when my inner-masculine had full authority, I would hold onto what was no longer serving me and add new desires to the mix. Then I would get overwhelmed trying to do too much and wouldn't have time to replenish. This was my inner-masculine's way of trying to protect me. He thought that if I held onto everything, then no one's feathers would get ruffled and I'd be the "good child" for keeping the peace. In reality, trying to hold onto everything made my life so much harder and wasn't in anyone's best interest. And it definitely didn't create peace. When I don't have time to replenish, I am not the person I want to be, and this adversely affects my health and my loved ones.  Being a loving, caring, compassionate and understanding person is important to me, and balance is critical to this end.

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My inner-masculine and inner-feminine have been on quite an adventure over the years. Reflecting back, I was a very sensitive child and always asked "why" in an attempt to know the feelings that fueled my parents' thought processes. I now realize that my parents grew up during  the Depression, and therefore learned to make many of their choices based on survival. They sacrificed for me and I was supposed to show my appreciation by being  "good." Looking back, I can see that being a "good" child according to parents of this generation meant being a child who didn't ask questions that required parents to be in touch with their feelings-not because our parents necessarily were bad people, but because they didn't know how to be sensitive to the way they felt. When we challenged our parents' feelings, it made them uncomfortable, and we got blamed for it. This is how we got wounded as children. It was also where we learned to take responsibility for other people's feelings, making sure they were comfortable so we didn't get blamed for their discomfort. Like others of their generation, my parents weren't sensitive to the feelings that fueled their choices and decisions; and therefore, couldn't communicate them well. I was left to interpret their reasoning and was often inaccurate. They also couldn't be sensitive to my feelings because they weren't sensitive to their own. They were very good at providing my physical needs, but providing emotional support was more challenging for them. Lord knows, I did my share to challenge my parents in their unfamiliar territory of feelings.

The inner-masculine and inner-feminine aspects of me emerged as supportive partners when I was around eighteen months old. Their energies flowed harmonious and free, and it felt great to be me! As I grew, I came to realize that if I did something my parents or any other authority figure didn't like, I'd feel their disapproval or get punished. It didn't feel so great to be me during those times.

Some things that I did that I thought were really creative in early childhood, weren't seen as particularly creative by my parents. And as my vocabulary increased, and I started asking questions and having opinions, this seemed to get me in even more trouble. So as I was growing up, my inner-feminine-being so sensitive, innocent and vulnerable-kept getting hurt and didn't have the maturity to understand why. When I concluded that I wasn't going to be emotionally supported by most authority figures in my life, I consulted with my inner-masculine and inner-feminine, and decided to hide my inner-feminine in efforts to protect her from more pain. I was about four years old when I made this decision. It made sense to hide my inner-feminine since she was vulnerable and couldn't protect herself-not because she was less valuable. In her vulnerability, she held my inner gift of sensitivity, which couldn't be cherished by my parents at that time.

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Hiding my inner-feminine was a creative solution from the perspective of a four-year-old. And from that child's mentality, it was necessary to my survival. My inner-feminine would come out of hiding periodically to express herself. But when she got hurt again, I would take her back to her hiding place where she could be safe. The more hurt she got, the weaker she became and the less I would hear from her. Eventually I got so absorbed in the "doing" aspect of my inner-masculine, that I forgot about her. I no longer recognized her voice and when I did faintly hear it, I'd dismiss it and go back to what I was doing.

By ignoring her, my inner-feminine, along with all her wonderful qualities, became lifeless, valueless, depleted and powerless. My inner-masculine had come to resent her. He felt that her absence had left him with all the responsibility. He believed that her vulnerability had slowed me down. Her emotions got in the way of his productivity, and he didn't have the time to deal with her. He no longer viewed her as a supportive partner. Instead, he viewed her as weak and burdensome. He couldn't see how there could possibly be any value in her vulnerability.

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As an adult, I had forgotten about my decision to hide my inner-feminine. Because her voice had become so weak and powerless, I didn't believe that her input was valuable. Boy was I wrong. I was no more sensitive to her needs than my parents had been and the imbalance that I had created between my inner-masculine and inner-feminine was becoming more and more apparent. Initially it played itself out as illness and injury. It started out as TMJ, then high blood pressure in my twenties. My inner-masculine was angry at still having to be the "good" child. From there I allowed my inner-masculine to push me to the point of depletion and I developed a chronic sinus condition. I thought I had healed these physical conditions using traditional methods. I was treating the symptoms, but going back to the same unhealthy choices that were depleting my inner-feminine. Then I developed a repetitive strain injury that totally debilitated me. This injury forced me to stop and look at my life. It brought me out of the realm of traditional medicine and into the realm of alternative healing. As I learned to process the messages my physical body was screaming at me, I was able to thank and release the messengers-my physical symptoms.

When I got healthy, my relationship fell apart around the same time my husband lost his job. The issues I had worked through with my physical body had changed my life. I had even made a career change to share what I had learned with others. As my practice began to take off, my husband became very unsupportive. Although I had never felt better or been happier, and I was expressing my creativity on a whole new level, now my relationship was falling apart. 

I examined what was going on from every logical angle. But my answers were in a territory that was foreign to me, because they were related to my inner-feminine. Finally I got some help from my friend, Rho, who told me that my inner-masculine was not supporting my inner-feminine and it was playing itself out in my relationship. Yikes! That made sense. My inner-masculine only knew how to be supportive of a wounded feminine-just like my husband. I realized that both my husband and inner-masculine knew how to be supportive of me when I was sick and injured, but not when I was strong and empowered. I now knew I had to heal the relationship between my inner-masculine and inner-feminine on the inside before there could be any hope of healing our relationship on the outside.

The relationship was well on it's way to healing when the unemployment ran out and my husband hadn't found a job-another expression of my out of balance masculine and feminine. In overvaluing and giving decision-making authority to my inner-masculine, I was giving more of myself than I was taking back to replenish. My giving and receiving were out of balance and so was my checkbook, as a result. We were giving away more money than we were taking in. Now even though my husband is the one who lost his job, we were going through this together. He is  my partner, playing this out with me, so I can't say it is solely his stuff. He has his stuff, too. But I had to look at what his stuff was bringing up for me.

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Looking back I can see clearly that I built my life around the imbalance of my inner-masculine and inner-feminine. This imbalance was the foundation that my health, relationships and finances were built on. As I began to address the imbalance the structures that were built on it began to crumble. It was time to let go of the old supports and to build a new foundation based on a harmonious partnership between my inner-masculine and inner-feminine.

The first step in building this new balanced foundation was to go back and find where I had hidden my inner-feminine. But I needed the cooperation of my inner-masculine in order to do it. I needed to be sensitive to him and to let him know my plan. I listened as he expressed his feelings and let him know that I wanted to work with him. I explained that it may take some time to re-create balance, but it would be worth it. My inner-masculine needed to trust me, and I needed to validate his feelings and help him feel safe during the transition.

The choice I made that created my imbalance was a creative choice that had served me well in childhood and adolescence. Now it was time to acknowledge this choice for the time it served me and put it to rest. It was also necessary for me to acknowledge the damage that suppressing my feminine had caused in my adult life, and to forgive myself for letting it remain out of balance for so long. It took some time to revive my inner-feminine. She needed much love, tenderness, nurturing and support. I had to be patient with her development and to give her the honor, respect and support that she deserved. It was an intricate process that can't be entirely discussed in a newsletter.

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I have learned that when I overvalue my inner-masculine, I devalue my inner-feminine. My inner-masculine gets overworked and my inner-feminine gets ignored. They get out of balance and so do I.  Life becomes a struggle, I can't get in a rhythm, my energy doesn't flow, and I feel depleted and stuck. As my experiences have shown, this imbalance can manifest outwardly as illness, unsupportive relationships and even as financial hardships. Metaphysically speaking, when our inner-masculine is out of sync with our inner-feminine, there will be dysfunction in some area of our lives.

American culture as a whole has a tendency to overvalue the masculine and in that process devalues the feminine. This masculine, doing side is our productive side. Productivity and money are often valued at the expense of our own well-being and the well-being of others. This imbalance is the root of chauvinism and men and women are creating this imbalance in epidemic proportions.

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In reviving my inner-feminine, I realized that she held creativity that I hadn't tapped into yet. She showed me the power and strength in my vulnerability and I could now see that my sensitivity was not a curse; it was a gift. Part of the gift of sensitivity is being able to see beneath the surface to what someone is really feeling and why they are feeling it, including yourself. As I learned to honor my creativity, sensitivity, heart' s desires and intuition, so did others. As I learned to honor my feelings and time to replenish, my body became healthy. As I honored my creativity and heart's desires my career unfolded. As I honored each quality my inner-feminine held of mine, so did my husband. And when I am in balance, so is my checkbook.

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When I can honor both my inner-masculine and inner-feminine, I feel energized, balanced with my giving and receiving, and, as a result, my life flows. I feel safe, protected, happy, supported by the Universe, guided, and free to creatively express myself. I listen to both their perspectives, allowing me to make my best decisions. I am grateful for the depth of understanding that I have gained from my experiences with imbalance and grateful for my parents who challenged my growth in this area. My relationship with them has never been more mutually sensitive and respectful, because I have learned to be sensitive and respectful toward myself.

I can't guarantee that I will never attempt to build another structure on the foundation of imbalance. I am human, and will fall into this old pattern on occasion, but when I do, I will more and more quickly remember to engage my inner-feminine, and get back into balance. One thing I can guarantee is that I will never build another metropolis on the foundation of imbalance again. The practice of engaging my inner-feminine helps me to integrate her back into my life. Eventually, my new pattern of engaging her will replace my old pattern of ignoring her, and my inner-masculine and I will genuinely come to know and appreciate her full value once again.

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When the inner-masculine and inner-feminine are balanced and in harmony, the masculine supports and protects the vulnerable feminine and the feminine guides, supports and nurtures her masculine partner. Have you ever experienced having a thought and someone you know starts doing what you were thinking before you tell them? This is analogous to a harmonious feminine and masculine. When we are in balance we are healthy, our relationships are mutually honoring and respectful and money flows easily in and out of our lives.

If you have a deep longing to find an intimate partner, someone to share your life with, this could be indicating a deeper yearning to reunite your inner-masculine and inner-feminine. Once they are back in balance, this will take the weight off of finding a partner to satisfy this yearning. Once this yearning is satisfied, you will find that partner you have been longing for. When what you long for is present on the inside, you can more effectively create it on the outside.

If you have an unappeasable desire for balance, it is because you have known it before. Deep down, your inner-masculine and inner-feminine are longing for the partnership they once had- when it felt great to be you and life was easy. Life is anything but easy when your health is suffering, your relationships are a struggle, and your finances are out of control. Any of these issues may be your wakeup call, indicating that it is time to re-create balance in your life. Reviving your relationship with your inner-feminine is where it begins. And don't forget to honor your inner-masculine in the process.

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Suggestions For Reviving Your Inner-Feminine

Taking a bath is a great way to nurture and rejuvenate your inner-feminine. Give yourself the first class treatment: candlelight, soft music, organic bath herbs, essential oils, salts or whatever tickles your inner-feminine's fancy. Let your answering machine take your calls, put a "do not disturb" sign on the door and begin to dialogue with your inner-feminine. 

A walk in nature can be a rejuvenating way to revive your inner-feminine. While walking take time to notice the intricacies, the beauty, and the uniqueness of plants, rocks and animals. Be in awe of nature's magnificence. Experience nature with all your senses: sight, sound, smell and feel. Feel the temperature, the breeze, the warmth of the sun. Ask Nature to teach you about balance. 

Develop a ritual for cleansing and clearing yourself between activities. Taking 15 minutes to rejuvenate when coming home from work can make all the difference in the world. During that time, change your clothes, taking off your workday clothes and putting on comfy clothes that you feel good in. Then lay on your bed with headphones an eye pillow and listen to relaxing music while visualizing liquid light cleansing and nourishing all the cells of your body. When I worked at a stressful job I would do this ritual, come out of my room, and greet my family with an abundance of love and patience. By doing this, I could be the mom I wanted to be. I felt centered and balanced and my children were more supportive because they liked this mom much better than the mom who came home empty, depleted and impatient. 

Treat yourself at least as well as you'd treat a revered guest. Make yourself a candlelight breakfast. Serve yourself breakfast on your best china. Light candles for atmosphere. Take the time to fully enjoy your meal. Make note of the flavors that burst with each bite. Notice texture, color, aroma and appearance. Ask your inner-masculine and inner-feminine how they feel about you treating yourself in this way. 

Treat yourself to a kitten day. Take a day to eat when you are hungry. Nap when you are tired. Play when you want to have fun. Ask for affection when you want it. Be sure to thank the person whose affection you requested and tell them you've had enough when you've had enough. Notice any resistance you may have along the way.

Do something your heart desires every day. Start a creative project for the pure pleasure of it, take a class in pursuit of your passion, or take the time to engage in an activity you enjoy. This gives your inner-feminine the opportunity to express herself. She loves to have fun and be creative.

Start a journal. Journaling is a great way to get in touch with your emotional side. If you are overvaluing your inner-masculine, you will ignore your feelings. As adults the feelings that get triggered in us are pointing us in the direction we need to go to do some healing from our past. The feelings you refuse to own can do much damage: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Journaling is a great way to re-connect with the feeling part of your inner-feminine.

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