ReMothering with Clara Belize Wisner

Modern life tends to make people soft in the places we should be tough and tough in the places we should be soft.

We have endless OTC drugs to make simple illnesses like the flu more bearable. And trust me, after being fully incapacitated for 3 days with the flu, it is not pleasant in anyway shape or form.

I didn’t enjoy it.

I didn’t love it.

I’m still pretty physically miserable, to be honest.

Taking ibuprofen or any other OTC drugs that are simply meant to keep us comfortable, slow down the natural healing process. And, I believe, they create a numb divide between the communication of our bodies and our consciousness.

I did take one capsule the second night just so I could sleep, so I am not militant, but that is the first ibuprofen I have taken since tearing during childbirth, so I take it VERY rarely and only when very necessary.

I was so hesitant to take that one ibuprofen because I knew it would lower my fever and a fever is what you want when you have the flu. We are programmed to be afraid of the ways our bodies heal themselves because sometimes they are quite uncomfortable.

I am a woman who leans in to the communications of the body.

There is value in the pain. There is wisdom in the experience of something hard. There is insight to be had when we are brought to the edges of our sanity with discomfort.

Now, does this mean we should unnecessarily make things hard for ourselves? Does this mean we should be gluttons for punishment? I also know all about this, because I am someone who has had, in the past, a very strong internal punisher. The story you have got to earn it was very much part of my programming.

So I’ve sat with my hesitancy to take OTC drugs or go to a doctor and I’ve asked myself, “Are you punishing yourself here?”

And the answer is truly, for me, no.

I believe ibuprofen disconnects me from myself and my own felt sense. Call it a sort of extreme sobriety, but I feel it when I take it. It’s super subtle but it allows me to override parts of myself that I wouldn’t be able to override if I didn’t take it.

The answer is that I believe these physical health challenges are shamanic initiations of sorts. I believe they leave us better than they found us, maybe not physically initially, but mentally or spiritually. To disconnect from myself while in that experience doesn’t feel aligned for me and in integrity with who I am and what I teach and model.

(As far as going to a doctor, my observation is the closer you get to conventional medicine the sicker you become and the more interventions you get.)

As I was in the deepest dark of my recent flu journey, one of the stories that really got kicked up is how I’m going to lose what I’ve created in business, and in life. Like I have this idea that my family will fall apart, my house will fall apart, my business will fall apart, if I’m not capable of holding it all together. Because the fear is always that I will always feel this way (sick).

These stories are not logical or based in reality, they are the illogical fear stories that just play on a loop when you’re in a vulnerable, painful, uncontrollable, uncomfortable place. It’s not actually about the stories. It’s kind of like the Bogart in Harry Potter, the stories just show you what you are most afraid of. This takes A LOT to be with and not want to run to something to take it away.

There is the physical discomfort and that is painful, but it’s the stories that arise from that discomfort and the idea that it may never go away that really gets you desperate.

I am not saying that everyone should see every headache as a mini shamanic initiation. This is my practice. My path is of listening to the body and trusting the communications of the body, and that needs to come with the fun and pleasurable, as well as the pain.

This is a spot where I do feel like people have gotten a little too soft in a place where it would serve us to be a bit tougher. Not in a “tough it out” kind of way, but in the way that we see physical processes as an opportunity to learn deep truths about ourselves. If we stay deep in the cavernous blackness that opens up to us when we are in pain, sick, or grieving, there is a massive opportunity for growth and expansion.

In this particular flu, for me, there was a big healing around my younger self who was sick a lot and always felt like she needed to get better quick. That being sick wasn’t ok and it needed to end as soon as possible. I got to revisit this wound during this illness and rewrite it for that internal little one. I got to love her and let her know, no, it is ok. You can be sick. You can rest. You can be warm and cozy and do nothing.

One of the messages that came through was: This sickness doesn’t mean “you’re falling behind”, it’s actually propelling you forward in ways you can’t see right now.

What if that was true? Our minds think we need to keep all our appointments and can’t handle the inconvenience that illness brings with it, but what if the illness was actually preparing us for something? What if this pause right now is exactly what we need? What if this is the “fastest” track to our own awakening?

What if illness was always an upgrade?

I see this in childbirth. Childbirth is an initiation. It is not meant to be easy or breezy. I do not think it is meant to be “orgasmic.” I think it’s possible for it to be orgasmic, but most of the time it is f*****g intense. As it should be.

We deny our strength when we try to rescue women from this fact or offer epidurals or planned c sections to anyone and everyone. I am speaking on a collective level. I, obviously, believe each woman has complete bodily sovereignty over her choice of how to birth, but if this narrative was shared more, and we practiced being uncomfortable more via going through things like headaches without ibuprofen, maybe women would be more willing to surrender to the birth process as the intense initiation and rebirth of a mother that it is. Which is intense, painful, and, ultimately, always leaves you a better woman than you were before, when it’s integrated.

Postpartum feels so long and “unproductive” and I understand how isolating it can be for women, but postpartum is also thought of as the “golden opportunity” in Chinese medicine. It is a time in a woman’s life when she can miraculously heal old illnesses and diseases, complete cycles, change relationships, and massively blossom into who she is becoming.

It’s all about how we frame it.

What if we met these naturally occurring initiations in our lives with courage and strength and a resolve to learn what there is to learn from the communications our bodies are giving us?

What if we softened into the ways these initiations want to shape us?

(Ok. I want to be really clear here. There are a lot of things in this that could ruffle feathers and poke at some tender spots. I want to say, I am speaking on a collective level. If you decided to have a planned c section, I do not judge you. If you take nyquil to go to sleep every night, I do not judge you. If you go to the doctor all the time, I do not judge you. We all have our own stories and our own histories that shaped us into who we are and got us to where we are today. Your journey is yours, mine is mine. We all have to live our lives in this day and age. There is no judgment on how you decide to go about healing your own body).

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The end of 2024 for me has brought with it many endings and therefore new beginnings.

A big overarching theme is a deep reckoning with how available I have been.

I wrote more about this here.

On a macro level I can see how I have associated my deservingness of love and my availability.

The more available I am, the more I give of myself; the more love I can get, right?

Or, maybe more accurately; no one would love me for just being me; I must prove my worth by being useful, capable, and available.

I must earn the love I am given. I must make sacrifices and work hard.

If I have something people want; I should give it away, right?

The answer is probably yes, but there is a subtle line between being generous because you can be and giving more than you actually have to give in hopes that someone else will see you and replenish you.

Where does that line live? Who determines where it lives?

I have been operating as if my business gets to decides where that line lives. Or that the collective society gets to determine where that line lives. Or that other people’s expectations get to decide where that line lives. [I loved this piece on this subject].

But what about me? What if I got to decide where the line lives?

So much of my work, personally and professionally, revolves around nourishment.

But being nourished can be quite relative and subjective.

One one level; I am very nourished. I have impeccable boundaries. I have more than enough and more than I need in so many ways. I am very well resourced.

On the relative scale of nourishment; I would say, my current life is probably quite a bit more nourishing than the average person’s life.

This is not about comparison and it is not about better or worse.

The frequency of nourishment and Mother are my teacher. This is my path.

The levels of which I have been undernourished in my lifetime are also quite extreme relative to most.

The pits of despair and pain we crawl out of happen to be the places our medicine gets the strongest.

Wisdom is built in our experiences of alchemy. This is the way of the medicine woman. We know the medicine is in the poison.

And so.. l am being invited forward.

I am being called into even more integrity with nourishment.

I am being called through the spiral 🌀, and into the more integrated, mature, and powerful woman I am becoming (as we all are by our current circumstances whatever they may be).

I am seeing how starved I am of certain necessary nutrients of wellbeing: spaciousness and self preservation being major themes.

I have given so much away before I have really digested and received the nourishment of it.

I have rushed toward a perceived reward that as I slow down and give myself more space, I’m not actually sure I want.

I notice that the more I integrate and heal and nourish myself, the less ambitious I become.

I start to see what so much of my ambition around having a ‘thriving business’ and proving myself as a ‘respected authority’ on certain subjects, was just about wanting to be loved and feel safe in my place in the world.

As I see and feel in my body more and more that I am perfectly safe and will always be loved, by g-d and myself, there is no need to hustle. There is no need to grind. There is no need to override my precious physiology.

I don’t need to spend hours a day on platforms I know to be wildly depleting and in direct opposition to the juicy and cozy frequency I call nourishment.

I don’t need to respond to every DM or give people endless hours of my time just so they will spend money on my offerings.

I don’t need to deliver my message in a way that feels for good to anyone but me.

I don’t need to sacrifice my physiology or the physiology of my children or the entire energy system of my family as a whole, to make sales.

I don’t need to make people like me. I don’t need to make offers that are more accessible.

I don’t have to have a clean kitchen or more new or trendier stuff.

I don’t have anything to prove.

I need no external validation when my internally sourced worthiness is stable and abundant.

And my internally sourced worthiness and abundance comes from me protecting it, cultivating it, and listening to it, like it is The Most Important Thing In the World.

Internally sourced worthiness comes from being unendingly devoted to my inner well spring of energy. And this is ultimately what I teach and guide other women to do.

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with being kind, generous and loving. I am actually naturally such a generous soul. I love nothing more than to nurture, give to, and feed people.

But the way these qualities get twisted up with self-sacrificing, ‘being nice’, and likable more often than not, has made me really question all the places in my life I am giving others the benefit of the doubt or explaining away bad behavior, at the detriment to myself.

My inquiry this year is really around: what if I really honored my own energy system FIRST?

What if nothing came before it? What if I really asked myself; what do you want? What are you hungry for? What do you think? Is this serving your well being and your nourishment?

Because I’ll tell you what: being constantly on social media; feeling like I have to respond to every message I get across all platforms and apps; feeling beholden to make my offerings accessible to all, constantly having my attention pulled between different apps on my phone and my family; and using my life to create content instead of living my life, doesn’t actually serve my nourishment one bit.

Consistent creative expression does serve my nourishment.

Working with women committed to their own long term nourishment, nourishes me.

Spending time being a main feature in and holder of my girls’ daily lives, nourishes me.

Having the space to dive deeply into topics that interest me for no reason other than I’m interested in them, nourishes me.

Having the space and time to create and cook my own food, nourishes me.

What nourishes you?

Because I am so deeply devoted to The Mother (where all nourishment is derived), I am heeding the invitation here because I can’t unsee how the level of unbridled availability expected in this day and age is actually in direct opposition to what I so vehemently believe the world needs.

Which is more reverence; a deeper sense of sacredness and respect for the sanctity of human life and life force, eg more of a connection to what nourishes us.

Quite honestly, I feel very alone in my sober realization here. I feel like most of the world can’t feel what is at stake at the tenor at which I feel it.

I respect peoples’ choices and their sovereign paths. I actually really do trust humanity. I would never assume I know what is best for anyone but myself and my children, because only you can know what is best for you.

However, I can no longer bare the dichotomousness of teaching about nourishment from the compulsion and addiction that is wrapped around social media and the constant consumption and creation of ‘content’ and ‘having a growing and successful business.’

It’s not it and it feels like the elephant in the room.

The wellness industry is indeed an industry and it’s one that 99% of the time isn’t actually promoting anything even close to true wellness or relaying accurately what it actually means to nourish ourselves.

The wellness industry is promoting fear driven quick fixes and sparkly silver bullets to overstimulated, depleted people who simply need to put their phones down, eat enough whole foods to properly fuel their bodies, go outside and drop to their knees at their connection to something larger than themselves.

We all need the long game work of real and true nourishment. Which requires a slowing down. A tapping in. A willingness to do the mundane and unexciting work of being where we are.

As Sarah Blondin said; “Sometimes it’s not about blazing a new path, but rather kneeling down on the one you’re on and asking if there is anything you have been denying.”

I spent the last 2 weeks off of social media and deep in quiet contemplation of where my work is headed. I slowed all the way down to the speed of my embodiment and what I’ve been feeling at this spot actually surprised me.

When I slow all the way down and ask what I really want without the compulsion and addiction to results driven thinking; it is that I want to spend more time with my family and with my girls on a daily basis.

Who is this Clara that pines for more time spent coloring with my girls? Who is this powerful woman who feels her path bringing her right back to what we, as a collective, are told is the lamest location of all, barefoot in the kitchen?

What if the window into my desire was wiped clean of all shoulds and have tos and potential sparkly accolades and what I see so clearly is the truth that I want to be a mother who doesn’t outsource her mothering?

I want to be a mother who understands what a privilege it is to be able to spend this short season of my children’s childhood being a mother before anything else.

To quote Sarah Blondin’s most recent essay again, “Everyday is new, wild, and whispering in your ear, and courage sometimes involves letting go of who you thought was you, and embracing someone else underneath. It is okay for life to be lonely and raw, unfamiliar and newly discovered. Neither is it predictable nor is it even definable. You are free to explore an entirely new, unformed version of yourself and tell no one about it.”

Who am I without work? Who am I without the incessant pull of the inbox? Who am I without this ambitious drive toward making something of myself?

Who am I when I’m less available to you and more available to me?

This is the new version of me I am being called to explore. Lonely and raw, I am sure it will be.

But embracing the woman underneath, the woman I am becoming, is where my nourishment lies.

It’s the long game step by step my soul is hungry for.

My work and offerings are going to change drastically in 2025. I am going to be far less available, which is actually very in service to the potency of my work.

The only way to work with me directly in 2025 will be through, joining FERTILE.

We already have a beautiful group of women fully committed to their long term nourishment and exploration of their creative power ready to begin later this month.

FERTILE is going to be such a gentle and spacious journey with me. It is the truest offering I’ve ever put out in that, it’s so deeply in service to this long term flavor of nourishment.

It is the offering I’ve been too afraid to put out there because it’s felt like such a big thing to ask women to commit to 2 years of work with me.

But I realize that when I commit to myself and what I know to be true, like the fact that you can’t actually work on true nourishment without a bigger and longer commitment, I call the women in who are also ready to take responsibility and play the long game with nourishment. Here we go.

If you feel called you can find the basic details here and send me a message to book a call or message me more about it. We being mid January, so be sure to message me soon as I’m only doing calls next week.

I’m still not clear what I will be doing with the FED newsletter. I’m thinking I’m going to adjust it to a monthly vs weekly offering, but stay tuned.

I am offering some in-person experiences around Bozeman in 2025. A one day VILLAGE retreat in February 2025 (date TBD) and a 3 day family VILLAGE retreat in August (save the date 8/22-8/24) for sure.

I will still post to Instagram and Substack as I’m called but I will only be answering DMs and comments one day a week. The best way to get a hold of me will be old fashioned email: [email protected].

Happy new years to you and yours! Here’s to us all finding the nutrients we are missing and giving ourselves exactly that.

As always I hope this little peek into my process gives you some inspiration or permission to give yourself the new beginning you need.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

As I’ve been watching and experiencing the fall out and division surrounding the results of the United States election I have had this resounding truth about myself settle in: I trust humanity.

In a world where the places we are different are constantly being highlighted, we have to remember to come back to the places where we are actually the same.

In a world where the fear mongering is so constant and the assault on our nervous systems is so pervasive (in the sense that we are living in environments that are so far from the natural environments we evolved in) we have to remember that we are not our highest selves when we are triggered.

In a world where it is profitable for us to feel powerless and like we need fixing, we have to remember that we are whole and holy as we are.

I see this really disappointing and inhumane response of, “Anyone who voted for Trump is a bigot and an idiot.” As if anyone who doesn’t think like a liberal is simply stupid and awful.

How much of an ignorant oversimplification is it to assume because someone came to the conclusion that voting for Trump was in their best interest, they are a “bad” or “stupid” person?

(and this goes for the judgment of people who voted for Kamala being brainwashed or somehow less intelligent.)

Humanity is so much more complicated and nuanced than that.

Humans are multifaceted, multi-layered, beautiful, terrible, awful, manifestations of Universal Intelligence.

All of us have done and said things we regret. All of us have hurt others. All of us have aspects of ourselves that we are not proud of and are working with and on in our own ways. We are all hurt and, therefore, project that hurt out onto the world and those around us.

This is what it means to be human. We are inherently flawed. Each and every single one of us.

Anytime we start to get high and mighty, righteous (not to be confused with rightness) or so egoically convinced that our way is the only way, we are not in our right minds.

We are all getting played in some way. We are all glaringly misinformed in some way. We are all convinced of at least a few things, that, in reality, aren’t at all true.

If more people were able to remember compassion is not condoning, that our own personal healing is the greatest form of activism, and that it is completely possible to have connected conversations with people who don’t agree with us, we would not be in the situation we are in.

However, because we are in this situation, let us not use it to seed more division, but instead seed more unity.

This is a choice. A choice we have to make of our own volition, every moment of every day.

We can choose unity or division by how we speak to our partners.

We can choose unity or division by how we treat a stranger in the coffee line.

We can choose unity or division by how we treat our own bodies.

We can choose unity or division by how we choose to see people who don’t fit our definitions of “good.”

We can choose unity or division by how we talk to our opponents.

We can choose. And with our choices we create.

We forget that we are not each other’s enemies. We are each other saviors.

We are the friendly souls that came to play out roles and parts for eachother to learn our life lessons through.

I understand that what I’m saying can get dangerously close to going over the edge into “spiritual bypassing” territory.

You may say, “Ok, well if we’re all just friendly souls walking each other home, what are we going to do about our DEMOCRACY?!” right?

I hear you. But if you actually attempt to listen to what each side is saying, both are actually afraid of losing our democracy. Both are positioning themselves as the prevailing party over the evils of some dystopian future.

The left thinks Trump is such a lunatic and misogynist that he doesn’t and won’t respect the traditions and precedents set up in our country. They believe women will lose all their rights and we will fall into international chaos because of the policies he is going to back and put into place.

The right thinks Kamala and her backers are threatening fundamental constitutional rights like free speech and the right to bear arms. They believe she is a pawn of the shadowy deep state agenda and a threat to the United States. They believed choosing her was a vote for the globalist World Economic Forum’s 2030 agenda and the statement “you will own nothing and you will like it.”

If you zoom out, both sides are actually concerned about the same thing: the collapse of our freedoms and values.

We can double down on our divisions and differences OR we could see that we actually both really value our country, our traditions, and what they represent to us.

If we can stop making snap judgments and sweeping generalizations and letting our systems to be dragged into fear mongering, we can come back to ourselves and remember that we are all human and we all, for the most part, want the same things.

We all want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

We can agree that we all feel the severe need for something to change. It is so clear our country is not ok and that our systems are broken.

That’s why the tensions are so high, because, collectively there is a very clear feeling that something cannot go on as is.

I feel this too. I want change. I want big change.

And, I know the only change that is going to be worthwhile is going to achieved through further unity, not more division.

Separation is actually the enemy here, my loves.

When we band together, we move mountains and create worlds. This is the space of miracles.

There is a potential here that people who are still focused on the “win” or the “loss” are not seeing and that is the potential for True change and True shifts.

The amount of potential energy here in this moment is massive.

Because of my own personal practice of body based energetic alchemy, I have an embodied understanding of how when we can be with a “negative” emotion or sensation, no matter how powerful or overwhleming it may feel or seem, if we can actually be with it and welcome it and invite it in deeper instead of push it away, it transforms.

True energetic masters understand that everything is energy.

There is no negative and there is no positive. It all just is. The greatest pain can be transformed into the most orgasmic pleasure when we are fully present with it. (orgasmic childbirth anyone!?)

Humans are alchemical beings.

We are the conscious connection between the physical and the energetic. We have a massive capacity to transmute energy on the very basic level of how we turn food, light and electrons from the Earth into energy in our bodies and on the more spiritual level of how we are spiritual beings having a manifested physical experience.

In many spirtual traditions we see this theme of humans being the bridge between heaven and earth.

Human beings are quantum, a particle and a wave, energy, light and matter all at once.

When I hold my attention on humanity’s power, I see what is possible for us.

When I hold my attention on individual human’s power, I see them as their highest version.

I choose to see each human as a sacred amalgamation and expression of God, not because I am some love and light chump, but because it is the best use of my creative power and energy to do so.

I choose to see Trump and Kamala as two souls who are deeply in service to our alchemical potetional for change on this Earth. Souls willing to play roles for us cultivate our own power within oursleves. (And souls who wanted to have a wild ride this time around.)

When I make the choice of unity, in all the miniscule ways of my day to day life, I am choosing to see humaity in its power.

That power can be used to create all sorts of things, terrible and beautiful, and has been. But I am ready for it be a conscious choice.

I trust humanity. I trust peoples’ choices.

Because the moment we start question our neighbor’s humanity, is the moment we lose sight of what it is we are here doing. It is the moment we start to let separation win. And this is what creates the future world that I wouldn’t want my children to grow up to inherit.

I trust in humanity because I am a mother.

I trust in humanity because I am a creator.

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This piece has been percolating for a long while.

This is an invitation into a new or deeper experience of what I am calling; Divine Union, or the aligned relationship between the Feminine and Masculine energies within us and outside of us.

As I repeat again and again, I am in service to The Mother, the mature feminine frequency that lives within our physiology. I have also called this energy ‘the collective nurturer’, because the mother is the source of all nourishment.

Something that has become clear more recently is that because I am in service to The Mother, I am also in service to the Family, or, in other words, the legacy of humanity.

When we think about the family we are not only talking about The Mother, but also The Father and the legacy that is begotten from the two coming together, the child/ren and the family as it’s own creational force.

When you start to study things like masculine and feminine energy, you can go down all sorts of rabbit holes. There are infinite teachings about these two energies, because they are ultimately what our world (and maybe everything in existence?) is made up of. They are are the balanced (ideally) and opposing forces. The yin and yang.

The two aspects I’m going to use as a way to demonstrate my translation of the integral relationship of Masculine and Feminine forces are modern relationship polarity teachings and feminism.

I have written a lot about these two aspects before so you can check the archives of the Matriarch substack and find all sorts of articles on the Feminine, Masculine and co-creation. The two articles that feel the most applicable to this piece are The Mature Feminine the World Needs and Mature Feminine Responsibility Just Is.

Polarity

On the most basic level, the word polarity means the separation, alignment, or orientation of something in two opposing poles. That is a very mental way of saying; duality. Duality exists. In the reality that we live in on earth, duality exists. There are all sorts of spiritual teachings suggesting there is no duality and that we are all one.

This is a big YES AND, we also live in a world of opposites.

We see this in the charged particles of atoms and we see this in night and day; the micro and the macro.

Relationship polarity teachings suggest that a “polarized” relationship is preferable to an unpolarized relationship because it creates an enlivening, sexual tension within the relationship.

Polarity teachers and coaches suggest that the more the poles, Feminine and Masculine, are embodied and enacted (very important word choice here I’ll come back to later) the more aliveness and spark there will be in a relationship.

This basic concept, I don’t really disagree with. It seems to be as factual as the basic definition of polarity. We select partners that generally create some sort of tension in us and have some unique magnetism that pulls us in. It could be their appearance but I would argue it’s really more their energy, something about what embody pulls us towards them.

However, polarity teachings lose me when they suggest that we should role play the epitome of Feminine and Masculine characters so that we can somehow create polarization in our relationship.

My very clear embodied knowing is that when I pretend to be something that I am not; it is never good for me or, ultimately, my relationships.

If you have to pretend to be something you are not to be friends with someone, are they really your friend?

If you have to pretend to be the perfection of feminine softness and receptivity to turn your husband on, are you really connected?

I do believe that we can have fun and alchemize a lot of frustration and disagreement through role playing with our partners. Sexual role playing can obviously be very hot. There is something super sexy about inhabiting that demure feminine and being ravaged by your masculine man in his beast. I’m not in denial or delusion about any of this.

However, if these types of interactions with your chosen partner aren’t done with a lot of intention and a set container, then it’s just fantasy and boundaries get foggy.

It starts to get dangerous when we’re not sure where the role playing stops and the reality begins. And this is what I have heard from women who have gone deep into polarity teachings as a lifestyle; that they started to lose themselves and disown parts of themselves that weren’t part of the polarized Feminine menu. [This is a good post by Madelyn Moon on her experience.

Teachers espousing that we should live our entire lives within the confines of some polarized definition of feminine and masculine as women and men are not in any way shape or form leaving room for the subtle and intricate dance of these two energies within ourselves and the way we express each aspect uniquely.

I’ve noticed that zero of these polarity teachers have children, because you simply cannot maintain these rigid poles and fantasy in a relationship when you have to keep baby alive too.

Polarity is true. It just is. There is a lot to learn about yourself as you play with these aspects in yourself. Your partner and you have it, or else you wouldn’t have been drawn together. It can be fun to embody in an intentional way, but when it comes to Divine Union, creation, family, and legacy, polarity just is not a huge part of it.

Feminism

In a world where feminism is basically just the masculinization of women (wrote more about this here) polarity teachings can feel like a relief to women who have been trying so hard to basically do everything men do.

Paradoxically, feminism also has this kind of “girl power,” vibe that feels deeply off and immature.

In the world of feminism women can do it all! They can have a career. They can have drink, smoke, and f**k just like the men do. And then when they turn 30, they feel their biological clock ticking, they can also have a baby, while they still do all those other things.

And f**k their lazy, silly, stupid man-child husbands who are good for nothing but drinking beer and, at best, playing with the kids on the weekends.

Of course I believe women should have the freedom to work and own businesses and property (and I’m very grateful to those women that fought for me to have those freedoms), but saying women can do everything men can do is not actually revering the Feminine.

The man hating I see in the feminist spaces stems from this over masculinized woman. She’s bitter. When women aren’t allowed to be fully expressed versions of themselves, then men aren’t either, and both sides of the whole, suffer.

Women’s bodies are made differently. We are on a 28 cycle vs the simple 24 hour cycle of men, so working the same way everyday doesn’t really work for our physiology, just as an example.

Our bodies (until menopause) are always prioritizing the ability to build a baby on a biological level. We need more sleep than men. We need food on a more consistent basis than men. Why do you think things like thyroid issues and autoimmune disorders so disproportionally affect women?

Revering the Feminine would be valuing the Feminine, not just more valuation of the masculine through women, which is making women sicker, victimized and more burned out than they ever have been.

This is why so many women are attracted to this polarity idea of “just let me be in my feminine and the man can tell me where to go for dinner so I don’t have to!” It feels like a relief to a body that is tired of trying to be something it is not. And it’s a radical thing to attempt to be completely devoted to a man when you’ve seethed about his ineptitude. It’s a pendulum swing over to the other side.

In both of these examples there is a compartmentalization happening. In the polarity examples there is an idea that women should only be a certain kind extreme feminine; soft, demure, gentle, open, devotional. In the feminism example, it’s women being over masculinized and denouncing their softness, openness, and devotional nature.

The Mature Feminine Loves the Masculine

As I have found with most truth, I find it in the gray, in the subtitles and in the twists and turns. I find it in the paradox.

Feminism is not true and these polarity relationship teachings are not true.

The Truth is the mature Feminine loves the Masculine. She loves Him because the desecration of Him would be the desecration of Her, because they are two parts of the same whole. Which I will call the Third Thing.

The integral relationship between the exalted, mature Feminine and the exalted, mature Masculine is that they understand they are creating something together. The two parts come together and create something that is more than them individually: the Creation, the Child/ren, the Family.

Polarity teachings say the masculine must always lead and feminism eg ‘the future is female’ concept says the feminine leads.

The Truth is, the Third Thing must lead. God must lead. Creation must lead. Union must lead.

The Feminine has more access to raw creational life force. She feeds life force to whatever she backs. Therefore, she must also have discernment. She must also be able to say, “No.”

I am reminded here of the hormones estrogen and progesterone. The old idea was that estrogen was the feminine hormone. However, estrogen is the hormone of growth and proliferation. We need it. It is important. However, when we have too much of it or it is unchecked, it will tell cells to grow and grow and grow.

Endometriosis is connected to too much estrogen in the system and results in the overgrowth of the uterine lining. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) characterized by cysts on the ovaries is also due to too much estrogen in the system. Same with fibroids. Too much estrogen equals too much unchecked and undirected growth.

Progesterone is actually the solution to this because it tells the cells where to grow, how to differentiate, and when to stop. This is discernment. Progesterone is actually far more important for feminine fertility in a lot of ways than estrogen in our modern world. Just as discernment is actually the quality our world needs so badly.

In a world where it is unclear what is real, where we have AI writing poetry and books, and there are discussions of growing human embryos in artificial wombs, we need the power of discernment more than ever.

One of the most valuable qualities a person could have is to be able to determine what is True and what is not True; eg discernment.

I’ve been working in the field of women’s fertility for over a decade and I have seen, on a hormonal level, progesterone being the biggest player in women’s fertility. I have also seen again and again, that as women improve their progesterone to estrogen balance, their discernment increases.

Pregnancy is the state of our bodies where we have the highest levels of progesterone. You have either felt yourself or seen for yourself how much more a woman Knows when she is pregnant. She knows what she likes to eat. She knows who she wants to be around. She knows when she’s tired.

I believe, progesterone is actually the Feminine hormone. The more progesterone you have, the less estrogen. They are in a direct inverse relationship with each other. It’s actually a big piece of the puzzle when it comes to how much estrogen dominance symptoms (ovarian and breast cancers, PCOS, endo, hot flashes, difficult menopause, etc) we see in the collective. Generally, if you increase progesterone naturally you will see women having less symptoms.

The idea that estrogen is the feminine hormone is about as off as the idea that the feminine should only be soft spoken, demure, and open. The Feminine is both sides; soft, open and powerful and chaotic. She is both devotional and quick to slay that which is not true. She is discerning. She knows how to say No.

These are aspects of the Feminine that need to be exalted in the collective. In fact, I would argue, just as most women need more progesterone these days because of our wildly estrogenic culture, most women need to invite in more Feminine discernment. Not man-hating, girl power rhetoric, but discernment, eg “This is enough.” “It’s time to rest now.” “It’s time to stop this.” “I am a No here and a Yes there.” Not closed or tight, but open and fully extended.

The Mature Feminine is not just devotional and open to anyone. She understands that her devotion is power itself. This is not a “soft feminine” quality. This is a Kali, sword, cut your head off, Feminine quality, and with great power comes great responsibility. She is responsible for her power and opening.

The Mature Feminine understands that her opening is sacred and loves the Masculine deeply. She wishes to create with Him. She calls him forward into His best and highest self through her openness, devotion, AND her clarity, her discernment and ability to say No. She doesn’t hold back any part of herself and the Mature Masculine isn’t afraid of any part of Her.

The Mature Masculine serves her opening because He knows that She feeds him. They become a regenerative cycle this way. They come into alignment and integrity with the The Third thing this way, and then Creation in alignment with Life moves through them.

The Mature Feminine loves the Masculine enough to tell him the Truth. Not “her truth”, no, this is most likely egoic, but The Truth. She is willing to say what she feels, what she sees, and what she Knows.

This requires that she cultivate a trust of her knowing within herself, first. This requires that she trust the Mature Feminine within herself, first. This requires that she have a deep faith in herself and Life, because her man may not be able to hold the truth yet, but she must say it anyway, fully open and fully extended.

This is where the Mature Masculine must be willing to have his ego shattered. He must be willing to drop down below his mind and into his heart and body. He must be willing to feel instead of think, similar to Her. He must be willing to serve, similar to Her.

This is where they meet, in service, and create the Third Thing. Bowing down to each other and God.

This is not an easy path for a human man and a human woman to walk. We all have wounding. We all have hurt parts and places where we can’t see ourselves clearly. We all have patterns and flaws. We all have needy and selfish parts. We all need to fall apart sometimes. We will hurt the ones we love most and they will hurt us.

We are all scared of obliteration.

But when I see these deeper Truths and I embody my powers of discernment, No AND openness and devotion, while at the same time seeing the places I am an imperfect human, I can see my partner with a wider lens too. I can see all the ways He serves my opening, holds me, and is completely and totally different than me. And I can see his humanity and all the ways he isn’t perfect, and I can love him nonetheless, just as he loves me.

The Mature Feminine and Mature Masculine love each other enough to bow down to each other’s humanity, give each other grace, AND consistently be willing to call forth the highest version of the other.

David Whyte defines maturity as the ability to hold to two opposing poles at once. That is exactly why I chose the word mature. Because when these two energies mature, they can start to invite a little of the other within themselves. They can start to hold both; which is ultimately, Divine Union. (think the yin yang with a little dot of the other in each side).

Divine Union is the is-ness that surround us. As we let go of the compartmentalizations of ourselves and the ideas that we have to be a certain way, and allow ourselves to be fully seen, felt and loved, as we are, creation itself aligns with us.

We can see the wholeness within ourselves and outside of ourselves reflected in our relationships, in the world, and in the cosmos.

This is the ultimate healing. The integration of two halves into a whole.

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There is a punishing harshness I want to unpack in the health and wellness world. 

I see so many female influencers in this space peddling punishment as virtue and unnecessary harshness as ‘facts.’ I see ‘get-your-s**t-together-you-lazy-f**k’ energy being sold as radical responsibility. 

Just to be abundantly clear: This is not what we need to heal. 

We do not need more punishment, more harshness, more authoritative, hierarchal, disciplinary energy to make ourselves healthy. 

If you are overweight, ill, unmotivated, exhausted, acting in ways you are not proud of; more punishment of yourself will never equal real transformation. 

It may create a lot of change. You may lose weight through punishment of your body. You may run a marathon by telling yourself harsh words to push through the pain. You may make millions or billions of dollars through a deep hatred of yourself and a desire to make yourself feel worthy. 

Punishment can be an entirely effective mechanism for certain action; until it’s not. 

Or until it’s just you and your mind on your deathbed and you hate yourself. 

Radical responsibility is not dominating your tender, wild, broken, hurting, tired parts into submission. Radical responsibility is being willing to look at those parts. It’s being willing to see them and take stock of where you truly are with neutrality and sobriety. 

In my personal life and in my work, I live by the statement: “You cannot transcend what you do not first accept.”

Acceptance is massively misunderstood. For some reason people think acceptance equals saying the thing in question is good and right. That’s not it. 

Acceptance is saying what is, IS. That’s it. It’s not a value judgment. It’s neutral.

We are terrible at this as a collective. Before we can make any attempt to truly “solve” a problem, we have to first look at the problem soberly. 

We have to see where we actually are and accept it. Only then, can we really move forward in a way that takes the reality into account. This is a big reason why we haven’t actually made any big changes in regards to climate disaster. We can’t actually get in alignment (another way of saying “accept”) with where we are and feel it.

When we get in alignment with where we are and accept what is true about ourselves and our patterns, we can access the despair, the grief, the loss that comes with it. 

This is why everyone wants to avoid this step because if we opened and softened to what is truly here, we might actually have to feel pain. 

Even the people pedaling punishment, harshness, and judgment of self are using those tactics to avoid the grief and the despair that comes with actually acknowledging where we are. It’s like they believe if they force the pain; then they won’t have to actually feel the pain and fall apart. If they force the pain; they can get ahead of it and still be in control. 

We are all avoiding the coming undone; which is inherently feminine. All of this harshness and punishment is rooted in hatred of the feminine; eg misogyny. It’s rooted in not understanding the death and life cycles and how to ride them while staying awake and aware. It’s all rooted in actually wanting to avoid transformation and becoming.

We all say we want transformation, but most people aren’t actually willing to die well. 

You may read all this and think I must be for coddling people. For allowing them all their emotional turmoil and victimization. That I somehow think we all just need to fall apart and lay on the ground and give up. That if I’m not for harshness and punishment; then I must be for permissiveness. 

This is where the nuance that doesn’t get translated enough comes in. This is where we get lost if we don’t have the maturity and flexibility in our systems to hold paradox.

Radical responsibility is not harshness and it’s not punishment. It is a noticing. It is a being with facts and realities that may be hard to sit with. We are so quick to jump into punishment once we see these facts, and that is the place where we need to cultivate softness if we want to experience true transformation. 

Let’s say you decide you want to work out three times a week. And for a few weeks you do. Then one week gets busy and you miss your workouts and before you know it a month has passed and you haven’t worked out once. 

What do you do when you notice this? Do you berate yourself? Do you feel ashamed? Do you tell yourself how bad and broken you are? Do you try to avoid thinking about it? Do you kind of go blank? Do you tell yourself you’re a piece of s**t and go to the gym and work out harder than you really had the energy for? 

No matter the outcome of any of these options they are all based in harshness and punishment. 

What I’ve found is most people don’t know how to go about change without punishment. 

Isn’t this the way we were raised? We colored on the walls and then we got punished by having to be in time out so that we didn’t do it again, right? 

We screamed too loud and then our mothers turned away and ignored us (withdrawing love is most certainly punishment for a child) hoping it would make us be quiet. 

We parent ourselves the same way we were parented. Our parents’ voices becoming our internal dialogue. 

How is this working for us? 

There are wildly alarming, unprecedented negative statistics pertaining to the average person’s physical, mental and emotional well-being. 

As a collective, we are not ok. This is a fact we all need to look at, soberly. 

We can look at this and say most people are fat, stupid, ignorant, and lazy, and we all just need to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and get it together. 

We could disguise this attitude by saying people don’t “respect” or “love” themselves enough to make good choices, but that’s still using shame and self flagellation (I’m such a loser! Why can’t I just love myself more!) to get to our goal. 

You can’t hate yourself into loving yourself and if you don’t love yourself now, as you are; you’re not going to love yourself as a rich woman or a skinny woman. That’s not how self love works.

What we are seeing in the collective today is actually a result of punishing culture, generations deep and well worn. 

Eventually, punishing wears us down and ultimately disconnects us from Life. 

You can see it in the way we believe how separate we all are. “I’m not one of those stupid people because I wear linen clothing and eat organic food and workout!” 

Life, creator, God, Truth, whatever you want to call it, connects us. It reminds us that we are all part of something much bigger. It tells us: “you are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a single drop.” 

However, we don’t get to collapse in that either. We don’t get to just lay down and do nothing. 

Life will humble you. Life will show you where you think you are in control and blast it apart. Life will continually with a whisper at first, a brick next, and a Mack truck last, guide you, lead you, and point you in the direction you’re meant to move. 

So instead of operating as if everyone is an idiot that just needs to get their s**t together; you could decide to actually be with what is true here.

The truth is; humans are good. They are flawed. They are hurting. They are traumatized. They are being poisoned by processed food and chemicals. And we are always more alike than we are different. Underneath all the noise; we want the same things: health and happiness for ourselves and our loved ones. 

This is where the massive power of softness comes in. 

When we treat ourselves with softness; we don’t give up responsibility. We simply choose to no longer punish ourselves or others.

When we treat ourselves with softness; we will treat others with softness and the world becomes a softer place. A place where people can stop being so deeply afraid of their feelings. A place where people aren’t afraid to look at the facts; because they know; no matter what they will not turn on themselves. 

You don’t know your power until you know what it’s like to be a woman who refuses to turn on herself. 

This is the kind of power that creates worlds. This is the power of God’s Love. 

When we no longer turn on ourselves; we are not afraid to speak out. We are not afraid to stand firmly in the world we would like our children to grow up in and wave people toward us. 

When we no longer turn on ourselves; we can lead from a fully integrated place.

Softness is not weakness. 

Softness is power.

When you embody and hold this kind of softness, you aren’t afraid of the facts or the reality because you can accept anything because you aren’t going dread living in your own mind if you f**k up. 

When you embody and hold this kind of softness, you can let Life lead you because you trust yourself to not beat yourself up no matter what happens. 

When you embody and hold this kind of softness; paradoxically, you are precise in a way overarching harshness could never be; because you can feel all the little caveats and deep pockets. 

When you embody and hold this kind of softness; you can take full and total responsibility because there is no punishment on the other side of it. 

This is radical. This is not the paradigm any of us were raised in; but it is the paradigm we are shifting in to. 

Some people (my past self included) think of softness as disgusting. They find it repulsive. They find themselves avoiding it at all costs. 

Disgust is not neutral. It’s a very charged feeling. It’s visceral. When we have a deep, real need for something and we are again and again denied that need, one way we make the pain of that missing need feel a little less brutal is to be disgusted by the need itself. 

This has been shown again and again in attachment research. Babies and children require this kind of softness I am talking about; this unconditional love. 

If you were not given this softness enough as a baby and child; you may feel disgusted by it because disgust is a more powerful position than need. 

We reject what we need most to make that need less painful. 

I find the harshest people are most disgusted by softness, and this points to their deep and primal need for it. 

We don’t need another kick in the ass. We don’t need another reason to punish ourselves. We don’t need to avoid the truth because of the fear of what acknowledging the truth might mean for our internal dialogue. 

We need acceptance. We need precision. We need to bring the light of unconditional love down into our bodies.

We need to own the power of our softness. 

“EvenAfterAll this timeThe Sun never says to the Earth,"You owe me."LookWhat happensWith a love like that,It lights the whole sky.”

- Hafiz 

Come see my interview with Siri Birk during the Soft Revolution free summit next Friday October 11th at 10am PST where we’ll be discussing this new paradigm of softness. 

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Last night, I saw a male spiritual teacher’s post that stated: “fat people are untrustworthy.”

He went on to claim that because excess weight is a result of “unmetabolized trauma” and “emotional numbing” fat people are avoiding “a necessary transformational crucible” (that would result in weight loss; I am assuming). 

On one hand; I partially agree. Not that fat people are untrustworthy, but what he’s saying about unmetabolized trauma, emotional numbing, and the need for a transformational crucible leading to weight gain. 

These things are absolutely a part of weight gain and excess weight, as it’s part of, I believe, all health dis-ease and disease. Any symptoms we experience are our bodies trying to communicate something to us, on multiple dimensions. Weight gain isn’t some sort of special shadowy case of this. 

I actually taught a class called the Wisdom of Weight about this specific thing. You can purchase the recording here if you’d like. 

The most important thing to me regarding trustworthiness is; anyone who has claimed to have metabolized all their trauma, to never take part in emotional numbing, and to not need a transformational crucible or five in their lifetime; is definitely NOT trustworthy.

We are all humans. 

Flawed, scarred, and hurting. 

It is what makes us human. 

Even humans considered enlightened; Tich Nhat Hanh or Ekhart Tolle. for example, talk about their painful human experience and struggle. 

The wound is where the light enters you, after all. 

Now, as an obviously overweight person who teaches and guides other people; in the field of nutrition, no less *gasp* (see my article, The Fat Nutritionist); being lumped into the category of untrustworthy doesn’t trigger me exactly, but it does make me want to set some truths about weight gain/loss and who we should or shouldn’t trust, straight. 

First off, I don’t take commentary on my body from anyone and I don’t advise anyone else to either. You get to be the arbiter of your own experience in your own body. The only advice about my health I take is from experts I’ve vetted and who I can feel trust my body’s process and it’s deep wisdom as much as I do, or have a very particular expertise that I am looking for in an acute, specific way. 

I don’t take advice about my body from men, ever, that’s one of my very clear boundaries. I would never go to a male doctor, a male OB (or let’s be honest for me, any OB), a male nutritionist, a male gynecologist (or any gynecologist). I will, in special instances, work with male body workers, therapists, or spiritual teachers, but for the most part anyone on my body care team is a woman. That’s just what makes my system feel smooth and feels true to me. 

Men and women have very different physiology, life experiences, and spiritual relationship to creation. Therefore, I generally don’t think men have a clear embodied understanding of what a woman’s body might need from a physiological perspective. 

My body and my own intuition are the ultimate litmus test that everything runs through, be it health decisions or how to handle symptoms. A huge piece of my work with clients is giving them information from my professional training and my embodied experience, and then pointing them to feel into their own Knowing about what to do with that information.

I am always pointing my clients back to themselves as the leader of their own health journey. 

The other piece of this is that weight gain/loss is so much more than discipline and calories in/out. I’m honestly so tired of even refuting these ideas. The confusing thing about this post I’m talking about is that this guy is basically saying: “don’t trust fat people because they have so much shadow, they can’t even discipline themselves into looking better.” 

Wow. Just wow. There are so many things wrong with this I could write a book on it. (maybe I will). 

The obvious first issue is the value placement on physical appearances. The idea that if you aren’t some vague and subjective ideal body size then you must be hiding something sinister and therefore unworthy of trust is so blatantly misogynistic and comes from a worldview that is obsessed with optics being what matters most. This is not the world I want to live in. It is not the world I am creating with my energy and my intention. 

On the other hand, of course, looks do matter. They can tell us a lot about a person’s habits, lifestyle, values, and health. I love to do visual diagnosis in my practice, looking at things like the whites of the eyes, the tongue, health of the hair, skin and nails. 

However, if we stop there, if we choose something as subjective as “being overweight” as a decider for whether a person is trustworthy there is no wisdom there, there is just surface-level preferences. One person could look overweight but be quite vital, radiant, and embodied and the other could be really toned, thin, and conventionally the “right size” but could have really low energy, a dullness behind their eyes, and be disassociated. Is their weight really what you want to judge your deeming of trustworthiness on? 

The other piece is that weight gain is not about eating too much or exercising too little. It is an energy management issue. Most of the women who are overweight I see in my practice are eating far too little nutrient dense food. A big reason they aren’t eating enough is because of sentiments like this post shared. Because there is this collective program that says “fat people are lazy pieces of s**t who stuff their faces all day,” so, as a collective, we have stopped eating, to the detriment of our own vitality, lest we become one of those fat lazy people. 

We are not fat because we eat too much and lack discipline, we are fat because most of the food easily available to us is toxic and we are burnt out. Our energy management systems cannot regulate our energy levels because of toxins in our food and environment, shortage of connection to nature, lack of nutrient dense food, and our sedentary lifestyles (this doesn’t mean we need more intense exercise).

I am not blaming the government or big food or big pharma, we are responsible for ourselves always, but we do have to actually understand where these issues originated if we have any hope of reversing them. 

As a woman, to lose weight in a sustainable way that works with your wise and beautiful body, you need to be eating enough nutrient dense food on a consistent basis, moving your body in a way that feels good on a consistent basis, and spending lots of time in nature. I truly believe given enough time (this may be years) ninety percent of weight issues would regulate.

You do not need to go on a diet or deprive yourself or force yourself into some sort of box that doesn’t fit. This is just the same old same old. It may work in the short term but it will never works in the long term. The only way out is through. The only true way to work with the body is the long game. 

Which brings me to the next thing; weight gain can may be the needed crucible, in itself. For me, having lived in a body that was conventionally attractive and the “right” size for most of my adult life which required a lot of force, manipulation, and discipline in the forms of dieting (basically starving myself) and intense exercise, to let my body gain weight, take up space, and fill out was actually the transformational crucible I needed and am still undergoing.

As I released my punishing tendencies, allowed myself to see the grip with which I was living my life, the way I wanted to temper the energy of Life itself from flowing through me through controlling my food intake and movement and let go; I have gained weight. A lot of weight. I know it’s my body telling me something.

I know I will not be this weight forever. I know I take impeccable care of my body. I feed her with nutrient dense food, consistently. I move throughout the day and build muscle in a way that allows for my body to feel juicy and strong. I prioritize rest and working with my hormonal cycles. I focus on my felt sense of radiance and vitality.

And, other than my weight, I can say, after years of working towards this, I am incredibly healthy. My skin is plump and radiant. My hair is long and strong. My cycles are painless and consistent. I sleep deeply and well. I have good energy levels throughout the day.

And all this was achieved gently and without any force over the last three years.  I am still trusting this process. I am still committed to the long game. I am listening deeply to myself and willing to hold myself with such gentle care and trust of the ancient wisdom of healing that lives in every single one of my cells.

Since the majority of my weight gain about 3 years ago, I have lost 20 lbs. This seems to be the rate at which my body can lose weight in a sustainable, non forceful way. Everyone wants to lose 20 lbs a month, but this is stressful on the body. It takes energy to burn fat and process what is stored in that fat (toxins, estrogen, etc). And if you don’t have that energy or you get it from an unsustainable source, it will almost a hundred percent of the time, come back.

In the process I have learned what it’s like to live in a body that isn’t the ideal. I have softened and learned about my own judgments of myself and where I placed my value of self in my appearance. I have learned to love myself deeper than I ever could have if I had not gained this weight. 

Through the process of weight gain, I have learned to trust myself most of all. And it continues to be an invitation into more trust, more gentleness, and a radical choice of letting my body go through her process while just holding the position of: you deserve to eat, you deserve to rest, you deserve to open, you deserve to be trusted. 

I am not suggesting that gaining weight is something every woman should do. It is just my ongoing journey of trusting myself.

If there is anyone we can trust across the board, it is people who trust themselves, not their minds, but their inner Knowing. As my teacher Perri Chase just said in her writing on this same subject, “trust is an inside job.”

There are no clear delineations based on appearance that could direct us to who to trust and who not to trust; there is only that quiet whisper than lives within our bones and tissues, that Gnows. 

When we trust our inner gnowing, we will always know what to say, who to connect with, and where to go. And we get to know that through brining our Soul deeper into our physical form, which could come through physical illness, weight gain/loss, and any other experience that asks us to trust in the face of our mind’s doubt. 

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It’s really interesting that as I prepare to hold a retreat experience called VILLAGE, I am being called deep into my wound of aloneness.

From the outside, I’m not sure I look like someone who has a core wound of aloneness. 

I have community, family, friends and, for the most part, function quite well socially. 

However, for some of us who have the wound of aloneness being socially adept has been a developed coping mechanism.

I believe some of the most charming, magnetic, and likeable people probably have a significant “I am alone” wound.

Developing the skills of charm, magnetism, and having people feel comfortable in your presence is a beautiful survival skill. You could think of it as “fawning.” 

Personally, I am not a fawner exactly, but I do know that because of my core wound of “I am alone” developed social skills so that people couldn’t see just how alone I felt and experienced life to be. 

The “I am alone” wound is one of, “No one has got me, so I’ve got to get myself.” “No one has my back.” “No one can really be trusted.”

When you have this programming, you compensate a need for connection by not needing people. You may become very self sufficient and very capable. It’s not a “bad” thing; although it is a disconnecting thing. 

Our core wounds tend to be pre-verbal. They were inflicted before we could speak or had language, so there really isn’t a story when we experience the wound arising in the current day. 

Typically, a pre verbal core wound would feel like unexplainable terror around something that doesn’t seem like it should be that terrifying. 

It could be that you were ripped away from your mother’s body at birth. It could be that you were left alone for what was deemed too long by your primal body as an infant.

It could be a lot of things, subtle to completely unthinkable and awful, and it doesn’t really matter exactly what it was. It just matters that the wound probably started there, at the primal layer of your animal body.

Just because we can’t cognitively remember the experience doesn’t mean it didn’t create a program that continues to run in us far into adulthood. 

As you grow, you have experiences that highlight this wound. Until you are willing to feel the pain that lives in that original wound in a way that integrates it into your being, it will continue to resurface in all different locations and situations.

Maybe your caregivers were aloof and self obsessed and you were alone a lot. Maybe you were treated like an adult far before you were, or expected to do adult tasks. Maybe you experienced bullying or rejection in adolescence. Maybe you experienced heart break or professional rejection or isolation. Maybe you’ve had far more serious and terrible things happen to you. Again, it could be a lot things that highlight and reopen this wound of aloneness for you again and again. 

It isn’t really the details or the story that matters, because the only way you overcome a wound like this is to feel the pain of it from an integrated conscious place. Eg, you allow yourself to feel what you were incapable of feeling when the wound happened and process the pain.

I feel this wound of aloneness right in the center of my sternum. It’s a tender, shaky, wobbly spot that is activated anytime I have a perception of: ‘I am alone. I can’t trust people. I’m on my own in this life. I have to figure life out all by myself.’

If I scan back through my life; there are many experiences that brought up this sensation/wound, this feeling of deep isolation, being misunderstood or unseen, feeling rejected for the way I exist.

And the skills I developed to cope with this pain (notice: I’m not saying feel this pain. I’m saying cope with this pain. Those are very different things) are:

1) To put a wall up around my heart and internal world. A protective barrier. 

2) Understand social games. It’s not in my make up to be a people pleaser in the traditional sense, but I did learn how to “play the social game,” in a way that made people comfortable at the expense of my true expression. The goal of this was to  make me “popular”, cool and superior (a safer position). 

The problem with both of these skills is that they completely cut me off from the nutrients of true human connection.

We all need to be witnessed and seen. We all need to feel heard and cared for. We all need to feel like we can let all of ourselves out and we will still be loved. We all need to feel connected to other humans without feeling like we have to change who we are. 

As I said in another article, we need each other. 

When we put protective barriers that have zero permeability all around us we get into a place where we don’t actually have access to the nutrients of true connection. 

A barrier may be protective on one level, and was quite possibly a necessary survival strategy at one point in our lives, but it’s also extremely isolating and can end up feeling like we’ve put ourselves into a prison of aloneness. 

Having social skills isn’t a bad thing, but when we lose the ability to actually share openly about the truth of our lives or how we feel from an authentic place; it’s all just being fake and superficial and we feel that. It’s like junk food connection. It might feel good to gossip or collude with our friends, but it isn’t actually what we are starving for.

Fake, superficial, gossipy, victmized, complain-y conversations with people we are close to, will always leave us hungry for the real thing in the long run.

We may even be so convinced we could never be our true selves around others or share our most vulnerable stories; that we don’t even try to anymore and keep it all inside. Where it pressurizes and festers; making it seem even more inane and toxic in our minds. 

A snowballing of all the reasons you’re too different, too stupid, too bad or too crazy to be considered a good person worthy of sharing their feelings or desires. 

I have been working on revealing myself more to those I love and love me for many years now. I have long ago given up the compulsion toward overly superfulous social niceties or the urge to gossip and opted for honest relating. This is not always comfortable, easy or fun. But it is wildly more nourishing. 

I don’t lie. I don’t have secrets or things about myself I’m trying to keep hidden. I don’t spend energy trying to be someone I’m not. Can you see how much less energy social interaction takes when you relate like this?

When there is real conflict I address it in a way that’s honest and willing and I have the energy for it because I’m not wasting my energy on lots of inauthentic pseudo-connections. When I hang out with people I am just me, not some version of me that I have keep up the facade of or remember. 

Getting the shadows out of the closet and into the light is something that is terrifying but ultimately always feels like the best kind of relief and release.

As Gabor Maté says, “Safety is not the absence of threat, it is the presence of connection.” 

I have deconstructed the barriers and implemented boundaries, which are loving layers of protection that do not block all flow but simply set up gates and specific channels where connective nutrients can be offered and received between myself and other humans. 

I feel deeply devoted to being a fully expressed Clara in the world. Nothing to hide. Nothing to keep hidden. All parts of myself integrated and integral and in integrity is the ultimate intention. 

And yet, in the past 3 weeks I have been so hit by this I am alone wound. 

In the process of promoting and transmitting VILLAGE, a family embodiment retreat, I am feeling the everyday rejection that comes with “selling” things on the internet, as if it were a dagger to my personal heart.

I am seeing all the places I still use things like “likes” and numbers to validate myself and the worth of my work. I am seeing all the ways I still operate with the idea that creations are only worthwhile if other people like them too.

The dark side of community is indeed rejection and betrayal. This is one of the reasons why we don’t cultivate the community we say we want; we are afraid they will reject us and we will end up feeling alone and bad, once again.

The obvious downside of opening our hearts is if we do open them they could very well be shattered. 

I am seeing all the places these fears still have a hold on me. Better to be alone. Better to self isolate and disengage. Better to just do what I can alone and not invite people to join me. 

I am seeing where my instinct is to wall up and disconnect. I see where I have a sneaky voice that runs in my head always keeping score of who is “worse” and who is “better” than me so as to not be blindsided by rejection or judgment. 

I am seeing all the places I still believe I am alone and that I can’t have the connection I want or need. 

I am seeing all the ways that when I believe I can’t have the connection I want or need; I don’t get it. I am seeing all the ways I am the creator of my own experience with this wound.

When I expect people to be untrustworthy; they are. When I expect people to not be able to hold me, they can’t. When I expect people to not get me, they don’t. 

The wound of “I am alone” is self perpetuating. 

We unconsciously create from our wounds until we are willing to feel the pain in them from a conscious and integrated place. 

The only way I have found to start to dissolve this wound is to start to lean into the ways I am not actually alone and open my heart. And a big part of this is actually feeling the pain of rejection.

It’s feeling the pain of the aloneness I’ve experienced in my life and also the greif of how I’ve subjected myself to a lot of it in the interest of safety.

It’s feeling the pain of being laughed at, ridiculed, bullied, misunderstood, betrayed, and left behind and then choosing to open my heart again.

If I’m going to receive the nourishment of true community; I have to open my heart and to open my heart I have to feel all the times my heart has been broken, from a conscious place. I have to hold myself as I lean deeper into that shaky, wobbly, raw place in my solar plexus and feel it. This has been the deepest lesson the frequency of VILLAGE has taught me so far.

Community brings up these spots and wounds in us. It reflects back to us all the places we don’t trust ourselves or don’t have firm boundaries (not barriers), or don’t feel worthy of attention, expression, or connection.

True community requires us to open and receive and reception is inherently defenseless. 

But the thing is, the more I have opened and felt the pain of my wounds from an integrated conscious place, the more I notice opportunities for genuine connection all around me. 

When I don’t have to believe the lie that I am alone, I can receive my life and the people who love me and see me and want the best for me that are actually all around me. 

When I trust myself I can appreciate the ways people are available to me and not need them to available in ways they are not. When I trust my own discernment I don’t need people to always agree with me or eat the same way I do or wear the same type of clothes to connect with them.

When I am connected to my humanity I am more connected to other peoples’ humanity and there is beauty all around me.

As Michael Singer says, “Nothing is worth closing your heart over.” And I am truly a believer in this. Open heart and open pussy, connected, this is where true nourishment comes from.

What I’ve found as I’ve leaned into holding a retreat in service to connection, nourishment, and community is that community is actually everywhere, all the time, we just have to be willing to feel it, open to it, and receive it. 

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I awoke this morning after just 5 hours of sleep unable to fall back into a peaceful slumber.

The stars were calling me. 

Some people might call this anxiety, but I have come to know it as purely energy that wants my attention. It is just a little buried underneath the static layer of daily tasks and to do’s. 

I am holding so much. 

I am carrying so much. 

We are all holding so much. 

This is not just me.

It makes sense that there would be a call to consciously set it down and feel what’s underneath at times, or else we get lost in the noise and forget what we are doing here.

I have always been a morning person. I love the fresh start of a day and basking in the stars right before the sky in the west starts to glow. 

It’s quiet and it feels like one of the rare times these days I can fully hear myself.

There is something about the morning hours when no one else is awake that allows me to really put it all down and be with the layer that lives below all that I am holding. 

Almost always when I touch this layer the first emotion I feel is grief. A lot of times I cry, story less tears. 

Again, one might feel like this is a problem or it means they are depressed or something is wrong, but I have come to relate to grief as opening. 

When I’ve been closed and then I open, there is unfelt emotion there. The tears or the overwhelming sense of grief is just that unfelt emotion moving and clearing.

If I don’t get hooked into any storyline about what is wrong or where the tears are coming from, the experience is really beautiful and feels cleansing. 

As I felt into this spot this morning I touched this grief that isn’t even all mine, it feels more collective: the umothered mother.

This well of grief of the unmothered mother I’ve been tapping into lately is not actually about what my own mother did or didn’t do. 

It’s about the lack of the collective nurturer. The absence of Her within the collective. It’s about the ways we, as a society, have abandoned the true Feminine. How little we call upon Her. How little we value Her.

Because she is always there awaiting our invitation.

She is in the soil and grass and she is in the stars.

She is in the earth and in the sky.

She is in our very bodies and she is outside of our bodies; within and without.

We have access to Mother everywhere we are.

And yes, our own relationship with our own mothers is the template for our connection with Her, but if that relationship wasn’t nurturing or it didn’t teach us the boundaries and discernment or give us the guidance we needed to navigate the world, we can rewrite it.

We must rewrite it. For our children and for their children. 

When we invite back in the collective nurturer into our own lives, we can invite her back into her rightful place, at the center of it all.

When the collective nurturer is present in our collective we don’t have unmothered children or unmothered mothers. When we are all mothered, we don’t have to fight so hard for our nourishment, it just becomes natural. She provides for us.

As I prepare to hold the family embodiment retreat, VILLAGE, I see the need to highlight the importance of Mother in the village of humanity. 

We all need to acknowledge the grief of all the umothered mothers and children.

We need to allow the consequences of the absence of Her for generations to sink in.

The only way out is through and we cannot bypass the greif and loss of what we have forgotten and abandoned. In fact, we can only make real sustainable changes when we’ve acknowledged and willingly felt the despair.

The absence of wisdom about our bodies, pregnancies, birth, parenting, food, self care, family care, community care, relationship, creation in alignment with Life, nature, proper utilization of resources, is felt so deeply in every single corner of society. It’s rom the micro to the macro.

We can invite Her back; through our actions, through our listening, through our choices for our families, through our mothering of our children, ourselves, and others. 

We can call back in the collective nurturer, by simply nurturing ourselves and our communities. 

If you are ready to connect with me and others who are ready to center family and community, VILLAGE the 4 day retreat and VILLAGE the community day (a one day version of the retreat) are happening.

Send me a message for details. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

Over the past few weeks, I have been in some deep portals of healing personally. 

Whenever I hold a new frequency in service, like my VILLAGE retreat that I’ve been promoting, I am simultaneously served the medicine of it.

The places in my life where I am not in integrity with the lessons and energy within the offering will be highlighted and I will have a chance to work with them more deeply.

When you choose to live a life of service to the energy you don’t get to stay on the surface of life. You don’t get to simply worry about numbers, sales, optics and the value you’re offering. You have to get in the muck and the mess too. You have to see all of the ways your life is not in alignment and integrity with the thing you are serving. 

I am not here on the internet sharing as a typical business owner. I do not simply create offerings from my mind or my ideas of what I think will sell or what I think I’m “good” at. 

I listen deeply.

I pray.

I quiet my mind and ask, again and again, “How can I be of service here? What is mine to teach? How can my life be a living example of the world I would like to create? Show me. Guide me.”

I am deep in my own personal practice and then whatever arises from the place beyond my mind and ideas is what I ultimately offer.

This is a deeply vulnerable and unpredictable way to do business. 

You cannot do business this way unless you are fully, 1000% moving from trust and faith in the bigger thing that is leading us all. 

I don’t get to abandon offerings because they don’t work for my preferences. I don’t get to decide this whole “spiritual nutritionist” thing isn’t working for me so I’ll go get a day job. I’m way beyond that.

This path is mine and mine alone. 

No one could copy what I do and no one offers what I offer because it wholly and completely unique to me. 

There is no competition from this location. 

However, this also means that when I offer something, I am co-creating with The Creator and therefore I will be reminded again and again that I am not in control.

Co-creating, yes, in charge, absolutely not.

I like the analogy my teacher, Perri Chase, (Magic Led Business is what she calls it) uses of co-creation being like surfing.

You are the surfer and the energy is the wave. You’ve gotta build the skills, understanding, and muscle memory of what it feels like to paddle out beyond the breakers of the mind, sit and wait until you feel a wave that’s for you coming and then paddle like crazy and if you’re lucky and you commit at just the right time with the right amount of input you’ll get on that surf board the ride the wave. 

There is a perfect amount of participation and trust that gets you on that wave, and that is a different amount for each individual wave of creation.

Do you see how this isn’t just about laying back and doing nothing and letting the wave take you and it’s also not about forcing anything to happen? It’s a constant back and forth, a conversation between you and the wild oceanic powers of creation. 

In the process of feeling the wave that is VILLAGE I have been so cleared out and worked. 

The gift so far has been this crystal clear landing on what is mine to teach and transmit. 

I have learned that the frequency of VILLAGE and I are in a forever relationship. I will be working with this medicine for the rest of my life. 

This is a confronting knowing to have.

We all think we want so badly to know our purpose but my experience is that when you know, that doesn’t make anything easier because then you see all the places you are out of alignment with that purpose and all the places you will have to get bigger to meet that purpose.

What is the frequency of VILLAGE, this content that I will be working with, on some level, for the rest of my life? 

The medicine of VILLAGE is the medicine of original and true humanity.

It’s the medicine that exists in the way we need each other. 

The paradoxical spot of how needing each other makes us stronger. 

The place of where the imperfections are the perfection. 

The beauty in the flaws. 

It’s the divinity within the messy and gross human form.

It is the experience of all of our parts belonging and being welcomed home. 

It is seeing how the most painful experiences in our lives somehow shaped us led us to this very moment where we are alive and breathing and capable of love. 

This is the medicine of coming into our bodies and fully incarnating here; fully inhabiting ourselves.

Belonging to ourselves is the only way we can ever belong to others, because we are the same. 

We cannot transcend what we do not first accept. 

I will spend my life backing, exploring, transmitting and holding with such beauty, care and reverence the fact that we need each other. 

We need to be witnessed. 

We need to be seen. 

We need to be held.

We need to be heard. 

We need to be allowed to be human in our imperfect bodies and with our imperfect behavior. 

We need our families, be they chosen or given. 

We need the simplicity of what it takes to keep a human body thriving; good food, clean water, body care, love, nature and connection.

The future of true humanity quite literally depends on these needs being met and us remembering that all our parts belong. 

I am here inviting my beautiful partners in this revolution to come forward, to say, “Here I am too.” 

Let us come to together and remember what it means to be a human. 

I am forever committed to bringing the truth of humanity through. 

As my morning daily prayers always start with: “I am here. I am listening.” 

Final call for VILLAGE | A Family Embodiment Retreat registration. Send me a message to join us. 

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe

There are a few threads that have been really present in my awareness lately: 

* The metabolic health crisis we are currently experiencing in the US and a lot of western countries. 

* The importance of reverence for family as a key to humanity’s legacy. 

* Healing as the expansion of our range of consciousness

These three things have been swirling around me non stop for the last month. It seems like every podcast, conversation, work meeting and discussion I have somehow brings one of these subjects up and what I’m really sitting with is the place where each of these meet. 

Number 1: The Metabolic Health Crisis 

Processed food has been available for about two to three generations now. I believe the harrowing statistics we are seeing like soaring infertility rates, chronic illness, autoimmune diseases, decline in quality of life and mental health, etc indicate we are very much in the midst of a public health crisis.

We can look at all these health conditions as mysterious separate occurances or we can ask, what is the root here? What is the thing at the bottom of all of these seemingly unrelated collective health concerns.

The answer is: Metabolic health. 

What is metabolic health you may ask? 

Metabolic health comes down to bioavailable energy. Every single cell in our body needs energy to do its job. When the energy is not there, then the body has to triage and jobs that may not be necessary to short term survival, do not get done.

For example, our body will always prioritize making stress hormones before sex hormones because if we need to run away from the proverbial tiger, it doesn’t matter if we can procreate later.

Chronic low energy states create chronic illness eg our body goes into survival mode vs thrival mode. Whether this low energy state results in a mental health condition or infertility has more to do with the individual and their constitutional weakneses, environment, genetics, all the more variable pieces, but the root cause of all of it is this ability or inability to create and utilize energy well. 

Where do we get energy from?

We get it from electrons. We get electrons from food, natural light, and the earth’s magnetic field. I wrote more about this in my article The Electric Body and Evolutionary Mismatch.

There are all sorts of things we need to utilize these electrons well and efficiently. 

Two of them are totally free and very much intuitive: grouding and sunlight.

Grounding requires you to touch the earth, trees, and plants with your bare skin or through natural fibers or conductive material. You can even gahter electrons by sitting in waterfall spray or the rain.

Getting electrons from sunlight also requires that natural light from the sun or moon touch your bare skin or eyes (without glasses or contacts or lasik surgery).

We get the most electrons from food that is closest to its natural form and local, eg fresh. Our bodies are wise and they know when we eat an avocado in Montana something isn’t quite natural about that. 

Water is also important. The water we consume from cities has been piped in from the aquifer or somewhere else, with added chemicals like fluoride and chloride etc. The water we drink and cook with and use should be alive as much as possible, not treated and battered and stored in plastic or pipes. When water is structured, mineralized and clean, it supports more efficient electron transport throughout our body and therefore greater energy availability and utilization. 

Some really good resources on this subject for a deeper dive are: 

* Energy | An Interview with Dr. Paul Eck

* A series of Rooted in Resilience podcast interviews with Kathleen Stewart discussing the Minnesota Starvation Experiments and what happens to our bodies in a low energy state. 

* Tucker Carlson Podcast with Calley and Casey Means 

Number 2: Reverence for Family 

I am very much rooted in the Truth that my purpose in this lifetime (and probably other lifetimes as well) is to be in service to the frequency that I call The Mother. The Mother is a mature feminine frequency that I experience as living within the body and cells.

It’s the place where my work with my physical body and with nutrition overlaps with my spiritual teachings and understanding of Life itself. 

The Mother is a frequency and presence that I see as very much needed in the world right now. 

In the mainstream collective culture of our times women, mothers, children and family are not intrinsically valued. There is some sort of optical valuing of  “the perfect life/family,” eg that white picket fence, nice home, and luxury car in the driveway with cute blonde kids, but there is not an innate valuing of Mother and Child. We see this by how little mothers value themselves and how little mothers are supported in the greater collective culture. 

We are told that mothering is a side plate and not the main course of our lives. (I wrote more about this here..) “Women can do anything men can do!!” we are told, and then we are expected to do all the things men do and raise our children without help and take care of our home.

‘Women can do everything men can do’ isn’t actually true. And men can obviously, not do everything women can do. We are perfectly different and entirely complementary, and each equally important, but definitely not the same. 

When a man and a woman understand this about each other, they are in flow.

When we do not try to put one below the other, we are in right relationship, equal and opposite in a lot ways. The yin yang symbol comes to mind.

When a woman and a man come together in deep love and reverence, creation happens. That creation is sometimes a child. These two create a family. And family is a representation of their and God’s love. These two opposites coming together, supporting each other in equal, but different ways. 

It is perfection and it is a legacy. Family and legacy are one in the same. Not in some sort of masculinized “I must procreate and spread my seed” way, but in a way that the thread of love is expanded upon and widened. 

Life wants to extend itself. This is creation. Creation wants to stretch and grow and actualize. it is the point of Life. 

That is why, I am seeing more clearly recently that I don’t only serve The Mother, I serve Family.

Family is the vehicle through which the grace and love of humanity is passed down. It is the center point of Creation and all that the manifestation of love is.

You don’t have to create a family of your own in the traditional sense to participate in family in the way I am speaking of it here. We all have family, given and chosen, you simply must revere the relationships you have and recognize the reciproicity and love you are being invited to participate in through them.

Just as I aim to be an example and beacon of permission for Mothers to claim their innate worthiness, value, and power because it is of service to do so, I also aim to be a Mother who puts her family at the center, because family is the highest form creation. 

Now, I am a human with flaws, patterns, triggers, and s**t I’m carrying, so I am not the perfect mother and I do not have the perfect family. 

I still struggle with rejection, pain, lashing out, feeling victimized, acting out of malice and frustration. I am the first to admit not every day is easy. I am stretched on a daily basis by my life. Mostly to recieve its beauty fully but also to hold steady in the pain of it.

However, I am clear that my reverence and full participation as the Matriarch of my family is my highest honor and practice. 

I was on a call with Nicole Parker today and she said, “Mothers are born and matriarchs are made.”

Meaning, there are lots of women who became mothers through the birth of a child, and that is no small thing. But to become the Matriarch, the woman who Knows her worth and the power of her presence and claims the responsibility of the leadership of her family, is a process that you must consciously participate in. 

Every single human being on this planet is deeply affected by dynamics between themselves and their mother. There is no human being on this planet that didn’t come through the portal between worlds that is a woman’s cervix and pussy. This is the level of reverence we need to have for Mothers and families, because it is the legacy of humanity and that from which all humanity springs forth. 

The continuation of humanity requires women and families. The culture we create and live in will be created by the mothers of the children of the future. This is the influence that every mother holds in her hands. May they know it and revere it and participate with it consciously and intentionally. 

Number 3: Healing is about Range Expansion 

This one is something that really dropped into my body like a ton of bricks after opening a particularly painful wound last week. 

I have been on the “path of awakening” for a long time. Maybe like two decades if you count my drunken and drugged attempts to reach God. The seeking has always been there, even before that.

I got a tattoo at 17 years old that says “Create Your Own Reality” in Latin. Looking back on my life I have always been looking for something, something deeper and more basal than what any adult I knew at the time could offer me. I found it in poetry and music and expression initally and in my adult life have sought after teachers and spent hours and hours on the mat of daily practice and pattern identification.

I consider myself lucky because the constitution I came into this life with was one of not taking no for an answer. I came into this life with a willingness to go deeper and be more uncomfortable than most. I had an Akashic records channel tell me that this life is my Soul’s favorite life and that I’ve had A LOT of lives. I believe it. This life has been such a deeply rich one and I pray it’s not even close to over. 

And so, when I was working with this wound somatically last week the level of sensation in my body increased until it was at a childbirth level intensity. My mind wanted to tell me all sorts of stories and spin in all directions; I stayed conscious with it, but barely.

I leaned in and leaned in and right when I thought I might pass out or explode, there was a whoosh of relief and a dissolving. I was shaken and weak, but the intensity left me and I felt how I had reached some new level of awareness because of my willingness to feel that old pain. And I could not have held steady in that spot without a thousand smaller scale experiences I have gone through. Practice was the key here.

There is no guarantee on this path of concious embodiment that things will get easier. In fact, in a lot of ways they get harder and more challenging and that is actually part of it, because you are expanding your range. As you become more awake you increase your ability to feel more. The up and down. The “good” and the “bad.” 

The only guarantee is that you will get to Live more awake. More awake to pain. More awake to joy.

The last couple days, seemingly randomly throughout the day, I have experienced these levels of sustained and embodied joy and connection that were not available to me before. I have felt a level of gratitude and opening and reception I’ve never felt before.

The making of the space for the pain also made space for the joy; my range has increased. You don’t get one without the other.

On a healing path we get obsessed with “feeling better” and there is nothing wrong with wanting to feel better. This is not about self punishing.

But we forget that part of the feeling better is also being able to feel more. 

Healing isn’t actually about better or worse, it’s about expanding your capacity for range, up and down, backwards and forwards.

How are number 1, 2, and 3 related? 

Metabolic health, reverence for family and healing as expansion of range, all come back to orienting to a new kind of paradigm. 

The mainstream views on health, family, and healing are not working. 

They are outdated, rigid, and rooted in the glorification of immature masculine ideals and the small egoic mind. The holdup is people being unwilling to slow down, feel, question their minds and their indoctrinations, and be with themselves below the static layer of all they think is so urgent and important. 

We can be so committed to our confusion, misery, and discontent that we miss the way Life is pouring love into us and leading us down the exact path we need to become who we were always meant to be. 

On a mainstream level you bring up the word “metabolic” and people just think their “metabolism.” If they have a “good” one and they are skinny or a “bad” one and they are fat. 

Metabolism and metabolic health are about how our bodies utilize energy. Energy being the baseline for everything.

Energy is prana, life force, qi.. dare I saw, creative power? Access to energy is in some ways your access to God (and I know that God is a loaded, charged word for some people, but I have never been nor will I ever be a religious person, so for me, God is just the original Creator. It is in all things. It is energy its self).

I am not implying that if you don’t have energy you don’t have access to God, but I am personally drawing the conclusion here that all of these three threads I’m discussing have a root in a disconnection from Life (God) itself. 

I heard an MD say the other day that the reason we have so many public health issues is because people are living longer. He also said that we can’t do double blind studies on things like herbs and eating a diet based in whole foods and therefore can’t make public health recommendations based on them.

Do we really need a study to tell us that eating an apple is better than eating something out of a bag with 60 ingredients? Have we fallen this far away from our innate Knowing and common sense? Do we really need a study to tell us that breastmilk is a far superior food for babies than formula? Have we fallen this far into our own egoic God-complex that we think we could possibly know better than Nature Herself? 

The mainstream view on having a family is that it is hard, exhausting, expensive and kind of miserable. We need coffee and alcohol to just get through the mornings and evenings with our kids. We need to put them on screens just to go out to eat. Really? Is that the best we can do for the raising of the future of humanity?

The mainstream view on healing is that is you should heal quickly and if your’e sick its probably your own fault. We should be satisfied with as little calories as possible and eat a “plant-based” diet cause it’s what’s best for the planet, no mind what’s best for your individual body! If you don’t feel energetic, happy, and look amazing all the time then there is definitely something wrong with you and you should probably get on a pharmaceutical! It couldn’t possibly that your body is struggling to produce energy and you need to have a spiritual awakening.

How is all this working for us? 

I heard someone say, “Americans aren’t lazy, they’re just burnt out.” 

And that really resonates with me. I don’t think people want to put their kids on screens all day, I think they literally don’t have the energy or the modeling to do anything else. I don’t think people really want to eat plant based, they’re just confused about what is healthy and have basically been starving themselves all their lives and work under fluorescent light and sit in chairs on a computer all day and so they are so dissociated they have no access to their body’s knowing. 

As sick as we are, our lives are entirely too comfortable in a lot of ways, we aren’t well versed in traversing difficult situations.  Healing in an integrated and sustainable way takes time, stamina, commitment, faith and trust in our bodies. It takes a playing of the long game and a trust in our own ability to hold ourselves through difficult times.  

We would need to be at home in our bodies (embodied) to address healing from this angle. Our current medical system is based in a hierarchical system where medical professionals know more about bodies than we do. This is not the directionality to operate from if you’d like to address healing on a holistic level.

You have to trust your own insights and feelings first and foremost, collect information from experts and run those opinions and recommendations through your own inner knowing. It takes so much so responsibility to come at healing from this direction. That’s what most people are unwilling to take on. They would rather someone just tell them what to do.

If we would like to heal on the level of increasing our capacity to stay fully conscious in more and more situations then we will have to take a whole lot more responsibility on an individual level, as well as a collective level. 

Metabolic wellness is about creating and utilizing energy well and efficiently. Family is about creating a legacy of love and creating a future consciously. Healing is actually about creating a larger capacity for Life itself. These all tie back to us having a more conscious presence and awareness of ourselves within our bodies; more God in our bodies.

The more embodied we are, we become more aware of what takes energy away and what gives us energy. The more connected we are to our bodies the less we can override them by feeding them food devoid of life. 

The more embodied we are, the more presence we can have with our children, with our families, and the more capacity we have to consciously create a culture that serves the life of our families and therefore, humanity.  

The more embodied we are the more capacity we have to be with the discomfort of illness, disease, or whatever challenging thing Life offers us (to teach us and guide us). 

What do we need to come into our embodied nature?

The first step for most people is to slow way down. That doesn’t mean not being functional or neglecting your duties or becoming metaphorically numb or frozen, it just means brining more awareness into your life throughout the day. Feeling things as they come up just 5% more. It means brining your awareness to your body more often. Listening to your biological impulses. It means noticing and stopping the mind spin and bringing the energy back into your pelvis and asking what really needs to be done from there. 

These are simple but not easy tasks. Most peoples’ minds will try to find something flashier or more entertaining to “do about this,” but the real practitioner will stay with the slow, boring and steady and lean in to the monotonousness of what it takes to make real sustainable changes.

VILLAGE | A family embodiment retreat, is a chance to slow down and be in your body for a weekend with your family. It’s a chance to truly BE together in a way you may have never been before. VILLAGE is steeped in all three of these threads: metabolic wellness, reverence of family, and healing. 

We will focus on whole, local, ancestral and lovingly prepared foods eaten slowly and together. We will greet the sun in the morning and say goodbye to it at night, with our families. We will allow our bodies to touch the earth and be outside.

We will be with other humans who are also committed to slowing down and becoming more intentional as a family committed to a legacy and culture of responsibility, embodiment and intentional creation. We will experience workshops and practices that bring us further into our bodies in a way that is gentle and slow and nourishing.

If you come with your partner, there will also be opportunities for you to drop in together without kids. 

For me, there is no higher priority than parenting and enjoying that parenting. This is my parenthood, afterall. May it be everything I know it can be. Joyful, painful, challenging, and expanding. This is also my children’s childhood. May it be joyful, shaping, beautiful, and exactly what they need. This is the most important thing we can do for our families, center our embodiment.

We are calling in two more families to join us. Reach out to me if you’re ready. Registration is now closing on September 12th.

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