Rage, Fear and Mud-Wrestling with the Divine.
{Photo via Pinterest}
I’ve recently moved house, and aside from the endless cardboard boxes to unpack, not knowing where anything is, and desperately wanting to take a two-week holiday while someone comes and makes it liveable for me, I’ve found that I’ve been questioning myself — as a woman, an author, a wife, a mumma, a business woman.
It’s been an interesting time.
Side note: Interesting is code for messy, emotional, heart-hurt-y with lots of swearing and shouting. Just so you know.
It has stirred a puddle of dark fears and rage that had been lying dormant at the bottom of what, on the surface, looked pretty clear.
And when that happens, you have two choices.
Get yogic. Observe the ripples, watch as the shit rises to the top — the fears, the concerns, the anxiety — and acknowledge that you are not the fears, concerns or anxiety…
… or…
… sack off all you’ve ever learned in every Yoga class you’ve ever been to, and dive, heart first, into the muddy puddle and have it out with the Divine.
What can I say? I love a good mud-wrestle.
My hot viking husband took cover as over the past two weeks, as the moon waned, I wrestled, hugged, loved and cried with Kali Ma — the dark goddess — in search of my truth of what it means to be a woman.
This woman.
No matter what any love and light guru may tell you, I believe it’s totally necessary to get down and dirty with the grit of being a woman, yet for so many of us, we are afraid to go there.
We are worried at what might happen if we allow ourselves to feel rage, anger and grief in every fiber of our being for as long as we need to.
We’ve been conditioned to believe that we should push down our emotions, turn down our light and be nice and likeable. We’re told that if we express ourselves fully by shouting, screaming and orgasming, we’re wild and uncontrollable.
It’s why I’ve titled my next book Untamed, because in the words of Isadora Duncan:
“You were wild once, don’t let them tame you.”
But the truth is, we have been tamed.
We’re heavy with the shame and guilt carried by our lineage for the last 2000 years.
It’s why we talk about periods and sex and pleasure in hushed tones. It’s why we don’t trust our own gut. It’s why we rely on the media to dictate how we think and feel about ourselves and others. It’s why we numb our pain with excessive food/drugs/alcohol.
It’s why we compete with our sisters and feel resentment and animosity when their so-called life played out through pictures on Instagram/FB/Twitter looks better than ours.
One thing I know for sure is that at the bottom of each of our puddles, there is an underlying rage — it belongs to our mumma, our g-mumma, our gg-mumma — and it needs to be stirred, felt, experienced and expressed.
Now, I totally get non-attachment, I totally get that by rolling in the mud I’m going to make messy handprints all over the whitewashed walls on the way to spiritual enlightenment, but what my mud-wrestles with Kali teach me time and time again through the continued death and rebirth process, is that I need to fully experience being this woman — the pain, the anger, the joy, the pleasure, the mess, the dirt.
I am woman, and I will freakin’ roar.
I will also cry. I will scream really loudly during sex and not give a shit what the neighbors think. I will take time off when I bleed each month. I will run my business in total sync with the moon and my menstrual cycle. I will fully feel and express the rage of my lineage.
I dare you to feel it.
I dare you to experience it.
I dare you to express it.
Unapologetically.Get down and dirty with the grit of being you.
Invite Kali to play — she plays rough but it’s with the love of the great mumma — and dare to go there. And then, from that place, create, love, start a business, have sex, write a book, dance, sing, travel — because what the world is missing is women who are willing to be in relationships, start businesses and live life belly-deep in the mud and grit of what it really is to be a woman.
*****
Lisa Lister is a UK-based author, menstrual maven, fat yogini and lover of hot vikings and chocolate. She is the creatrix of The Sassy She — feminine mastery and badass-ery for gutsy girls — and is dedicated to helping women know their flow, unlock their monthly superpowers and create an amazing business and life in a fiercely feminine way. Her book, Sassy: The Go-For-It Girl’s Guide to Becoming Mistress Of Your Destiny, is out now.
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