I’m not used to men.
That’s a weird thing to say for someone like me.
After all, I’ve lived with one man or another my whole life, beginning with my father and then 20 years between my ex-husband and my shug.
But when I go on retreats, when I network, when I teach and hold ritual, it’s women only.
Like, only.
I think in terms of feminine psyche. I embody it, I teach it, I create content that helps women locate and value it within themselves.
But, here I am in Puerto Rico with a bunch of guys.
Like guy guys, military veterans, dads, and ultra tech-y- dudes with giant beards who leave the toilet seat up. (No judgement, just painting a picture).
So when Neal, our host and fearless leader, invited me to hold our opening ceremony, I was inspired to think about yin and yang, masculine and feminine.
Particularly I wanted each of us to feel that we are both, gender aside.
We all talk and listen, we can all be active and still, we all teach and learn.
To think that we are exclusively one or the other is not only a mistake, it severs access to something that is our birth rite.
Are these guys more likely to talk than listen? Yeah. Are they more apt to move than rest? Teach than learn? Project than receive? Pursue than attract? Yep. Do they tend to talk more about how to do something than how they feel about doing something? Definitely.
And you better believe that at my women’s gatherings we’re in the exact opposite camp, just as comfy and fluent in our innate yin nature.
But we are all are both.
These guys hold within them innate capacity for the divine feminine.
We women hold the divine masculine just as readily.
And transgendered or non-binary people embodying this alchemy in the most revolutionary synergy ever before seen.
So in our opening ceremony, I let our bodies guide the way, reminding us how fluent we are in both languages–yin and yang, masculine and feminine.
And as we wrap up the Dark half of the year and prepare to enter the light half on March 20th (Spring Equinox), we can see that the Earth has this fluency, too.
The Dark half of the year, from late September to late March is feminine—dark, cool, still, subterranean, and dreamy.
The Light half of the year, from late March to late September, is masculine –light, warm, active, above ground, and real-time.
So, if you are tempted to claim one camp and dismiss the other for any reason, don’t.
They both have unparalleled value.
The synergy created by embracing and combining both?
That’s our birth rite.
love & pineapples,
kv
Me in Rincon, Puerto Rico recording a podcast about divine feminine & masculine with Neal Conlon. Photo cred: my hot shot biz coach Lisa Zahiya