She is Rising
Reclaiming the Feminine in a World That Taught Me to Reject Her
Most of my life was spent in the hustle.
The chase.
The climb.
I couldn’t sit still—not just because of FOMO, but because of something deeper:
Insecurity and cortisol.
I didn’t feel safe enough to rest and I also didn’t value it.
Rest, slowing down was for the weak and incompetent. I was also very aware of my mortality seeing a parent almost die at 16 years old- I knew time was ticking. I had dreams, goals to complete and nothing, not even my body was going to get in the way.
I prioritized strength, speed, and accomplishments. Ironically, I never felt like I really accomplished anything… I felt empty because I was moving so quickly that I didn’t have time to even digest what I had done.
At the same time, the world felt like this huge, magical glittering sphere—full of places to explore and experiences to collect. I wanted to see it all, know it all, do it all.
I also felt I had too.
As a first-generation immigrant, an only child, and the first and only daughter, I don’t have a cushy safety net. There is also a massive weight of subconscious expectations.
Like, ‘Your parents didn’t leave their homeland for you to lez away the gift you had been given, your family didn’t suffer through world wars for you to be scrubbing dishes and you better figure your shit out in case a revolution happens and you need to start from scratch again. And… there is only one of you so you better do it all and be really good at it’.
I had to figure it out—how to fit in, how to succeed, make a living, how to “be normal” in a country very different from the one inside my living room.
So I pushed. I performed. I perfected.
I unknowingly became masculine in a feminine body—trained to strive, hustle, work hard, and execute with precision.
(It didn’t help that my father desperately wanted a male child and I was well… female. I couldn’t carry the family name on but perhaps if I was great enough that would suffice for my lack of maleness…Anyways, that’s a story for another time.)
So, I did it well this being strong, tough, capable, masculine in a woman’s body thing.
But not without consequences.
The Cost of Constant Doing
My body suffered—again and again.
Sometimes through self-inflicted wounds, and other times through the bruises that come when you’re not paying attention. I ignored the whispers for rest. I silenced the nudges to slow down.
In a hyper-masculine culture, rest isn’t revered—it’s shamed.
And I paid the price.
Now-
I am done with that story.
For the first time in my life, I’m taking a real pause. A loving, caring pause.
Not a break forced by my body.
Not a collapse masked as rest.
A pause by choice.
Not out of burnout, but out of pleasure.
Of course, I can’t stop life or the daily grind — but this summer, I’ve made a conscious decision: I will not push, strive, or rush.
I’m choosing a different way to live. I am choosing to soften, to flow and to accept. To move through life as my feminine side would like to flow.
I believe that, like a river, life will continue to flow around me if I learn how to float —
with balance, not too deep, not too shallow.
This is my theory.
Let’s see how it goes.
Softness of Slowness
On the banks of a river in Kerala, India…
Beneath the olive groves and golden light of Sicily, Italy…
Something inside me is reviving.
A deep remembering.
A childlike ease.
A soft pulse of feminine energy I didn’t know I had forgotten.
These places are inherently feminine in their rhythm. They’ve helped remind me that life has its own pace that I need to align with it to be in harmony.
Also:
That I can eat pasta without worrying about a spare tire. (Because who cares, like really, so what)
That I can read a novel for joy, not productivity.
That I can lie in the sun and listen to birds without having had to earn it.
It is okay to do “nothing.”
It is okay to enjoy beauty for beauty’s sake.
It is okay to rest, to go slow, to take it easy.
It is okay to be a woman.
But Why Does That Feel So Hard to Say?
Even writing that last line, I feel tension. A subtle recoil.
‘It’s okay to be a woman’
It feels too intimate.
Too controversial.
Why is it so hard to say:
I enjoy being feminine.
I like softness, pearls and lotuses.
I want to be protected and I don’t want to have to be the warrior.
How did we get here?
Where the natural rhythms of womanhood have become taboo, questioned, dismissed—even mocked?
How did wanting to do less become repulsive?
How did motherhood become marginalized and undervalued?
How did womanhood itself become so contested?
And how did we, in the name of survival or acceptance, begin to reject ourselves?
We Cannot Heal What We Keep Rejecting
We cannot reject what we are and expect to be whole.
We can’t cherry-pick parts of ourselves and shame the rest into silence.
Every part of us—the tender, the fierce, the confused, the craving, the exhausted—is worthy of being seen.
Integration is the only path to lasting wellness of body, mind, and spirit.
Because here’s the truth:
There will never be peace inside us if we hate parts of ourselves.
If we hate the feminine, we suffer.
If we hate the masculine, we suffer.
If we reject balance, we suffer.
We need both wings to fly.
The feminine brings softness, intuition, grace, and cyclical wisdom.
The masculine brings structure, direction, stability, and strength.
One is not better than the other.
They are different—and equally divine.
The Danger of Division
At different times in my life, I’ve leaned on both.
But I lost myself when I started believing I didn’t need the other. That only one was valid. That one was superior. That one had all the answers.
In my hyper-productive era, I silenced my body’s cry to slow down.
I ignored the inner feminine who gently urged me to rest, to care, to simply be.
That mindset—“if it doesn’t serve me, it doesn’t belong”—was deeply destructive.
And I suffered for it.
As Jesus said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
And many of us—men and women—are walking around as houses divided.
We See It Everywhere (in the west)
This rejection of the feminine is not personal—it’s cultural.
It can be seen in how society writes off women once they become mothers or they enter menopause.
In how we dismiss the wisdom of aging women.
In how we don’t ask how moms are really doing, rather focus only on the children.
In how we choose performance over presence.
In how we shame emotion and praise burnout.
You see it in the erasure of what it means to be a woman.
In how easily female voices are spoken over.
In how quickly we are made invisible.
And let me be clear:
Only women should be defining what it means to be a woman.
Men can support, but not overwrite.
Not here.
The Feminine Force
As women, we’ve been quiet for a long time.
We whisper discomfort through body language.
We try to speak gently.
And when no one listens—when the pressure builds too high—we erupt in rage.
The feminine is not just soft.
She is not only Mary or Aphrodite.
She is also Kali. She is Durga. She is storm and flame.
And I feel her now—rising beneath the surface.
Whispering. Grieving. Demanding to be heard.
We Cannot Reject Half and Think We Are Whole
The world is out of balance.
We feel it in our bones.
If there is to be peace on this planet, it begins with peace in each of us.
If we ever hope for balance out there, we must find balance in here.
We must welcome every part of ourselves—the soft, the strong, the still, the striving.
We cannot keep rejecting half of our being and expect to feel whole.
We need both wings.
We need all of ourselves.
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With love and reverence,
Thalita
Very insightful. We are studying and learning many of the same things. We need ma'at or balance between masculine and feminine spiritual energies and we need to remember who we really are so we can walk in it. Good job! Thank you.
Really enjoy this. Our world is so overran with “masculine” energy. A few years ago I realized how that it was changing my behaviour. Recognizing the imbalance, I accepted the feminine aspects of myself again. Remembered the teachings and talked deeper with my Grandma. The world needs the balance.