Shadows

I used to see powerful women as a threat and I would immediately think all sorts of disempowering, judgmental thoughts about them. Anything to tear them down in my mind and preferably in the minds of others. Oh she's a bitch, she's full of herself, she's a control freak, she's ugly, she's dumb, she's trying to get attention, she's cold hearted. Anything.

It still comes up for me sometimes. But I have also made it a project of mine to create powerful women as my ally. I have been blessed to have wonderful women around me as friends who bring me back to earth, who have taught me about the history of gender in western society, who have asked me to consider the sexual and status competition we are taught to play whenever we look at pop culture media and questioned whether that is really my commitment. And I continue to learn to create a context in which to connect with powerful women, ask them to support me, offer my support to them, and see their strengths as a contribution to the world.

I try to remember as often as possible that the things I criticise in others are the things I find ugly in myself. So the first step is to acknowledge and own them. And another step is to look for the things I admire and value in others - for they, too are a reflection of things to recognise in myself.

And beyond it being about myself, it's about having those other powerful women feel empowered and fulfilling what they are here to do, and having men and women alike celebrate this in each other. I read this in James Hollis' "Why Good People Do Bad Things" (p 23):

We carry [a] huge polarity within us. Some of us flee the tension, others rise to embrace it...Progressively knowing these split-off, buried, projected parts of ourselves, and owning them as ours, deepens the journey and gives us work for a lifetime. As problematic as this Shadow work may seem, it is the only way to experience personal psyhcological healing, as well as the healing of relationships with others. The work we do brings us not to a more satisfied ego, but to the ego's larger move toward wholeness...The tikkun olam, or healing of the world, begins with oursleves, begins with what we do not wish to know about ourselves. Over time, this conscientious scrutiny ripples out from us to touch those around us. Owning our own Shadow furthers the reparation of the world.