BEING WOMAN
Creating Balance in a Stress-Filled World
Copyright ~ Sophia Breillat©

Woman’s home has always represented her nest, her womb, her sanctuary, her heart, hearth, palace. As a reflection of the feminine psyche, this is a sacred space where she needs to feel safe, nurtured, protected, sustained and balanced.

In ancient times, the Goddess Vesta of Roman matriarchal civilisation embodied the heart of the home, and her round temple, symbolising the womb, or female centre of life and creation, was the centre of the city. Within this temple burned her Sacred Fire, representing the flame of divinity within every woman. Vesta, her name meaning “hearth” or “earth”, also embodies the home place, or wellspring of nurturing, for every man. He deeply and intrinsically needs his woman and his home to be his sacred place of loving, relaxation and nourishment, balancing his outer worldly life with inner peace and fulfilment.

Vesta represents woman’s wisdom, that indefinable and intuitive feminine knowing that arises from the depths of her innermost being. When a woman is connected to her divine flame, heart or hearth within, she knows serenity, contentment, strength and balance.

Every woman carries within her psyche the collective suppression of female power and divinity that has insidiously seeped through many generations. Every woman also carries within her psyche the potential to awaken the mystical, divine and sacred qualities of the Goddess within her heart. She can never become truly free, truly who she is, until she fully embraces her love, her truth, her grace, her perception, her clarity. Without consciously merging with her sacred wellspring of inspiration, she will always feel unbalanced.

In ancient cultures, woman was revered as the embodiment of the Goddess in all her glory. Her heart, her hearth, her womb, her home, all represented her divine centre of balance. The richly dancing glow of the hearth is rarely the focus of the modern home, where television and computer have now frequently replaced this heart centre of the family. Contemporary civilisation has dragged woman far away from her inner hearth, into a world that increasingly demands busyness, attainment and achievement.

Through becoming separated from her inner sustaining fire, she has lost her harmony and equilibrium. Among the many things that create havoc with the delicate balance of the female psyche are lack of true love and lovemaking, lack of honouring or acknowledgement, too much busyness, not enough nurturing, not enough stillness or quiet space for enjoying the beauty and simplicity of being.


DEAR WOMAN

You, beautiful Goddess, are out of balance because you have stopped listening. You have stopped listening to your heart, your intuition, your body, your love. You have abandoned the intrinsic wisdom of your profound depths to a shallow world that dictates how you should look, dress, work, live and love. And so, you suffer, not really knowing why you feel so emotional, insecure, doubtful, stressed or tired. You are unbalanced because you are living in a world that is unbalanced, a world where it is difficult for you to find your true place.


SACRIFICING WOMAN

For many years, woman has become so immersed in the role of primary caregiver and nurturer that she has forgotten how to nourish herself in the simple ways that keep her heart open, her love flowing and her passion alive. If she cannot tenderly, sincerely and openly embrace all that she needs to be, she will feel unbalanced.

If she lives a life of outer distraction, where many other things have become more important than love, this imbalance will create deep emotional pain. Although she may pretend, repressing this pain with busyness or addictions, eventually it will surface, masked as inexplicable moodiness, despondency, eating disorders, pre-menstrual tension, post-natal depression or distressing menopausal symptoms.

When she sacrifices her soul to live through others, she lives in denial of her own intrinsic needs, repressing her innate wildness, creativity and power. This lack of balance then creates emptiness, resentment and lack of fulfilment, particularly if she sacrifices her natural need of loving for emotionalised concepts of security, comfort, prestige or recognition.

When she is truly loved, she glows, shining like the sun, radiating a joyful presence of openness that is ageless. Everything in her life then flows, everything is then balanced, simply because her body and being are alive with love.


NURTURING WOMAN

For the contemporary woman, life has become a stress-filled balancing act where partner, children, home, work, creativity and leisure time all tug at her heartstrings, each crying out for her full attention. Pulled simultaneously in many directions, she is frequently stretched far beyond her inherent capacity for giving, becoming mentally frazzled, emotionally unbalanced and physically exhausted.

The media, that illusory contemporary God of power, creates extra pressure through preying upon her self-doubt, seducing her into believing that to be a real woman, she must become perfectly beautiful, perfectly functional, perfectly achieving and perfectly thin. After long exhausting hours at the office, she is expected to create a perfect body at the gym, cook a perfect nutritious dinner for her family, help with her perfect children’s homework, clean her perfect house and make perfectly passionate love with her partner.

The external world creates too many complicated and unreal pressures, forcing her to fit into rigid time schedules that are not aligned with the natural flowing rhythms of her body and being. When a lack of worthiness creates imbalance in woman, she has difficulty embracing the enjoyable pleasures of relaxing with nature, giving fully in lovemaking, spending money on pampering herself, or simply melting into the sweet bliss of doing nothing at all.

When a woman cannot find enough space in her busy life for stillness, nurturing and replenishment, she is already swimming in the danger zone of excessive imbalance. Every woman, in her innermost being, is a fragrant flower whose delicate petals need sensitive nurturing. She is intrinsically of nature, of the earth, not of the world and its forceful demands.

She is not naturally attuned to the mechanical pressure of clocks, timetables, deadlines and schedules, as these separate her from the wisdom of her ancient primordial timeless knowing.

When she loses her connection with Mother Earth’s natural rhythms, she loses a vital part of her divinity, creating an imbalance that disrupts her menstrual cycle, her hormones, her emotions, her body and her psyche.

Woman’s natural place is in the deep, in the vastness of her being. She does not inherently belong in the world’s shallow waters. Yet she constantly struggles to retain inner balance whilst being too busy, doing too many things at once, taking care of too many people, moving too fast. Although it is her sincere delight and intrinsic joy to offer nourishment, warmth, compassion, tenderness, she will frequently over-extend and exhaust herself as an attempt to validate her existence or increase her self-esteem.

As embodiment of the Earth Mother, woman naturally loves to nurture, to give selflessly, but when she continually gives and gives and gives without receiving acknowledgement, her life quickly slips out of balance. She can graciously work in the world, she can easily embrace many tasks, but if she becomes depleted or sick through taking on too much, she loses her power, and the virtue of divine integrity or sacred purpose in whatever she is doing.

to be continued...

Copyright ~ Sophia Breillat© ~ not to be reprinted without author’s permission
Sophia is a woman who lives, writes and paints from the heart ~ she may be contacted at: wullegurra@hotmail.com

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