The Fire Inside

a reference point in all religious traditions with a prominent feminine presence is an integration of spirit and matter, spirit and the body, which leads to spirituality being inseparable from daily life and to the divine as immanent rather than transcendent.

With this stage comes a deep yearning for wholeness—bringing together the ego and the deeper parts of the self; integrating mind, body, and soul; cultivating both the feminine and masculine parts within; being whole in relation to others; and repairing our broken relationship with life and nature.

I speak to some of the greatest female thinkers every day as a job. Some observations:
- all struggle with not being taken seriously, ALL of them
- women never fully know when someone is helping or using them - women never know if someone just likes them as a person
- women seem hireable; many men see you as a future hire as opposed to a leader or

A feminine-centric recovery paradigm assumes that you are already whole and perfect; it is not you who is broken but the system; you are the expert on your own life, and therefore you make the template, and you make the rules.

To pursue as a woman is to instigate. The word “agency” gets thrown around, but it feels wrung of any glamour or excitement. The woman is chasing. She asks, “What do I want?” Sometimes the answer doesn’t come right away or maybe the destination is far off—like scenes of dinners al fresco, or a life of leisure filled with curb-to-car shoes. The

“In our yearning to be perfect, we have mistaken perfection for wholeness. We think we cannot love ourselves until we and others meet some external standard. Depression, anxiety—in fact, most neuroses and compulsions—are ultimately a defense against loving ourselves without condition. We are afraid to look at the damp, dark, ugly yet exquisite

When women got into positions of power, they calibrated and recalibrated tenderness and strength, modulating and correcting. Power and love didn’t often live side by side.