Why Women Need Men…

Or at least they think they do.

If I had a nickel for every woman who asked me why she would always lose herself in her relationship with a man, I would be a rich woman. Hell, I would be a rich woman if I had a nickel for every relationship I lost myself in. Ha!…I wish that was a paying job!

It’s a strange phenomenon. It at least seems to be a phenomenon. It doesn’t matter how smart, how successful, how old, or even how accomplished a woman is. She will still become completely lost in the man that she is seeing. Often she will find it hard to concentrate, she will obsess over how often he calls or doesn’t call. I have even known successful business women that have sabotaged their own business while in a relationship.

Women have so many more opportunities now than they did even 50 years ago. We now have the right to vote, the right to go to college, we can have just about any job, and many of us are entrepreneurs. But somehow we still have the notion that we need a man. Of course for some women it’s because the internal clock is ticking but for many others they still feel that need even though they have their babies.

We have all seen smart, successful women in powerful positions take seemingly completely self-sabotaging actions to get or to be with a man. We’ve watched our girlfriends walk in a state of foggy denial as she dates a complete loser. Perhaps you have also awoke within the fog after denying so much of what others were trying to tell you. And that’s not to mention what your own intuition was telling you.

As I said before it seems like a phenomenon, but it’s not really. Every person in our society is affected by the societal stories, history, and beliefs. Although women have enjoyed a great deal of increased “rights” they still live in a patriarchal society in which men still have more rights than women. Although, legally women have more rights, in many of our leading religions women remain the second class citizen.

I speak primarily about Christianity, as I am most familiar with it, but make no mistake, many, if not all patriarchal religions, blame women for the creation of evil. In Christianity, Eve was punished for eating the apple from the tree of knowledge. After which, Eve and all woman kind is punished by God. The implication of this story is that woman has disappointed God. This now, often manifests in the psyche of girls, creating feelings that she is a disappointment to her own earthly father.

This rejection first by God and now by her father will often cause women to have a compelling need for approval from men. When daddy doesn’t provide the love, acceptance and approval that they need as little girls (and few do) they seek it in boys. You can still see it today as younger and younger girl’s dress more provocatively to attract  male attention. Girls and women can be coerced into sex, crime, drugs, prostitution, pornography and even murder to heal the wound of being rejected by God, then by daddy. Many times girls and even women will do almost anything just to feel loved and accepted by a man.

This burden of rejection has been carried by our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers and so on, it’s no wonder that we find ourselves compelled to please men, to do anything to make them love us. This biblical story said to be inspired by God was merely to protect and justify keeping women dependent and powerless. We have been lied to about God’s intentions in creating us and how God feel’s about us as women.

If women are to reclaim their true power of the Divine Feminine and create the relationship with a lover that honors and respects both parties she must heal her relationship with her God, her father and her Self.

As always I would love to read your comments. Please leave a note.

Are you ready to heal that relationship?

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Are You Bound by Guilt?

Women experience a lot of guilt.  Many have heard me say that guilt is poison.  It’s a poison that we must stop taking and giving to those around us. Guilt makes us do things we don’t want to do.  Our children get away with more when we feel guilty.  We say yes, to people, not just our children, when we want to say no in order to avoid guilt.

Guilt has been used for millennia to control people, especially women.  Organized religion is a, if not THE, major perpetrator of guilt affliction.  This has caused women a great deal of suffering.  A portion of the population cannot suffer without causing the whole to suffer.  When women suffer, men suffer, as do our children.

As thinking individuals we must demote the many stories of the Bible, especially the Old Testament, from the literal word of God to allegories at best and to stories concocted to support the agendas of the politics of the time, at worst.

Certainly as a result of our evolution we know logically that man and woman did not fall from grace by eating fruit from a tree.  It was simply a story created to explain our perceived separation from God.  Nor can we believe that woman was created from Adams rib.  That was a story created to explain woman’s subjugation to man.  Honestly, these stories (and more) go far beyond asking for my faith, they insult my intelligence.

Stating that many of the Biblical stories were probably more influenced by politics and the selfish, power hungry agendas of the writers of the day does not preclude the existence of a Divine Intelligence that some may call God.  But it does preclude the existence of a punishing, judgmental, human-like god that would curse humankind with guilt and shame.

It’s unjust that such stories of woman’s subjugation and guilt have become so embodied within her as to manifest as painful childbirth, painful menstruation, difficult menopause and even as breast cancer and cancers of other female organs. The rejection of the Feminine is also manifested for women as a fear of her intuition and her instincts.  Women have become indecisive, fearing that their decisions will somehow harm those they care about.  As depicted in the Biblical eating of the apple story portrays.

We all have stories that define who we are.  The biblical and other religious stories are Universal and create a culture of rape and violence against women.  These stories and many others that I have not mentioned give men a sense of entitlement over our bodies and our energy.  Often we give them this entitlement to earn the love we lost when Eve followed her instincts and ate of the tree of knowledge, only to supposedly disappoint God and to curse all of humanity.

The Divine Feminine is walking the Earth.  In order fully embody Her, we must heal the wounds of patriarchy.  We must rewrite the stories of creation for ourselves and redefine our relationships with men.  Releasing the shame and guilt that have been forced upon us is paramount to our healing along with the healing of the rapes of our bodies and our spirits.  We must heal the abuses of our gifts of intuitive wisdom, healing by nature, and nurture. We must re-write the stories that have defined us and made us guilty and shameful.

I believed it when the Dalai Lama said that it would be the western woman that would save the world.  But it is our healing that will precede our saving the world.

Blessings,

Michelle Lee

PS… Ready for that healing? Check out my Personalized EFT and Hypnosis MP3 Sessions!

Self-Sacrifice is Selfish!

Consciously, we all set out to serve our families or friends with the best of intentions.    But for many of us, somewhere and somehow the energy shifts. It begins with the energy of loving generosity but eventually can become an egoic need.  Stick with me here and I’ll explain.

Go back in time, just imagine when you were a first time mom and your baby showed a preference for you.  Wasn’t that an awesome feeling?  I remember it well too, with all of my babies.  Because I was the primary caregiver, my children wanted my attention the most.  It feels really good to be needed.  For many of us, that was our first experience of really feeling important or significant.

If you’re not a mom but you’re a career woman, you can go back in time and recall the first time when your co-workers or even boss couldn’t do something without you. Maybe they had to call you on vacation or in the middle of the night to find out something only you knew. Remember how great that felt (although annoying)?  They needed YOU!

Feeling needed is an important part of our lives. We like to feel needed. It gives us a sense of purpose which is necessary for our overall happiness and fulfillment.  But it can shift into being less about love and purpose and more about validating ourselves.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re a mom, working woman, or both.  When service becomes about validating you(all self-sacrifice is, because we can serve without sacrifice) everyone is losing, even those you believe you are sacrificing for.

We can become so dependent on the validation that we receive from others needing us, that we sacrifice ourselves in order to get that approval fix.  We will allow our bosses, co-workers and especially our family to monopolize our time and energy, simply because part of us has become addicted to them needing us.  We begin to believe that only we can do the task “right”. This belief makes victims out of us and them!

It’s a lose/lose situation.  You lose your self…literally.  You don’t have the time, freedom, or the energy to allow joy, fun or fulfillment in your life.  You must make yourself available for everyone.  Because only YOU can do it right.  That leaves no break for you.  You can’t be away from the family for long…because who knows what will happen or the mess you will come home to.  I know you’ve said those words before, because I have too.

But your children lose BIG time, because they lose the opportunities to build confidence in their ability to do for themselves.  They also lose the opportunity to build a sense of independence because you are always there for them.  They lose the ability to know that they are responsible for their happiness…not you.  Your need to be needed actually makes them need you. And fair warning…when you teach them to need you, they don’t suddenly stop needing you when they turn 18 or 21 or even 25.  It’s a very unhealthy situation for the entire family.

For the working woman who sacrifices for her boss and her co-workers, everyone can sense your insecurities and you will eventually be replaced by someone who knows her worth. Most places want employees who are smart and confident…not just a push over.  When you know your worth, you will express that worth in the workplace.  You will produce bigger and better.  You won’t have to sacrifice yourself to be noticed.

When we tell ourselves that we must sacrifice ourselves for our jobs or our family so they will be happy, we are lying.  The truth is our self-sacrifice is more about OUR need to be validated and approved of by others.  We have been told for eons just how noble it is to be self-less and generous to no end.  It’s a lie that we will continue to perpetuate until we stop the sacrifice.  I invite you to stop giving yourself away to be loved and accepted.  Your love and acceptance begins within you.

When you give from a place of self-love and self-acceptance you model that for your children and they will be able to love and accept themselves, giving them a powerful foundation from which to be the best they can be.  Otherwise you are crippling them making them need approval from others.

Coming from self-love and self-acceptance in the workplace will make you stand out as most people do not really love and accept themselves.  Business is changing and manipulation doesn’t work the way it used to. Authentically caring about your clients, co-workers and boss is the only way to succeed.  This is only possible if you have a foundation of self-love and self-acceptance.

Today, begin loving and accepting yourself as you are right now!

Blessings,

Michelle Lee

Radical Self-Care Mentoring Program

Do You Time Travel?

I know, it sounds like a science fiction movie.  Time travel movies are my favorite.  I love, love the idea of being able to move forward and backward in time to manipulate events.  The work I do with clients involves a little bit of traveling across the waves of time.

You do it too, you know?

Each time you focus your mind on anything but the present you are time traveling.  Do you ever find yourself thinking about the past or focusing your thoughts on future events?

When you do this you are time traveling.  The mind cannot differentiate between actually being in that time or imagining it.  So when you are imagining the future or the past the mind is living it as if it’s real, which is why you can become emotional.

What is happening in the present when you have traveled to another time?

It continues to tick, tock, tick, tock on by…with or without your conscious presence.  When you are distracted, you feel as though time speeds up for you.  When you are not in the now you are either in the past or the future, completely missing the now.

Distraction shrinks time!!!

The more distractions we have the faster time passes.  You can master your time and increase your productivity by staying in the moment.

Save your time travel expeditions for therapeutic reasons and amplify your joy by remaining firmly planted in your now.  Take a moment to cherish your child’s laughter and silliness, the compliment you received from your spouse, or the lunch with your girlfriends.  You’ll be amazed at how time expands for you.

Blessings!

Michelle Lee

Get off the cross, we need the wood!

I was watching Oprah the other day as she was interviewing Wynona Judd.  Judd made a profound statement about losing weight and taking care of herself.  She said that she had forgotten to put herself on her priority list.  She also stated that now that she had finally made herself a priority she was happier, more peaceful and more confident than she had ever been.�

If you’re a woman and especially if you’re a woman with children you know how hard it can be to make yourself a priority. We are literally taught that it’s more noble to put everyone else first and taking what is left over for ourselves.  More often than not though, there is nothing left.  As a result we become exhausted, overweight, depressed, angry and even resentful.  All of this eventually turns to guilt because we believe that we’re doing a lousy job and everyone else seems to have it together so much better than we do.�

As little girls we learned that we are to be pleasing and helpful.  Not to mention that the happiness of our loved ones depends solely on our ability to love and care for them.  Eventually this becomes our greatest sacrifice and we begin to trade our happiness for theirs.  We become the good martyr acting as if our love for them is greater than our own needs and thinking erroneously that it should be.    All the while in the back of our minds we have the belief and desire that some day, sooner than later, hopefully, that everyone will thank us for our sacrifices. �

As a mother of grown children let me give you a heads up…you will never be thanked for your sacrifices!   �

Primarily because nobody realizes that you’re sacrificing anything.  All that they see is that you are doing what you want to do because you want to do it.  And if you tell them that you are sacrificing anything for their happiness they will be offended.  Nobody, not our children nor our partners want to be responsible for our happiness, disappointment or sacrifice. �

Get off the cross, we need the wood!

� In other words your sacrifice serves no one.  Not your family and certainly not you.  Sacrificing always leads to resentment. Later when you want recognition for all you did and all you gave up, they will resent you right back.   �

Think about it for a moment.  Do you really want to be a person that someone you love gave up their desires and needs for in order to make you happy?  I’m betting you don’t.  We simply cannot be nor do we want to be responsible for another’s happiness.    �

You must put you at the top of your priority list!  Nobody can do it for you.  What’s the worst that could happen?  Your kids may develop some independence and as a result, greater self-confidence.  Maybe your family will get to know you as the creative, joyful woman you used to be.  Maybe you’ll laugh more together.  You can have it all.  You can even have it all, all at once…and the bonus NO GUILT!

Now is the time to finally put you at the top of your priority list.  Are you so busy that you can’t see a way to have time for yourself?  Are you afraid of what your family will say if you become a priority?  I would love to help you redesign your life so that you can make time for you without taking anything away from your family.  Register for your Radical Self Care package now. �

How many more days, weeks, months or even years are you willing to live in exhaustion, anger, and resentment?�

 Improve the quality of your life.� Radical Self Care.   �

Joyfully,

Michelle Lee