What It Really Means to be Fiercely Feminine

What does it mean to be fiercely feminine? You're going to hear a lot of talk and words, especially, probably more in the holistic or spiritual community about healing the divine feminine. I've been in this energy for a couple years. It has been an intense part of my own healing process and I want to invite you just to consider with me today.

Come on a journey with me, stepping into the curiosity of what it actually means to be in our own feminine energy. And this is for men and women, by the way, and maybe become more curious about the healthy balance of that energy and what that means.

If you are a woman who wants to show up and do her best, who knows she's here for a purpose, wants to create something amazing, wants to be strong and fierce and nurturing all at the same time. What does that look like? What does that mean? What does the healthy, divine feminine mean? What are the different feminine archetypes? Why do they matter? Do we all have them? And what are the shadows of each archetype? That's what we're going to dive into today.

I'm pretty passionate about this topic as this has been one of my probably deepest core wounds in my own personal life. And I tend to attract women that are struggling with the same attachment to their role and identity of how they see themselves as a woman and what it means to be a strong and confident woman and what it doesn't mean.

Many of the women that I have worked with over the past eleven years of coaching have been extraordinary, amazing, accomplished, successful, giving, loving, nurturing women. All the things, whether it was in the way that they consciously parented their children and went above and beyond in many ways, or in their own thriving business, whatever that was, or whether it was through their college education and becoming a doctor or a lawyer or a Navy jet fighter pilot. I've had the pleasure of working with all types of women. And we are in a time where we are being invited to really take a step back and think about how we want to show up.

So I was born in 1977. I am in the generation of women who I can remember when I was in high school in the 90s, just the idea that women couldn't really fly jets was mind boggling to me. I was just like, well, why not? Why can't we do everything that men can do? Because we can do it. You're just not letting us. So keep in mind that some of you are going to be a little bit younger and some of you may be a little bit older. And a lot of our beliefs have to come with what we've experienced, what we've been through, and that is how our beliefs have formed.

So I just want to take a minute to sit in my deepest, deepest, deepest, deepest gratitude for everything that the women that came before me endured and went through so that I could have the experiences that I did.

And as I move forward, and I want to invite each of you to do the same as we move forward as parents, as teachers for this next generation of women as the community. If we as women can come together in community to be teachers of wisdom, if we can do it from love and not from our wounds, the world is going to be a better place. And that's what we need.

If we can parent from our gifts and not our wounds, if we can teach from that place, if we can lead from that place, if we can collaborate from that place. Because there are a lot of deep, deep wounds in the feminine and in sisterhood. And I'm going to talk about some of those today.

I'm the mother of two daughters, and this is still happening and it's more important than ever. I am now witnessing the incredible energy of healthy masculine stepping forward and helping the feminine to heal before all of the women are ready and willing to support the energy of this. This is really about inviting you through information and experience to just notice what role you want to play in this? What do you notice about yourself? You may or may not be able to relate to everything that I share because we've all had different experiences.

Maybe not the experience itself, but maybe the feeling. Was there ever a time in your life, depending on what generation you were born into, where you struggled with your worth as a woman? 

I know I did for most of my life. And struggling with my worth as a woman. I didn't really even think of it consciously that way because it was more about, like, proving myself as a woman. But there's nothing to prove. But I thought that there was. I can remember being the only girl on a baseball team. You told me I couldn't play baseball. Softball was for girls. I played baseball. I was the only girl on my hockey team. I was the only girl on my soccer team. I could have played on a girls team, but I played on the boys team because I just had this desire to prove my self worth as a woman. I didn't want to believe, and I didn't believe that I was anything less because I was a woman.

And now, what's so interesting, if you look at these young girls coming in, they already know that. They know that they are worthy as women, if not more, because of the foundation and the work that we have done before them. That then led me to go to a military academy with 7% women. And I enrolled in 1995. Well, the first woman graduated in 1979. And so here we are 25 years later, after I went in. And it had been less than 20 years since the first woman was enrolled. And not a lot has changed. It's changing very, very slowly. 20 years is a long time in my life, in your life, in a woman's life, but not a long time in the history of change. Think about that.

Think about all the changes that women have gone through. It takes a community, a tribe, to create big changes in the world, doesn't it? Just think about that for a second. So it begins with us. How we want to be treated is how we show up. The energy that we hold, that's how we're going to be treated. If we want to be looked at and held and embodied in our worth, then we have to know it. It has nothing to do with how we look. It doesn't have anything to do with our performance. It doesn't have anything to do with our results or how much money we make. And quite honestly, we are in a system where we're still trying to own our worth in some of that. In other words, women still do get paid less than men. 

I graduated from a military academy as a mechanical engineer, and I knew I got paid less than all my male counterparts. And when I asked my boss why, his response was, well, women typically take maternity leave, and that costs the company money. Oh, okay, you mean we get to have children for our families and we are entering a new world. What I have seen in my generation is that we were very much the generation of still proving we could do everything that men could do. And so we have.

Now a lot of my friends are the breadwinners. They're doctors and lawyers and having kids. And so now what? Now we've done it all. And are we happy? Are you happy? You're highly educated, making great money, and you have kids. Are you spending the time that you want with your kids? Is that what you wanted? But we're stepping into a new time. You can create what you want. The pandemic showed us that, and some of us knew this before the pandemic. We were already aligned with creating what we wanted, intentionally stepping out of the conforms and structures of corporate America or other forms of structures that we've been living under the illusion of. I am witnessing more and more men and women stepping into trust, figuring out what they want, and creating the life first, the life of their dreams, followed by the career or dream that they hold true, not from a place of scarcity like I learned.

I can remember I was going to be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer, because I needed to make money and I needed to provide and I could. I was lucky that I was living in a time where women could do that. You know what? I got an engineering degree. It did not make me happy, and I certainly didn't make any more money working corporate. I make way more money now, doing what I love, than I did for corporate America, working with women. 

So what does it mean to be fiercely feminine? What are the qualities of the feminine? The qualities of the feminine include intuition, nourishment, connection, receiving, creativity, joy, grace, flow, softness, growth. You think about the qualities of the sacral chakra, the sacral womb. All of those qualities exist within that. Abundance and prosperity. Thriving and growth. 

Like you think about the fact that we have babies and immediately we can nurse them with breast milk. That's just natural abundance. Our body's aligned with that. Our feminine energy is aligned with the energy of abundance. But it's all about receiving. Receiving and allowing. And so what are some of the unhealthy qualities that we've been living in?

Hustle, grinding, proving, competition, comparison. Those are some of the unhealthy qualities of the feminine. And so it might sound like I'm being a little bit judgmental. I'm not making it right or wrong. I'm just noticing what has come up. Exclusion.  There's a lot of wounding around sisterhood when it comes to division. What makes us different when actually we're more alike than we are different? 

So I want to invite you just to think back and reflect on your life. Noticing your relationship to the feminine usually starts with mom and just noticing. What is your relationship to the feminine? What is your belief around? Who was there or who was not there to help you heal your relationship with becoming a woman? You. What are the qualities of the feminine that are easy for you? What are the qualities that you struggle with? What core wound do you notice around the feminine, and how has it showed up in your life? What are the survival strategies that you've created that have impacted your relationships with the people in your life? Might have had to do with mom or a sister or a friend. Is there a relationship in your life around the feminine that needs healing? Is there someone that you need to forgive? Maybe there was a mean girl in middle school. Maybe something was said to you about your body image, or maybe you were kicked out of a tribe, right? These things still happen, even as adults. I mean, it's crazy, but it happens. Like, women are still rejecting and kicking out, and that still happens.

We think about the history of true nations and tribes, of the indigenous people, and they were very matriarchal. And so how did that become broken? When did it stop that the feminine matriarch was the center, was the tree of life and the knowledge and the wisdom keepers? And so somehow that started to change. 

And so just reflecting in your own life, like, how did this show up for you? What is your relationship to the feminine and mom and sisters and friendships? What is the core belief or wound that shows up around that? What are the different type of archetypes? 

So when we're younger, right, we have a certain personality. We have the maiden who's super playful, super curious, always wanting to have fun. And then sometimes at some point in time, she learns that maybe it's not safe to be fun. And curious and even flirtatious. I know I did. You can't be that way at a military academy. It's not safe. That was my belief. That's true. Some raw truth here. 

And after that, we have grown into being a woman. So the Venus archetype, where we really start to embody ourselves as sexual beings, as beautiful women, and our bodies start to change, and then we become the mother energy, where we become mothers, we become nurturing. And even if we don't become physical mothers, maybe we have pets, maybe we have nieces and nephews. Maybe we're mother to the earth. But we have this mother energy that comes to us.

And we also have our Kali energy, our Kali archetype, our shadow archetype, and work. The part that sometimes we judge or we don't lean into, the part of us that's rebellious or has experiences, anger or wants to reject or resist. The part of us that wants to be selfish. That shadow work that we can lean into, which includes our core wounds.

And then we have the crone energy that we eventually, in the later part of our life, that we step into, the wisdom. And so just noticing for a moment, where are you? What archetype phase of your life are you in now? What are you welcoming in? What are your beliefs around each of the archetypes? What are your beliefs about your body? What are your beliefs about how you show up as a woman? What's available to you? How is that shifting? Is it shifting for you?

The truth is that for a great part of my life, I actually subconsciously resented being a woman because I found that it made things difficult. I found that it made things that there was more resistance that I had to come across. I've been fired. I was fired off of a ship for being a woman. I've definitely been mistreated in more than one way many, many times, and couldn't really be true to myself because my true self wanted to be playful and fun and got voted best sense of humor in high school. Then all of a sudden, you can't do that when there's 7% women or you're the only woman on a ship. So just, I know many of you can't relate to that, but maybe you're in another masculine profession, maybe the media or the medical system or as a lawyer, but still, there are many systems in this country, in the world, that are very paternal, very patriarchal. And so it's important to also notice your relationship with the masculine in order to heal the feminine.

So what does it mean to be fiercely feminine? Well, I've completely reframed that whole idea. I've completely rewritten it. So fiercely feminine doesn't mean fierce in the way that I used to think it did. It doesn't mean doing. Doing, hustling, grinding, proving myself, being a badass, being super strong, and doing all the things it actually means. 

Surrender. It's the opposite. Being fiercely feminine is an act of surrender. It's taking a step back, allowing myself to be nourished by the earth, by love, by light, by food, by relationships, allowing myself to be like part of the garden, just growing and nurtured, witnessing the world around me as if I was mother Earth, witnessing the seasonal changes, witnessing the change of the lunar cycle. I'm witnessing the changes around me, and I'm taking a step forward from a place of nourished alignment. Before I take action, I ask myself, is this in alignment with me? Is it the right time? Does it have to be me? And then I open it to receive. I let go of attachment, and I open to receive. 

The healthy feminine is not the doer. It is the teacher who stands back and witnesses that doesn't speak but allows space for change. That's called grace. When you allow grace, when you let go of the attachment, the need to control, the need to hustle and grind, and you step back and you open up to grace, to source to God, to whatever that is for you. For me, it's God, which I say grace because it's the feminine energy. Open up to receive. Allow yourself to be in the magical flow of life.

The feminine flow is cyclical. The masculine is a structure. We live in a very masculine world and we need that. We need structure. It helps us to feel safe. It helps us to take aligned action and get things done. It helps us to feel organized, it helps to get things done. So it does take a balance.

I want to invite you to just reflect and think about your relationship with your feminine qualities within you. Think about what you might be willing to give space to, what you might be willing to let go of, which archetype you identify with right now, which one needs more attention.

If you haven't spent a lot of time with yourself as Venus or as the crone or as the maiden, if you haven't had enough fun, if you haven't allowed yourself to feel sexy, all the things, spend time with her. Give yourself permission and grace to live more in the flow of life.

I take aligned action from a place of intention. I give myself permission to allow things to take longer than I think they're going to. Sometimes I have to do things over. Sometimes I get distracted by my busyness, which is out of alignment. But I am more prosperous and abundant with time, with money, with love and support than I ever have been.

We come together, we collaborate, expand and grow together. It's just beautiful. And if you think, like back in the day, the matriarchal tribes, that's what we did. There was the woman who taught the children to garden, the woman who taught the children to sow, the medicine woman, the leader, the wisdom keeper. When did we stop living in community? When did we stop living as a tribe? When did we start thinking we had to do it all? That is not fiercely feminine. Doing it all, it's overrated and it's an old paradigm.

So I'm going to invite you to let it go. Because the truth is, underneath, you don't really want to do it all. You don't. I'm betting. I'm betting you don't really want to do it all. You actually want somebody else to do it for you. You don't want to take care of everybody and everything you're wearing. That is not a badge of honor. It's a badge of exhaustion and overwhelm and perfectionism.

I'm going to invite you to just get really clear on where did this come from? Are you willing to let go of it? Because for some of us, it's hard to let go of because we've identified with it for so long. It's been such an amazing survivor strategy. It's led us to accomplish amazing things that it's hard to think about letting go of it. But I'm telling you, on the other side is freedom. Freedom and liberation and abundance and prosperity and joy and peace and health and well being. Sisterhood, connection, community. 

Let them give yourself permission. Let go and let God. Let go and let grace.

P.S.

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Jen Mons is an author, speaker, mentor and coach for high achieving purpose driven ready to shift the paradigm of feminine leadership and redefine excellence and wealth through 5 Element Wellth, Prosperity, Journaling and Soul Wisdom Imprinting.