Have you ever made yourself small? Think about it for a second.
If you’re a woman, then I can assume that you’ll answer that question with a yes.
You’re not alone in that, I’ve been there, in fact, I used to live there.
I can distinctly remember the moment I realized that I’d been making myself (and playing) small for my entire life – in 2016 sitting in a New York City hotel room around the time when I started on my personal development journey.
I’d been living in Australia for three years and had just gone through a bad break up and was in a bit of an identity crisis asking myself; Who am I? What do I want to do with my life? Where in the world am I going to live (literally)? How on earth do I start again? I had no idea.
So I did a big thing…
and flew across the world to New York to attend a 3-day branding workshop in a community that I was new to and I didn’t know anyone. I had this feeling that it was the right thing to do and after months of feeling shitty and down, it made me feel excited and hopeful.
On the first day of the event, I walked into the event room at a hotel in the heart of New York City and I was terrified. I’d done the courageous thing and flown across the world by myself to get there but now I was there, I guess I had to show up and I didn’t want to. I met and made friends with one person the day before and they were now my safe person. Walking into the room, I stuck by their side and avoided eye contact with everyone else, especially the hosts leading the event.
Inside I wished I was invisible, I wanted to shrivel up and have the floor swallow me, I was always tried to avoid eye contact so that I wouldn’t be picked on to speak, hoping to be a silent participant. I felt uncomfortable but little did I know back then, that this is exactly what was needed to kick-start my growth journey and ultimately was the start of a series of choices that totally changed my life.
Fast forward five years…
and I have a deep understanding of why I felt like that on that day (and many other days). I’ve broken through from making myself small and hiding in life to feeling the need to be seen and show up authentically and fully self-expressed as me. I’ve gone from hiding at the back of the room to sometimes being the loudest in the room, from waiting for people to speak to me to be the one to reach out to people I want to connect with and from having big dreams that only existed in my mind to living them.
As women in this society, we’re sold this lie of feminine inferiority, we believe that we need to change ourselves, make ourselves physically smaller to take up less space to be accepted and loved, to dye our grey hairs, to inject ourselves so that you can’t tell that we’re aging, to hide the fact that we bleed, to cover our faces with makeup before we leave the house – the list goes on. To note, there is nothing wrong with any of these things, but these unattainable standards don’t exist for men, in fact, they are encouraged to make themselves physically larger to therefore take up more space.
Every woman I know…
including myself, has either; gone on a diet, called herself fat, set a ridiculously unattainable goal to make herself smaller for that special date or tried to deny or change herself in some way. So if we grow up believing that it is “better” to be physically smaller, different or like somebody else, is it any wonder that we metaphorically play small in other areas of our lives?
I’m not sharing this to make you feel down about yourself or the world, quite the opposite in fact. What I’ve shared above is just one facet that contributes to dis-embodiment, and by this I mean when we are not ‘inhabiting self’ i.e. not living in or deeply connected to our bodies.
When we place the need to belong above the need to be sincere to who we are (by physically changing ourselves, shaming ourselves or trying to fit into the mold that society makes us believe to be true) or to accept our whole selves fully, we are denying our essential truth and turning down the volume on our sensitivity as a learnt response to existing within society.
The truth is that women are fucking magical beings.
You might be thinking “you’re totally contradicting yourself now, Steph”, but stick with me.
In order to step into our authentic selves, to play full out, to show up in the world as the radiant, confident, magnetic women that we already are at our core, we need to be deeply connected to self and this requires us to be embodied, as in living in (and accepting) the body and not just the mind. (Yes, there is more to us than our mind, that ain’t the half of it).
But how do we do that?
Can we just do one practice and flick a switch on.
It starts with giving ourselves permission to embrace it all, every single part of ourselves; physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, without shaming it or trying to change it. To go to the deep dark parts of ourselves and welcome in those feelings that we’ve been trying to suppress, for years or even decades.
Because of that pain that has been shunned, those traumas that have been buried, and those feelings that have been bypassed, by doing that we stop them from being fully processed and completed and so it’s all stored within the body, blocking the flow of energy.
Those things that you might not even remember, things that in hindsight don’t seem like a big deal or things you thought you got over your body remembers, she keeps the score.
Your body is like your entire subconscious, all the data is stored in there.
As women, who are inherently feminine beings, you need to reconnect to your essence (aka your inner truth at your core) to get back to flow in the body. And in order to do that, we have to work through the shit.
Because hiding underneath all of that shit, all of that stuff that you’ve been through is the most beautiful, radiant, embodied and confident woman.
The Radiant Woman is powerful, she is a magnet to her desires and she is a force in this world.
The Embodied Woman is deeply connected to her intuition and she knows her worth, has firm boundaries and she doesn’t settle.
The Confident Woman knows what she wants and she’ll go after it and nobody can tell her not to.
This woman, she is you – she already exists within you and is waiting to be remembered and shown to the world.
If you’re ready to step into the Radiant Woman that exists within you, apply now for my 3-month program Love, Me: The Radiant Woman.
You are not broken, there is nothing wrong with you, you already have everything you need, you simply need to remember all that you already are.
Until next time, enjoy your wild ride to calm.
Steph xo