Suddenly I find myself churning inside like a troubled sea.
—Natalie Rogers
Sandra, a woman in her early forties who was suffering from extreme fatigue, came to me recently for a healing. She was married and had a two-year-old child, and she was a supervisor in a large corporation. Although Sandra loved her job, her husband, and her child, her life was extremely hectic, and she was having trouble doing all that was expected of her. She had a difficult time asking anyone, including her husband, for help. With a full-time job and primary responsibility for raising her child, Sandra still tried to be attractive at the end of the day. Yet Sandra felt guilty when she complained about her life because it was all “really very nice.”
When I channeled healing energy to her, Sandra would cry and cry. Her body felt very sad about all that was expected of her each day. Her body really wanted a break!
Her medical doctors finally discovered that she had mononucleosis and told her that she was not to work for quite some time. I believe that her illness was her body's only way of getting her to slow down and make some changes in her life. She continued to come to me for healings, and it became increasingly obvious that she needed to change some of her attitudes and beliefs about herself and what was expected of her.
Gradually, Sandra learned to delegate some of her responsibilities. She learned to say no when she felt stretched to the limit. She accepted that she had limitations, which was really difficult for her to do. She looked at her physical problem in a holistic way. What had caused her to get sick? What did it mean mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, as well as physically? She made some tremendous changes because she was open to them and to the necessary healing. As a result, Sandra healed quickly.
Let's look at what being a woman means to you. First of all, do you like being a woman? Do you like the way your life is? In general, are you happy with your role as a woman?
Are you a mother? Do you have a full-time job? Do you go to school? Are you in a relationship? Do you care for your parents or members of your family other than your children? Do you have a lot of responsibility? Do you ask for help when you need it? Are you the person you always wanted to be, or are you living the way others would like you to live?
In the past few years I find myself doing healings for more and more women caught up in “superwoman” roles. I can see what all of the stress is doing to their bodies, especially when it is coupled with unresolved issues and the emotions surrounding them. Many women are angry about their treatment by society in general and by co-workers, family members, and even other women. I've seen women with mononucleosis, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, asthma, and clinical depression. Every one of them has a very difficult schedule, juggling school, children, a full-time career, a relationship, or all of the above. They all knew before getting sick that they should slow down, make changes in their lives, delegate some of their responsibilities. But they just kept pushing themselves until they became physically sick.
Over the past few years I have also seen many women who are having trouble getting pregnant. One woman in her thirties was a very busy professional. She was also in school finishing her postgraduate studies. She and her new husband had just purchased a home, a fixer-upper, and were trying to get pregnant but with no luck.
I remember psychically looking inside her body, trying to get some information that would help with her inability to conceive. Her body said to me:
No way! I will not get pregnant. I'm already exhausted. I can only handle so much and right now I'm stressed to the limit with tight schedules and heavy demands on me. Tell her I will get pregnant only when there is a change in our lifestyle and I'm not expected to do so much all the time.
Her body also shared its fear concerning her husband's ambivalence about being a parent. It was afraid she was going to have to do all the parenting herself. Her body said there was a great deal to be figured out and changed before it would open itself up to a baby.
It is my belief that many of the health challenges women are having today are directly related to their role as women. It's very difficult for many women to say no, to put themselves at the top of their own priority lists. It's difficult for them to delegate responsibilities to others or to accept their own limitations. It is difficult for them to receive rather than always give.
For this reason it is more important than ever to take a very close look at our expectations for ourselves, the expectations of others, and how these expectations may be causing us some physical problems.
Perhaps one of the most difficult areas for women to resolve and to integrate into their lives in a healthy way is their sexuality. I have done several healings over the years for women who are struggling with being sexual. Usually these issues manifest themselves physically through the following:
Anna, a twenty-five-year-old art student, came to me for an intense two-and-a-half-hour healing. She wanted to be free of her negative feelings around sexuality. When I psychically looked at Anna's body, her negative attitudes, beliefs, and feelings were in her breasts. I saw images of past lives when she had bound up her breasts to hide them. There were feelings of shame around being a woman. She said that in this life she would often wear a very restricting bra to make her look smaller. She was trying to hide her femaleness.
John, my spirit guide, said that her negative attitudes and beliefs around her sexuality, her femaleness, her wants and desires as a woman, and her sexual needs were all issues she came into this lifetime to heal. Anna cried a lot during our sessions. I could feel the energy healing past-life pain. Many past-life images came to her as I channeled the energy.
It was an incredible healing! Anna told me that she was convinced that the healings, along with working on her emotional issues with her therapist, had saved her from developing breast cancer. She said that ever since her breasts began to develop, she could feel an inner tenseness about them. It was as if she wished that they weren't there.
I have also seen numerous women struggle with their lack of sexual desires. One such woman was Maria, a fifty-two-year-old woman who came in for healings of a recurring bladder infection. Maria told me that her husband really got on her nerves. She always felt angry with him. She didn't want to have sex with him, but didn't want to appear frigid either. So her body created a monthly bladder problem. This condition had continued for more than a year. The payoff was that her husband not only didn't ask her to have sex but was nice to her each time that she got another infection.
For Maria's healings to be complete, she had to address the issues she had with her husband by talking them out. I told her that if her bladder healed without resolving these issues, their emotional root would manifest in some other physical way. But Maria chose to keep the bladder issues rather than to examine her issues with her husband. She simply refused to go to the root of her problem.
I had another client, a flight attendant named Abby, who felt extremely bitter toward her ex-husband. They had met on a flight, and at first she had been drawn to his commanding personality. But shortly after they were married, he began wanting to have a lot of kinky sex, and intercourse with him, which she had previously enjoyed, began to disgust her. She felt that it was her duty to have sex with him, so she never said no. Eventually, she was able to leave him.
After they had been divorced for a few months, Abby began suffering from a lot of pain inside her vagina. It was very red and swollen, and constantly itched.
John told me that Abby was just as angry at herself for not saying no as she was toward her ex-husband for wanting kinky sex. She needed to forgive both of them. Abby's healing process was long and painful. She cried on and off for weeks, which was very necessary. As we were healing layers of memories, other memories from her childhood surfaced. She had blocked out sexual abuse by her grandfather. This also needed to be healed.
As a woman, it is easy for me to identify with others’ struggles around their sexuality. I believe that the sexual abuse I experienced as a child, as well as the double messages I got about being female, were the emotional roots of most of my female problems. Like many of the women I have seen over the years with the same or similar issues, I didn't want to be sexual, so my body created problems to use as an excuse. I have also seen women who have guilt about enjoying themselves sexually or who are not married and feel guilty about having sex. Their bodies created vaginal problems as a form of self-punishment.
Looking at issues around sex can really be tough. I had been in therapy on and off for years, had talked about my confusion around sex, had talked about the sexual abuse. But until I was in my thirties I never really felt my anger or rage or sadness around these experiences. When I was twenty-nine, I went into surgically induced menopause after having a total hysterectomy. My ovaries, my fallopian tubes, my uterus, and my cervix were covered with benign tumors.
Today, I know that my reproductive organs had stored all of my feelings of rage, anger, sadness, hopelessness, resentment, and self-pity around being a woman. These unresolved feelings turned into benign tumors. I think my body was saying, “Echo, I can't or don't want to be a dumping ground for all of your negative feelings anymore.”
Shortly after the hysterectomy, I went into a severe depression and suffered from several physical and emotional symptoms, which I later realized was menopause: hot flashes, nervousness, paranoia, anxiety, forgetfulness, and insomnia. Until I was put on the correct dosage of hormone replacement, every day was a nightmare. This actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I went back into therapy and really began looking at all of my issues around my sexuality and being a woman.
Most women I have known or done healings for have found it difficult to look at their feelings about being a woman. Are you having any recurring female problems, that is, trouble with any area of your body that identifies you as a woman or that has anything to do with your sexuality? Can you identify your feelings about being sexual? Perhaps going back to chapter 7 will help you identify them. You'll have an opportunity to do more work on this topic in the journal work section at the end of this chapter.
You deserve a happy, productive, stress-free, joy-filled life— not because of how hard you work or how good you look. You deserve it just because you are you. It is your birthright.
If you are a woman and don't like it, if you are having difficulty with your role as a woman, or if you are having difficulty with your sexuality, you have suffered long enough. It's time to start healing. It's time to get free from this pain. The process will probably not be any more painful than the pain with which you already live. And once you have gone through it, you'll be free of it. The pain will end.
My belief is that, as women, we are fortunate. We can find ways to have it all, all meaning anything we want—career, family, creativity, education, our own income, our own spirituality, rewarding friendships, fulfilling relationships. Society's attitude, in general, is changing toward women. More and more doors open for us each day.
But we can't have it all if we don't feel good.
Exercise 1
Your Feelings about Being a Woman
In your journal, write down your feelings about being a woman. It can be most helpful to go back to the list in chapter 7. Write down what you feel about women in general and about your own role as a woman. What expectations do you have as a woman? Write down everything that comes to mind, allowing yourself to free-associate as you do.
Exercise 2
Your Sexuality
Part A
Look at your feelings around your sexuality. Are you sexually active? How do you feel about it? Are you not sexually active? How do you feel about that?
Record your responses in your journal.
Ask yourself if there are any parts of your body that are feeling fearful or tense right now. Write those down and describe what you are experiencing.
Part C
Are there any questions you are hoping I won't ask? What are they and why are you hoping I won't ask?
Exercise 3
Connecting Feelings to Physical Problems
Do you see any connection between your attitudes and beliefs about being a woman, your sexuality, and any physical problems you may be having? Please write these down in your journal.
Exercise 4
Inner-Child Work
Put your pencil or pen in your nondominant hand and ask your inner child how it feels about being female. Don't edit its thoughts and feelings. Let it be as expressive as possible.
Now ask it to write how it feels about sex. Ask it if it has any memories of being hurt by someone sexually.
Remember, its answers will be different from yours. Its words or pictures may be different from the ones you would use, but that doesn't matter. Just let it express itself so that you can get to the bottom of any memories that might be hiding inside.
The Adult You
Once I became honest with myself and my therapist about the rage I felt, and began releasing the negative and hurtful feelings I had around being sexual, I began to heal. I began to see the positive aspects of being a woman. We are beautiful, creative, spontaneous, passionate, loving, nurturing, playful, delightful human beings.
Part A
Write down in your journal your positive feelings and beliefs about being a woman. If you don't presently have any, move on to part B.
Part B
Write down what you hope you will one day feel about being a woman.