Empathy: The Greatest Superpower of the Feminine

Sometimes I feel torn between wanting to disconnect from the media and turn away from the pain I feel from current events, while at the same time leaning into my increasing heart rate and palpable anger over the negative forces alive in our world. This past week was no different. And “leaning in” has won out — yet again.

As I, like many of you, learned that our government was taking children away from their parents at the border, I wanted to collapse and shut it all out. Instead, I was swept up by the collective outrage of so many people. Now I feel more alive than ever, with a renewed clarity of purpose and a hopefulness stemming from the undeniable power of our connected voices.

It’s easy to become despondent when we are alone and feeling alienated from the rest of the world. In fact, the patriarchy has traditionally drawn much of its power from separating people and creating strong divisive lines in areas of gender, race, economics and political ideas. This kind of bullying, top-down negative reinforcement, and abuse of power has been the norm in cultures where the masculine is out of balance with the feminine.

Now all of life is suffering. What we see happening with refugees seeking asylum at the border is a metaphor for our current global crisis: Humanity has become separate from our primary caregiver — our true Mother, the Earth herself. The aching in our hearts as we hear the cries of children reaching for their parents echo the pain of separation we feel for the loss of the Feminine on our planet. And we need Her; we cannot survive without Her.

Empathy is the greatest superpower of the Feminine. May we not be drained by the strength of our emotions, the depth of our compassion, and the lengths that we must travel to fight for Her rightful place in our world. Eve Ensler could not have said it better:

“I think what I’ve learned is that every time I say something I’m not supposed to say and every time I’m willing to look at something or feel something, there’s incredible freedom that comes — even if there’s sorrow attached to it. Even if there’s despair attached to it, even if there’s a responsibility attached to it, there’s enormous freedom. It’s a big question. How do we say Wake UP and make awakening a beautiful thing?” 

Lean in and feel; then speak up, vote, and gather with others. Connect with and love as many people as you can. Now is not a time to be stingy! It is the intimacy of our relationships that will remind us what we are fighting for.

It’s not going to be comfortable, it’s not going to be easy, and we are just at the beginning – but we have each other.

And we are, each of us, FIRED UP. Collectively? Unstoppable.

Big Love,

Chantal Pierrat | Founder, Emerging Women

Janet Mock: How Speaking Your Truth Increases Your Power

We are all emerging. We are working to manifest an outer life that aligns and resonates with our deepest and most true inner selves. Some emergences may be more physically obvious than others, but the priciples behind them remain the same. It takes trust, courage, and community to emerge.

Janet Mock is a model of all three traits. Her transition was superpowered by her belief that she knew herself, and no one could tell her otherwise. She trusted that inner voice, had the courage to speak it aloud, and shared her story in her book Redefining Realness, a trans girl’s coming of age memoir, to serve as a blueprint for others. That’s radical authenticity, and it has the power to make meaningful impact in the world.

At the end of her engaging Emerging Women podcast, we asked Janet what she would say to women who are no longer willing to compromise their inner truths for outside audiences.

This is how Janet answered:

“All of us, everyday, are fighting so hard to take off the masks that we were trained to put on in order to survive.

A lot of the work is undoing all the things that we learned about what we were supposed to do in order to be deemed as valuable or to be deemed as heard. We have to do that work of taking off those masks and revealing ourselves.

It takes a lot of power to be that vulnerable publicly, to exert your truth publicly, to no longer listen to all the commentary and what everyone outside of you are saying but then to just listen to what you know is true for yourself. What’s going to bring you happiness, what’s going to bring you joy, what’s going to make you content in the world?

For me, it’s been a life’s journey to come to that space to say, ‘Just because you may perceive me in a certain way, I have a lot of experiences that you may not see on the surface, but they are a part of me and I will own them.’ I will no longer think that having labels of trans or black or woman as things that I should push aside in order to be seen as more powerful. You know what? I’m going to actually speak them out, because me speaking them out and saying them and reclaiming them actually gains me more power. There’s such power in the truth, and we can emerge from such darkness when we tap into ourselves and tap into our truths.

May it be so, dear Emerging Women! Share your true voice with us in the comments section.

Have you heard Janet’s Emerging Women podcast? Tune in here:

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