In a meditative moment recently, I asked my soul self, “What does it mean to be a Wise Woman?’”
The answer was clear and simple:
A wise woman knows how to find her way home.
That’s given me a lot to chew on.
I’m curious what arises when you ask yourself this question. Because the answer that matters most is your own.
In fact, I think this is part of what “finding your way home” means, this quality of deep knowing, occupying your seat, wearing your crown, unapologetically claiming your own truth. Even when that truth isn’t pretty, disappoints others, or clashes with your carefully constructed image of yourself.
Especially then.
“Home” is something we all get to define for ourselves. The wise woman we become during the metamorphosis of our meno-passage era is as unique as every winged creature that emerges from a cocoon.
I had my first hot flash almost ten years ago. I’ve now coached and mentored thousands of high-achieving, spiritual women navigating The Change. I’ve also spent a lot of time at the feet of wise women who are in or through this passage because I’m keenly interested in learning from them.
So I’ve also discovered this…
…our wings may be different but we can all fly.
Although our individual meno-passage experiences are unique, this journey has a territory, familiar signs, and a path beaten by ancient footprints. Sharing our stories helps us access the collective wisdom running through this mid-life rebirthing.
That’s especially important when the dominant cultural narrative seems to want to extinguish the rising potency of women like us with relentless messaging about decline, drying up, and fading desire. Don’t fall for it, sister.
What we’re experiencing isn’t a failing, it’s a flowering.
How are you finding your way home, wise woman?
The pathway I return to again and again, and the core of my teaching, is to align with sacred feminine power or Shakti, using mind, body, heart and soul.
At the root, it’s about being at home in my body. Here are some of the ways I’m doing that.
Gently noticing self-critical thoughts when they arise and bringing awareness to the sensations happening right now in my body, instead. Literally “coming my senses.”
Practicing loving and accepting the “soft animal body” of me, as she is, with her rounder belly, silvering hair, and age-spotty skin. It’s not a young body anymore and sometimes that feels sad, frustrating, and disorienting. And that’s ok.
It’s about protecting my need for solitude, quiet and rest, giving myself ample time to move between appointments and responsibilities. I can rush and do stress if I must but I have absolutely no appetite for it anymore. It used to be “what was for breakfast” but now it takes too large a toll and makes me cranky. And that’s new too.
It’s about nourishing myself with yoga. Showing up at dawn to practice breath, balance, movement, muscle, meditation. Being committed for a time but then falling under the spell that says this thing is optional in my life. Stopping. Suffering. Then returning to the mat and beginning again.
A wise woman knows how to find her way home.
It’s about prioritizing pleasure. Remembering that pleasure is who I am, what I came from and what I will return to as a frequency of the Divine. It is not a reward for performance or productivity. I was born a sacred and sensual being, a daughter of the Goddess. Pleasure is the sparkly breadcrumbs that guide me home.
It’s about making sure that the Goddess in me is well-sexed and orgasmically annihilated regularly because that feeds Her radiance and magnetism. Not only is that extremely joyful, it’s also efficient and elegant; there’s not a lot of wasted effort trying to make things happen because things come to me instead. I stay home, tend to the garden of my embodied life, give my gifts, and opportunities seem to be irresistibly attracted to the nectar, spectrum, and fragrance of the goddess Shakti living through me.
I think finding our way home is ultimately about love.
Loving ourselves enough to be authentically who we really are and offering that as our ultimate gift. Maybe when we cease being flooded every month with productivity-fertility-tending-everyone-everything-else-before-ourselves hormones, it just becomes a little bit easier to discern the way home to our own heart.
And it seems to me, there’s a whole lotta wisdom in that.
I coach and mentor high-achieving professional and spiritual women who are done being driven by pressure and are ready to be powered by pleasure instead.
Let’s explore what that could mean for you.
Celebrating the wise woman in you,
Lisa Schrader
