Celebrate Women’s History Month:

 What I wish my mother

had told me about being a woman

Part 3: Heart-based Female Leadership

I’ve been wandering about all the things I’ve learned in my life that my mom did not teach me because she herself did not know. Today I’m sharing the third Secret on Female Power: Woman is the heart of life and the guardian of the power of love. Assume your Heart-based Female Leadership.

This is a series on the Secrets of Female Power for Women’s History Month, at the rate of one per week. This is the first article. Read the others here:

• Women’s History Month-What I wish my mother had told me (You are entitled.)
• Women’s History Month-From Appearance to Experience
• Women’s History Month-Wearing your Unique Gifts
• The Goddess Circle

Secret of Female Power No. 3

Woman is the heart of life and the guardian of the power of love. Assume your Heart-based Female Leadership.

When we talk about leadership, the models that come to our mind are patriarchal. They are about who’s in charge, who’s in control and who’s the boss. This is a pyramidal and vertical model of leadership. It’s archetype is the King’s throne and the court and town below.

But Female Leadership is not about competition, winning, controlling, climbing the success ladder or being tough. Female Leadership is based on the power of love, which stands in collaboration, receptivity and oneness. This is a circular model of leadership. Its archetype is the ceremonial circle, the round table or the Native American Circle of Life.

Woman is the heart of Life

Woman is the center of life. This is not about being better than men or any such simplification. This is a reality that any woman who knows her value perceives and any man who knows his partner’s value accepts.

Woman is the heart of the family and community. She holds the ceremonies, stories and healing traditions that nurture, support, heal and grow the family and the community.

Woman has been organically wired for this task, just as man has been organically wired to protect the family and community and build for progress.

This does not mean that women cannot build or men cannot nurture. Let’s skip the polarizations and simplifications and understand the very fiber of the female being without having to invalidate it by crying out for comparisons.

If you look at most families, you will find one or more women at their center. It may be the grandmother, the mother, an aunt or the godmother. It may be a council of women. She’s the one who organizes delicious meals for Thanksgiving and other Holidays, even if they are not done at her space. She’s the one that encourages the females to create ceremonies and passes on the stories and traditions to help them. She’s the one that knows the old healing remedies. She’s the one that knows the old traditional recipes… and still cooks them! She’s the one that calls everyone when someone is sick, has not been seen in a while, is born or dies. And you know that if anything at all happens that impacts the family, you better call her, because she has a way of keeping the family (or community) together, informing everyone and inspiring and uplifting those in need.

The Gifts of the Sacred Feminine

Women come equipped with this gift. They have qualities like:

• Empathy
• Compassion
• Emotional Intelligence
• Listening and Receptivity
• Mothering/Nurturing
• Sisterhood
• Celebration/Rituals/Ceremonies
• Intimacy
• Collaboration
• Adaptation and communion with environment
• Storytelling
• Creativity (right-brain activity)
• Intuition
• Developed Psychic abilities (like telepathy, dreams, etc.)

I’m not saying that men can’t or don’t have them. Actually, men also have a Sacred Feminine or Shakti aspect. But usually they embody the Shiva or Sacred Masculine more easily and in their relationship with women have the opportunity to learn and awaken their Sacred Feminine.

With women is the other way around. We more strongly and easily embody the Sacred Feminine or Shakti aspect and in our relationship with men we learn about and awaken our Sacred Masculine.

In community, however, you do the math. Look around. Count those that embody, express and pass along these qualities from the Sacred Feminine. They are mostly women. As a matter of fact, only men who are wise, creative, out-of-the-box or have done in-depth personal growth have awaken these qualities in them. Otherwise, the masculine is “widowed” from the Sacred Feminine and these qualities are dormant; even devalued or lacking.

As a matter of fact, until quite recently, women who carried these gifts and took their position as the heart of the hearth were seen as less “powerful.”

You KNOW these things. They are true here and in China. But no one says it. No one names this Female Gifts. Few consciously value them… until those women die and the family crumbles if another female does not pick up the scepter.

Female Heart-based Leadership

Because that is what we are talking about: the Scepter of Female Heart-based Leadership.

Look at your life. Value what you give to your family and community. Do not allow anyone to take these gifts for granted. Let them know that you are proud of the gifts of love you bring to your family and community and that you know their value.

Walk tall in your Female Heart-based Leadership.

Don’t ever say that you are doing the cheat-jobs! Don’t ever allow others to take you for granted and make you invisible because you are a caregiver. And don’t you believe that this gift is any less valuable than your “real” job.

Our society has devalued and made the female contribution invisible. In Women’s History Month, celebrate that women have kept family and community going for centuries. Acknowledge that we are the heart and feed the heart, not just the stomach. Name it. Give thanks to the Female Heart-based Leaders in your family and community.

What good would Einstein’s relativity or Edison’s electricity do if children could not read or love, men had no one who understood their heart and old people would die without being cared for?

This is the true measure of our civilization. And women carry that torch!

Continue reading the Secret of Female Power No. 4

COMING SOON!

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