A strong woman is just that, a strong woman. Healthy men celebrate strong women.
A strong woman who doesn’t trust the masculine or men, and feels like she needs to compete, dominate or control a man is an emasculating woman.
There’s a big difference between a strong woman and a strong woman in distortion. No woman needs to dim her strength ever, but she does need to use it wisely.
I’ve always been a strong woman, and spent most of my life being an emasculating woman. I love men but I was hurt, angry and didn’t trust the masculine at all. My heart breaks now when I think about how I treated men (and sometimes the emasculating was very passive aggressive - mothering a man is emasculating too) and then didn’t understand why they couldn’t or wouldn’t show up. Why would they? They were always under attack or being made to feel less than.
I’ve spent the past year owning and healing from being a strong woman in distortion and it’s allowing me to soften, open my heart fully and really step into a place of profound compassion for myself, and a deep honouring & trusting of the magnificent masculine who I now witness is starting to feel safe enough to show himself to me. I can quickly notice when I want to or do revert back to the emasculator, and consciously choose different and hold a safe space for myself. And what I’m being presented with is beyond my wildest dreams. I also see now how limited my idea of the masculine was through my distortion too.
In this I also feel more empowered than ever. Less pain, less shame. And my internal masculine now has a place at the table too. This is true strength.
If you’re reading this as a woman and still thinking “men just can’t handle a strong woman”, I ask you to acknowledge how emasculating this perspective is too.
If you’d like to explore this, I recommend a good starting point is the work of @thealisonarmstrong . I really enjoyed her book “The Queen’s Code”.
Or come and see me and we can work on this through my Supportive Mentoring Sessions.
Image by Oghalé Alex Photography