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It's Been the Feminine All Along, Silly!
I was raised by my mother and grandmother, but the story I've always told was that I was raised in my grandfather's house. Self-reflection over the years has led me to see the pitfall of this personal story!
Date: 9/1/2005 3:19:20 PM ( 19 y ) ... viewed 2010 times It’s funny how I’ve always imagined myself the product of a patriarchal culture—especially, a patriarchal household. This is especially curious, considering my mother and grandmother raised me, essentially; my parents divorced with I was two and I never saw my father until I was ten. My grandfather was the one in charge of punishment. But it was the energy of my mother and grandmother surrounding me as I grew up.
Whether this was purely “nurturing” energy or not is not part of this tale: the fact that I’ve never recognized my upbringing as having been feminine in nature is the curious story. I was very heavily influenced by my grandfather and his ideas. Aside from his belief in the Republican Party, and my work with the Kiwanis Club, I never followed his footsteps. Unlike him, I didn’t work for a major corporation; I didn’t stick with any one career; I didn’t create a stable life for myself; and, I didn’t fit into the mainstream as an adult.
I may have thought I was raised by my grandfather, but, really—I was raised by my mother and grandmother.
Perhaps the scenario in this culture is less about “absent dads” and more about how the feminine is returning, reclaiming her territory. Perhaps we’ve been viewing this scenario in American and world culture through the wrong lenses, the wrong set of glasses: maybe it’s not as much about the man not taking responsibility for his children. True, this is an inherently blatant and disgraceful problem. But let’s look at this from a more universal, archetypal perspective.
Without a doubt, the feminine, the Goddess energy is returning to culture in so many ways. And, perhaps, the decline of the father’s role in the family through single parent mothers is more about this very basic, primal return of the Goddess energy to reclaim the world. It is as though this matriarchal energy is reclaiming her households, so to speak: that the failure of men to be supporting fathers and husbands is about the masculine energy withdrawing, stepping aside, and allowing for the return of the Goddess on a cultural level.
Where else in society does the presence of masculine and feminine energies have more importance than in the household? This is the space where these energies create so much, for this is where children are born and reared and nurtured and shown life. Traditionally a mother and father have filled this space. True, the mother has always raised the child, but the masculine energy has been there to support and provide additional foundational support for these new energies being raised. Today, that masculine energy is not present.
What if the feminine is reclaiming her world by booting the masculine, patriarchal energy out of the household? What if this is a very basic, fundamental move that is necessary to allow the chaos to enter the world—creative chaos—and, thus, give a whole new generation the flavor of purely matriarchal, feminine, Goddess energy in the household? Children leave home now, at whatever age, having been raised with nothing but feminine energy. This clears space in society for greater presence of the Goddess energy.
I did not realize my own relationship to this until very recently. My life has been filled with the presence of strong feminine, Goddess energy. Yet, I was still under the belief that I had been raised by my grandfather in a patriarchal household. True, the rules were patriarchal, and the cussing and screaming was patriarchal: but the underlying essence of the energy in that house was from the feminine. How could it not, with two small boys, a grandmother and a mother there to raise them? Women were always coming over to the house, and there was, for a while, a middle-aged, adoring Latina woman present to help raise my brother and me.
The seeds were planted within me to embrace and live through the feminine, Goddess energy. Despite the strong, ruling nature of my grandfather, the energy of my grandmother and mother was present, vital, and essential to my upbringing.
How I related to that energy—and grew to relate to that energy—has been the story of my life.
Having spent a good portion of my adult life in the “rational mind” setting, it has taken me so much work and discovery to be able to sense and work within this feminine aspect of energy within myself. My dreams have told this story over the past decade. Yet, the strange thing has been how my academic studies over the past four years have been the triggers towards really unlocking this realization of the feminine in my life.
It’s funny how one of the most outwardly patriarchal universities on the planet—the University of Texas at Austin—is, in my estimation, camouflaged by the Goddess energy. The liberal arts school at UT-Austin is incredible, filled with free-thinking professors and students. I experienced a developmental psychology course taught by a self-proclaimed feminist, a young woman with two children whose husband taught on the other side of the country. This woman showed how child development theories throughout the span of medical science had blatantly disregarded the nature of child rearing: how these patriarchal decisions were so antithetical to the nature of motherhood. I’d never even thought about the idea of breastfeeding, and became incensed when I realized that man is the only creature that refuses to allow its children (in the Western world) to be breastfed. Ridiculous!
I really began to see how this culture is a patriarchal culture, and I’d never stepped outside of the idea I had about myself as being a 30-something, conservative male raised in a patriarchal household. I was no longer conservative (I hadn’t been for a decade) and truly wasn’t raised by a patriarchal household.
My courses in Austin continued to have so many feminine, Goddess-like energies streaming through them. Perhaps my attraction to these classes was due to the dream energy I walk around with—certainly, a Grandmother Moon, Goddess energy, no? And today I’m midway through work on a Ph.D. at a graduate school infused with ancient wisdom heralding from feminine cultures of old: truly, the Goddess energy.
So it’s fun and enlightening to be able to step out of my old shoes and stand barefoot, looking back at these themes within my life. The myth I thought I was living has not been so: it has been much different, and it is refreshing to experience this reality. At least it’s a reality for now. Who knows what I’ll discover next week.
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