We often isolate ourselves when we’re hurt. We close ourselves around our suffering, shut the door to the world, and to largely to ourselves, and hide. We don’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable around our issues, because we’re ashamed of whatever we’re going through.
As society, we love problems and problem-solving, and we pride ourselves on our resourcefulness and resilience in coming up with solutions to all kinds of problems.
Technological, political, societal problems are all very interesting intellectual riddles that we love to engage our minds with, discuss openly, have seminars and conventions on. But whenever problems start to approximate the realm of the personal, or even worse, the emotional—we tend to quickly sweep them under the carpet.
And our tolerance and attraction to problems have two very clear boundaries: the personal and the emotional. We grow up believing that emotions are an inherent weakness. We grow up believing that having problems is embarrassing. There’s no place for fragility in our patriarchal world.
But real power is in embracing both the masculine and the feminine. Admitting weakness requires more strength than denying it. Admitting vulnerability comes from a place of strength, denying it comes from a place of fear. We have both the feminine and masculine energy in each of us, and the more closely we are aligned with both of these facets of ourselves, the more powerful, free and resourceful we are.