Self care for women | Embracing Your Womanhood & Femininity
As a Woman, have you ever felt stuck in a go-go-go mentality? Maybe you have a difficult time resting and feel as though you always need to be productive? Maybe you feel the opposite like you're unmotivated to take action and feel stuck in the same cycles and patterns that limit your potential. As women these are clear signs that we are out of alignment with our feminine nature, and that you are likely disconnected from your body and possibly even undernourished and unfullfilled.
Many of us have grown up within a culture that minimizes the significance of womanhood and the blessing of motherhood, making it all too easy for us to disconnect from our innate femininity. Especially within the christian church and other religious practices, leaning into our feminine nature can be seen as unnecessary and in extreme spaces even immodest or downright idolatrous. God created us as women for a reason. Our unique female experience is sacred. Womanhood and Motherhood are a special part of God's design for our lives, but many aspects of femininity like sensuality, breastfeeding, passion, creativity, and our connection to nature are often seen as threats or inherently dangerous qualities, so we supress them.
Many of us women grow up feeling uncomfortable in our bodies as young girls. We aren't taught about the sacred passage that is getting our cycle. Most of us don't have older women walking alongside us to guide us through the passage from young girl to woman. In fact many of the women we would look to for that guidance and advice have suppressed their own femininity and feel shame in discussing these aspects of womanhood. Instead we are treated much like our male counterparts and the uniqueness of our female bodies and our womanhood is diminished.
We are often put on hormonal birth control before our young bodies have even fully developed. We are shut off from our bodies' natural rhythms and our innate femininity. All before we have even gotten the chance to develop into womanhood and our womanly intuition, which all women have the ability to tap into.
This culture here in the United States does a good job of trying to suppress masculinity in men and suppress femininity in women. Instead our culture celebrates women who act more masculine who are go-getter’s, independent, non-emotional, women who “don’t need a man” or are “boss babes” not acknowledging that you can be both soft and powerful, independent and nurturing. The impacts of hustle culture, ultra self-sufficiency, as well as a lack of intimacy and deep human connection is written all over our bodies, from rising infertility and declining birth rates, to skyrocketing rates of mental illness. Our men are demeaned if they are naturally masculine and desire to protect and care for women and children, and women are demeaned if they are natural feminine nurturers. Instead both masculine men and feminine women are pushed to live in an androgynous state.
It's no wonder that femininity is degraded within our culture when we don't even respect the most natural feminine processes like our monthly cycle, childbirth and child-rearing. We no longer revere women and mothers which truly points to how we lack understanding of the innate differences between men and women. But just because our culture is headed in the wrong direction doesn't mean that we can’t shift our own consciousness towards a healthier relationship with ourselves as women.
But how can we reconnect to our feminine nature and get out of a masculine head-space when we live in a culture that tries to make us think that men and women are the same? How can we remember how sacred our womanhood is? How can we ground ourselves back into the reality of our bodies as women? The answer is simple, our bodies' natural rhythm, our innate feminine qualities still exist under the surface and cannot be suppressed regardless of how much suppression or even oppression is present, under the surface our womanhood shapes and guides many of our emotions and choices.
“The ways in which we can ground ourselves back into our femininity and our womanly bodies already exist deep within us.”
I can speak to what has helped me to embrace my femininity and how I have found a new respect for what it truly means to be a woman. But only you can uncover whats been lost within yourself. These self care tips and mindset shifts are just some of the steps that I have taken to embrace my femininity and fall in love with being a woman.
Self Care Tips for Women
Get Enough Sleep and Rest
Women on average need an estimated 8-10 hours of sleep while men can typically run off of 6-8. You may be on the higher end of that scale if you find yourself frequently under rested and fatigued. Be sure to sleep enough so that you’re fully rested and present. When we are fully rested we are less likely to be reactive and irritable. When we are well rested it is easier for us to be at ease and embrace our soft and sensual feminine nature. We as women are far better at nurturing others and prioritizing ourselves when we have first prioritized rest.
Live by Your Monthly Cycle
In this culture we have been taught to suppress our unique experience as women. We are told it's not ladylike to mention our cycle, it's best to hide that part of ourselves away. Young boys make jokes about girls getting their periods and we are taught from the time we are young to be embarrassed and ashamed of our bleed. Women, if fully nourished and living in a naturally healthy state, live on a 28-35 day monthly cycle. Throughout the month our hormones fluctuate giving us different nutritional needs and energy levels.
Respect your body by respecting this natural rhythm. Our cycle has four distinct phases. Our hormones ebb and flow throughout the 28 to 35 day cycle. Our hormones shift and change which means we may need more rest and have less energy during our menstrual phase. Our libido, and our overall physical energy may increase during our ovulatory phase. We may have specific nutritional needs throughout each of these phases. Lean into this unique experience of womanhood and honor your body's subtle cues. Each phase has their own energetic flow and differences. Here they are below.
The Menstrual Phases: Understanding a Woman's Cycle
Eat Nutrient Dense Food
Many women today are living in a state of malnutrition. We are at our most fertile and vibrant when we are nourishing ourselves well. Foods such as grass fed beef, raw milk, butter, root vegetables, raw carrot salad’s, oysters, adrenal mocktail’s and eggs can help to balance your hormones and give you the needed nutrients to thrive within your body. Don't underestimate the impact that nutrient rich foods can have on your health. Ancestral foods can heal us from the inside out thus giving us the energy and vitality that is needed to thrive in our bodies.
Respect your bleed
Women experience a natural drop in progesterone during their menstrual phase which means you may desire to rest more, have slight fatigue and feel a need to replenish nutrients through proper nourishment. Be sure to give yourself time to rest and embrace this sacred part of womanhood. It's not uncommon in our culture for women to be pushed past what’s healthy for our bodies. We are treated as though we should perform even whilst in the midst of a sacred release, a period of time in which we need to slow down and allow our bodies to flow (no pun intended). There is interesting research that suggests that stress can not only negatively affect the health of our cycle but that extreme stress can even cause us to lose our period. Many cultures across the world have women cease working during this time for optimal femal health.
“A healthy monthly bleed is a sign of optimal female health.”
Get off hormonal birth control
The effects of hormonal birth control go far beyond just suppressing ovulation and preventing pregnancy. The damaging effects of birth control can make you 3X more likely to experience depression and can affect future fertility, it suppresses your body's natural rhythms and cycles. While we have some understanding of the effects of birth control on the body, I personally believe that our connection to our bodies as women is more than just biological but also innately spiritual and that when we take birth control it affects our emotions and intuition in a way that science can't quite speak to. I personally used an IUD for around 10 years and I didn’t realize the deep effects it had on me until I got off of it and then started to experience a host of mental, emotional and physical changes. Getting off hormonal birth control was a huge step in the direction of my health journey and it could be a pivotal shift in your health journey.
Embrace Intimacy
If you're in a relationship or a loving marriage. Intimacy can be an extremely healing and regenerative experience. Sexual Intimacy with a trusted partner has helped me to heal so many insecurities I had around my body. Having someone truly love you, and desire you for who you are is a great way to regain confidence and can help you to feel free within your body. Being truly loved (and made love to well) by a masculine man can naturally bring us into alignment with our feminine nature. When we lean into our sensuality and experience deep intimate connections we can not only shift our physical health but even heal trauma and emotional wounds.
“Intimacy and human connection is healing.”
Reduce stress
When we are stressed we may become defensive, irritable, controlling and overprotective. It's hard to rest in your femininity and embrace womanhood if you are constantly on the defense and trying to protect yourself. I know from experience that when I am stressed it is much harder to rest, receive love, and nurture others because I find myself settling into a masculine mindset, as I'm ready to go to war with my environment and with other people, when I am in a stressed out state.
To avoid falling into this mindset try to prioritize leisure time, rest, and self care, and you may find yourself naturally feeling more gentle, nurturing and sensual. Remember you do not always have to be doing to be worthy.
Nurture yourself and others
As women, we are born to nurture. Our bodies can inherently nurture life, our innate qualities help us to nurture children well. Even if you are struggling with your fertility or you just haven't yet become a mother, you can still connect to your femininity by nurturing those around you. Choose to intentionally nurture your loved ones. Help other women in your family with childcare, help take care of other women during postpartum. Nurture your family by creating a safe home and nourishing food. Even smaller forms of nurturing like taking care of pets, house plants, or growing a garden can help you tap into the innate nurturing quality that every woman is born with even if you haven't been able to embrace the mothering instict yet.
Spend time with other like minded women
Bonding with other women is a very simple yet powerful way to reconnect with your womanhood. Women share a special bond, a shared life experience. If you’ve ever felt like you can't connect with other women and seem to get along better with men than you're not alone, many women have had negative experiences within female friendships. For too long our culture has pitted women against each other in competition; competing for jobs, friends, and for men. We can rewrite this narrative by becoming the loyal and supportive friend that we desire. Getting together with other women, especially women with shared values can be a great way to create a community and sense of belonging. Even if it's difficult at first to build or maintain friendships, keep trying to connect with other women, and you will find your people.
Embrace your sensitivity & trust your Intuition
Your ability to observe others' emotions and body language is an innate female survival instinct, women have adapted to pick up on these perceptions to protect themselves and their children. Your sensitivity, and ability to feel deeply is not a weakness but instead a powerful female instinct. Women tend to be more emotional and through that they can foster a deep intuition and can pick up on their surroundings and discern the needs of others better than their masculine counterparts. God gave us this ability for our own safety and so we can become better mothers. Don't suppress this innate quality, instead learn to harness it in a productive way. Allow yourself to feel deeply and be in tune with your emotional state.
Femininity is not an elusive quality if you're a woman, it is your birthright. Even a society that is completely disconnected from God's design for womanhood can't fully prevent the expression of femininity. You may notice that a lot of these practices are about allowing and accepting our innate feminine qualities instead of suppressing them because even when we push away our nature as women, it can never be fully taken from us. Womanhood and femininity are not simply something that we have; but it's what we are at our core, it's what WE as women embody.
God’s design for women is sacred and beautiful, rest in that my beautiful sisters.
