Self care for women | Embracing Your Womanhood & Femininity
As women, many of us move through life stuck in survival mode. Maybe you even feel trapped in a constant go-go-go mentality and struggle to truly rest. Or maybe you feel emotionally exhausted, disconnected from yourself, and unable to find motivation. These can all be signs that our nervous systems are overwhelmed and that we’ve become disconnected from our bodies, our needs, and our natural rhythms as women. We were never meant to live in constant survival mode and stress.
I’ve come to believe there is something deeply sacred about the female experience. Womanhood and motherhood carry unique emotional, physical, and spiritual experiences that are unique to us and deserve to be honored. Our unique female experience is sacred, but sadly many aspects of femininity like sensuality, breastfeeding, birthing and nurturing our children and our connection to our bodies and nature are often minimized.
Many women grow up learning to disconnect from parts of themselves like their sensitivity, creativity, sensuality, and intuition. Over time, this disconnection can leave us feeling emotionally numb, unsafe, or unsure how to fully rest and be cared for.
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.
Many women feel pressured to constantly perform, achieve, stay productive, and remain emotionally guarded in order to feel worthy or safe. Many women have learned that slowing down, resting, receiving support, or embracing softness can make them seem weak. Instead, we are often praised for overworking, over-functioning, and carrying everything alone, even when it leaves us emotionally depleted and disconnected from ourselves.
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. 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.”
Consider if hormonal birth control is right for you.
Hormonal birth control can affect women differently, and many women share experiences of feeling emotionally or physically disconnected while using it. In my own journey, getting off hormonal birth control became an important step in reconnecting with my body, emotions, and overall wellbeing.
Every woman’s situation is different, but learning to better understand our hormones, cycles, and bodies can be an empowering part of the healing journey.
Embrace Intimacy
Intimacy can be an extremely healing and regenerative experience. Safe, loving intimacy can be deeply healing for the nervous system. Feeling emotionally safe, desired, seen, and cared for within a healthy relationship can help many women reconnect with their bodies and rebuild trust within themselves after stress or trauma.
“Intimacy and human connection is healing.”
Reduce stress
From my experience, when I am stressed it is much harder to rest, receive love, and nurture others. When we’re constantly stressed or emotionally overwhelmed, it can become difficult to soften, rest, receive support, or feel emotionally present. Survival mode often keeps us guarded, hypervigilant, and disconnected from our bodies. Remember you do not have to always be ‘doing something’ to be worthy, you are aloud to just exist and have time to slow down and be human.
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. our sensitivity is not a weakness. Many women carry a deep emotional awareness and intuition that helps them perceive the needs, emotions, and energy of the people around them. When nurtured in a healthy way, this sensitivity can become a source of wisdom, discernment, empathy, and connection.
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.
