Why go on a women’s retreat: WHAT IS DIVINE FEMININE ENERGY

Women’s retreats, and time spent in women’s spaces and containers are a beautiful opportunity to discover the feminine energy, tap into it, and become empowered within your feminine energy.

But you might be asking, “What even IS this divine feminine energy?” “Why go to a women’s only retreat?” Or “Why do I want to embrace my feminine?” I want to dig deeper into what this really means, the choice of language, and the way I believe this work is able to impact the world.

First, I want to clear up some language use that might be misleading or confusing. When speaking about feminine and masculine energy, these are words I use to describe the polarity of expression of nonphysical human qualities. I am NOT using them to describe gender, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity (although they are the same words we use for these things).

As humans, we use metaphors to describe non-material concepts – to make abstract and ethereal concepts make sense in a way we can express and communicate about. What I really am referring to is the polarities (and the whole range of expression that exists between polarities) and how all humans contain BOTH polarities to different degrees at different times.

*I’ll use italics when I’m referring to these energy polarities rather than gender.

WHY the Divine Feminine is important:

Women, and the feminine energy, have historically been oppressed in our patriarchal society. Thanks to feminism, we live in a modern society where men and women have much more equal rights and roles in the world than our ancestors.

Female empowerment had to be initiated at first by anger. Anger is the emotion that is expressed when a boundary has been crossed. As women, our lack of rights, equal access, and physical barriers caused us a very valid reason to feel our boundaries were being crossed, and to get angry about it. This was a necessary step towards liberation and equality among all women. But it didn’t get us all the way there.

Along the way of women fighting to gain equal power in this world, affluent white women have had most of the progress. In a world that was already very controlled by patriarchal authority, the only way to rise up seemed to be to take on more qualities of the masculine energy. Men, on the other hand, have been even more stripped of their feminine qualities, as they have been pressured to be more and more driven, go go go, productive and powerful. This approach has not brought true equality nor does it address the underlying imbalance of masculine and feminine energies.

I believe we are ready for, and already beginning a new phase of female empowerment in which BOTH men and women are learning to love, accept, and embrace the feminine energy.

We all contain both polarities, and whether you identify as male or female, it is likely that you have received a wound around the feminine energy (from social conditioning, ancestral trauma, and just existing in a world that has devalued and defiled the feminine for hundreds of years). As women in particular, the next step towards our liberation is to recognize that we are different from men, and to embrace these differences as EQUALLY valuable.

This is not to say that if you are a woman who identifies more strongly with masculine qualities, you are doing something wrong or not working toward liberation. Quite the opposite, we need to divorce these qualities from gender identity and understand them as energetic qualities.

The issue is that feminine qualities have been demonized and devalued by all society, for all of us. In order to reverse this we need to embrace, honour, and love the feminine energy present within all of us (because we all have both polarities).

As women who identify with our feminine energy OR would like to embrace the divine feminine more deeply, we have an active role to play in bringing this feminine energy back into balance. It’s necessary to create harmony and balance between the opposite polarities energetically, internally, as well as for the world around us.

WHY women MUST gather:

Women’s spaces create a different container than mixed gender spaces. I’m sure men’s spaces have their own different energy as well. There is a certain healing magic that happens when women gather.

There are inherent differences in the biological and hormonal bodies of men and women and it would be silly to ignore or deny this. There are also differences in how we are prone to behave, which can be traced back to our cave ancestors and can help us understand why men are often prone to carry more masculine qualities, and women more feminine qualities. (Of course, this is not always or necessarily the case.)

When women gather to discover, honour, and embrace the divine feminine within themselves, together, the wisdom of this energy flows effortlessly. For all of history, women have been gathering in sacred spaces to tap into their unique feminine magic. Women have even been persecuted for sharing their inherent gifts with the world.

We change the world when we create safe spaces for women to come together and step into their feminine energy together. It brings balance and harmony to the polarities. It helps to heal the wounds that have been inflicted on the feminine and on women for centuries. It helps us as women to heal the way we relate to each other as sisters.

It creates a safe space for us to process and understand the magic that we hold, the gifts of being a woman, the gifts of the feminine. It creates a space for us to explore how we relate to this energy, how we want to engage with our femininity and express it. It creates a safe space for the feminine energy to exist in this world.

WHAT IS the Divine Feminine?

So what are these feminine qualities anyway? A great metaphor to help us understand these non-physical concepts more deeply is the sun and the moon.

Like the male hormonal pattern, the sun rises and sets each day, in the same place, and roughly the same time (depending on your latitude). The moon however, changes every single day. She moves through cycles that are about 28 days, mirroring the female hormonal cycle.

The divine feminine cannot be described or contained in a box, so my words will surely fail to do justice, but the feminine energy carries the qualities of the moon.

The feminine is constant adaptation and flow. Like the moon, she is continually shifting. The feminine force is one of receptivity, focused on being rather than doing. The pleasure and the process and the flexibility define the experience, not the end goal.

The feminine energy is wild, mystical, elusive, nurturing, intuitive, creative, and responsive, or anything else she might be in the moment. She cannot be contained or controlled, she is deeply connected to spirit, and her heart moves like the tides.

The divine feminine thrives in adoration and adornment, relishing in beauty and earthly, sensual delights. She is instinctual.

The feminine energy has its own superpowers that have been oppressed and repressed by the patriarchy. As women who feel this call, embracing our own inner feminine creates more space for her to exist in a patriarchal world.

If you feel called to explore your own inner divine feminine, in a safe a supportive container of women, I encourage you to consider joining one of our weekly Women’s Circles, or contact me about joining my online workshop series Rewild your Cycle (to connect to the moon and your own inner cycles). And if you’re ready to dive DEEP into this work, I invite you to explore the Rewild the Soul Women’s Retreat in Costa Rica.