“There is no force outside of you greater than the force of life within you. You wear your diamonds on the inside.”
I’ve learnt so much about women in my work as a life coach and healer over the last eight years. What it is to be a woman, what issues women face, and how women deal with living in today’s world.
I used to work with women every day, listening to their stories of hardship and gain, pleasure and pain.
I heard tales of women who struggled to believe in their own worth, their power, and their place in the world. Women whose voices were muted under the strain of living with pain buried deep inside.
I saw how living in a world where women are encouraged to value their outer appearance over their inner attributes can destroy a woman from the inside out. How women are pulled into the beauty trap which degrades every woman alive, as she is encouraged to grow older instead of wilder.
I walked alongside these women as they overcame great adversity in their lives. They went on to become the proud Queens that they were born to be. I saw women stepping into their heart where their power resides and thrive.
For this reason, I see every woman in the same way. Every woman is a diamond and the rough is the world we live in.
That’s right. Every woman is a diamond and her diamond is her feminine energy.
When I see a woman on her knees, emotionally spent, I whisper inside, “She doesn’t know that she is a diamond.”
When I see a woman attacking other women, my heart cries, “She is scared, she doesn’t know the power she holds within.”
When I see a woman in fear, I want to shout, “She has a rock inside of her. A rock so strong that nothing will ever break it.”
When I hear a woman bitching because of another woman’s beauty, I want to stamp my foot and say, “Do you really think what another woman looks like compares with the true beauty of your diamond inside?”
I understand why this happens. The world we live in is the rough. Yes, women in the western world have never had it so good, yet the assault on women is still at an all-time high. The war on women is subtle, yet it is a war waged under the patriarchy.
The fairy-tales that a woman is told as a child begins the indoctrination into “a look outside of yourself for your worth” mentality, that starts a lifetime of subjecting herself to advertising and propaganda of what a woman should be.
On her first day at school, when she is given a uniform, taught how to stand in line and behave, i.e. comply, only to have her head filled with useless information for the next 18 years, as her individuality is slowly knocked out of her.
Where creativity and imagination are side-lined to a couple of lessons a week, while she learns the importance of money; how to count it and make it while selling her soul out for a job that she will ultimately hate. More importantly, how to spend it on crap to make herself feel better for living a life that is less than she is capable of living. No disrespect to the many wonderful teachers in the world. This is the patriarchal system.
She is not taught to live from a heart-centred place. There are no classes on empathy, compassion, kindness, and creativity in terms of her ability to create her reality. She is not taught how to love herself, never mind how to love another. Instead, she is told a fairy-tale from childhood; how one day a man will enter her life, the one, and then she will be complete. She keeps looking outside of herself.
If she is lucky, she won’t be the one in three women who suffer sexual abuse as a child, having her innocence destroyed, her feminine energy polluted in the vilest way, and her foundation for life left in tatters. She might also avoid physical, emotional, and mental abuse along the way.
She arrives in adulthood believing that she is ready to start making decisions for herself, her life is her choice, yet the conditioning from her childhood, her belief system, and the values of society have already eroded her diamond.
She is taught that she lives in a survivalist world; time to get to work, start earning money and spending big time. Imagination? Creativity? Freedom? Nah, that’s not the real world.
And that’s before the real onslaught begins, as she is subjected to the perfect vision of what a woman must look like through a barrage of media, most of which is photo-shopped to further enhance the apparent beauty that she must aspire to. She is taught she must look and act sexy when what she really should embrace is her inner sensuality.
So she looks outside of herself. She seeks instant gratification. She eats too much, drinks too much, and lives too little. She buys crap to make herself feel better, wastes her creativity and imagination by watching television, and lives in constant fear of what other people think. So, she judges others to protect herself. She keeps looking outside of herself.
Her inner diamond is buried under all of this. A diamond in the rough. Her energy is consumed by surviving, by making money, and by trying to feel she is worthy to live in this world. There’s no energy left to fire up her heart space to feel empathy, passion, and purpose. She is consumed by trying to survive and still, she is unaware that her true power and beauty lies within.
And that is the rough, the adversity that a woman must overcome including her own individual wounds she has collected along the way. Let’s not forget our sisters who were born with a darker shade of skin. They have to contend with racism too.
How does a woman overcome such adversity? She wakes up. She gets out of her fears, as her energy rises into her heart, and unlocks her inner gifts of intuition, healing, and creativity. She cares for herself. She sets boundaries and limits. She honours her need for creativity, imagination, and playtime. She stops looking outside herself for validation, her worth, and her ability to love herself. She realises that she is a diamond in the rough and all she needs to do is rise up and shine.
Once a woman steps back into her heart space, her power, she rises like the fierce Queen she was born to be. She believes in herself, her place in the world, and she finds her voice.
She stops bitching, backstabbing, and fighting others, realising that she is only fighting herself. Instead, she steadies her gaze over the rough that is our world, and she is most displeased. She drops all her illusions and she is ready to do what she was born to do. She becomes a passion-filled creator. Ready to get her hands dirty in setting the world to rights. She finds her purpose, starts creating a wave in her own life, and she shines on.
She realises it’s okay to make money. It’s okay to buy things. It’s fantastic to take care of herself and look well. But never at the expense of her inner world, of living a heart-centred life of passion and finding her purpose.
Women have a vast and raw potential of creative, feminine energy inside of them and that is their diamond. A woman’s feminine energy is not complicated. It doesn’t take years to study to understand how to connect with and awaken this energy. A woman can learn how to properly care for herself, her energy, and how to protect her energy from others.
(c) Samantha Wilson 2020. All Rights Reserved. Article first published in December 2015.
