Silver - Feminine genius: the provocative path to waking up and turning on the wisdom of being a woman

To you

To every woman from whose torch
I light my own: Even if I do not know you,
still I bow to you.

And to you, woman,
reading this right now: As says the poet Rumi,
You suppose you are the trouble, but you are the cure.

Contents

Part One

Going to the Source

You Are Not Crazy

The World Is Off Its Rocker

When you are at war with yourself and you win, who loses?

CARL BUCHHEIT

T he world has gone stark raving, totally loony tunes, round the bend, nutty as a fruitcake, not in its right mind, dangerously and absolutely mad. And you cant see all the ways the world is wacky because you marinate in them you literally stew in them day in and day out. And you not only swim in the stuff, you drink it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so the insanity becomes part of your bones, your blood, and your DNA.

It is as though you like most women walk around in a straight jacket and a muzzle, and youve been wearing them so long, and they feel so normal, that you no longer even notice that you are bound, gagged, and hobbled. Instead, you gaze in the mirror, examine your reflection, and ask, How do I look? Do these handcuffs make me look fat?

This, my friend, is crazypants.

In my decade and a half as a coach, seeing this all day, every day, one hundred times over and in a thousand variations (not to mention within my own self), has confirmed for me that both the world out there and the world within far too many women need a big, bold do-over. A new era, inspired from our sorely missed, pro-goddess past and informed by each womans true wisdom, must become our new normal. And you, sister, like me and like every woman, bring your piece of the magic so that together we can make our worlds over.

And yet, as one of my mentors, Carl Buchheit, asks, When you are at war with yourself and you win, who loses?

Oh, right. That war inside you. Theres that.

Let me share with you how I came to be writing these words, and why I believe that cultivating Feminine Genius is the key to bringing an end to the war we each wage against ourselves and perhaps even to the war that the world at large wages against women.

My own path to an inner cease-fire began on the stage well, actually on the side of the stage, cozied up in my pint-sized sleeping bag while my mother led her dance rehearsals. Aside from a brief time when I wanted to be a princess, and then a scientist, I had always wanted to become a professional dancer like my mom was. When my father, a staunch proponent of following your bliss, asked me why I loved to dance so much, I told him, Daddy, I feel like I have this light inside of me, and when I dance people get to see it too. I just want to share it.

So when I turned sixteen, I got myself a scholarship and left my hippie home in northern New Mexico to go to a fancy boarding school for the arts in conservative New England. I quickly memorized the script I would need to follow if I were to go pro: be very, very thin and get the steps very, very right. These harsh rules apply for a girl aspiring to be a dancer as well as for a girl aspiring to be a woman. On both accounts, I got busy. I shifted my focus from sharing my light to getting it right, from following my bliss to following the script, and from shakin my booty to working my ass off.

Along with biology, French, and ballet classes, I studied up on how to become an excellent anorexic, and embraced my new way of life with religious fervor. I ate nearly nothing. I scrutinized the girls who were technically advanced and tried not only to dance like them, but also to move like them, sit like them, and even talk like them. I stayed late in the dance studios, practicing long past the point of pain and fatigue. As the weeks and months went on, people asked with concern if I was getting too thin, but I knew other students were secretly jealous of me and my teachers were proud of me.

During one visit home, I handed my parents my report card a column of straight As and waited for their reaction. Instead of admiring the piece of paper, they looked at me and beamed. You know, my father said, we love you unconditionally. Always will. There is nothing you could do or not do to change that.

While that was probably the best thing any girl could hope to hear from the god and goddess of her universe, inside I was distraught. No, I thought. No! Dont you understand? I dont deserve that. Not yet. There are so many things wrong with me, so many ways I am not yet perfect. I cant accept your love until then.

Back in boarding school, I was hungry, tired, and felt like I was holding my breath all the time. I dreamt at night about the indulgences I wouldnt let myself have by day, things like meat with gravy, ice cream sundaes, boys to kiss. I longed to skip class and sleep in. I started to feel that the urges of my body my hungry, unruly, feminine body were antithetical to my goals of becoming a great dancer. I began to believe that somehow my body was against me.

I doubled down with my preferred war tactics of control and deprivation, and didnt look up for the next ten years. One day, in my twenties, in rehearsal for a dance company I dearly loved, I watched a fellow dancer practice. As I stretched on the side of the room, an icy realization poured into my body. She was a great technician (she got the steps very, very right), yet as I watched her, I became aware that her greatness was about something far beyond her technical virtuosity. She seemed completely at home in herself. A luminescence shone from her that was almost holy. In that third-story dance studio in Lower Manhattan, it hit me in the gut: I would never feel truly successful, in dance or otherwise, because I was focused too much on following my script and too little on sharing my light.

But the light I saw in my fellow dancer woke up a dormant part of me. I realized that I gravely missed my light, even if I had no idea how to regain it. I realized that I had traveled far from my true self, and the path back was anything but clear. Regardless, more than the salvation that I thought my script would offer me and that I was killing myself to reach, I began instead to want to feel completely at home in myself. I longed to feel luminous and to know myself as holy or, if that was too much to ask, then to just feel okay.

Although I didnt know it at the time, it was my want that was actually my first step on the path that led back to me. It was my longing that let me pick up that humble white flag that signifies the end of a war. Friend, I believe you picked up this book because you also feel a similar longing stirring in you.

Maybe you too, at some time in your girlhood, were naturally in touch with your light. Maybe you too, like the women I get to know and get to work with, used to feel naturally confident in your body, sassy (in my case also bossy), and clear about what you wanted. Even if you have to reach way, way, way back into your past, you might find a time when pleasure was everywhere for you, as natural as drawing breath. When you were luminescent. When you felt what you felt, knew what you knew, and you felt completely at home in yourself.

And then maybe at some point either very early on or in young womanhood, your light began to dim, or the world dimmed it for you. It became no longer safe to feel what you felt and to know what you knew. Your body might have even stopped feeling like your own and became a commodity to trade for love, acceptance, and belonging if only you could become perfect. You learned to hold your tongue, be a good girl, close your legs, and do as you were told. Your girlhood was cut short. You stopped trusting yourself. You stopped hearing your soul.