Healing Our Masculine and Feminine

I woke up this morning and went for a walk on the beach in San Diego with my husband. On our way home, we stopped for coffee served by a lovely man at Cafe Matinal.

Later, I looked through my pictures and found one of me between my husband and son on a sailboat the night before. We had just spent ten days in California, traveling for work and pleasure, and as I looked at the photo, something began to settle in.

Throughout the trip, there were moments when I almost fell, hit my head, or went quiet in vulnerability. Each time, my son or my husband would ask if I was okay.

It didn’t fully register until I saw that picture: I was being protected by healthy masculinity.

The truth is, I didn’t quite know how to receive it. More than once, I brushed their concern away, perhaps out of fear that needing care would make me appear weak. Somewhere along the way, my body learned that being vulnerable meant being unsafe.

We live in a time when we see harmful expressions of masculinity on the news constantly. And I wonder what happens to our feminine qualities: our softness, receptivity, and capacity to trust, when we don’t feel safe. I learned how to be both the protector and the nurturer for myself and for the people around me.

This morning, though, I became aware of the men around me who are also trying to find balance. They, too, are navigating the expectations and roles they’ve been given.

Recently, a colleague said something that has stayed with me: The boxes are useless.

We’ve been trained to put ourselves and one another into boxes so we know how to function in the world. But I wonder what the pressure of those boxes has done to us. How many puppies have learned to become sharks? How many elephants have had to become honey badgers?

We are meant to live in community, yet so many of us are afraid that the person calling our phone is a scammer. We place so much importance on money as a way to move through the world, even though we know we can’t take it with us when we leave.

I can feel my mind trying to make sense of the disconnect. How have we grown so far from our hearts?

Whatever our gender, so many of us long for the same things: to feel safe and connected.

Looking at that picture, I felt something I’m not sure I had ever fully allowed myself to feel before. I was sitting between two men who wanted to protect me, not because of what they could get from me, but because they love me.

At the same time, my daughter was calling from 400 miles away, asking for help with her car. I could still be her mom, still offer care and support, while also allowing myself to be cared for.

Something within me is beginning to understand that I am not alone. I don’t always have to be the strongest person in the room.

Complex PTSD has shaped the pathways in my nervous system. For much of my life, men were not safe. My father beat my mother, molested children, and manipulated women. The women in my family were left to hold everything together while protecting their children as best they could.

I would never claim that I did it perfectly. But today, I have a son who feels it when something is unethical and wants to do right by the world. I have a husband who wants to give back to the land and stand up for the good of our community.

Their care creates space in me. Space to connect with each life force I have the privilege of encountering. Space to make offerings to the unseen. Space to soften.

And it brings me back to a question: What if it doesn’t have to be the way it has always been?

What if strength can include receiving? What if being cared for doesn’t make me weak?

I can still give my mom medicine to the people around me. And I can let the men in my life ask me if I’m okay. I can let their love reach me and cry in gratitude when it does.

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