In the name of the Rose
How I stopped using Headpower and began melting into Heartpower
A few years ago — probably around 2018 I was chatting to my friend and colleague Li Brook-Tyler and said randomly and from pure intuition:
‘If you ever run a women’s circle, I’m in it’
and she said:
‘Funny you should say that — I was just thinking about this and you are one of a number of signs so that’s settled.’
I think that is when Lian and I knew that we were more than Facebook friends — more like co-conspiratorial, soul-contracted muses for each other. In fact for the following three years we have gone on to have one of the most nourishing and transformational relationships of my life.
The journey that I subsequently went on, I had no idea I was signing up for. I already knew and understood a lot about being human and how to shine — as a leadership developer and mentor, as well as spiritual seeker, and all round expert in what makes human beings tick.
But there is a difference between intellectual knowledge and insightful knowing. In your bones. Sometimes I just needed to learn the intellectual concepts that explained those already existing deep knowings — this was often the case. And this was deeply re-assuring.
But even more powerful were those times when I deepened from conceptual to embodied knowing. Life-changing.
Up till the point I started Waking the Wild Feminine, I’d been told often to slow down, let go, do less, stop pushing. I’d known to trust my intuition but then get confused when there’s a good reason to drive over it. I’d known it was a good idea to rest and rejuvenate but it would often look like crash and burn.
So whilst I had a lot of knowledge and was inspired, creating, free and sovereign in many ways, there were areas of my life — where I was pushing through — and it did not seem like I had a choice; I was just sucking it up.
I see now this was not true. But it felt true at the time. Completely true and so much so that I wore myself out trying so hard.
Pushing through with what I would now call — headpower — the drive and focus of the masculine energetic polarity. I might even have had a slight disdain for ‘being weak, wimpy, too soft, too changeable, too inert’ and might have perceived rest and resourcing as slightly lazy and indulgent. So perhaps not the healthiest relationship with the feminine energetic.
And I also had a tendency towards manic highs of extra-ordinary superwoman activity (in which I would try to get it all done — and take on more too) and then the crashes of exhaustion — which would feel like depression and a general feeling of being inept and hopeless and feeling bad about that.
And whilst I knew I had that pattern, I didn’t really know how and why I was creating it or if there even was an option. Maybe it was brain chemistry.
Enter the Waking the Wild journey. In particular the journey with the Divine Feminine and Masculine. I did ‘know’ a lot about it all but none of that knowledge had had me really slow down and lean in to softness.
(Apart from that one full year age 35 when single I decided to make myself happy by being on my own, nourish my soul and let go of the idea of being in a relationship to make me happy — turns out that was a year of being deeply in my feminine — and at the end that year? I met my now husband.)
Each crucible I have done (some even initiated by me) with Lian & Jonathan Wilkinson from Primal Happiness has felt deeply familiar and seemed more about melting away what isn’t needed and reclamation rather than fixing, adding to and improving.
I needed to be reminded of my Wild Woman and what she needed. I needed to set down the armour and feel. I needed to be brought home to what is Archetypal and true in this human embodied form. As equally and paradoxically true as our Spiritual Oneness.
I needed to feel.
I was always pretty hot on the feelings side. Inconveniently at times, I feel deeply and a lot. So coming across a game-changing understanding about ten years ago on who we really are and how we all create our inner experience truly helped me know my spiritual essence and that my experience was temporary — which was and is infinitely helpful. But my stoic tendency and upbringing coupled with my desire not to feel bad meant I could use that understanding to bypass my own felt reality and unwittingly create a kind of suppression that I didn’t know I was doing. Innocently I was just doing what made sense.
The Waking the Wild was a journey of discovering ALL IS WELCOME.
Which interestingly has always been the hallmark of my own work as a Coach-Facilitator — but I hadn’t always given myself that same grace. I had such powers of transformation at my fingertips, I knew how to reframe and be Sovereign about literally anything. I knew reality is a story we create. I knew how to intend and manifest.
What I didn’t know so well was how to be in a body and feel.
This was a journey that Lian took me down into — by literally welcoming all of me — the good (which I would forget about when low), the bad (which shamed me) and the ugly (which I wouldn’t want to be with). With the gentleness of rose petals and the radical candour of thorns, she helped me dissolve into seeing the value of softness.
My latest crucible with her is the Empress — not for the fainthearted. It is about realising your true power, manifesting effortlessly by ruthlessly pruning whatever is in the way.
Turns out what was in the way was my own wounded relationship to the masculine (again) as Maureen Murdock says the heroine’s journey is circular — you keep coming back to the same place with new eyes.
I saw how my own traumatic start with masculine energetics has imprinted my tiny child brain with shadows I couldn’t get to from a conscious place.
I had to feel what is real to heal and reveal.
I had to be truly present with — and welcoming of my inexplicable rage. It wanted to tear down walls. On this particular occasion Lian left me (unusually) dangling after one session — sitting in my pain.
She said create from it.
Turns out the walls it wanted to tear were up around my guarded heart. Which was choosy about surrendering to masculine energies. Really choosy. And even more choosy about surrendering to the softness of She — the Divine Feminine.
So here is the outpourings of my creative healing laid bare for all to see.
A Tryptich: In the name of the Rose
- The Rupture: Where I have built walls and hardened my heart now it’s time to melt into Heartpower
2. The Truth: When the walls are brought down the truth is revealed
3. The Rebirth: When I surrender to Heartpower the world and its riches fall at my feet.
What I now know is that when I created these collages something in my soul was felt into, soothed and held. To me now, Softness looks anything but weak. It is in fact the greatest teaching, healing and revealing power of them all.
Elizabeth Lovius is a Changemaker who works with Leaders to let their wisdom lead real change.
She specialises in bringing the Heartpower of Love into Business through cultivating Connection, Creativity, Confidence, Clarity & Core Wisdom.
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