Category: Roles & Expectations of Women

My Third Trimester of Pregnancy & Giving Birth – Surrendering to Being Vulnerable as a Woman

~ womeninlivingness

The first two trimesters – Letting go of Control and Perfection of pregnancy for me were a time of new beginnings, with the opportunity to feel what was in the way of me being able to more deeply embrace the womanly quality of stillness I naturally have. I found that during my first trimester my need for perfection was revealed, and after releasing as much of this need as I was able to, I began to see moving into my second trimester of pregnancy that it was about letting go of my need to control others and my environment.

So as I headed into my third trimester without this incessant quest for perfection or the overriding drive to control in order to ‘protect’ myself, what was being uncovered was my natural tenderness in being vulnerable.

Continue reading “My Third Trimester of Pregnancy & Giving Birth – Surrendering to Being Vulnerable as a Woman” →

The True Beauty of Pregnancy – Embracing the Stillness of a Woman

~ womeninlivingness

Pregnancy is a time of new beginnings and not just because there is a new person growing and developing inside. The true beauty of pregnancy is that it offers the opportunity for a deep change to take place in the way we live as women. A change that is initiated from deep within and supported by all that is offered during pregnancy.

Pregnancy is a time for us, as women, to experience ourselves more deeply as the delicate, sensitive and nurturing women we naturally are.

I have had the opportunity to be pregnant twice and from these pregnancies I now have two amazing daughters. Each time I learnt a profound amount about how I was living as a woman leading up to each pregnancy and the changes that were needed as each one progressed.

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Bringing my “Be Sexy” back with Sacred Women’s Movement

~ womeninlivingness

In the past I have accepted that how I behave is who I am, deeming myself to be a good person or bad person dependent on how society views this behavior. I felt I was extremely bad and gross if I in any way found myself, or anyone else for that matter, to be ‘sexy’. I related being sexy to being sexual and if I were to feel and act sexy then I was trying to impose it onto someone.

All of this changed for me after attending Natalie Benhayon’s Sacred Women’s Movement classes. This led me to explore and find other false beliefs I wasn’t aware I had around what it meant to be sexy. Some of these beliefs I came to shine some truth on were:

  • Being sexy is a form of leading men on and giving them the wrong idea
  • Being sexy is a sexual act
  • Being sexy is related to sex
  • Being sexy is shameful and cheap
  • Being sexy is attention seeking, neediness, trying to suck people into my web
  • To be sexy and playful meant I was trying to be sexually attractive or sexual towards someone
  • And what loaded this belief was the additional belief I had that sex is bad.

Continue reading “Bringing my “Be Sexy” back with Sacred Women’s Movement” →

Being a Woman: Developing my own Self-Worth

~ womeninlivingness

I entered my adult life anticipating that I would meet the ‘one’ and have my own family. This picture was firmly set from a young age. It was what being a woman was all about, unless you were unfortunate and ended up as a spinster – on the shelf…

“In modern everyday English, spinster cannot be used to mean simply ‘unmarried woman’; it is now always a derogatory term, referring or alluding to a stereotype of an older woman who is unmarried, childless, prissy, and repressed.”1

The term ‘spinster’ came with such a loaded image of an unattractive, miserable and lonely woman. It was to be avoided at all costs and remaining single wasn’t an option on my checklist for life. Instead, finding ‘the one’ and having a family would mean that I’d made it … or would it? Continue reading “Being a Woman: Developing my own Self-Worth” →

A Woman Turning 40: Celebrating the Beauty of the True Woman

~ womeninlivingness

I am a gorgeous, single woman with no children and have never been married. Last year I found myself turning 40.

A few years ago, I spent a lot of time worrying that time was running out – ‘time’ being biological time. It is common knowledge that a woman’s chance of conceiving naturally after 40 is much slimmer than a woman in her 20s or 30s. The idea of turning 40 was D-Day, I figured that 40 was the cut-off mark that would determine if I was destined to be a mother or not.

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Who Creates the Image of Women

~ womeninlivingness

If you look to the media you could say that there are constant pressures from the world and society as to what a woman should be, what a woman should look like and how a woman should behave. There is constant finger pointing and blame about how women are represented and even sexualised to create the image of the perfect woman, but the question arises to deeply consider and ponder:

Did that image and projection come from men and the media, or is it at all possible that it actually began with women themselves?



As a woman today it is an interesting perception to fathom that we are constantly being governed by what we see around us.

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Mona Lisa – an Inspiration for the Modern Woman

~ womeninlivingness

What is it about the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci that draws approximately six million viewers to the Louvre every year?

I have a print of her here at home, and I asked her. I looked into her eyes and waited for an answer. This is what came to me:

“I am powerful in my stillness, grace and beauty. I am complete. My presence transcends time. I am every woman.”

For centuries scholars have been intrigued with her Renaissance identity. But does the truth of her fascination lie with the quality and power of the painting itself? Many people comment on how her eyes travel with them as they walk past her painting in the Louvre, or even when gazing at a print at home or in a book. Continue reading “Mona Lisa – an Inspiration for the Modern Woman” →

The Roles We Hide In

~ womeninlivingness

Throughout my childhood I took on roles so that the world would see me, and so that I knew who I was.  Sometimes the ‘tidier’, sometimes the ‘wrecker’, sometimes the ‘quiet one’ and sometimes the ‘screamer’.  As time went on I began to cement these roles, becoming known as the peacemaker and carer within my family.

If I had a role then everything made sense.  Without thinking, I could work from the script.

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No Children – I am No less of a Woman

~ womeninlivingness

A very normal and common question to ask a woman is whether she has children or not, especially on a first encounter this is something we tend to ask. The other day I was visiting a friend’s house and I met a man there who was house-sitting the house at the time, we started talking and quite soon in the conversation he asked me if I had children, “No” I replied, “I don’t”.

In the past I used to not leave it at ‘no’ because I always felt I had to explain myself as to why I don’t have children. I was always feeling uneasy and awkward with the silence that would follow my ‘no’ so I would fill that gap with just letting out words and explaining my situation. Continue reading “No Children – I am No less of a Woman” →

Learning to Express Myself

~ womeninlivingness

What is it that gets in the way of me truly expressing myself?

  • Wanting to please other people and make sure that I act in a way that makes them feel reassured and accepted
  • Wanting to be the best, to be noticed or to be rewarded in some way for taking part…always after that A* prize of recognition
  • Fear/shame/embarrassment of not wanting to reveal myself as some kind of inept imposter
  • The ‘children should be seen and not heard’ mantra from childhood
  • Not wanting my expression to spiral into an uncomfortable emotional reaction, because I’ve been holding back for so long, and there is so much to say Continue reading “Learning to Express Myself” →