The Sisterhood Wound

I’ve been in a portal for about 8-weeks alchemizing one of my deepest things:

The Sisterhood Wound.

By the time I was 13, because of various traumas with my mother figures and my girlfriends, my split from trusting the feminine was complete.

I closed firmly to feminine connection. It felt too scary. Too dangerous. For it was when I was open there that I got creamed.

Better to close.

My psyche shattered into two directions that had me feel I could ‘navigate’ feminine relationships without actually having to let them in:

• The Light Masculine - Achievement became my norm. Hiding behind productivity and accolades. Work hard and make money so I don’t have to feel the grief. To deal with all that control, smoke cigarettes which gave me stimulation to offset where I no longer had the sensation of connection (I had closed to it, remember?). Run away for a smoke when things got too close for comfort. Cocaine which allowed me to feel connected to women even when I wasn’t.

• The Light Feminine - This is where I could pretend I was vulnerable, open, and feminine. I looked the part. I talked the part. So I must be the part right? This was where my drinking lived. The social lubricant. The fun, party girl’s girl who would entertain you with how crazy she was. I was dancing in my feminine relationships. The sophisticated fawn masked as the ‘cool girl’. One step removed from authenticity through the arm's length of hypervigilance, which showed up as a mind-based performance rather than just being in the heart of it. Testing the air, anticipating the next step, closing the curtain before it gets too close.

(Note that by 'light' here, the contextual resonance is a lack of depth or real power).

Beneath it all lived a low grade constant anxiety that life was going to attack me, as my inner child perceived that it did then. That I would be punished, rejected, abandoned. I could never really rest. THIS is why I started to joke that I’m an introvert. It just took too much energy to manage being in relationship.

The interesting thing though is that this wasn’t a lack issue (as in, that the love didn’t exist), this was a RECEPTION issue (as in, I could not see, or open to, the love that was already there).

A few threads started unraveling simultaneously leading up to the Sisterhood Wound alchemy - I couldn’t initially see how they were related.

First, I signed up for my spiritual teacher's transmission event in NYC - Lineage. This type of deep priestesshood work is very agitating to the sisterhood wound. It was working me.

Second, I had birthed the culmination of my life's work: The Priestess Path. In perfect cosmic poetry, her birth brought up for release anything standing in the way of me and full service to her.

Third, my teacher taught a class on penetration that really nailed me.

Penetration is how well you are able to receive the adjustment of Truth in your life. Are you open? Like butter? Or closed? Clenched?

Her: Steffie what’s your relationship with penetration?

Me: I’m afraid of it.

Oof.

I was closed to penetration, because I had confused it with punishment. I had it that it was going to ‘hurt’.

I had also started smoking cigarettes again in this timeframe. I had already quit so was embarrassed by this. I was hiding. This was an energy leak.

I could see I was in an old pattern of dopamine-seeking behaviors - ‘future oriented, stimulating, more’.
This is an outward thrust of penetration energy that actually doesn’t let anything in. It’s the opposite of present and receptive. It’s closed. I could feel the smoking had to go. I could feel that I needed to self-penetrate it and feel whatever sensation I was running from underneath.

I could also feel that my intuitive channel was dimmed by the smoking this time around. I wasn’t receiving any new inspiration. Truth was like, 'babe, this really needs to go'.

At first I panicked at the lack of inspiration. Then I relaxed and knew it would come back when it was ready, if it was meant to. I didn’t have to force anything (I couldn’t even if I wanted to). I remembered that it was safe to go down in this spot and let the protection pattern all the way out. The smoking quickened to an all new level.

My ego could smell death. It could sense something big was coming. And it was resisting, hard…

I almost collapsed in this spot. My ego was really dodging the penetration it could feel was coming - it could sense the truth sword that comes in and pierces dead old and distorted patterns with a clean slice.

My ego tried a few games to get me to abort mission. And it was almost successful. But the bigger and deeper thing in me stayed the course.

I picked a day to penetrate the smoking. This was different than I did it before.

I went in with the intention to FEEL what I had been avoiding. Not to try to soothe what was underneath it, but to embrace it. Let it out.

I kept paying attention to my nervous system to make sure I was in range and could hold what was happening. I felt solid (even if agitated - agitation is the sign that something is rising to the surface and there is enough heat for it to be alchemized.)

It was time to go there. To the sensations I've been avoiding. Time to self-penetrate.

So I smoked my last cigarette as a ceremony. As a prayer. And a thank you.

Then, I went in. First, I sensed this like low grade sensation that is really always present. But that I have been numbing. My mind would call this anxiety. Or more specifically, hypervigilance. The feeling that ‘something is wrong here’ or that unspecified sense that ‘something bad is going to happen.’ Watch out.

I really went into it and felt it. Took deep breaths. And I found approval for it. Like, I can be with this. Not only that, there was almost a pleasure. Like I was moaning with the breath.

This doesn’t mean it goes away. But the difference now is that when it peaks I can actually hold it. So I am no longer afraid of it.

Then I went deeper into the terror. And what came up was this young girl in me, panicked, saying "I did it wrong." This is like a full body, want to die cringe. Paralyzing. She is afraid she messed up and is going to lose connection, get attacked.

And then of course the inner punisher comes in and beats the shit out of her. Which is really what she fears most of all. Not other people. Herself.

I told this part of me: “it's ok if you did it wrong. You are allowed to get it wrong. I will love you no matter what. I will never leave you.” A huge softening.

Today, it’s not that there is no charge, but instead that I can hold the charge that there is. I don’t need anyone else to behave in ways that have me not feel it, so that I can be ok.

This weekend, I got activated, and I was able to practice with my inner child:

“It’s ok if you did it wrong. I will always love you no matter what.”

My love and approval is the only thing that little girl inside me really cares about. And,

“I will feel this with you. You don’t have to feel this alone.”

And in that moment really surrendering to the sensation as it moves through my body. And it becomes - in a way - ecstatic. Erotic even.

I can feel all of it. I can let life f**k me good. I can be penetrated without preference and feel the arousal.

Before, I felt victimized by this level of sensation in my body, so I was trying to avoid it or offgas it.

Because I was closed to the ‘pain’, I was closed down to the pleasure too.

And the connection.

And while that armor helped to protect me, it also prevented me from seeing, let alone receiving, the feminine love that really WAS there.

I wasn’t letting in that Nutrition, and so a part of me was atrophied inside.

It's coming in now, like liquid light vitamins, through the cracks in the stone. Drop by drop. Healing as it seeps in. Repairing.

And what I am embodying now is that the adjustment of Truth does not come from punishment, it comes from the most exquisite love. And I can hold whatever that adjustment brings up for me as I align to it.

Which has me wide open to receive it. Rather than clenched and bracing.

This is really what's inside the thread I have been dismantling around the Sisterhood wound - the capacity to actually open to receive Her love…

…The End (except it’s not).

This is the ongoing work of the priestess path. The continual unpeeling of energetic layers that allows me grow in relationship with the truest thing inside me: My Essence.

There are always deeper and new octaves of healing. I need to be careful not to rush through this spot and tie it up with a pretty bow. Like ‘check!’ integration complete. Because this is how my mind sneakily bypasses sensation. And it would be 'hooky' and not true.

I can actually see this thread started unwinding back in December as I was preparing for my Hawaii trip. I thought it was completed, but it was really just beginning.

The work of karmic healing is messy, non-linear, and humbling.

And liberating, and exhilarating, and awesome (in the true sense of the word).

The glorious thing is this is conscious now - the loving mirror of projection pointing back at my wounding is fully seen. The invitation to turn within, and discover what that wounding needs from ME and me alone.

This is true feminine power.