Oana
Hi, and welcome to the podcast The Feminine UNCUT! For the newcomers, I’m Oana, the founder of thefeminine.com, an online platform dedicated to empowering women all over the world to trust their voice, follow their hearts and embrace their womanhood.
I truly hope you had a wonderful summer. I surely did. This autumn, I want to invite you to relax, play and go further on your path toward more womanhood, more femininity, and self-expression in your world, in your universe, and in your life.
In this episode of The UNCUT, we’re going to speak about a very interesting, juicy, steamy, but unspecific topic called PASSION.
What is passion? I have no special talent. I’m only passionately curious, Albert Einstein once said.
Another amazing artist, Italian director Federico Fellini, believes there’s no end, there’s no beginning, and there’s only the passion for life.
There’s a lot of talk about passion, nowadays. There are a lot of thinkers and doers who link passion to life’s creative energy. So why are we dealing with passion on such a hot topic? Why is it such a hot topic? And why is this relevant to a woman’s journey? And I’m going to explore the mysteries of passion and also debunk some of the myths we have around passion so that we can access it and experience a more fulfilled way of living our own womanhood.
And I’m going to do that with my partner in crime, Ioana. Hi, Ioana!
Ioana
Hello. Happy to be back!
Oana
Happy to be back.
Ioana
I have prepared for our conversation. Do you want to know how?
Oana
How?
Ioana
I’ve googled the word PASSION.
Oana
Wow!
Ioana
Have you tried?
Oana
No, not really.
Ioana
Well, I have, because I was really curious about what women are looking for when they think about the word PASSION. And Google says women generally associate the word PASSION with meaning and examples. So let’s start from scratch. What is the meaning of this mystical word PASSION?
Oana
I can’t be accountable for giving meaning, but I would say that passion is the experience of joy. Passion is something that gets stirred up. We open to it, and we open to it when our heart is open and when we connect with who we are. What’s our purpose? What do we want to live in our life on the deepest core level? So passion is the expression of our heart and what matters to us fully lived, fully creatively, let out into the world.
Ioana
Is there any specific connection between passion and sexuality?
Oana
Well, it’s the first link people make in their minds when they hear PASSION. We all think that passion is related to sexuality or fiery hot, intense encounters. And the moment we start engaging with passion, we get our fantasy loop activated, especially as women see the red, fiery hot encounter with a beautiful man. Right?
Ioana
Totally agree!
Oana
Right!
And that’s one myth I want to debunk today, because passion, yes, is about a hot encounter, at least when we have a hot encounter, we’re sexually activated, we’re sexually expressing ourselves. That’s a very powerful way of experiencing intimacy. But passion is much more than that.
Passion is about what matters to you. Passion is about the things you love. Passion can also mean resilience on your path to success. Passion is what gives you drive and inspiration in moments when you don’t have the drive and inspiration. It can look in many different ways.
It can look like fighting for your kid’s health or taking care of your beloved when he’s in a breakdown. It can mean going to work every day and finding enthusiasm in your life and enthusiasm in what you’re doing.
It can mean starting a new hobby, the one that you’ve been waiting for since the 6th grade.
So passion is about what makes you feel alive from the inside out. And it gives you purpose, it gives you a sense of self, it gives you the experience of feeling fulfilled.
Ioana
You said in the beginning that we would debunk stereotypes today. Which are the most common stereotypes you’ve noticed linked to passion?
Oana
That passion is direct, free, wild sexuality.
And I can give you a very famous example with Sharone Stone and Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct.
Do you remember that scene?
Ioana
Yes, but isn’t that true? Isn’t passion connected to sexuality?
Oana
Well, sexuality is part of the passion, but PASSION is a much wider concept and I think that was a landmark for all of us in a very powerful way. It brought PASSION a very explicit or sexually hot encounter. But I think it is very important to understand that passion is much more.
Passion is what connects us to what matters and what brings us aliveness and joy. It also connects us to our sense of self and our purpose in life. The moment we truly allow our passion, which is our life force energy, to really get expressed, that, in the end, will link us to our vision for life.
What do we want to create? What’s our legacy? I do remember when I started my journey into this beautiful, deep process of encountering my own expression of the feminine energy of encountering my own womanhood and the answer to what makes a woman, I was afraid of my own fire because I was thinking that if I allow it to be expressed, it will mean I’ll get very sexual and I have so much moral stigma around allowing my fire to get expressed because I was repressed in my sexuality.
And when I started engaging with my feminine energy, when I started cultivating it, and when I saw that fire, I saw that the fire wasn’t about my sexuality, it was about my creativity, it was about my life force energy wanting to be expressed in the world. And when I allowed it and understood it for what it actually was, I was able to envision a mission for myself that brings me joy and aliveness every single day, no matter how tired I am. And sometimes, yeah, it’s sexual, sometimes it is about a hot encounter. But it’s not only about that.
Ioana
I think many of us get stuck growing up because we see all these stereotypes and we really don’t know how to connect and what to do with them. How can we look at stereotypes and use them in our own growing-up process and make them a very powerful instrument that can actually help us?
Oana
That’s a very good question.
Let’s take a very popular stereotype, archetype stereotype, coming to be. Let’s take Wonder Woman, for example. It’s a very powerful expression of feminine essence, feminine energy, and womanhood. How can we use Wonder Woman, and most importantly, how can we guide or teach the young generation, the girls who are going to get a Barbie, Wonder Woman, to use that as a reference in developing their femininity? And I think stereotypes are embodied in references like Wonder Woman represents a powerful woman who has undergone a journey to access her power. And that’s very important because that teaches us that we have to undergo a journey to embody whatever that stereotype says or whatever we are inspired by in relation to a stereotype. So if I take Wonder Woman and I want to be like Wonder Woman, then a way to experience that in a powerful, growing way for me is to make it a living experiment.
How can I go beyond my limits? How can I take Wonder Woman, who is a powerful woman who goes beyond her limits, challenges herself to the most in my everyday life, and it may mean many things to many women?
It may mean taking up a game where I can be this amazing, powerful woman in business and come home and be gentle and sweet with my beloved. And that’s a Wonder Woman experience for me because I’m tired of getting up today. I can’t be sweet. So it’s really unlocking my creativity and going beyond what I now perceive as a limit. And in this way, I’m integrating the concept into my experience and into my life, and I’m giving it a voice of my own.
Ioana
Let’s go a bit deeper into this. How can we guide, say, our daughters or our teenage daughters to take what they love and what they admire and actually become what they love and admire and not get stuck in that?
Oana
Good question again.
Well, by empowering them to connect or integrate or apply the things they admire, we never admire something that’s not linked to something inside of us. We only see outside what we have inside. Maybe it’s not cultivated, maybe it’s not fully expressed, but there’s a link there. So whatever I admire outside, I have the potential to manifest it. So in a way, giving girls and adolescents confidence about what they feel and whatever they see outside, have them link with something inside and give voice to that something inside and put it into action. It’s the same way in which, for example, as adults, we start the healing or the activating process of connecting with our own vision.
Ioana
We have many examples of people who preach about being passionate and following your passion and following your dream. What’s the most feminine way to do that?
Oana
The feminine way of bringing yourself more in connection to your passion, what really matters to you, is by nurturing and by connecting with your heart because you find passion, you find your sense of self, your purpose in life when you’re truly connected with your heart and with what matters to you.
What do you really love? What do you really enjoy? So most of us, in our connection with finding our own passion, experience two things: we either don’t connect with our vision and it’s a slow process of finding our purpose in life, finding our meaning, or giving it a very clear cut, or we have a clear cut on what we want to achieve in our life, what’s our legacy and we don’t necessarily find the vitality, the resilience to follow up on that in our day to day life.
And I think in both cases, it is about nurturing, in different ways, in different stages. In the beginning, when you’re not really clear about your vision or your passion, it is about nurturing your intuition, and that requires a very feminine process, actually, because it is a very gentle, subtle way to approach your intuition.
Your intuition is not loud, as somebody was saying, it whispers to you and you have to really listen, and that requires quietness. It requires a seat of receptivity. It requires trusting, against all odds, against what you see in the outside world. So it’s not so much about focusing on the outside and pumping yourself up, but it is about really tuning in with who you are, and then if it’s a little voice and it whispers softly, nurture it, love it, bring honor, bring confidence to it!
Ioana
That sounds too good to be true. But how can we actually do that?
Oana
Well, let’s do it now, for example, it’s very easy, actually.
You just have to relax and give yourself five minutes of space and quietness. So if we’re going to end the podcast with this, I just suggest the listener and you, of course, and me to just relax and take a break, close your eyes and connect with your body. And it can be as simple as putting your hands on the belly and just noticing the in breath and the out breath and just being with your belly. In breath out breath, really allow the hustle to melt. Allow the voices in your head to melt. You don’t have to worry about them. You just have to let them be. And at that moment, your body starts to unwind and your body unwinding allows a more spacious experience to occur, and in that spacious experience, you can just be with yourself, or you can ask your heart, what does it want? What does it really matter to it? And just wait for the answer. And if no answer comes up, it’s fine. Trust, because the voice of your intuition doesn’t necessarily whisper the moment you ask. And I’ve noticed that, in my own process, sometimes when I just put my intention of spending more inward time with myself, it takes a couple of days for that message that I actually want to hear from a deeper level of my own womanhood to surface.
And it may not come in the moment you take the break and you breathe. It may come when you’re taking your shower in the morning. It may come when you’re driving your car to work. It may come right before you go to bed or tune into a song or listen to something on TV or watch a movie. It’s a moment of inspiration and it’s linked to the practice of just breathing with your body and tuning into your voice. And it is a process and it takes time, but it is your vision, your passion. It’s the exact process of nurturing, like anything else, like a flower that wants water and air and love to flourish, like a child that needs to grow. It is the same process of nurturing. And with attention, love, and energy, it grows stronger and stronger.
Ioana
That was a very beautiful moment. I really enjoyed it. Now let’s wrap it up.
What’s the idea that you would point out to end this podcast?
Oana
Don’t overestimate the power of nurturing your passion. It can bring you power and self-expression in ways that you don’t experience now. So, wherever you are in the process of either finding your passion or expressing your passion, nurture it. Nurture yourself and those parts of yourself that are linked to what really matters to you. And I want to end up with this, with the idea of nurture and I want to invite you to stay tuned to our next podcast because, in our next podcast, we’re going to explore more.
How do we nurture those things that really matter to us in our day-to-day life, how can we turn routine into ritual, and why ritual is such an important step in nurturing what really matters to us?
So I guess that was The feminine UNCUT for today.
Thanks for tuning in. I really hope this was valuable and it brought inspiration to connect with your passion and honor what matters to you and give you a voice. Don’t leave here before subscribing to our weekly newsletter, jump to thefeminine.com. Start here and also receive our free guidebook. It’s an amazing toolkit of how to access your feminine energy and bring it to life.
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We want to hear your question and we want to answer it.
So, ladies, have an amazing day, and do give voice to those passions!
