Oana
Hello again, or hello if you’re here for the first time. We are the Uncut Feminine Podcast, and we’re really thrilled that you choose to be with us today. With each episode, the journey turns out to be more and more exciting for us, and I hope for you, too. And we’re incredibly happy when you come back and you bring us challenges and stories and questions about how does it look like and how does it feel like to be a woman of our days? What are the possibilities, what are the mysteries, and what are the challenges? We really are committed that this dialogue brings value to your life and allows us, all of us in sisterhood and Brotherhood, to bring the feminine principle present and use it in our lives, in the way we live, in the way we work, in the way we create, and in the way we bring all of our gifts to one another. For those who don’t know us yet, I am Oana Founder of thefeminine.com. It’s an online platform dedicated to women all over the world. Our mission statement revolves around a totally new and fresh paradigm of self-care, well-being, and being feminine at The Feminine.
Oana
We really believe that the feminine principle can be a guide in our life, and it can enrich us not only on a personal level but on a social level as well. So we are developing, creating, and looking at practices and ways in which we can take the feminine principle into our lives and enrich our lives with it. I have been a transformational coach for 14-15 years now, and I’ve dedicated the last aid to empowering women to trust their voices, follow their hearts, and embrace their womanhood completely. The Feminine is the embodiment of my work, and its main focus and intention are to support women in acknowledging their true power, connecting with their authenticity, and giving a full expression of their gifts to the world. And it brings together practices and exercises and principles that are connected to the feminine principle, especially for women. But I think also for men. And we are going to look at that more and more because we’re bringing different ways in which masculine and feminine can interact in our day-to-day life. One of the things we’re going to talk about today is figuring out what we want and what we need in life in general or in relationships or in different areas of our life.
Oana
And what do we need to claim what we want and what we need so that we can experience life in balance, in balance, in relation to what we offer and nurture and what we receive? And I have my friend with me here, Ioana, and she’s going to throw some questions into the air, and we’re going to roll with that.
Ioana
Hi, Oana. And I still meet you today. I was just coming back from a coffee with a friend, a very good friend. I think I’m going to give him a name because my conversations with him are inspiring and I just keep on coming up with examples here. Let’s call him Mr. M or just M, like in James Bond.
Oana
Mr. Big, he’s just an M. No.
Ioana
We were turning back in time and recalling a period when we worked on a project together and he told me, you’re so in a different place right now, because can you remember how you were in those days? And I told, of course, no, you’re so messed up back then, which was, I think three years ago. And I told him, yeah, maybe, but why do you say that? And he said that you were always dating or you were always messed up in a strange relationship with a man or a mysterious man or with a famous man, or it was impossible to work with you and you’re such in a different place right now. And he was telling me that I was like, yeah, maybe you’re right. And the bold conclusion just came to me as I was messed up and I was having a lot of trouble with men. But I think I know why that happened, why I never knew what I really wanted. The chaos popped up in my life because I was trying everything and looking for excitement and looking for interesting characters. But I didn’t manage to find the answer, like what I really wanted from those relationships or from those experiences.
Ioana
And I think that this is a problem. Of course, everybody experiences in different ways, but not knowing what we want really gets us into trouble. So I think it’s a good idea. We talk a little about how we really come to the conclusion that we really want something in a very mature way well.
Oana
I think part of the process is exploring. So I don’t think you were that messed up. I think you were trying to figure it out ineffectively after a point. But I think exploration is part of how we figure out what we want. But for me, I think there is a subtle step before figuring out what we want, which is connecting more with what we need. They’re linked, I think what we want that really nourishes and fulfills us and brings order to our life is a match with what we actually need. And I think part of going through the motions of really knowing what you want with men as a woman has to come by a deeper exploration of what you actually need. Because I know I was having this trouble in my life with men also until it settled because I was somehow split between what my mind thought I should have next to a man. And I was projecting this very cool image of my womanhood and it had to be the perfect match for that. But it wasn’t. Nourishing me. And what I need was actually a very different type of man and a very different type of man nourishes me every day.
Oana
So I have the experience of balance in my womanhood because I am receiving a lot from that relationship, from that dynamic, from that man. It was hard for me to let go of the pictures in my head and really actually trust my intuition and trust the feelings I was receiving from my body and from my emotions while I was searching for the perfect mate and actually let go of the mind. And I think in this process of figuring out what we want, we need to understand that maybe what we want at the beginning stage is an intoxication of different pictures and fantasies and labels that the mind has gathered. And that for us women, we need to step into our truth, which is in the belly. When you have the braveness to let go of the pictures and the frames in your head about the perfect scenario and actually listen to your belly and listen to your gut, everything changes. I was in shock when I started really diving deep into my femininity and really reclaiming my sensuality and my sexuality for myself, not in connection with men because the whole pattern of how I attracted men and what type of men I liked changed radically.
Oana
I was in shock because until I was really deeply connected with the truth that lay in my body, I was searching for and looking for a completely different type of man. And of course, I wasn’t happy because it wasn’t compatible with who I truly was. And it took courage for me to claim for myself that maybe what I need is more important than what I want.
Ioana
And what’s the question we should address to the womb to receive the right answer or to start receiving the right answers?
Oana
First of all, there is a connection with our womb, that’s subtle, that we can receive and hear at the moment. We connect gently with our body and we ground our body in the feminine energy. And that can be simply connecting with the Earth, barefoot hugging trees, just deep breathing with your wall, simple breathing, deep breathing, staying more connected with yourself in solitude. These are simple ways in which you start connecting with the womb. And then you ask your womb to guide you into decluttering, the noise and the outside expectations of how you should be and what happiness looks like and what’s the perfect dynamic. Because in a way that declutters is connected to your image and what other people should think about you. They’re not truly connected to what makes you happy. And that’s in a way, a difference between an adolescent girl and a woman. A woman can step into what makes me happy, even if it doesn’t look good for the outside circle. If that man makes me happy, I’m going to go for it and I’m claiming it and I’m loving it and I’m unabashedly enjoying it because that’s what actually my body says makes me happy, and it doesn’t matter what it looks like.
Oana
And I don’t care because I choose happiness more than image. It’s a deep process. It can take a long time. That’s also part of stepping into much more awareness about your boundaries. And I think another layer of figuring out what we want is understanding and giving ourselves the space and the respect and the self-authority. To say no, to say no.
Ioana
Even to your own. The word desire comes into my mind, but I don’t know if it’s the right word, but sometimes there’s a voice in your head that tells you to go for it, but you cannot discern where the voice is coming from. It’s like the image with the angel on the right shoulder and with a little devil on your left shoulder. How do you realize what’s the voice of the angel and what’s the voice of the little devil?
Oana
I think both of those types of signals are from the mind, so they’re not connected to the truth. And the moment you let go and actually dive deep into the practice and learn to trust the practice, you will feel in your body the truth of any situation, and it will carry energy, vital energy, and it will put things in motion and it will bring synchronicities that are beyond the way the mind manipulates because that’s the power of the feminine energy. And women ask me, how do I do that? Well, it’s not a mental thing. You actually have to take practice and do it. Put yourself in the process. We have programs that are developing women into getting more grounded and more trustworthy of their feminine energy and how it flows into the body. Do that homework, because after you do the practice, you will not only feel your intuition, which is very different than what your mind says and your instincts, and they’re meant to trigger the truth in any situation, your womb is a channel for truth. So is your heart. The answer to how you choose between your right shoulder and left shoulder is you don’t.
Oana
You just develop your intuition and your instinct, which connects you to the truth in any situation, and then you will know. You’ll know that that meeting or that situation or you exposing yourself in that way won’t carry the day and won’t bring you fulfillment. And you’re avoiding something where you’re just going for the charm of it, but it won’t really bring you joy on all levels of your being. So only by developing an awareness and a strong relationship with your intuition, you will be able to shift these triggers inside and be able to surrender to actually what the feminine energy is going to guide you. And when you surrender to that, things flow and they come with ease. They’re not bringing chaos into your life. They may bring different developmental stages, like different relationships that will each teach you something new about yourself. But it will be in a growth process that will have order, that will be to your benefit. Truly.
Ioana
I will try to go back to my own example because I know that if you’re not familiar with the practice, it can sound a bit abstract at the beginning, but how it looked for me when I started doing the practice and work with the feminine programs was that okay. I was at a point when I realized that something is very off because I was giving a lot and receiving nothing and it was training. It was very saddening. And the first thing I felt after a while of course, was just so I took a step back, I took a step back and I could see what was not working. And that everything I was enthusiastic about at the beginning doesn’t give me anything in the long run. And then for more than a year or even almost two, I didn’t feel the need to go out and meet a man because I was feeling that I needed time. Like the solitude process, you were talking about in the last episode. I felt that I needed to cry the pain I stored in my body and in my heart from all those broken experiences and just take the time to heal because I couldn’t have clarity.
Ioana
It required healing in order to get more clear about what I wanted for real and what’s the starting point for somebody who knows that what she’s doing or he’s doing now is totally wrong but doesn’t know where to start because you are confused and it doesn’t mean something bad about you.
Oana
You just need support to get clear and put yourself in a process that’s like the basic program we have is four pillars of femininity where you actually take the time to go through a process that puts the order in your life inside of you and it will bring you back to your core center. It will bring an alignment with your own self and in that way you will start the journey of reclaiming your power and becoming clear. You were sharing it and I was in pain at some point while you were sharing it because the question that popped up into my mind was, Why would you do that to yourself? Why would you keep doing that to yourself? Knowing it doesn’t give you anything. But we do that to ourselves. I’ve done it in my own life until I grow up. No, I’m joking. And we do that to ourselves. And I think we do that to ourselves because we don’t have and we have lost the power and the strength of the feminine. Our mothers have not given us that strong capacity to trust our intuition. And I know I have been saved in my life.
Oana
The moment I surrender to the feminine principle and the feminine energy as a guide, it brought the power to cut the chords of everything I wasn’t able to see. That doesn’t work because I was trapped in a pattern and I wasn’t able to see, and I didn’t have the strength to cut it. I didn’t I actually needed a strong mother to do it for me. I didn’t have that mother. I didn’t have a sister. I didn’t have a sisterhood. So I was weak in a pattern, and I was a victim, and I wasn’t even aware that I was a victim. So how do you start engaging with something that has sacredness, that has strength, that has integrity, that can guide you and surrender to the guidance, because it will bring a power you don’t have yet? And it will start the healing process, which is an order process, and through the healing, become strong on your own. Clarity will pop up into your life and you will learn, which for me took years, or at least it felt like an eternity. This strong lesson in putting boundaries. And I think for women, that’s such an essential stepping stone into womanhood, knowing how to channel what you need, what you want, what are you nourishing and creating and how are you mapping the boundaries of how much energy you give to people and how much energy you receive?
Oana
And I had to learn it the hard way, which is fine. I hope other women will go with the support we are giving them, and they don’t have to go through all that struggle. That’s the point. But it is about boundaries. And funny enough, it’s about boundaries. Every day in your life, even if you’re in a happy ordered relationship, you have to tell your lover, hey, I need this. I can’t do that. I’m sorry. That’s what I want. Today, tomorrow is the next step. And we have to just create a way of being intimate in this pattern, in this new pattern, in this new set of rules, in my limits. And it’s why it’s so important for women because it’s our responsibility and our constant task to take care of ourselves and be in balance. And it’s the only way in which we can map territories that men need so that they can fulfill their role in the relationship.
Ioana
It was very important to work with the feminine. It brought me, I think, the strongest insight I could ever get regarding this specific issue. And also the answer to why it felt that way. And what was actually disturbing me, because, at the moment, I couldn’t even express what was so disturbing was the fact that I was not honoring myself and my femininity. And because I wasn’t doing that, of course, the man was not doing that.
Oana
Sure.
Ioana
And this was the first and the strongest thing the feminine taught me, the importance of honoring your womanhood because only after you do that, you will mirror that.
Oana
And the man just has to honor it. And he won’t honor it unless you claim him to honor it.
Ioana
It’s a mirror you just mirror that.
Oana
It’s funny enough, I always share this with women because I think there’s an instinctual side in men that’s an asshole that wants to kick in in every relationship, no matter how much they love you or they’re into you. At the beginning stage of a relationship, men will try to go beyond boundaries and be assholes just to test if you have the verticality as the woman to punish him for that and claim respect. And if you pass that test and he understands he needs to respect you, he will trust and surrender to what opens up after that game dynamic, which is intimacy. And it’s a very unconscious dynamic that happens. It played out in all of my relationships. I see it in relationships when I do couple therapy, and it’s just amazing. But it’s something instinctual that’s very rooted, and it’s like a test that the masculine does. So how could have you claimed your femininity and the honor of your femininity if you missed on the right of passage of a strong woman mother who would share that knowledge with you because he has to honor your femininity by not understanding anything about it, by you being weird about it because it looks weird from the outside?
Oana
Women are in their truth, following their intuition, seeing things that are not happening yet, shouting at the moon, being in solitude, and being wild and crazy. It’s an instinctual self of the feminine self that you have to honor, and he doesn’t have to understand it. You just have to claim it.
Ioana
That’s so true because what Anne told me today in the same context of the conversation about the period, I was very chaotic in that I was actually caught in a very toxic relationship at the moment. And today he told me, I was looking at you and I was so enraged you couldn’t see how you were dishonoring you, and only if you just allowed me, I would have stepped in and done the work for you. But of course, at that point, I said you should have done that because it would have saved a lot of pain. But the second thought was like, no, it’s okay. You didn’t do that because it was my lesson. And if I wouldn’t gone through that situation, probably I wouldn’t have been here now.
Oana
Oh, totally. And it’s definitely not something that somebody can do for you. You actually have to pick yourself up and commit to something better and something more for yourself. And it is you empowering yourself and generating your own right of passage into womanhood. It’s how you become a woman. It’s how we have to do it, because we haven’t received that structure, that circle, that sacredness in our life, and we have to stop waiting for it. We have to generate it. We have to take action now. So don’t wait. Put yourself in the process. Precious years are passing by and you’re just beautiful enough and strong enough and courageous enough and brave enough to do it. Do it.
Ioana
And trust me, it’s so true. The mind. It’s so creative in telling you and giving all the arguments in the world why you’re doing the right thing while doing the worst thing in the world. But I just want to shift the topic a bit because not knowing what you want, coming from the same source, doesn’t touch only our relationship side.
Oana
It touches our ex-boss gave you the perfect feedback. You were a mess of work. Yeah. And more than that.
Ioana
Now, while you previously answered my question that my professional life mirrors exactly the same process or the same situation because I was super lucky to have jobs fulfilling in the sand. I had many times, a lot of great colleagues with whom I had a very good relationship and a great boss at the moment. But I was feeling unhappy all the time. I was feeling like suffocating all the time. And now when I think back on it, I could have done 10 million times better, and I could have proved my knowledge and my power 101 times more. But I didn’t do that. And I think the reason why I was all the time unhappy is that I didn’t know what I want. It’s the same process.
Oana
I think, and you didn’t know who you were, which is even worse, and they’re connected. And only by taking the time to love yourself and meet yourself consciously, do you end up defining who you are or understanding who you are and then knowing what you want and addressing it, creating it, manifesting it. And we need that process. And it can play out in many ways for each one of us. And there’s no recipe, and we shouldn’t really be stuck in a recipe. We should be creative because we are unique human beings, but we need that process and that time and that commitment to defining who we are because then we will know what we want and it will be much easier to generate it. It will actually bring us closer to success and abundance and happiness. Because the moment you know who you are and what you want and what you need, and you go for it and you win at it, you’re happy. It’s very simple, actually. Of course, it takes time, and it’s a process, but you can get there.
Ioana
And I think most of us just look in these difficult times for shortcuts or how can I avoid this process? But I think the key is not avoiding or shortcutting it, but finding the right landmarks and finding the right type of support, and finding the right inspiration that can take you from point A to point B. But my question here is where should we look so that we are really sure that we’re finding the right inspiration and the right guidance you will explore that.
Oana
I don’t think you can know for sure, but it will feel right and it will bring positive feedback and effect in your life. And if it doesn’t, then stop engaging with it and look for something else. But don’t stop looking. I think we are our own best teachers. We need structure and we need support and we need context. But I think we know for ourselves what’s good for us or not. It just starts with commitment.
Ioana
Why I asked this because many times we get stuck in what our friends think is good for us or what our parents think is good for us. And we spend so much time looking at what others ones or think is good for us that we just disconnect completely from our own truth.
Oana
Yeah, that’s also the side effect of a lack of right of passage in our lives. Because if from five years old, we would have been empowered to listen to our voice and our intuition at 15, we would have it’s exactly like the daughter of my Pilates instructor, which is a very close friend. She was brought in a conscious rite of passage from her mother. It was like a full initiation, and she was connected to her intuition. And she’s seven. And she told her mother that she was in love when she was five and a half, deeply in love, totally in love, ecstatically in love, so intensely in love that she was afraid to tell her mother. And she had a huge breakthrough when she generated the courage of telling how much she loves this boy that she was having a crush on. And when she was seven, she came home and her mother asked her, So what’s going on with this boy? Are you still in love? Because something shifted in her behavior. And she said, no, I’m not. Why?
Ioana
What?
Oana
And she’s like, well, he’s not respecting me enough. He’s not paying attention to me, and I have given enough, and I don’t want to wait for him anymore. She was seven, and I was like, wow, that took me seven years of self-development.
Ioana
And she’s like, It will come a day when he will be in love with me.
Oana
But I’m done with him. I’m totally done. And it was true. We actually had a gathering very recently, and her mother was sharing with us the whole topic. And she’s like, from that moment on, she was so clear what she wanted, what she needed, and claiming her self-respect. She was done with him, and she had no heartbreak, no emotional mess, and was able to fully let go. And that’s the power of the mother-daughter initiation and the circle and understanding that we need to recreate in our life are what’s actually going to be a backbone to the story that we are going to write as women.
Ioana
It’s very useful for me. It’s very strong for me when you mirror my choices. At some point asking me to look at the inner girl because there’s a very powerful distinction between what a woman desires and what a girl dreams of. When I was 25, I had a strong crush on a boy. He was an artist. He was a musician, and he was, of course, extremely Bohemian. And I think it was one of the most heartbreaking experiences I’ve ever had. After years, we had a beautiful closure. And, of course, we are each of us in different places. But I was sharing with our colleague a few days ago, and I told her the whole story. And while talking with her, I realized that he was my Bob Dylan. He was my own personal Bob Dylan because I grew up with Bob Dylan. And my dad had a friend. He was a musician, too, and he was fascinated with Bob Dylan and Rolling Stones and the whole rock and roll era. But I didn’t see it so obvious. But I didn’t see it. I saw it ten years after. How can we make the distinction between what the inner girl dreams of and what the woman desires?
Oana
Well, first of all, understand there’s an inner girl and there’s a woman. And probably if you’re over 27, as you listen to this podcast, you already should know that the woman, if it’s not actively present in your life, is shouting behind the stores of your inner universe, wanting to have a voice in your life. And probably there’s a suppression in allowing the woman to show up because the girl is fully present and taking on the show and just making the distinction that there might be an inner girl and there’s a woman will separate, and it will help you observe the differences between what the woman inside of you which wants to get birth wants and what the inner girl is still attached. Because I think your Bob Dylan story is perfectly fine to have been lived.
Oana
Up to a point. And each one of us has our own story. It’s an adolescent type of love, which is fine. The problem is that it doesn’t end or it ends after so many years. So the problem is the attachment to that type of love and that dynamic and that place in our psyche where, in a way, we avoid dying to that type of love and growing up as women and learning a new type of love. And, of course, that’s a rite of passage that should have happened, and it didn’t. But how do we take charge of that right now? Because in a way, Bob Dylan still haunts you, and you will come up against this challenge in your next experience. Even if you’re more grounded in your womanhood and you want that relationship to be from the woman’s perspective and you’ve attracted a man that’s compatible with the woman, there’s still the need and the attachment of the inner girl for Bob Dylan. It’s popping up, and I’ve discovered it for myself. I think it relies on the belief that all girls have that they are a superhero, and their beauty or the way they love or who they are is going to save that boy is going to make Bob Dylan not be Bob Dylan.
Oana
The woman settles for less, and she understands that less doesn’t mean actually less. It means normal.
Ioana
What does less look like in this case?
Oana
Well, it looks like I’m a woman with my needs, and I want a man who has needs. And we’re meeting in the middle, and there’s no perfect relationship, and there’s not a hero Act I have to make or a sacrifice I have to make to claim this relationship. It’s either meeting us in the middle of our humanity with our vulnerability, or we can’t and I have to let go.
Ioana
And it’s okay to like or to.
Oana
Love Dylan. Yeah, it’s okay to love Dylan. It’s okay to have sex with Bob Dylan. It’s okay to engage with him. It’s okay to take your time. It’s okay to fully, fully enjoy the ride, but also understand that you’re not going to marry him and stop saving him so that in a way, he becomes what he’s not so that you can marry him because that would be a way in which the inner girl would feel like she has the victory.
Ioana
That’s true. And the funny part is that you don’t want to save him from the world, but to save him from himself.
Oana
Which nobody can.
Ioana
Nobody can. And maybe he doesn’t want to be saved.
Oana
Of course, most of these cases don’t want to be saved, and that’s the other side of it. That’s why the dynamic keeps being in place for many years. They don’t want to be saved. You want to save them. So it’s a whole game. The woman understands what she needs and is ready to accept things the way things play out in reality, not in our fantasy or Hollywood idealized stories in our head. And that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve great passion and great intimacy and deep love in a relationship. But it has to come through the integration of what doesn’t work and through the patient’s time and process, which the interval has no availability. In reality, she just wants to be a superhero, and she’s playing out her game in the conversation. And how do you make the shift by addressing both what the inner girl needs, because what’s the difference between an inner girl and a woman? Well, the inner girl has attachments and needs. The woman is willing to nourish and receive and ask for it. It’s a very different game. And when you take responsibility for your inner girl as a woman and you nourish her and you also put her in her place and teach her the best out of any situation or ground her in reality, then the woman can have a real say in the matter of relationship or any area of your life so you feel freed up and you’re really stepping into a much more mature part of your life.
Ioana
It looks the same for men. I mean the dynamics between the inner boy and the man yes.
Oana
But the rite of passage for men is letting go of the mother psychically and psychologically and then meeting the woman. And if they can’t access the woman it’s because they’re holding on to their mother. So they have to sacrifice the woman because that’s the right of passage through pain that will push them into the awareness of letting go of the mother. Unless they let go of the mother they won’t be able to really be with the woman and step into manhood.
Ioana
I think the subject is too good and we really have to dedicate a whole podcast only to this distinction between the inner girl and the woman because at the basis of this there are so many unaddressed needs we hold on to throughout life and hence the dysfunctions and the belief that we can be happy in relationships which is something that the feminine for me has really shifted.
Oana
Like the feminine won’t let you do this to yourself. She will come as a strong priestess or as a strong mother and she will say Stop making yourself hurt girl, stop it. This is how you build a healthy relationship your man will come and he’s not going to be perfect, he’ll have his own story in his own process but he will want to be with you and you’ll be able to have a healthy relationship. The Feminine is the feminine guide. The feminine energy that can come in meditation or through practice through the energy work and really cut the cords of your unhealthy behavior.
Ioana
So we have to promise on subject’s desire and sexuality and inner girl for the future. And for this one let’s sum up in just a few words or ideas. How do we learn what we really want?
Oana
By taking the time to cultivate a relationship with ourselves that allows us to know ourselves beyond the mind, by acknowledging that we need support and we need structure and we need a circle, and by empowering the feminine energy to be our guide. And by going into the process and connecting with our body and with the energy in our body because it will in time with patience and awareness cultivate our intuition and put us in connection with the truth beyond any other illusions. And if you are ready for it, we have a very strong program. It’s called Four Pillars of Femininity and it’s meant to work on this. Reconnection with your feminine energy. Empowering the feminine energy to be a guide into your life. Reconnecting with your body and uncollapsing the girl and the woman so that the woman can start having a voice and can start living the game of your life and the story that you want to create as a woman. So join us in the Four Pillars of Femininity because it really is the context and the process that can help you put order into this subject.
Ioana
Fantastic. Thank you, honey. And we’ll also put the link to the program in the description and also the link to the previous episode because there were some references and it would be very instructional to listen to that one too.
Oana
Totally. And just pop up with questions or stories or situations where you’re dealing with the same either confusion or disentanglement between the girl and the woman and what’s coming up for you? We would be really curious and happy to all of those stories.
Ioana
Yup. Thank you. Thank you.
