Oana
Hi there. Hello again. I’m Oana, and this is the UNCUT Feminine Podcast. It’s actually your podcast, and we are here to serve your desires, your stories, and your visions about what a woman truly wants, and what a woman can achieve if she listens to her heart and she honors her true power. So listen without caution and make this conversation yours. We’re also very excited and very open to hearing about your questions or comments and how this plays out in your life. All the topics we are discussing here with my colleague Ioana. And today we want to really bring some light into the distinction between women and girls. What is the difference between women and girls? What do women want and what do women offer and what girls don’t want and what do they offer and see? Why is that so important for us in how we map and create our own stories as women 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.
Ioana
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.
Ioana
And I’ve dedicated the last aid to empowering women to trust their voice, follow their heart, 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 gift to the world.
Oana
And 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. And I’m here with you, Ioana, my colleague. And we really want to go Uncut into our lives and into the lives of women and with my other team members. We have a whole gang here co-creating and co-producing this podcast. So today we really want to hit a very controversial subject, I might say because it’s very poignant. It’s there in your face, whether you acknowledge it or not or are aware of it or not. And I say that out of my practice of talking with so many women along the road. So, Ioana, let’s go and cut hello to me.
Ioana
And for my inner girl as well. She’s here with us, and she’s a rebel before going live with the recording. I was sharing my life story. My inner girl is part of that life story, and even if I already know it, it’s still difficult to manage it. And I will bring the story to our listeners, too. The fact is that my whole life I’ve been having some I don’t know how to call messy or strange relationships with men. I think I already shared part of the story, but I never really understood why. In the end, the relationship broke and none of us was able to commit to that relationship. I was telling you, and you already knew the answer, of course, but you just let me struggle for a few years. And one day I had a very strong ha realizing that I all-time start my relationships like a game like we are playing all the time and having a lot of fun when we are playing and the game is actually innocent and cute. There’s nothing bad about it. But somewhere on the way, it breaks. And I struggled all my life to understand where that relationship broke.
And after I started to work with my inner girl, step by step, I started to realize what happens. And I think it would be really powerful if we go on through the coaching you do when you work with the inner girl because I think a lot of women will get bigger from the story of the inner girl.
Oana
Yeah. This particular aspect of womanhood, the distinction between a girl and a woman inside the psyche of a woman is very part of my body of work. It’s very much part of what I facilitate and take the time to really go deep with women because it’s a very important triangle. They’re not only the inner girl, we all have an inner girl, it’s us developing ourselves as women. We have an inner girl who turns into an adolescent, who turns into a young lady who then becomes a woman. And actually, psychologically speaking, becoming a woman happens through a rite of passage, happens through awareness, a decision process that goes in every corner of your life. And until that rite of passage actually happens, and most of us experience it through marriage or divorce, through having children or through failures in relationships or failures in our careers, or things that are negative because the culture in which we live nowadays doesn’t create conscious rites of passage between elder women to younger women. And we’ve been talking about this everywhere, this right of passage and this transfer of knowledge and wisdom and love between the elders and the younger. But it’s important life will carry you through a rite of passage.
Oana
The value of having it consciously is a lot of pain, deleting a lot of your pain and a lot of the confusion that Springs from the perceptions of the inner girl. So basically my distinction is there is an inner girl, and then there is a woman who will give birth once you learn to take care of the inner girl and really allow her to have a space inside of you that’s very contained because the woman has different visions, different needs, different gifts than the inner girl. And most of the things that don’t work for us in relationships, in intimacy, in life in general, when we really struggle again and again and we don’t know why, it happens to be in a way our psyche yet undeveloped in a mature self, becoming aware of this is really powerful and enlightening.
Ioana
I have so many questions, even though I know your work now, I always have questions regarding the inner girl. And now the question that pops up in my mind is, do we need at the moment in our life somebody to just come in in any way and guide us through growing up? Or is it something that simply occurs as life goes on?
Oana
Both of us need it because if we do it guided, contained, and supported, then it happens between 18 and 21, hopefully, or it happens until 30, which prepares you for your adult psychological life as a woman and makes your life on an emotional level something you can grasp, digest, and you’re ready for marriage, you’re ready for commitment, you’re ready for the trials and the ups and downs of real life. And you don’t consider it something boring that you want to avoid or something hard that you can cope with. It happens through life anyway. And the midlife crisis is really the time in our life when we hit that expiration date of all the lessons we should have learned and we didn’t.
Ioana
And it happens violently.
Oana
It happens violently. We experience it violently because we actually think we can go along with life without making all the right conscious choices and without really stepping into accountability. But life doesn’t play that way. So minimizing crisis is the moment where you hit all the boxes, but it doesn’t really stick. And you don’t experience fulfillment or things just break out of a sudden and you don’t know why, and you don’t have a context and it’s actually a rite of passage and why going through a midlife crisis in a therapy contained way, whether it’s spiritual or therapy or just coaching or whatever works for you, is exactly you empowering yourself to live a conscious rate of passage. It should have happened earlier for most of us, but even so, you have half of your life ahead of you. So go to therapy. It’s something very good. It actually works, and it will give you the clarity that a middle-life crisis lacks because you can take many actions. But if you’re not clear about why you’re taking those actions and they don’t lead to conscious choices, then the whole process doesn’t have depth and you don’t experience the victory.
Oana
And there are many people who don’t empower a process and don’t experience this victory and think it’s not possible. Once you actually go through the process and become aware, you understand you have and that’s what you know. That’s the difference between the girl and the woman. The girl actually functions on unconscious psychological myths and belief systems that sabotage her in the end and just make her write about the things she can’t or can’t have. The woman understands that there is nothing out there except your power to create and is really going to do the work, whether it’s letting go of expectations and generating life, whether it’s moving through frustration and fear and pain and sadness and containing them and understanding that life brings that to into the game. And there’s no perfect scenario. There’s just life, and you have to work through it. But that’s the beauty of it. So it’s a big difference. The woman has done the work of moving through the pain or moving through the unawareness of the unconsciousness and is now ready to face reality from a grounded place in herself. The inner girl is still the inner boy because it happens with men as well.
Ioana
I wanted to ask you, is the same with men? I mean, I don’t want anybody to imagine it happens only to women because like in my example, my inner girl was connecting with the inner boys of the men I met. But the tricky part with the inner girl is that you don’t have clarity when you’re acting from the inner girl’s point of view.
Oana
Sure.
Ioana
And because you don’t have the clarity, you cannot get unstuck. Where do you have to search? So you really understand that you’re acting from the inner girl’s attitude?
Oana
Yeah, it’s a very good question. I was actually exploring it over lunch yesterday with my partner because he’s struggling with interconnecting with his inner boy, and he’s like, so every time I’m all over the place and confused and responsible. Does that mean it’s my inner boy happening? He said, yes, it’s your inner boy playing out the game at an age. He’s stuck because we’re always getting stuck psychologically at different ages in our emotional development. So our inner girl gets stuck or inner boy gets stuck at six or seven or 13. And it’s not that the inner boy or the inner girl is present and takes over. It’s that the adult observer is missing. So you are identified with that emotional age. You are not aware that you are identified with it. You see life through those glasses, through those filters, and that’s life for you. You don’t know that. You don’t know that there is a different point of view, a different perception. And you look at other people who might have a grown-up perception, and you don’t understand why they act the way they act and where they’re coming from. And it doesn’t click on you, you know.
Oana
Yeah, very well, because it’s like I know there’s something missing here, but somehow I don’t get it. I don’t see it. I don’t feel it. And because I don’t get it and I don’t feel it, it doesn’t click on me, but the feeling and the getting it is linked with the perception. And until you bring the observer who distinguishes that there is an inner girl, and then there would be the birth of the adult woman, then you can’t have the observer coming into the conversation, into your inner situation or outer situation, and see that that behavior is a play out of a seven-year-old boy. And when people your partner, for example, tells you, well, I don’t feel you get me. I feel you’re irresponsible. I feel you’re avoiding intimacy. You’re like, what is she talking about? I’m just tired. I want to go to bed. But basically, that’s what you’re doing. You’re avoiding intimacy, but you don’t understand it. You don’t understand that feedback because the six-year-old boy doesn’t get intimacy. I’m not interested in that. I’m going to bed. So when your partner gives you that feedback, you’re like, what?
Oana
She’s just a woman. She’s hysterical. Her hormones are all over the place.
Ioana
Have you ever heard of a phenomenon called ghosting?
Oana
No.
Ioana
What is that social phenomenon like today? They invented the concept of men disappearing all of a sudden from somebody’s life. Women, too, but most men are those who do it. It’s like when you have a connection with somebody you meet, your text, suddenly disappears. That’s called ghosting. Is it? That’s an example of the inner boy’s play.
Oana
Totally.
Ioana
I think that’s an epidemic of inner boys.
Oana
Yeah, but it’s also an epidemic of inner girls clinging because you never get a disappearing, avoidant boy unless you are a clinging little girl. It just clicks. The dynamic is perfect. And whether you actually suppressed your inner urge to text him 15 messages the first time you clicked online, the energy is still there. And it’s not commitment or stepping into intimacy. It’s the need for attention and the need for the little boy to give me what I missed in life on an emotional level, basically from my parents or from all of life. And that’s too much for an inner boy to ask. So he runs away because he’s like seeing a black hole of a lot of things that he needs to step into, and he’s not going to be able to do that. So he runs away. It’s a very survival-based reaction, and it’s healthy for him in a way, because unless the man is present, the boy can’t step into that. He can’t be what you experienced all the life you didn’t receive from your parents or from life itself or from yourself. It can’t be what do the men do? The man understands there’s feels there’s an inner girl, and either if there’s a man there and you’re still psychologically, not a woman, he will not engage, but he will probably have the capacity to communicate that.
Ioana
Yeah, that’s exactly what bothers like the lack of communication.
Oana
Exactly.
Ioana
But how do you address that?
Oana
Well, you do your inner work. You don’t address it. There’s nothing to address. I actually saw it online with somebody who thought there was a soulmate and he disappeared. And then she sent I don’t know how many messages, and then he assaulted her for harassment. You can’t address that because that dynamic will play out on an inner boy inner girl level. The only way to address it is you go home, you do your work, you become an adult psychologically a woman, and then you will attract a man. Basically, you’ll still play in a girl-in-a-boy dynamic, but it will be part of the relationship and will not encompass all of the relationships.
Ioana
But it’s a bit discouraging. And you see like 90% of everybody you know who acts that way. It’s discouraging because even if you do your inner work and grow up and you still don’t have the impression that you don’t have with whom to move to the next level.
Oana
Well, you use the right word. It’s an impression, and it will play out. This impression perception. It will play out until you actually hit an adult psychological perception in your inner sanctuary. And once you do that, you will be able to see that there is the capacity to draw in your life adult men or men who are willing to do the work to become adults, just like you. Of course, the percentage might be less than the whole, but men and women, because of life situations, can grow up because of really tough life situations can grow up. And then they’re willing to do the work because they have experienced the impact and the failure, and they’re not going to go into that trap again. And then it becomes workable. It’s a loving relationship, a relationship where you grow. And also part of the adult perception is letting go of perfection and really working with everything that the relationship brings to the surface as part of the love, which is a very different claim than the inner girl who wants Prince Charming and wants that fairy tale. And that’s the only thing that she’s able to digest and want.
Oana
And if that doesn’t happen, then she’s upset and she’s going to make a tantrum out of it. And of course, the men are guilty because of Prince Charming, and Prince Harry because they’re very famous. Now, the ideal fantasy has been popped again into our psyche through Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding. And you look at the frenzy that image has created, and you understand that in our psyche that’s still such a very strong symbolistic part of our life, and it has a charge. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have the possibility of attracting an adult relationship.
Ioana
Where do you start with doing the inner girl in her boy work? Because it sounds comprehensible, but at the same time, it sounds too difficult for somebody to do the work on his own. Where can we find guidance and start really working with the inner girl and doing the right things we have to first have to want to do the work when it becomes unbearable. Do you really want to do the work?
Oana
Yeah. Hopefully, you don’t have to suffer that much to get to the invariable point. I have no idea why we’re so conditioned to go all the way through health to reach the other side. I don’t know why humanity hasn’t really made a step forward in creating a better life for them before hitting ground zero. But first of all, it comes with a decision, and then the decision will put you in motion, and it will attract the right process, the right people, and the right set of circumstances in your life that will push you through the process. For us here at The Feminine, we have a starting point, a starting kids process, which is four pillars of femininity, where I guide women into really establishing a relationship with themselves and learning how to nourish themselves in a feminine grounded way, which activates the right of passage for women. And then I guide them into this distinction between the inner girl and the mother inside that needs to show up to nourish and love and take care of the inner girl so that the woman can be birth. Because unless that happens, there’s such a gap between the inner girl and the woman.
Oana
Most of the time they want conflictual things. And that’s why women experience darkness, because unless they actually go back and learn to nourish themselves beyond what their biological mother has given them physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually, that inner girl will claim her needs and it will run her tantrums, and it will impact your life because of her wounds that weren’t yet healed or weren’t yet brought to peace. And unless we address that, unless we deal with that, unless we do that work, the woman doesn’t have space to act. It comes and it goes. It comes and it goes. And the moment you actually need her to fight in a relationship or negotiate the terms of a commitment or go for her voice in a toxic environment, or fight for her kid’s education at the school, whatever. Whenever you need the adult woman who is strong, who is grounded, who’s clear, who’s going to do that fight or that work for what she believes in, you won’t have the confidence or the energy or the power or the clarity to go all the way through because she won’t have space, the inner girl will pop up with her uncertainty, with her wounds, with her tantrums, with her expectations, with her drama.
Oana
That’s very much part of the inner girl, the drama. There’s a lot of drama in the inner girl’s land, and there’s life and pain and solution in the woman’s land.
Ioana
The first time, I think I really succeed in having a good negotiation with my inner girl was when I met a boy. We were texting, and it was really very fun relationship, the promise of a very fun relationship. And I had a moment of clarity. And I remember I called my inner girl and told her, of course, there’s the gift of my imagination. It’s not like I’m crazy and see kids around. But I told her, okay, listen to me. I know you want to play. Tell Mama how you want to play because you’re not going there again. I just cannot do that anymore.
Oana
I’ll play with you. Let me go alone.
Ioana
No, just tell me how you want to play. But we’re just playing together, me and you. No money is involved. And doing this one, two, and three times, it starts to work. So I think a good question would be, how can we learn to take care of the inner girl? Because she never disappeared. She’s going to be there for the rest of our lives. I can see that.
Oana
Well, loving her and guiding her at the same time, like it’s a part of us who is trapped in kids’ land and it will stay in kids’ land. And she brings so much magic to your adult life. The problem is not that she’s present or she’ll never disappear. The problem is she’s not put in the right place. Yeah, she’s in charge. It seems like it feels like she doesn’t work either for her, for that part of the view that she’s in charge because she’s in charge of things that she shouldn’t be in charge of, like adult things that don’t work.
Ioana
Like a marriage, for instance.
Oana
Exactly. And imagine putting a six-year-old in the accountability of a real marriage. It doesn’t work, and it will bring pain to everybody, including yourself. So it’s putting order inside of you and becoming aware of that part of you. Not use her, but work with her, play with her, love her, and ask her only the things she can give and give her what she really needs because she doesn’t need to play with a boy. She needs attention from me or from the whole world. Well, she needed attention from her mother and her father at the beginning stages of her life, and she probably didn’t receive it.
Ioana
And she’s stuck in that and she’s stuck in that.
Oana
And that’s as easy as that goes. And it ripples in every layer of your life, no matter how adult and rational and mental and mature you become in life, in your career, and in social engagement. So by giving her attention, which is not a very it means it’s not a false claim. She deserves that attention. Every kid should have that level of attention. It’s part of how we develop as human beings. So we need that. So by giving her that attention, then you put her at peace. You feed her, you nourish her. And when you step into an intimate relationship. You decide, when will the girl meet the man, and how will you introduce your little girl to the man so that he can give her attention and play with her, but also address the woman. It’s like my partner, we were having this conversation and come back to the end result. And after the conversation, of course, he had an inner boy episode. I got home late at night. I worked the whole day. I was pissed off that I had to work. I got tired. So the woman was, like, full of I had it. I had an anger episode.
Oana
And of course, because the woman was tired and hit the limits, she wanted the men to be there for her. And my partner was trapped in an inner boy episode. And he wanted to play no, he wanted to sleep, which is the same thing. He first played his video preferred games on the laptop for a long while, in my opinion, way too long every time. And then he went to bed. And of course, because the woman couldn’t be in charge because she was tired and angry, validly tired and angry, the inner girl crept in. And of course, she wanted him to prove to her that he loved her. And of course, he didn’t have the right words. And of course, he didn’t have the right attitude. And of course, I could have seen a drama on the horizon, and you can push, but there’s nothing that’s going to actually happen in that scenario. So my experience of the woman in a relationship was like, okay, so I’m tired and angry, and there’s nothing he actually can do. I wasn’t tired because of him, and I wasn’t angry with him. It was part of my personal day. And my inner girl wants nourishment, I can’t give her nourishment.
Oana
So he’s looking at him for nourishment. He’s totally lost. So the only thing saying to do right now is to go to bed, and I’ll wake up in the morning and see how that goes. But I was aware of her needs, and I was aware of the imbalance I was experiencing it. So by just bringing observation and breathing and awareness to that, it actually calmed the whole situation down. I went to bed. I had a good sleep. In the morning, he woke up before me, and he showed up like a man. He’s like, hello, honey. Should I do breakfast before I go? Yeah, sure, no problem. And then he started being intimate, and he’s like, Last night I was a little boy. I was so afraid. And I was like, in a corner. And you were saying something about love. I don’t remember. Somehow I wasn’t present, right? Yeah, you weren’t. Okay, maybe I’ll do better today. And if both partners will really do the work and meet in the middle, then that’s a growing, healthy, happy dynamic that in time, through practice, through awareness, will bring a different capacity. Because this distinction between a girl and a woman needs time.
Oana
You need your capacity and your constant practice of awareness.
Ioana
The best part of the encouraging part is like you going to sleep. But being aware of the needs of the inner girl. What I realized in time is that for me, it works. When I see the tantrum coming, I see it before it happens. I take her to the movies and feed her vanilla ice cream. And I swear to God, it’s working. I don’t know how, but it’s working. And it’s really easy to do that. You don’t need to go to a shrink or do some very deep psychological work. It just eats something like ice cream.
Oana
And it works like that because you are aware you’ve done the work. Of course, all the way to the work. You have to do the work.
Ioana
But while doing the work, you can do simple things just to take care of her. It’s not something necessarily very complicated.
Oana
No, it’s not. And both apply. You have to do the work and do those gestures of nourishment and only you, the observer who becomes a mother for those unclaimed parts of you can really feed and bring to peace those parts of you.
Ioana
Yeah, because if you don’t do the work how I saw it in the beginning, I wasn’t aware that I’m doing that for the inner girl, but when I wanted to go to a movie because my inner girl wanted to go to the movies and I didn’t have a partner for that, but all my friends were engaged in various activities, I got so frustrated. I was alone and I did a tantrum because I was alone and I didn’t have the room to go to the movies. But after being the observer and seeing that was the need of the inner girl, I relaxed in that and say, okay, I’m just taking my inner girl and going to movies.
Oana
So you’re not alone. It’s you and her.
Ioana
Yeah, exactly.
Oana
It’s a relationship. And this is how you develop a relationship with yourself, and the inner girl will bring other parts of you that are more mature to the surface. And that’s how self-care and nourishment look like on Court in real life, in simple palpable gestures that you can do for yourself and stop waiting for somebody to come and fill in the gaps.
Ioana
We can talk for another few hours about the inner girl, but I want to wrap this test up, trying to sketch the answer to the question you started with, what do women want? Because being so stuck in the inner girl, we really don’t know what we want as women. We only know what the inner girl needs.
Oana
How can we find out what the woman really wants by nourishing the inner girl and giving space to the woman to make her claim? I think every woman wants something else, but I think women want achievement. They want fulfillment. They want those results that happen at the end of the work. They want children in their life. They want stable relationships. They want fulfilling orgasms. They want their true voice to be heard. They want to break through and innovate. And the inner girl is just trapped in Prince Harry and wants something on a platter without the work that it implies. And I think this is the biggest distinction.
Ioana
I think we really have to do the podcast about sexuality because, as you just said. But that’s true that the inner girl is like keeping us away from a fulfilled sexual relationship.
Oana
Yeah. It also keeps us away from a fulfilled, intimate, loving relationship totally. Because the type of love she can create is a very adolescent falling in love type of love, which creates a playful sexual sensual dynamic. But it’s just the beginning of a relationship. And that’s the problem that people hit in relationships that happens the first year and a half. It’s all a bubble. The hormones are held there to help you. You fall in love, and everything plays out through the hormones. You keep seeing the shadow bursting in the corner, but the excitement is so high and you’re so on a trip that you just go for it, of course, because it doesn’t happen so often. But then when you actually go into the second stage of the relationship intimacy exchange, then the other person becomes boring. He has his story again and again, and the shadows or the things that are incomplete or the things that don’t work start to show up. Why? Because both partners have relaxed. The inner girl and the inner boy had gone through their whole show, and other things kick into play. And when other things kick into play, unless you have a mature or an observer on your side dealing with those accepting the other for what he truly is, not what your fantasy about him is.
Oana
Your projection about him is then that’s the real work of the relationship. And of course, his shadow will trigger your shadow and your shadow will trigger his shadow, because we always come together to learn about love and intimacy, not to just have it. So learning includes pain and includes the process of growth. So it’s like, are we going to go into the second stage of the relationship by accepting the shadow and the lack of the other and integrating the whole of him, or are we going to stay to the surface, being happy and wanting and claiming just our fantasy projection about him? And that’s a very strong face of the relationship. And if both people go into acceptance and open up about invulnerability that’s true intimacy and that’s the woman-man dynamic.
Ioana
I still have 1 million questions, but I think I’m down for today and I’ll save them for the next episode.
Oana
Okay, so pop up your questions. We’re here for you and with you and hope this was engaging and interesting and we probably have a talk on fulfilling orgasms stay tuned can’t wait.
