Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (133 page)

Do you take on everyone else’s problems and put yourself last?

This is the classic dilemma for women. Feeling the need to be the healer and peacemaker for our entire family or place of work is a pattern that many of us learned in childhood as a way to get recognition. To truly flourish, a woman must face this tendency squarely and commit to changing it.

Here’s an example: When my children were ten and twelve, they complained repeatedly about one of my colleagues who was a good friend of mine. This woman helped with the research for the first edition of this book and was a very entertaining companion for me during the process. My children perceived her as taking up too much of my time and preventing me from being as available to them as they would have liked me to be. I noticed, however, that when Ann and Kate were playing with their friends, reading, or living their own lives fully, they ignored me for hours, even days on end. And during the many days and hours when my friend wasn’t around, my children came and went as they pleased, focusing only on their own needs. They were not necessarily interested in my companionship if they had other things going on. They became extremely interested in me, however, the moment my entertaining friend walked in the door.

To deal with this situation, I initially spent hours listening to Ann and Kate’s complaints and trying to negotiate only
their
needs. Then I realized that, on an unconscious level, they didn’t expect me to have any needs for friendship, laughs, and companionship separate from them. When I realized this, I let them know very clearly that I also had needs—individual needs that were as important (not
more
important—
as
important) as theirs. I came to see that I had to take a stand for my own needs as well as the needs of my children. Together, we began working on becoming conscious of the ways in which they assumed that I had no life separate from them, and I assumed because of my cultural imprinting that I should sacrifice my life for their needs.

When I became clear about this situation and what needed to happen, I had a dream about being given a red 1950s-style gas pump that pumped milk. The name painted on the pump was “The Mother.” I had to keep the pump refrigerated so that the milk wouldn’t spoil. I kept trying to think of whom I was going to give the milk to. My family didn’t need it—we don’t drink milk. When I woke up, I realized that the pump represented me and that it was now time to let go of an obsolete kind of mothering.

Do you fully understand the workings of your female body and how inti-
mately your thoughts and feelings are connected to your physical health?

Your body experiences every thought and sensation as a “physiological reality.” By thinking of the taste and smell of chocolate, you trigger many of the same physical reactions as when you actually eat a piece. Our bodies are not static structures. The amount of sunlight shining on us in a day affects our physiology. The quality of the sounds we hear affects our physiology. The quality of the relationships we have with others affects our physiology. One woman said to me, “Oh, my breasts are being taken care of by Lahey Clinic!” Instead of believing that the Lahey Clinic is responsible for her breasts, she would be much better served by assuming responsibility for her breasts herself.

Many women don’t understand not only how intimately our bodies are affected by our environments but also the basic anatomy of our bodies. Many who have had surgery don’t know exactly what was taken out and what was left in. Yet knowing precisely where the organs in our bodies are is very reassuring. During my residency I once did an emergency appendectomy on a woman. She also required removal of her uterus and ovaries be cause of a life-threatening infection. Several days later, I learned that she thought her appendix was as big as a large melon and that now her entire lower abdomen was completely empty because we had removed it. I explained to her that her large and small intestine completely filled her lower abdomen despite the loss of her pelvic organs, which was very useful infor mation for her in her recovery because it helped her feel that the loss was less overwhelming. Showing her drawings of her anatomy was also helpful—she learned that her appendix was smaller than her little finger.

I encourage women to get personal copies of all their records and go over them with a health care provider who can answer questions, particularly reports of any surgeries they have had, so that they know exactly what is going on inside their bodies, how things look, and what is left. When you go to the doctor, take a friend or a tape recorder. Ask questions. Be proactive. Keeping copies of your own records can also expedite your health care if you are traveling or have to make an emergency-room visit.

Do you know where your organs are? If not, consider looking through an encyclopedia or standard anatomy guide. Get to know your body in health, not just in sickness. You also need to own all of it—even the parts that aren’t considered socially acceptable.

What do you call your genitals? What was the name given to the female genitals in your family? Too many women were raised in families in which all the functions below the waist were considered shameful and not talked about. One friend said, “In my family, the area below the waist was referred to as ‘down there.’ It was kind of foggy. I didn’t know what to call it. Likewise, women weren’t supposed to pass gas!” At a meeting of the Association of Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health several years ago, renowned midwife Ina May Gaskin commented that women would be far better prepared for birth if they allowed themselves more humor and relaxation about bodily functions such as bowel movements and passing gas. I agree.

The first step in reclaiming your women’s wisdom is naming and re-claiming all of you. Regena Thomashauer, author of
Mama Gena’s School of
Womanly Arts
(Simon & Schuster, 2002) and
Mama Gena’s Owner’s and
Operator’s Guide to Men
(Simon & Schuster, 2003), has spent years studying the goddess cultures of old Europe and has dedicated her life to helping women apply this knowledge in modern times in practical empowering ways. She uses the rather shocking word
pussy
to refer to the genitals. Many women find this offensive at first because of our cultural programming. However, this friendly word can be used as a term of endearment that aptly describes a warm, fuzzy, and pleasurable area of the body. Plus, it sure beats the other slang terms! Reading Regena Thomashauer’s books will help you embrace not only this word but also the power of your genital area. And, as already mentioned in chapter 9, the Sanskrit word
yoni
is a good, and accurate, choice as well.

Are you following your life’s purpose?

Our bodies are designed to function best when we’re involved in activ-ities and work that feel exactly right to us and that bring us pleasure. Our health is enhanced when we engage in deeply creative work that is satisfying to us—not just because it pleases our bosses, husbands, or mothers. This work can range from gardening to computer programming to welding. My friend and colleague Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., calls this our Zone of Genius. When we commit to spending most of our time in our Zone of Genius, as opposed to our Zone of Excellence (doing things we’re good at but which don’t really fulfill us), then we really start flourishing.

Though all of us will occasionally have to engage in work we don’t really want to do in order to get where we want to be, we flourish only when we make a living in our Zone of Genius. (I encourage you to run out and get Dr. Hendricks’s brilliant book
The Big Leap
[HarperCollins, 2009] for further reading on this life-changing subject.) For most people, unfortunately, going to work is more like “making a dying” than “making a living.” People often put up with very unsatisfactory work environments because of the “benefits.” I call this “dying for our benefits.” Financial and gynecologi cal health are intimately connected. The second-chakra area of the body (uterus, tubes, ovaries, lower back) is affected by financial stresses. Health in this area is created when we tap into our ability to be creative and prosperous at the same time.

Living in our Zone of Genius and becoming prosperous often involves as a first step a change in our attitudes toward money, self-worth, and work. We must be very clear on how our culture’s belief in the zero-sum model affects us. For instance, many people believe, “If I am doing well, someone else has to suffer. There is only so much money to go around.” Or vice versa: “If someone else is doing well, then there is no chance for me to do well also. There is no way to get ahead.” Our personal finances are powerfully and directly affected by our beliefs about money. Poverty consciousness per vades our culture on every level. When we change our beliefs, we can change our income!

In their book,
Your Money or Your Life
(Viking, 1992), the late Joe Dominguez, a former Wall Street analyst, and coauthor Vicki Robin point out that for most people, money is the substance for which we exchange our life energy.
⁵
Dominguez and Robin suggest that you figure out how many hours you have left in your life—your total life energy. Then calculate how much your work actually costs you in terms of your life energy. If you work so many hours that you require expensive vacations and frequent ill nesses to get enough rest to balance the energy drain of work, you may well find that once you factor in the “hidden” costs of vacation and illness, your work is worth much less per hour than you are actually being paid. Their program then helps you balance your relationship with money by determining how much fulfillment you get out of every purchase, compared with how much it has cost you in terms of your life energy.

Your next step is to consciously make a decision to spend more money on the things or activities that bring you the most fulfillment and less money on the stuff that ultimately has no meaning. What happens is that eventually your expenditures decrease and the fulfillment that you derive from them increases. When you begin to look at money in this way, your entire relation ship with it changes. You begin to see that it is not necessary to put off doing what you’ve always wanted to do until “later.” Some of my greatest pleasures, such as walking on the beach, reading, and going to the movies, cost little or nothing. It need not cost you much money to begin living your life in a more fulfilling manner. By going through the Dominguez-Robin program myself back in the late 1980s, I realized that my free time was priceless to me and that I would never again be able to work in any job, regardless of high pay and good benefits, if the job didn’t also fulfill my soul and give me am ple time to create my life on my own terms. And that is why, to this day, I turn down the vast majority of invitations to speak that come my way.

At midlife when I went through an unexpected divorce, I was once again forced to come to terms with what I really valued. I had had a large fibroid removed from my uterus a couple of years prior to the divorce—a sure sign that I had second-chakra lessons to learn in the area of money, sex, and power. The body never lies! After the divorce, overnight my income was cut in half and my expenses rose significantly. I was also faced with paying the vast majority of two private college tuitions for my daughters. There’s nothing like a financial (or health) crisis to get our attention! Knowing about the connection between prosperity and thought, I read the classic
Think and
Grow Rich
(Hawthorn Books, 1996; Aventine Press, 2004) by Napoleon Hill, all of Suze Orman’s work, and all of the financial advice from Robert Kiyosaki, author of
Rich Dad, Poor Dad
(Warner Business Books, 2000). (For more information, visit
www.richdad.com
.) I also played Kiyosaki’s ingenious board game CashFlow 101 until I could regularly get out of the rat race (living from paycheck to paycheck) and onto the fast track (creating residual income from business or investments). This game eerily re-creates one’s relationship with money. And is a real eye-opener.

Finally, I learned that financial literacy is crucial for all women. I got up to speed on the necessity of creating residual income (the kind that comes in regardless of whether you work or not). Residual income is the biggest difference be tween those who are prosperous and those who are struggling financially. I also learned how to reprogram my thinking about prosperity through the work of Catherine Ponder, author of
The Dynamic Laws of
Prosperity
(Prentice-Hall, 1962), and Randy Gage. (For more information on Randy Gage and his ideas on prosperity, visit his website at
www.randygage.com
.) As I was going through my divorce, I happened to meet Suze Orman at the
Today
show. She told me that you can always see health problems start in someone’s money situation first, because a balance sheet has no place to hide energy. Sooner or later that energy drain hits the body as a health problem. She also said that the only thing that keeps money away from you is anger or fear. I found that Suze was absolutely correct: I had a load of each at the time, which I worked through. By applying the laws of prosperity in my own life (e.g., the Law of Circulation—if you want to receive, you have to learn to give, etc.), I even tually was able to create true financial abundance and also greatly improved health. This process was so empowering that I passed it on to my daughters so that they would not have to be dependent upon a man for financial security.

E
INSTEIN
T
IME

Changing our relationship with time is equally vital to our ability to flourish. Several years ago I had a wonderful conversation with Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., about what he calls Einstein Time. (He has since written about this in his aforementioned book,
The Big Leap
.) He pointed out that everyone is allotted the same amount of time in every day. But in this ever-busier world, people increasingly feel more time pressure and operate under the stressful perception that they are running out of time. Using insights from quantum physics and Einstein’s space-time continuum, Dr. Hendricks explained that our perception of time is highly influenced by our feelings about what we are doing with our time. Hence when something is painful or unfulfilling, our energy field contracts and time drags on endlessly. We feel miserable. On the other hand, when we’re engaged in something that lights us up, such as making love with our beloved, our energy field expands and time stands still. One hour of being passionately present passes in a minute, but a few seconds of touching a hot stove feels like an eternity. It’s all relative.