Feminism gave me everything I asked for — but cost me my femininity.

In a recent visit with a provider I see for wellness, the topic of grief came up. I deflected. I wasn't in acute grief. It didn't seem relevant.

But this person skillfully persisted — noticing the way my voice and body language shifted when we touched on a particular relational change. They prescribed a grief protocol. I accepted, thanked them, and left the visit deep in thought.

Something felt right about it. But I needed time to understand why.

The relationship we had discussed had triggered grief — but it wasn't the true source of it. If anything, that relationship had offered me temporary relief from a much older grief. When we parted, the grief reappeared. And that's when I finally saw it clearly:

I had been trying to outsource my grief onto another person. Instead of acknowledging and processing its deepest sources, I had been subconsciously hoping someone else would fix the problem.

It turns out that doesn't work.

I am now taking full responsibility for feeling and healing my own grief. And what I found at the bottom of it surprised me. My deepest grief is the loss of my femininity. I equate that loss with the loss of safety, support and trust.

The image I can't shake

I have processed a great deal in my life — like most of us navigating this human experience. Therapy, acupuncture, qi gong, somatic bodywork, time with friends, time alone, journaling. All of it has helped. But the work that cracked me open most completely was something called womb awakening — a somatic practice of returning to the body's deepest feminine center. I went in seeking healing, years later I came out certified to teach it.

I can now talk through most of my stories without being moved to tears. But there is one image I still cannot revisit without choking up:

My younger son was six weeks old — profoundly colicky — when I handed him to a woman I had just met to care for him in her home daycare. I had to return to work full time. I was the breadwinner.

I was deeply sleep deprived. The pregnancy weight fell off rapidly as I pumped breast milk between patients. The morning drop-off took over an hour for both children. I learned quickly to spend the restless nights in my sweatpants and sweatshirt — the clothes I'd wear for drop-off — and change into my work clothes and put my makeup on after arriving at the office. Otherwise I'd inevitably show up with spit-up and something sticky on my work clothes.

A year into this routine, a regular patient looked at me carefully and asked: "Are you okay?"

I was not.

The promise I was sold

When I was a girl, feminism promised me I could have it all. Break the glass ceilings. Go to school. Have a career. Get married. Have children. Do everything I was capable of doing.

That sounded wonderful. Like telling a child she could have all the candy in the shop. Why wouldn't I want all of it? I was driven. I had purpose. I excelled. I always wanted a family.

Do it all? Sign me up.

What no one told me was the cost.

A framework that changed everything

In Traditional Chinese Medicine and Taoist philosophy, feminine and masculine are not primarily about gender or biology. They are archetypes — fundamental forces that exist within every person, every relationship, every system.

The feminine archetype, in its fullness, is magnetic. Still. Receptive. Nurturing. It is the energy of home, of receiving, of intuition, softness and deep knowing.

The masculine archetype, in its fullness, is dynamic. Moving. Directive. Protective. It is the energy of action, of building, of providing and generating.

Health — in a person, in a relationship, in a culture — is not found in choosing one over the other. We all have both within us. In our interpersonal relationships, it is always relative: someone can be the relatively feminine person in one relationship and the relatively masculine one in another. Life and health lives in the dynamic balance and interaction of these forces. Like the yin and yang symbol and the positive and negative poles of a battery: when both are present and in conscious relationship within ourselves or with another, energy flows. When one is suppressed or overworked, the circuit breaks.

I had broken the circuit. And the process started long before I met my former husband and became a mother.

Where it actually started

I was twenty years old when my sense of safety collapsed. The adults around me could not provide it. Presumably, the adults in their lives had not been able to either. My trust and sense of security was broken.

My subconscious response was to create my own safety. I became hyper-independent. Doing. Controlling. Building. I took on an increasingly masculine energy — it felt necessary. It felt like survival. At that time, I did not feel safe in my feminine energy.

I also didn't have female role models who showed me what I wanted to become. My mother was a nurturing woman who stayed home with us — but as a girl with ambition, I didn't see myself in her. Other women I watched growing up didn't seem happy or fulfilled and generally weren't being treated with a cultural respect I desired. My education and cultural messaging reinforced that my worth came from achievement. What I saw, in the world around me, was that men had more power, flexibility, and respect. So I modeled myself after that.

By the time I was a doctor, a mother, a breadwinner — I had been living predominantly in masculine energy for two decades. The trek to my office in my spit-up-covered sweatshirt wasn't an anomaly. It was the logical conclusion of a very long trajectory.

A perfect match of wounds

I chose a marital partner who was emotionally sensitive, caring, nurturing, and somewhat passive — because that felt safe. He needed a more dominant personality to inspire him. We fit together perfectly for a while.

We were also, I can see now, a perfect match of wounds.

He was misled by patriarchy the way I was misled by feminism. Men are being asked to move beyond the old model of dominance, emotional suppression, and proving their worth through power or achievement — and rightly so. But we haven't always given them a compelling alternative.

The ways feminism had failed me, cultural messaging about masculinity had failed him. We had each over-corrected in opposite directions, and found each other in the middle — two people who had each lost something essential and were hoping, unconsciously, that the other person held the missing piece.

They didn't. No one else can hold that piece for you.

What reclaiming femininity actually looks like

It does not look like going back. It does not look like giving anything up. And it does not look like plowing forward and constantly "doing."

It has, in fact, been one of the most rewarding and joyous explorations of my life. It has looked like learning to surrender — not as defeat, but as trust. Trusting something larger than my own effort to be in charge. Allowing my life to flow rather than forcing it. Letting blessings come to me rather than hustling for every single one. As a single woman now, that something larger is the Divine — however I understand it. It is the quiet intelligence of life itself and the quiet knowing within me. It has looked like learning to deeply honor myself.

Finding my femininity has looked like letting myself cry. Asking for help. Allowing friends, family, and community to support me — rather than managing everything alone and presenting only the competent, capable version of myself to the world.

Femininity, for me, has looked like making my children my priority and honoring my own way of motherhood.

Healing has looked like deep somatic practices — going into my body and listening to her messages. It has looked like recognizing and owning the shadow side of the feminine in myself and in all women while not being led by it. To do so, I've leaned on practices that bring me back into my womb, my creative center, the seat of feminine life force. Work that I initially approached for deeply personal reasons, but which has now become something I offer professionally. I love sharing my experiences and learnings with other women, and it has become one of the most meaningful threads of my practice.

Celebrating femininity has looked like gathering with other women — in retreat, in circle, in honest conversation. There is something that happens when women come together with intention that cannot happen anywhere else.

Healing has looked like softening around men. Asking them questions and listening. Truly listening. Honoring their masculinity, seeing their nobility. Letting them express their gifts and offerings and receiving them in my life. I'm learning that there is value and worth in receiving.

And it has looked like understanding, finally, that sovereignty and softness are not opposites. I do not have to choose between being powerful and being receptive. Between being capable and being held. Between having an extraordinary career and inhabiting my full femininity.

The promise of "having it all" was never really about doing it all. It was about being all of who we are.

Why this matters for men too

When women reclaim their feminine energy in a healthy way — not as performance or as manipulative magnetism, but as genuine embodied nurturing (and nurtured) presence — something shifts in the relational field around them.

Men feel it. The polarity becomes real again. There is something to meet, something to protect, something to cherish. Healthy masculine energy — directed, powerful, and noble — has somewhere to land.

I have seen this in my clinical work. I have witnessed men who were scattered, depleted, and directionless begin to find their footing when the women in their lives stopped over-functioning and started receiving. And I have watched women soften into themselves when the men around them stepped into genuine presence and owned their healing work, however that may look.

It's ideal when these shifts happen simultaneously or in quick succession. When we heal the hurt in women, we stop the hurt caused by women. When we heal the hurt in men, we stop the hurt caused by men. What's required is that we do our own internal work and stop subconsciously outsourcing our emotions. In this way, a healed feminine helps rebirth the masculine — and a healed masculine helps spark new life in the feminine.

This is not about traditional gender roles. It is about something much more fundamental: the ancient, intelligent dance between two forces that find wholeness together. It is the never-ending cycle of the yin and yang — two forces perpetually interacting and generating something new.

The grief is not gone, but working through it has brought immense joy and reward.

I am learning to receive. To rest. To trust. To let the feminine in me be stronger than masculine that carried me this far. To allow polarity to generate new ways of being in my life.

And for the first time in a very long time — being feminine feels safe. It feels like coming home.