Why Awakening Women Are Ditching Their Conditioning To Say Hello To Their Souls.

Many awakening women feel the inner longing to release the conditioning that suppresses their life force energy and discover and become their true selves, living authentically.

As women, we desire to let our lights shine brightly and feel passionate about our lives. And yet, many women feel like their lights are a little dim and, as one woman said, more like “snuffed out.”

The challenging thing about conditioning is that it’s often hidden from our awareness and yet impacts every aspect of our lives, making us physically, emotionally and spiritually sick. That’s why it’s so important that we shed light on it!

Three main reasons drive awakening women’s inner urge to ditch their conditioning to say hello to their souls: Soul hunger, stress-related health issues and the universal principle of balance. Let’s explore these more fully:

 Awakening women feel soul hunger.

I will share what my mom, who died at 90, has to teach us about soul hunger.

At 87, my mom read my book Awakening a Woman’s Soul: The Power of Meditation and Mindfulness to Transform Your Life. Although she couldn’t understand or relate to concepts like transformation, awakening, meditation, mindfulness, or consciousness, she could relate to what it feels like to have a part of your life that is unlived and the soul hunger that accompanies that.

When she read the term soul hunger in the book, something inside her woke up. She knew about the feeling of soul hunger but didn’t have a name for what she felt for so many years.

Soul hunger refers to a deep, spiritual longing or missing something essential. It is frequently associated with feelings of emptiness or a lack of fulfillment that material possessions or external achievements cannot satisfy. If you’re curious, you can learn about the causes of soul hunger in Understanding Soul Hunger: The 4 Core Causes Of Inner Stress.

My mom trained as a nurse 70 years ago. She had wanted to do this job since she was a little girl. She gave up her nursing career to raise her three daughters. She didn’t want to give it up, but the conditions at the time made it virtually impossible for her to work.

At the time, it wasn’t common or easy for women to work outside the home. The woman’s role was to stay home and raise the children, and the man’s role was to be the breadwinner and provide for the family. She was a woman born ahead of her time!

My mom had an inner yearning that she couldn’t express and had to suppress. This inability to fully express herself as a nurse and in so many other big and small ways resulted in a slow withering of her soul and the symptoms that often accompany that. She was angry, resentful, and generally suffering for much of her life. Her unhappiness and festering resentment didn’t become her and impacted her physical and emotional health!

This all changed when she was alone in the final year of her life and felt like she was in control of her life. She stepped into her authentic power and began to flourish. We saw her true self emerge as her toxic anger and resentment dissolved and were replaced by love and compassion. It was a beautiful gift and a powerful lesson about stifling our soul’s need for expression and doing the hard work to make peace with ourselves and others.

While things have changed a great deal since my mom raised her family, I continue to hear from women of all ages who struggle to balance the fulfillment of their roles with the needs of their souls. Women are stressed, burnt out, and suffering from the stress of soul hunger, which impacts us in significant ways!

Stress-related health issues are a wake-up call for awakening women.

Best-selling author and physician Gabor Maté  has reported that based on the research, “Women take twice as many antidepressants, get 80% of autoimmune diseases, they get more chronic illness, more chronic pain than men do.” These are all powerful indicators of women’s suffering, manifesting in their health.

The following short video is a powerful message for women about the impact our conditioning is having on us:

Maté identifies that the biggest reason for this is STRESS!

Four key factors contributing to a higher prevalence of stress-related issues  in women:

1. Women have a greater emotional concern for others.
2. Women suppress healthy anger.
3. Women are identified by their roles, duties, and responsibilities.
4. Women feel responsible for other people’s emotions.

He explains that these differences are not biological but conditioned and that women are acculturated to play a specific role, which has physical implications.

Women’s conditioning and expectation that we’re selfless, self-sacrificing, never angry, always pleasant and pleasing, and putting our own needs last is making us physically, emotionally and spiritually sick. In the article, 4 Vital Lessons I Learned About Healing From Stress-Related Health Issues I shared what I believe is an empowering message about our ability to heal when we create the right inner conditions for nature to do what nature does – heal.

It’s not only Gabor Maté who’s shining a light on this; it’s also others like Maytal Eyal, a psychologist, writer and speaker who wrote an article that resonated deeply with me, Self-Silencing Is Making Women Sick. The author questions, “Why is it that women are falling ill to these diseases at a rate so much higher than men? Such jarring disparities cannot be accounted for by genetic and hormonal factors alone; psychosocial factors play an important role as well. Specifically, it seems that the very virtues our culture rewards in women—agreeability, extreme selflessness, and suppression of anger—may predispose us to chronic illness and disease.”

Awakening women are seeking balance.

In the book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle,  the authors Emily Nagoski, PhD and her sister Amelia Nagoski, DMA, explain how women are often unconsciously influenced by the Human Giver Syndrome. The authors explain that “If you were raised in a culture shaped by Human Giver Syndrome, you were taught to prioritize being pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others, above everything else. Maybe-maybe-you can pursue your own personal (read: selfish) Something Larger, if you’ve thoroughly met the needs of everyone else and don’t stop being pretty and calm while you do it” Pg. 63).

They stress that the point isn’t that women stop giving (when appropriate); they suggest that giving must be balanced between all genders. It’s a great book that will resonate with women who feel stressed and are seeking tools and inspiration.

It feels like awakening women are in a collective dark night of the soul. The dark night of the soul is a time of transition when we let go of who we’re expected or conditioned to be and allow our true, more authentic selves to emerge.

To navigate this transition consciously, awakening women must first become aware of their conditioning and how it impacts their thinking, feelings, and behaviour. I also believe awakening women need to get curious and compassionate about the conditioning that men are experiencing. We are all conditioned and not free until we’re all free! To learn more about this, please listen to the podcast Mel Robbins did with her husband, Christopher Robbins, 5 Things the Men in Your Life Aren’t Telling You but Need to Talk About. 

Once we’ve illuminated the issue, awakening women are called to find the courage to ditch our limiting beliefs, step into our authentic power, regain our health, and let our lights shine brightly.

Women are meant to be healthier and feel vibrant, peaceful, deeply connected, and fulfilled. It’s our time to say hello to our souls!

If you feel called, please share a comment below. Our community would love to hear from you!