This weekend I staffed and helped facilitate a retreat for men. Yes, you heard it, men. Sure I’m a women’s empowerment coach and my practice primarily focuses on women, but I firmly believe that women’s healing cannot happen without the help of present, healed, and loving men. This Noble Man workshop is a three-and-a-half-day intensive for men who wish to heal their issues with women. It is a profound process of receiving support and honoring from experienced women holding an unconditional space of acceptance and love. Healing isn’t a one-way street. For transformation to stick we need to pay it forward and contribute, and that’s why 20 women stepped up this weekend to support the healing of MAN.
Our Celebration of Being workshops invite the WHOLE human experience. All is welcome. Seriously. This weekend I witnessed men bring it all. Their pain, their anger, their wounds, and their longing. The other side of their wounds and defenses were masculine power, strength, and mighty love. It was a privilege for me as a woman to witness the other side of the human race with fresh eyes.
I learned so much about men and women this weekend, and I want to share an analogy with you that might help you better understand the human condition.
Human beings are like chocolate chip cookies. Think about the ingredients. There are the sweet ingredients like sugar and chocolate chips, but you also need salt, flour, and baking soda. Those ingredients on their own are fowl to taste, but without them, the chocolate chip cookie isn’t complete. The eggs are a mess, but necessary to keep the dough together. As human beings, we need all of our ingredients to be whole. We need our happiness of course, but we also need our sadness, our anger, our envy, our pain, and our fear. We need balance, or we’ll fall apart!
When we suppress our feelings, we are also suppressing their polar opposite. When we are REAL with our emotions, we reveal our potential. Intimately knowing your fear allows you to unleash your true depth of courage. Exposing any hatred in your heart will open up your unconditional capacity to love. If you deny your ugliness, you lesson your beauty. If you deny your greed, you reduce your generosity.
Digging into your darkness will EXPLODE your light. That’s what the men taught me this weekend.
Did you know that the juiciest apples go through the harshest winters? If you are having a tough time right now, I invite you to be present with your experience and feel it fully because your radiant potential is around the corner. I have personally gone through some pretty cruel winters, and my life is full of delight now because I faced those challenges head on. Do I still feel pain, sorrow, anger, and isolation? You betcha! But I allow it. I don’t resist it. The other side of winter is the Spring, the time of rebirth, renewal, and sunshine. Our joy needs our sadness as much as the sun needs the moon. Honor your total human experience.
Back to the cookie analogy.
Cookies can’t bake without incredibly harsh heat, and they can’t form into solid cookies without sitting in stillness at room temperature. Like cookies, we need time to integrate. Our transformation takes time! When we’re impatient and try to eat the cookie straight out of the oven, not only do we burn our mouths, but the cookie falls apart. We need to be patient with ourselves so we can stay solid, healthy, and connected. We need to sit in stillness by breathing and allowing. There is NO rush.
Embrace your bitterness. Embrace your loneliness. Embrace your struggle. Be where you are with compassion. When you shine light on your darkness, your shadows no longer hide. It’s like lighting a candle in a dark room. Let your pain lead you out of the darkness and into your purpose.
One more nugget I’d love to share with you. If you want present and loving men in your life, YOU have to be loving and present with yourself. When women show up inside their birthright of unconditional love, men are called forth to be their authentic, powerful selves. When you shine your light, the light in others will reach for yours.
Your light weeds out those who are not ready to see it. Whether you are attracted to men or women, your counterpart will show up when they see the real you. You don’t have to search; you don’t even have to try. All you have to do is fill your reservoir with love, compassion, and purpose, and shine on.
The world is waiting for you to show up on this planet with undefended love and passion. I want to share my formula with you so your light can finally be seen by those who need it the most. If you’re ready to transform your pain into purpose by giving radical self-love a shot, let’s have a FREE 30 minute Discovery Session. I’m waiting for you, sister.
Shine on,
Chrissy
4 comments on “The Juiciest Apples Go Through the Harshest Winters”
Chrissy,
Thank you for sharing what you learned at this men’s retreat. I agree that both men and women must take equal responsibility for this shift in heart consciousness. It requires community and support, and what’s needed is modeling, role models and those who have baked their cookies over and over again to show others it is possible and what it looks, sounds and feels like to be real and authentic about fear, anger, shame, etc. It sounds like you’ve created a very safe space for much to come out of hiding. And for men, it’s greatly needed. Women and men can do this together, and must. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone in this community. I dream of a world where there is not one hidden emotion or thought lurking in the dark. A place where there’s a radical practice of transparency until it’s all been released, and the heart now has space for what’s true: love that feels really good and pure. Families and homes can rest in safety and blossom creatively. Thank you. I enjoy your posts.
Thank you Meisha for your heartfelt response! Women and men CAN do this together, and I’m thrilled to know that there are women like you willing to make these shifts happen. I’m touched to know you and thankful that we have crossed paths. <3
I felt you the most when I read this statement: “I dream of a world where there is not one hidden emotion or thought lurking in the dark.” Your words help me express that same dream of mine. Thank you.
Last night was a true meeting of men and women, brave enough to be together with everything that’s inside.
Yes! Heart Consciousness is spreading and we are healing from within, because of communities like this!
Thank you and to many more gatherings and baking cookies.
Namaste and love,
meisha