Have you ever wondered how we’ll ever have peace, freedom, justice, SAFETY and equality when half the population has been systematically erased from what most people in this society consider divine?
Since hearing from much younger women that the Divine Feminine – such a healing force in my own trauma recovery and life these last 30+ years – has been co-opted to be used against women as “Divine femininity”, this episode shares some self-care, Self care and collective care ideas for people of ALL genders to experiment with.
There are SO many Goddess archetypes, from around the world, that have helped me with my trauma recovery and for the graphics for this episode, I chose (to honour my Indian Irish roots):
· Kali who reminds me of Divine Detox. Letting go. Diving deeper into life’s crashing waves instead of arguing with reality. Her tongue sticks out to represent her catching drops of blood and absorbing evil in order to transform and heal.
· A photo I took at Uisneach of Eiru (for whom Eire, Ireland, was named).
· The Greek Goddess archetypes were the first I came across and I adored Persephone’s transformation from traumatised into Queen of the Night and a guide for others. As I’ve learned more over the decades, her mother, Demeter, who fought for her freedom, represents our need to heal in connection. To coregulate.
· and a Cosmic Egg with some hopeful looking sperm.
With all that’s going on in the world, it’s always worth remembering that none of us choose or do anything to deserve who we happen to be born to, wear, what gender, etc etc etc.
We’re all connected. And by connecting to the Divinity (as well as humanity!) in ourselves and others, we can hopefully find more compassion and give ourselves and others more grace.
Le grá (with love),
Eve
If you’re a trauma survivor and AuDHDer like me, or you simply find self-care more of a “should” than a joy, this podcast is for you.
I’m Eve Menezes Cunningham, a trauma therapist, AuDHD and self-care coach, senior accredited supervisor, columnist and author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-Care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing.
Each Tuesday I share a mix of solo episodes and conversations with other self-care professionals. From other therapists, coaches, yoga teachers and authors to neuroscientists and medical professionals, many of them neurodivergent themselves and all honest enough to share the gap between their own ideal and their ACTUAL self-care.
Find Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD with Eve Menezes Cunningham every Tuesday on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Learn to love and care for all your parts, from the soles of your feet to your soul.
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LINKS
Free Downloads https://solestosoul.ie/free-downloads
Polyvagal Purrs https://solestosoul.ie/feline
Meggan Watterson https://www.instagram.com/megganwatterson/
Jean Shinoda Bolen
Sally Kempton
Moon Mná
Laura Dowling
Dr Karen Ward
Clodgah O’Connor
Clodagh O Connor
Chapters
0:00 Systemic oppression and the red thread
0:42 Podcast introduction and rebrand
1:44 Introducing the Divine Feminine
2:56 How Divine Femininity has been hijacked
4:53 Reclaiming balance and receptive energy
5:42 Personal journey with the Divine Feminine
7:33 Erasure of women in spiritual history
8:25 The red thread and reconnecting inward
9:42 Polyvagal theory and empowerment
10:06 Feel. Love. Heal. framework overview
10:36 Feel: exploring your relationship with the Divine Feminine
13:00 Love: healing, acceptance and reclaiming power
15:20 Heal: connection, circles and co-regulation
16:33 Closing reflection and inner connection
FULL TRANSCRIPT
To recognise that it is systemic oppression, I got a little thread, a little red thread tattoo a few weeks ago after I had gum surgery and found out I couldn’t swim for an extra week or so, so it’s just my little reminder about that thread that connects us back thousands and thousands of years and that divine love is within all of us, all our genders, like whatever gender we are and that women, we just need to go inward
Hi, you’re listening to Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD. Learn to love and care for all your parts, including your trauma and AuDHD, from the soles of your feet to your soul. So this was previously the Feel Better Every Day Podcast.
I hope you’re enjoying exploring the rebranded site solestosoul.ie, accessing all the free resources at www.solestosoul.ie/free-downloads – finding out how you might work with me.
I’m Eve Menezes-Cunningham, I’m your host, I’m a columnist, author, podcast host and producer. I’m a trauma therapist, trauma survivor, AuDHD-er and AuDHD coach and self-care coach, where I integrate all of my offerings from psychosynthesis counselling to crystal therapy, including NLP, EFT, integrative counselling and coaching.
I’m forgetting something quite major, life coaching. Let me know if you’ve got any questions and as you listen to today’s episode, I hope that you’ll connect with how you’re feeling.
We’re working with Divine Feminine, not Divine Femininity. I recently became aware from some younger women that the Divine Feminine, which I’ve been working with for decades, and increasingly more and more of us are, after thousands and thousands of years of patriarchy and being left out. I was apparently, when I was a small child, when we moved from London to Essex, I asked the priest when I was four, why were there no women priests? And I think because my name is Eve, I took the Bible very to heart. I was raised Catholic and the recognition that women and minorities were systematically erased, that Christianity, Christ consciousness was all about equality and love for all and peace and the way it’s been so hijacked.
But that’s not what this is about. Divine Femininity has been hijacked. I came across fairly recently, the idea of the egg and the cosmic egg as Meggan Watterson talks about.
And the idea is that it’s this ultimate, kind of in her beautiful card, the Divine Feminine Oracle. The cosmic egg made me think of something I heard through Kate Northrup. So her mother, Christiane Northrup, Dr. Christiane Northrup, did amazing work around wisdom of menopause a long, long time ago, decades ago.
And she, Oprah helped her popularise it. Unfortunately, she’s gone quite conspiracy theorist. But one thing that I really remember loving what I heard, we grow up in this patriarchal society, sex education, it’s very much the sperm, the strongest and impregnates and all of that.
Whereas apparently, the egg chooses the sperm. And that was my alarm. I’ve got a client in a few minutes.
I’m going to just start this again when I have more time. No, I’m not. It’s all good.
So it’s very much the language we grew up in with this white supremacist patriarchal society is all about the man, all about the sperm, all about the like the strongest sperm, like impregnates, like kind of fertilises the egg, whereas apparently, the egg chooses the sperm.
[There’s a link in the show notes about how this keeps being discovered by scientists, forgotten and rediscovered – much like the Divine Feminine]
So where I heard about how Divine Femininity, femininity was being used against women, the idea of being very passive, being very receptive in a way of being very submissive, like we all have masculine energy, we all have feminine energy. And the more imbalanced we are, the more we’re using all of it, the more joyful and lovely our lives are.
But if it’s being used against people but at the same time, many women, myself included, have to work on recreating that more receptive egg energy, where we’re able to receive good things where we’re able to not be do.
Like for a long time, it was like women can be everything that men can be. And it’s that women end up then typically doing all the things we can step back, we can just be. My introduction to working with the Divine Feminine really helped saved my life in my 20s, my early 20s.
So initially reading people like Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Everywoman, where she talked about the Greek goddess archetypes. And then Awakening Shakti, Sally Kempton, I was kind of reconnecting with my Indian heritage. I’m Indian Irish, born in London, sound English, look white.
But it was lovely learning more about I’m looking up at my bookshelf there. And in case you can see, that’s not a very good way to show you. But that was really gorgeous learning more about the Indian goddesses and moving to Ireland.
I did my Moon Mná Women’s Celtic Circle facilitator training with Dr. Karen Ward, which was a gorgeous way of getting to know sacred islands and the Irish goddesses when I moved here. And you can find out more about her work at moonmna.ie. And there’s loads now around Megan Watterson’s work is phenomenal. And she is a feminist theologian and reading her listening to her.
I also had very visceral reactions as a small child feeling excluded and feeling like how on earth will we ever have safety, let alone equality for women and girls when women are left out of worship, where there has to be representation. We know representation matters in all areas. And Meggan Watterson has gorgeous books, her own journey, in Revealed, where she talks about her own journey with religion, spirituality.
She has the deck I just showed you, the Divine Feminine Oracle Card. It’s one of my all-time favourite Oracle Card decks. She has Mary Magdalene Revealed, where she looks at how the Gospels, what’s known as the Gnostic Gospels, so Mary Magdalene, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, Philip, Thomas, the more progressive, they were actually erased from the King James Bible.
They were erased before that, in the fourth century, when Christianity went from being a religion that was persecuted because it was so about radical love and it became the state religion. So it’s a bit of a blow. And also, it’s wonderful to recognise that it is systemic oppression.
I got a little thread, a little red thread tattoo, a few weeks ago after I had gum surgery and found out I couldn’t swim for an extra week or so. So it’s just my little reminder about that thread that connects us back thousands and thousands of years and that divine love is within all of us, all our genders, like whatever gender we are and that women, we just need to go inward.
I’m hoping that with this episode, it will encourage you to connect with the Divine Feminine in an empowering way for yourself, to learn to receive, to learn to just be and making yourself safe enough, like doing the work with your nervous system to heal things that might have kept you hypervigilant.
And knowing that the safer and more connected we can be, the easier everything gets, the more we’re co-creating a wonderful life, a wonderful world. We need to be empowered. I like working with polyvagal-informed approaches. Where I use the cats, the Polyvagal Purrs approach I developed, helping us feel that safety, that connection and that abundance and that capacity to build longer tables to feed people rather than walls to keep them out.
When you think about the Feel. Love. Heal. framework, if you’re familiar with this podcast and my work, my column for Platinum, I use that framework and often with my clients, but feel, it’s basically a way of working with whatever bandwidth you have for self-care, uppercase Self care, that like kind of highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself. And collective care, that co-regulation, we heal in connection. So for the feel part of the framework, notice how you feel at the thought of Divine Femininity, maybe journal around it.
Divine Femininity or Divine Feminine, what feels more relevant for you? What feels and if you’re a man or if you’re non-binary, what does the Divine Feminine evoke for you? And what might you do to heal your relationship with the Divine Feminine? What might you do today? I love sometimes going up to the local village, Aughagower, where I live and seeing a real-life ancient Síle Na Gig, and I have a little Síle Na Gig here where they’re around Scotland and Ireland and other parts of the world, but it’s like Laura Dowling has that gorgeous book, Love Your Vulva, but it is that rather than a lifetime or lifetimes of shame and hiding, it is that, yep, that openness, that safety. And there’s a Síle Na Gig near St Patrick’s Well in Aughagower and I sometimes like to just go and remind myself that in spite of all the other more organised religions, which have been helpful for some people and also really painful for many, many people and it’s not to take away from any comfort people get from organised religion, but to recognise that there is more to all of it and to do your research and connect with, I mean, it could be connecting with the women who were eradicated from yoga philosophy and history, all sorts of ways. Think about, like, I’m realising that had I organised this better, I could have done this for International Women’s Day, it won’t be out in time, but every day, the more we connect, the more we remember that just like men, just like everyone, we are part of the Divine and we can find that within us and it takes some work. I highly recommend Dr Karen Ward’s work, but also really, if you want a lot of history, she’s phenomenal, Dr Meggan Watterson.
Moving to the Love part of the framework, that acceptance, that support, that recognition of the wounding, “the witch wound”, potentially, the way in which women’s power has been so penalised and, like, cost lives over the thousands of years, any kind of difference, it can be really scary.
Really doing what you can to make yourself feel safe, to accept your power, to accept your vulnerability, to accept your whole self, and working with goddess archetypes, like, goddess, it used to be a not very familiar word, and then it got, like, so many things commodified and to market things, like, I’m thinking, I think there was a Venus razor for shaving your legs, because, of course, a normal Bic razor wouldn’t do.
And the more you actually connect with, the more you research the goddess archetypes, from your traditions, from where you are in the world, your heritage, where you’re drawn to, where you’re appreciative of, not in a cultural appropriation sort of way, but just to educate yourself, just to learn more and more, and connect, rebalance those stories for yourself and know you are part of the divine. We are all made of stardust. It’s not about being better than men in any way, shape or form.
It’s not about inequality. It’s not about, like, a matriarchy isn’t the answer to the patriarchy. It is about equality.
But finding within yourself that love, that acceptance for how your life would have been different and probably much, much better, growing up in a more equal world, where the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine were appreciated, honoured, cultivated and just being open to what comes up for you, in terms of what you might do to do that for yourself.
Moving then to the Heal part of the framework and thinking about how you might connect with others. So, you might want to, now I run monthly lunar circles. I’ve moved them to the Full Moon, rather than the Waning Half Moon. But there’s actually, I’ve not met her yet, but I’ve seen her Instagram, Clodagh O’Connor. She is a high priestess, Temple of Remembrance in Mayo, County Mayo. Check out Moon Mná facilitators near you! And check out people near you. Check out people online. Check out people you’re drawn to.
I’m not saying in any way, shape or form to give your power away. I’m talking about finding sisters, finding people you feel safe and connected to and who you can heal with because we heal by co-regulating. And the safer we are, the more welcome we are, the more loved we are, the more we can all thrive and the more we can all birth a world in which everyone feels safe, welcome, loved and able to thrive.
Thank you for listening. I’m your host and producer, Eve Menezes Cunningham. You can find links and the full transcript and more in the show notes via solestosoul.ie/podcast, and I’m looking forward to sharing more next week.
In the meantime, just scan your whole self, all your parts from the soles of your feet to your soul right now and notice any parts like what you’re feeling, like the most prominent physical feeling, the most prominent emotion, whatever is speaking to you. It might be a thought, it might be an image, but make some notes for yourself. Remember, you don’t need anyone else.
You know what’s best for yourself. Connect with that inner knowing, connect with your inner divinity, make space and time for that stillness, for that wisdom, for that knowing and let me know if it feels good how you’re getting on. I look forward to sharing more.
I look forward to hearing from you, and thanks again for listening.
As you think about this episode, I want you to imagine scanning your whole body, your whole energy field from the soles of your feet to your souls. Notice what has come up for you as you’ve listened and as you think about it now.
How might you show yourself some extra love, some extra care today, this week?
Make some notes, doodle, whatever feels good. And if it feels comfortable and you want to, email eve at solestosoul.ie or comment in any of the comment areas. Feel free to subscribe, rate, review, all the things. And thank you for listening. I’m your host and producer, Eve Menezes Cunningham. Find full links in the show notes and full transcript and let me know if you have any questions. Really looking forward to joining you again next week. Have a brilliant week.