When a girl is not met by a healthy father, male elder, or mentor, her relationship to the masculine, or rather the lack of it, tends to hinder her in one of two primary ways.
Her psyche may choose to stay in princess consciousness, rightly so, awaiting the missing King to initiate her into maturing, perpetually feeling like a girl around men rather than as a confident woman.
Or, she may mature into womanhood, but, having not had enough safe, present and honouring masculinity through the process from fathers or brothers alike, she may grow psychic shields, scabs and hard shells as protections and compensations.
Because individual consciousness is a kaleidoscopic phenomenon, there is often a combination of both.
As a male healer, when it comes to working with girl consciousness in a woman, I find that what the girl is waiting for is the seeing by a clean adult masculine witnessing consciousness of the woman within her.
When I am successful in this exchange, it is as if a waiting part of her receives the acknowledgment that the masculine sees her womanhood as a woman, and there is a coming forth of this mature aspect of her consciousness that takes place.
When I am meeting with an energy that has already blossomed into womanhood but has had to build armour to survive, I have to provide the exact opposite reference points to what caused the shielding to develop in the first place.
Where the masculine was impatient, urgent, rushing, and pushing, I have to drop into infinite patience and presence, honouring the pace of the woman in front of me.
Where the masculine was forceful, disregarding, and unattuned, I need to be deeply listening, responsive, and sensitive.
Where there was abandonment, I need to bring solid, unwavering presence and containment.
Where there was intrusion and violation, I need to offer space and distance.
Where there was a lack of protection, I need to stand guard, to become the warrior at the edges of her consciousness so that her shields can hand over the responsibility of safety to the masculine principle.
Where she was not honoured or revered, I need to bring forth the energy of masculine humbleness, to energetically kneel at the throne of her wisdom and to revere her mystery where she was labelled, judged or otherwise ‘figured out’.
This work is profoundly magical, sacred, fulfilling and natural.
At other times, I meet a woman that has simply lost touch with her femininity.
Perhaps the trials and tribulations of an unsupported life have worn callouses over her softness.
The continuous overwhelm caused by a lack of spaciousness from responsibilities subdued her vitality and life force.
A dimness in her eyes communicates a life of burden and of service rather than one balanced with creativity and passion.
Her energy contracted as if trying to survive by holding onto what little personal space in life she had been able to salvage for herself.
When I am able to offer her the right energetic spaciousness, that is for her, without the need to cater for me, or for anyone else for that matter, promising her field that I will now take care of everyone that she’s been caretaking; there is often a melting of the shell and an expansion that takes place.
Sometimes there is resentment, anger and bitterness towards men, life, and her parents that demand to have their voices heard.
They are indeed necessary because they fight for her very soul to live again.
We welcome this righteous rage to burn off the constrictions shackling her psyche.
Sometimes, there is grief, too, the pain of the cost of having had her femininity banished to the cellar for so long.
We meet this with honouring and with reverence too.
And then.
In short moments and eventually, in ever-increasing periods in time, the innocence, the sweetness, the majesty and the radiance, the tenderness and the power, and the infinite wisdom; those aspects of her feminine begin to reawaken and make themselves more present.
It’s like in offering the right psychic environment to clear out her inner space, we have rolled out the red carpet for the queen, the maiden and the others to re-merge into her kingdom.
The place that was always her rightful home.
This process of being with a person who reconnects to and remembers what it’s like to be a woman, as well as a set of roles she’s had to take on, is simultaneously divine and humbling.
Igor Vasilevitsky
Igor is a healer, counsellor, writer and speaker. His approach combines psychotherapeutic approaches as well as energetic work that can draw on archetypes as well as masculine and feminine dynamics. He lives in Melbourne, Australia and work with individuals and couples from all over the world.
