The “New” Women Empowerment

Many people may ask why I write of "new" women empowerment when, in reality, this is a subject which has already been spoken of a lot and it is even boring to some. Having been born and grown up in a Latin American country, machismo surrounded me like a natural entourage and during its early stages, my brain adapted itself to the values of a "machista" mother, like many other mothers that, so many women of my generation inherited as founders of principles in the beginnings of this wonderful experience called life. Without meaning to assign blame, I sincerely believe that it is imperative to redefine the concept and therefore, I will be referring to a possible new meaning.

"Sybil: He must have read the résumé I'd sent him by e-mail before our dinner date. We were drinking coffee and he'd asked for the check when I heard him say something in his warm, reassuring way.

Ed: You deserve an opportunity, Sybil. Life still hasn't rewarded you for your efforts. With all my years of experience, I recognize a courageous woman when I see one, and I've known a few like yourself, women who have had the door shut in their face by the masculine and then withdraw from it all. I know you don't trust me, but I'd like to be the one who gives you the opportunity you need in order to trust in life again. You may have been taught by guides from other dimensions, but you now need a flesh-and-blood one.

Sybil: He was right. I didn't trust him or anyone else, but my inner God did trust him, and I had no other choice but to accept his offer. I agreed without thinking about it. If God had brought this into my life, it was for some very important reason. I could at least find out where this new adventure might lead me." ~ Book Excerpt

There was a moment in my life when there appeared a man with the selfless kindness of an angel... a man full of decency and admiration for the feminine energy, who gave me the opportunity to show my ability to stand out by virtue of my talents and not by what others assumed or expected of me. He was an older man, weathered by life, unaware of the world that had been familiar to me, who did not need to ask me to "pay back" the help which he offered: the help I accepted in a moment when I had absolutely no other alternative, trying to imagine that this time, at last, the results would be different to the ones I had experienced in the past. I was so used to this dominating and ill-intentioned machista behavior, that my mind didn't have the basics to accept this new pattern that was now arriving, a healthier and liberating one.

Thanks to the God I discovered within me, for the first time the result was, indeed, different! Thanks to this distinguished gentleman, I learned that men in fact could help us women, to become aware of our value, and recover our self-love destroyed after so many centuries of unjust oppression. I speak on behalf of all of the women who have been abused in the course of the history of humanity. Yes, probably many of the women that are reading me, will want to show these written thoughts to one or another man in their lives, and let´s hope that they can read them together. Why? because today, empowerment of the feminine is not an exclusive topic of women. On the contrary, the new empowerment of women has to do with the forgiveness process that is starting to happen between both sexes throughout the world.

No matter what has happened in the past, women must be willing to forgive and men must be willing to apologize. For this forgiveness to be effective and lasting, women in turn must be willing to apologize and men to forgive. Those are the new rules of the game. The days when we were able to feel like victims and wound up triumphant when others backed that up, are over. Forgiveness is the only way to close this cycle and finally achieve balance between masculine and feminine energies.

Many years ago, in some workshops I attended with the man who was then my husband, I learned about the power of asking for forgiveness --even when one did not feel as "doing something" one had to apologize for! I had to extend so many times this forgiveness to everyone whom I believed had done me harm, that I have lost count of how much I repeated the exercise. Going through this test which life had set for my ego that was fighting against my heart, I gradually discovered that every time I apologized to my "aggressors", the person who really benefited from this loving forgiveness was myself. From there on I understood the empowerment of my femininity from another standpoint. I learned about a healthy power, without hatred or aggressiveness, which is, in the end, the empowerment which all women seek and deserve.

Forgiveness leads to falling in love with one self, our self-love is the source of the new power which begins to emerge. And from love only peaceful and harmonious lives can be created for men and women.

Let us then begin to think of the term in a new way, to give it a new meaning which takes into account the power which originates in the heart and not in the mind. Let us seek joint solutions because it is no longer the time for machista or feminist extremes: all they achieve is to multiply the sense of separateness and the differences which create our destruction. The new world is crying out for reconnection and unification.

Men with this new mindset will have to open the door to a new kind of woman who has begun to emerge from the bowels of mother creation, a woman upon whom the future of both sexes depends. I speak of a woman who is full of love. This is a truly empowered woman: one that no longer needs to compete, because she already has in herself all that is needed in order to succeed.

It is the time for men to open their hearts to the feminine energy they bear within themselves as an undeniable part of their essence, and to the masculine energy of the women who are a part of their external world. The new feminine empowerment is the empowerment of men and women joined to accomplish a common aim. We all know the old saying: "it takes two to tango"!

Until next time and don't forget to be love,