When I left law, I was truly exhausted. Exhausted of myself and the identity I’d created. As an adult, I was doing what I thought I should “do” to be “successful” in life. But competing with others in both the boardroom and the courtroom during all hours of the night or day was exhausting–my masculine energy was dominating everything, so much so that my feminine self had stopped trying to be heard.

I’d forgotten how to tune in and connect with the deeper part of myself that was longing for acknowledgment–she had long been forgotten and ignored. Even though I knew there was something missing, I couldn’t figure out where, what, or HOW to connect with that forgotten piece of me.

There was no way at the time that I could articulate exactly how I was feeling or why, so yes true to my masculine form I would have blamed things outside of myself rather than looking a little closer to home.

Little did I know then, that I was in fact the creator of everything and the reason I felt so soul destroyed was because my “feminine” and who I was at the core, had been ignored for far too long. The feminine energy inside of me wasn’t being listened to or cherished. Instead she was buried away in a shadow, not to be seen or heard from.

And I wasn’t alone — with my clients over the last 4 years, I began to discover a pattern and started using the principles I’d created to help me lead from the feminine (rather than my masculine). I called my clients out on the masculine parts of themselves that they were so blinded by, and helped direct them to lead from their feminine instead.

And I discovered not only the massive change that created for them but really all of my clients were wanting the same thing and that was to reconnect with their feminine selves and to lead from that space — no matter if that was in their relationships, lives, careers or own businesses.

And just the same as me, my clients had been those super successful women : busy in achieving, obtaining pieces of paper, being educated, climbing the corporate ladder and the systems and structures which told them that’s what they needed to be a success.

And whilst we are forever grateful to the ‘Athena’ generation of women who fought for our equality — yet for most and many of them, they also sacrificed their femininity and feminine as part of their warfare.

The Athena Archetype – the goddess of wisdom, of war and of achieving – she was defending towns, strategic warfare and going on heroic adventures just like men was unfortunately a virgin goddess and made sacrifices every step of the way.

Athena is an archetype I massively connected with as an ex defence lawyer and an archetype of woman — I was tired of playing. I asked the question is Athena type of archetype the goddess of war, strategy and defence the answer for the next level of the women leading?

As high achieving and successful women we’ve had to squeeze ourselves into a world and energy of masculine that we didn’t ourselves create and now it’s starting to feel yuk. Yet we still want success, we still want power, we still want to show up fully and we still want to make huge impact – but we want to do it in a different way

We’re dying to be successful but lead from a different place–yet its those masculine structures, systems and roadmap we’ve used to get us to where we are — so we’re left feeling confused?

Women have come to me and asked me – How do I be successful and feminine? How do I bring more feminine into my world, my business/career and my relationships? What does that even mean for me? And I remember in 2015, sitting with journal and pondering the same question, whilst writing an affirmation – ‘I am feminine’ and finding it daft — why did I look that way but I didn’t feel it. What did it even mean? How would that change things for me?
Yet it was a smart question as we can’t solve the problems we see in the wider society and within ourselves with the same thinking that created them ie. masculine, so I also wasn’t alone in wondering what feminine and leading from that space really looked like at root level……

What does it mean to you?