For women, transactions-first models feel gross.

We are modern women, waking up to the truth of who we are, and standing in that truth. We are formulating businesses, offerings and strategies, according to the full truth of who we are. We are choosing where to spend our money based on how we feel, who we know personally, and what ethos we want to support.

For women, sales are not first.


I think more and more, women are keen to know when a situation is transactional, and we’re opting out of it.

A few years ago I joined a women’s community where the premise was everyone was featuring their offers, but it really in practice reduced to everyone selling to one another. Or trying to. I never sold anything. Not because my work isn’t valuable or applicable to the women there – it could have been really useful – but I think it was because everyone felt “sold to” when maybe what we wanted was connection first.

Over many years now of what I’ll call spiritual entrepreneurship, I have worked with coaches whose models I no longer agree with ethically, and I’ve watched as female entrepreneurs first emulate and then try to adapt and improve current models.

I’ve also watched women’s circles that are like pyramid schemes and rely on overly-feminine processes and don’t effectively help women creators to launch and be prosperous.

As women creators who are bringing deep wisdom through based on life experiences, training, spiritual evolution and consciousness, we’ve got great offers, but how to get them to really fly? Sales gets tiring, but more than that, it often just doesn’t feel aligned to the authentic nature of what we’re trying to bring forward.

To be a solo-entrepreneur really requires one to constantly sell themselves, which isn’t the point, because we’re trying to sell an offer that improves someone’s lives but we’re a one-woman show, so it looks like we’re trying to sell us.

Which feels gross by the time we really experience it. Maybe more so depending on the level of ethics one chooses to utilize.

So, integrating experience with intuition, I’m going to offer a new way.

A new community model formulated on relationships first, but with the intent that every single woman in the space thrive financially and experience prosperity in all areas of her life.

And, it’s a community that fosters women’s unique gifts and talents, allowing her to experience prosperity in alignment with her true calling and essence.

This community is based on the premise that women can be exactly who they are, develop their ideas into financially viable offerings, and be celebrated and experience prosperity along the way. This is the Sacred Remembering Community.

Over the next 5 to 10 years, I want to see this grow into an entirely new model for women’s success. Since apparently the Barbie Movie just made it acceptable for us to now say “patriarchy” publicly without cringe, I’ll say it is an alternative or antidote model to patriarchy. (I said patriarchy in 2019 in my TEDx, which TED just so happened to not want to publish… so I’m glad we’re moving forward.)

I’m coming up on two years of running this community, and what I’ve witnessed here as well in the other groups I’ve hosted is that when women know one another, and care about one another’s whole experience, they will naturally uplift one another.

Without making sales, marketing or transactions the focus, women’s prosperity elevates when women form authentic relationships first.

So the basis of Sacred Remembering is “women waking up to the truth of who they are, and standing in that truth.” We share the “this is who I really am” part, which leads to women feeling more confident to stand in that truth, which then leads to more prosperity.

So let me give you an example.

If I know Audrey as a friend via community, and I have seen Audrey’s personal and spiritual evolution, and I’ve heard in Community Calls why she cares so much about the topic that led her to creating a business or an offering, I’m going to tell everyone I know  about Audrey‘s offering.

Because it’s a genuine on two levels. One, I have a relationship with Audrey, and two, I have witnessed her authentic process, the reclaiming of her own truths, and her passion.

Also, when a woman really touches into the *very* thing she cares most about, she lights up. When we see that in community, we reflect to one another, “Yes! That! Please share that with the world!”

When women or female entrepreneurs are trying to do this in isolation, we don’t have the feedback, and we don’t have the community to uplift us, which leads one down the road of becoming transactional. We have to sell our products. And that really is grating and draining to the cultivated feminine system within a woman. If we want to stop emulating patriarchy, we remember what life with the integrated feminine actually feels like (Barbie doesn’t understand that part yet), and then we have to develop new models that nourish, rather than deplete, the feminine.

When you are in authentic community, and someone over-steps and tries to sell to you first, it feels abrasive and inappropriate to the feminine essence. The feminine flourishes with relationships, a felt-sense of truth and trust, and connection.

I’m always astonished on LinkedIn that anyone thinks that they can come into my inbox and sell me some thing with one message. My clients do not make the decision to work with me through one message, they make the decision to work with me through trust, relationally, over time. I pretty much never invest my money when I hear about something for the first time, especially not a coaching or business mentorship offer, because I have no trust formulated for the person who just popped into my inbox. I actually don’t even finish reading the message, because when you put transactions first, it is off putting to the feminine.

It feels so good as a woman to stop playing transactional games. It feels so good as a woman to lift up other women, and have other women lift me up. It feels good to trust that we can all rise together – and that we will.

We are modern women, waking up to the truth of who we are, and standing in that truth. We are formulating businesses, offerings and strategies, according to the full truth of who we are. We are choosing where to spend our money based on how we feel, who we know personally, and what ethos we want to support.

For more information on the Sacred Remembering Community, please visit SarahPoet.com.

It’s okay to heal slowly.

I’ve been in dark nights of the soul before, sort of slashing my way through the dark. But this was tender, like walking myself forward by candlelight and love. 

Hello love, 

Have you ever felt that pressure to get it together when you’ve come undone? Have you felt the pressure to not be a mess when you just are? 

Or how about the pressure to go out and make money when really, you’re just not okay on the inside and you need time to heal? 

Where does this pressure come from? As I ponder it, it’s so bonkers (I love that word.) 

It’s bonkers because it’s the pace of the outer world, the world that humans have created that goes oh-so-fast, that doesn’t let you take a dang minute when you really need one. Which is traumatizing in and of itself. 

Last year, I took time to heal. It wasn’t productive, or lucrative, or super clean. It was caterpillar-turn-to-mush messy. I didn’t know what the result would be. I took time to get off the high-speed train of life (which for me, included a lot of old patterns of hyperarousal and fight/flight even as someone who “understood” this) and to heal something deep within me.

What was I healing? Well, I’ll tell you, at the risk that you’ll stop reading right here. But that’s the risk, isn’t it? Can we be with what is real in order to truly acknowledge and heal it? I was healing a mixture of deep loneliness and finding my personal lovability. It was triggered when, after I’d been so diligent about healing my sexual abuse trauma for so long, I experienced family rejection and a breakup that triggered the old sexual trauma all at the same time. I was also taking care of myself after finding out huge interdimensional intel on soul-level attacks I’d endured throughout my life. Someone recently called this Complex Sexual Trauma (like, including the invisible multidimensional f*ckery). Well, I’ve had it, and it became too much for this female-bodied light worker on a mission to handle for a while.

Also, I needed to go through this to help other women heal in the ways few are talking about. I was walking an embodied piece of Heartland alchemy. 

And it’s been about a year of going down and through this in order to come out the other side. That’s the slowest, sweetest healing I’ve ever done. I know the rest of my life will be so much better for it. And I know that it has changed the way I show up for myself, and embodied a new softness now within me. 

We like to throw around concepts like, “The feminine should be soft and receptive.” Well, in this world, that takes a lot of actual healing in order to happen, not pressure. 

This week I was thinking about the gift of giving yourself time for healing, and I put this message on social media – It’s okay to heal slowly, and if you’re healing slowly, it probably means you’re actually healing. Apparently others needed to hear it too, and I really respect that we can openly say this now. Many expressed gratitude for the message.

We are humans that have endured quite a bit of separation – I call these various events and societal circumstances “traumas of separation.” These traumas hurt the heart, they are held in the body, the soma, and they need to be met with tenderness and love. 

I’ve also been thinking about how sometimes I find myself judging the word “healing.” So I bet I’m not the only one who does that, too. Like “healing” isn’t as “woke” as “ascending” or something. So funny. 

I’ve always been this edge-walker who doesn’t really fit into boxes, and I’ve been this spiritual “coach” who is also really willing to acknowledge trauma as a part of the spiritual path. Healing trauma is a part of the spiritual path. How could it not be? You have to un-burden the effects of trauma to realize your God-nature. Anything else is bypassing and glossing over what’s hard, in my opinion. 

If trauma lives in the body, and it does, and we are spiritual beings in bodies, then how in the world are you going to deny an embodied trauma or stuck energy and just say, “Spritually, I’m great!” This is cutting the body, the feminine, off from the head, the masculine, and I’ve just never been game for participating in that. 

And so, healing is spiritual and not at all shameful. Also, if you are a womb-holder on this planet, you have likely experienced trauma, and we need to be talking more about those invisible assaults on the womb because this is what is keeping women impoverished. 

But literally, I’ve been interviewed on spiritual podcasts and because I talked about healing sexual trauma, the podcast was given a trigger warning. 

I don’t want to be a walking trigger warning at all, but I want to acknowledge what others may want to avoid, because I know the time and toll that these issues have taken on my life. 

The complexities that we have endured need time and space to heal, which is alchemy. True healing is alchemy. And by “taking time to heal” by no means do I mean “sitting around while I hope things heal.” Healing is active, too. It is diligent self care, it is energy clearing, learning about what’s really been going on, it is physical care, it is seeking support. It is being committed to healing the trauma truly, through and through, not identifying as a victim and staying in the trauma. 

This last year was truly a daily devotional practice to my true essence and to deep self-love. That’s it. So every day, that looked like doing my kundalini yoga, being on my Sacred Remembering path, taking the actions I heard Spirit tell me to take, keeping the faith, sleeping well, eating right, on and on, even when I did not know if that would be how I felt every day for the rest of my life. 

I’ve been in dark nights of the soul before, sort of slashing my way through the dark. But this was tender, like walking myself forward by candlelight and love. 

That devotion, gratefully, is bringing me through the “up and out” of this process. I can’t say it’s over, nor maybe ever, since I’m always willing to do the good work of transformation. 

For the past three years, I’ve offered Heartland every spring. But this year, spring came, and the energy wasn’t right because of where I was personally. I resisted and thought, “No! It’s always a spring 8 week event!” But that wasn’t happening. 

Also for about a year now, I’ve wanted to offer Heartland as an 8 MONTH experience. Heartland has 8 topics or components. And Heartland is about a New Earth experience of the feminine where we get to heal the ley lines of our lives in tandem with the Earth, heal our bodies and wombs of these traumas, and it has “code” for what life beyond the patriarchal traumas of separation feels like. So, in 8 weeks, you get the code. The activation.

But in 8 months, we can go slowly. We can heal, experience authentic transformation, and feel it down to our cells and bones, down to the way our feet touch this Earth. 

I am so, so grateful (tears actually welling in my eyes in this moment) to be here. Exactly here, with you, now. At this time on Earth, in our need for deep healing, in the amazing capacity for true and authentic transformation. The Heaven On Earth level embodiment. 

This year, we alchemize. We step into the Heartland for 8 full months and allow it to work us slowly, easefully, truly. And, we will emerge in the Spring! 

Beloveds, thank you for being the ones who open these emails, read to the end, and allow me to show up authentically as an imperfect woman with a big heart and true gifts. I want to do more to help us re-write our expectations of women, healing, performance culture, and what it looks like for us to stand in our truth. I try to model it and I will be doing that more and more as my desire to write returns. 

Thank you for your patience as Heartland prepared me for the beautiful journey that a group of us is about to take. Yes, it is a healing journey, and yes, it is also woke AF. 😉 

You can now learn more about this 8-month journey into the Heartland here: https://www.sarahpoet.com/heartland 

In love,

Sarah

Fierceness is required: embracing strength through love.

Also, simultaneously a few weeks ago, my friend Lisa sent me a picture in a text message and let me know that she felt guided to set up a place for me on her prayer altar. In the center of this prayer altar was a picture of me.

Journal Prompts to consider before, during, or after reading this blog:

  • Where in your life are you feeling like you need to fight for something? Is it exhausting or energizing you?
  • What is the difference, for you, between sacred fierceness and fighting?
  • How do these two feel different in your body? In your breath?
  • How do you want to embody your sacred fierceness more in your life right now?

A few weeks ago, I was talking to my friend Betsy and I said, “Betsy, I do not want to have to be the warrior anymore.”

You can hear the exhaustion in that statement.

Well, I believe, because I experience, that there is always a divine dance of Creation going on. A sacred unfolding.

In that statement of mine, there was exhaustion, but there was also a little stuckness. I had tired of being a warrior along the way….

Also, simultaneously a few weeks ago, my friend Lisa sent me a picture in a text message and let me know that she felt guided to set up a place for me on her prayer altar. I was surprised because we hadn’t talked about an exact thing that would have prompted this, but I wasn’t surprised because I know that Lisa is always listening to the divine and if she felt to do it, there was a reason why.

Lisa is a friend that continually makes magic and I truly love to notice and weave the Mystery with her.

In the center of this prayer altar was a picture of me. The layout of everything on the altar was astonishingly beautiful and thoughtful, but the picture surprised me because it was an old photo that I’d had on the back of my first business cards. She’s had this for years.

The photo, I realized in that moment but also more deeply throughout the next few weeks (that’s what I mean by “weaving”), was historically very significant to me because it was the first time that I “saw myself.”

I had gone in for professional headshots, and the photographer nudged me to take off my sweater and do a few shots in my flimsy old tank top, that truly I felt at home in.

The photo, when I saw it, still a school principal at that time, was strength. It was me. It was the me, underneath, that I felt but that I didn’t always know how to express, and here it was embodied.

And then, that was the photo that showed up from Lisa. A reminder.

And then I said, “Betsy, I don’t want to have to be the warrior anymore.”

Well, then a few weeks went by, things happened, and I did an 11 day spiritual practice that truly helped to regain so much life force, and then as I cleared energy, of course this affected things in outer relationships (as it always goes.)

And as I was witnessing an old pattern arising related to men & masculine, I noticed I felt different. I told Betsy, “I felt fear for a minute, but then I felt strength.”

The strength was different. It wasn’t a fighting strength. Younger-me had a lot of fighting strength, and then that was lost, or rather, let go. I grew tired of always being resilient. But (and I’ve written about this elsewhere), that was okay. Because fighting strength requires the nervous system, and one day that will tap out. True strength and resiliency comes from a different place. Turns out I’ve been cultivating it for some time, but am just realizing it.

Last year, I went deep deep down into the space of my own heart. I got so familiar with the aches and beauty, and I came to know love differently.

As it turns out, from that place is also where strength returns.

I was sitting in prayer this morning, and I asked, “Divine Shekhinah, what do I need to know right now?”

And in dropped the message, “The Sacred Warrior in you is a part of your divinity. It is sacred. Feel it now.”

And I sat with that message, the frequency of the Sacred Warrior, with the picture from years ago, the realization that Lisa had helped to evoke this via her prayer altar, and a part of me consciously returned.

Fierceness is required. Sacred Fierceness and the Warrior come through the space of the Heart, and can be trusted. Some things are worth standing for, worth being fierce over.

My path requires fierceness. I am here to disrupt common narratives and repattern aspects of patriarchy. I am here to introduce new information and tell stories. To be me and live my purpose requires the Sacred Warrior.

I am grateful to re-incorporate this, to walk in integrity with this divine energy, to the weaving, to the Mystery, to true sacred sisters Betsy, Lisa and more. I am grateful to look, once again, at this picture and see a true essence, and welcome it.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”

Photo credit https://www.heatherhamborphotography.com/

The real gender issues at work won’t look like gender issues.

So if companies are willing to innovate, and willing to realize, like we do in #DEI, that everyone has a bias, then we can start to talk about masculine and feminine characteristics and behaviors – not genders, we pivot the gender conversation – and take the conversation and #awareness to a whole new level.

The real gender issues at work won’t look like gender issues.

There are gender issues, because these are the times we’re living in, but someone’s found a way to justify decisions, to quote the data, and prove that all of the boxes have been checked – in order to put a lot of energy into holding up a pronouncement that “There are no gender issues going on here!” 

You will know that there are #gender issues at work when you look at the rate of true #satisfaction of the people, especially the #women and gender non-conforming people. 

We are still in an age where a lot of adult white males are busy leading #hierarchies, checking boxes, and saying, “We do not have a problem here.” This is more than we’d like to think, and it’s happening for understandable reasons, like our culture pressured men to feel they could always have the answers, and handle any problem. 

There are also a lot of men emerging that want to do it differently, namely younger men and men who have gone through psycho-spiritual awakenings.

If the true essence about the feeling at work is not a good one, for anyone, you have a gender issue. 

And no amount of checking #HR boxes is going to “solve” this. No amount of #denial and hierarchical proclamation will white wash the situation. It’s very easy at this point for people to see through that. They probably try to speak to it, and when they’re ignored, or it is explained to them how they are wrong, they often quit, if they’re not gotten rid of first. 

Handling this requires a new and different approach – one that is relational and innovative. It requires companies who actually want to lead progress to get real about the unspoken or undefined gender issues. 

Going to layer deeper, gender issues are, at the root, a discrimination of #feminine energy. Because if a woman uses #masculine #energy at work, she’s actually rewarded and can get by quite alright. This is how women were historically able to win positions of power – by adopting masculine work traits. The other polarity that women experience in the workplace is to stay quiet and more docile to keep the job. Both of these are ways that women behave in a #patriarchal workforce, both of which women are growing tired of and is why you see them #quitting .

Culturally, we don’t have the words for it yet – but we want to be able to bring the archetypal feminine to work.  

So if companies are willing to innovate, and willing to realize, like we do in #DEI, that everyone has a bias, then we can start to talk about masculine and feminine characteristics and behaviors – not genders, we pivot the gender conversation – and take the conversation and #awareness to a whole new level.

I was recently talking with a male client of mine who has a multi-million dollar business. He told me that he recognized that to hire women put his business at a competitive #advantageNot only does he hire them, he knows that to genuinely listen to them, to let them share their wisdom, and come up with a new ideas, is the reason his business is outshining competitors. 

He acknowledged that he sees the resistance in others to listening to women, and it is costing his competitors. Hiring innovative women, and him getting behind their ideas, has taken his business to a whole new level. 

Because he understands a bit about masculine and feminine through our work together, he was able to see that the competitive advantage was feminine energy, which is inherently creational, intuitive, and relational. 

This is what the traditional workplace has been missing. And it is the very thing that some companies are denying the need to look at, while other companies are pulling ahead because they’re not just putting women into positions of influence, but then they are allowing the entire body of wisdom – intuition and all – within that woman to influence decision making in the company. 

Wow! Of COURSE this is where our world should be progressing right now. Why all the discomfort and resistance?? We have to let go of what is not working to advance to where the world is progressing. 

It’s going that direction, and companies can innovate with feminine / masculine understanding and incorporation for #holistic development – or not, and be left behind. 

My client was happy to watch his company be more successful, and his clients more happy because of the magic that these women brought. He is someone willing to innovate and get out of his own way. Are you?

For workplace consultations, leadership team development, and systems consulting, see www . SarahPoet . com / Reconciliation and book a call today. 

Know someone who needs to see this? Thanks for sharing. 

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#genderequity #masculinefeminine #leadership #innovation #consulting #deiconsultant #hrinnovations #newparadigm #business #thoughtleadership

The real reason women are quitting.

I found it was becoming more and more difficult, as I was a part of a team and physical community of people, to remain sovereign particularly in my emotional energy. When we are relational (and we naturally are), the human-relating stuff starts to seep into the crevices of our lives, and work isn’t just work – it’s intertwined and perhaps harder to compartmentalize. 

As a woman, I watch myself have a certain habit that goes something like this: when I am invited to be a part of a thing (job, relationship, group goal), I first discern if it is aligned with my values and life direction, and then if it seems to be, I jump right in and give it my all. Key word – discern. I remember an old friend saying to me years ago after a breakup, “I think it’s all about discernment, Sarah.” She was saying – think more about it first. So I have gotten better over the years, but still, oftentimes, not long after this wholehearted “yes” to investing my time, energy, attention and heart into the genuine progress of said job, relationship or group goal, there is often a subsequent time of saying to myself, “Ah shit, I gave too much again.” 

What would indicate that I gave too much as a woman? Personally, and I don’t think I’m alone, I experience that I’m not being met by others in the amount of care that I am putting into it. It might seem like I’m caring too much, or they don’t care as much as I do. Another way I experience this is when the value exchange isn’t reciprocal. Maybe I gave too much in a job contract and am finding myself thinking about it when I’m not technically working, taking me away from valuable family or creative time. Or, the last time I was in a love relationship I knew I’d given it too much of my attention (and other resources) when I became sick with covid and he said as if accidentally speaking out loud the passing thought that was going through his head, “Oh, I should bring you food.” And then he never showed up with the food nor mentioned it again. That was the moment I thought, “Oops, I’ve invested more than he’s willing to invest.” It all fell apart not long after, which is quite alright, because I don’t like to live in a net deficit. I desire reciprocity and mutual respect of one another’s resources in places where I invest my energy. 

Emotional Over-giving: 

But back to the “thinking about the job when I’m not technically working.” This one wasn’t a problem when I was solely running my own business. After a previous career in education and as a school leader, I’d worked to build my own coaching and consulting practice in masculine / feminine energetics (see my TEDx) but then for various reasons – including but not limited to desiring to live and serve within a progressive community, and wanting to raise my son with more stability and positive community influence – I negotiated a part time salary to help build an innovative new project. I got my first “job” in nearly six years. 

Because we live and learn what we’re meant to teach, over the years I have developed and taught this system to women called Structure and Flow and my entrepreneurial work has begun to take shape more and more around redefining women’s #resources . I have taught this for years, but then I needed to really lean on this system for women’s resource allocation that I’d developed, as I found myself needing to categorize my time and not allow the various jobs and tasks to all blend together. 

I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing tasks and duties, or giving my attention and focus to one thing at one time. For example, I am a single mother and devote time to my son in a certain way and when I’m with him, I’m fully with him. I have coaching clients and run a membership community, and again, when it is just my work there is this joy that I have with it and I never think to myself, “I’m thinking about a client too much.” I do my work, my clients reach out when they need me, and all is great in the exchange (which I worked a very long time to achieve, I will say). I’m actually very good at managing my own energy and boundaries when it’s just me and my business, but some kind of old wire tripped when I went back to a paycheck, and what an opportunity to observe and report from this angle! 

I found it was becoming more and more difficult, as I was a part of a team and physical community of people, to remain sovereign particularly in my emotional energy. When we are relational (and we naturally are), the human-relating stuff starts to seep into the crevices of our lives, and work isn’t just work – it’s intertwined and perhaps harder to compartmentalize. 

Personally, I have redefined the value of my resources. People don’t just pay me for my time, as standard economics has implemented for some time. I define my valuable resources as my time, life force energy, attention, creative energy, my love and devotion, my intuition, my body, and my emotional wisdom. And that is what I charge for. Those are the things I’m considering when getting involved in an exchange, but that’s because I’ve literally redefined “value” for myself. 

Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. 

She said what? Charging for emotional energy? Yes. 

My emotional energy is one of my most valuable resources. It is my intuition, wisdom, my body’s knowing, and emotional energy is the basis of creational energy. 

To begin to redefine what “resources” are for us, and then also see the true value of them, we must be willing to look at “resources” and energy, and redefine them through a #masculine / #feminine lens. And when we do, it all starts to make more sense. This is what is underlying women quitting. Stick with me. 

Masculine & Feminine Resources are based in Masculine & Feminine Energy: 

It’s not a #gender thing, although it influenced #genderstereotypes . Masculine & Feminine are energies within each of us, and we call on them for different aspects of our lives. 

I’ll break it down like this – there are feminine and masculine archetypes, and affiliated with those archetypes are certain qualities. Now, we must (must) take time to understand what is an *actual* archetypal quality of both masculine and feminine versus a societal projection of feminine and masculine. Most people, if you just say these words, are going to associate societal projections and stereotypes to this, but I don’t have time to unwind that here, so we’ll move forward with a few quick examples. 

An archetype isn’t a person, it’s a flawless example (which people are not). The masculine archetype possesses qualities of singular focus, linear thought, task completion, decisiveness, consideration of all in the tribe, and makes sure everyone has their resources. 

You might not associate masculine with those things and instead associate masculine with things like dominance, control, coercion, snagging all the resources, etc. That is patriarchal, or shadow masculine. Also called unconscious masculine. It’s what needs to be cleaned up on the planet. 

The feminine archetype in its healthy expression will possess qualities such as nurturance, caretaking, emotional consideration, lovingly willing to open and to give, is very heart centered, has a wisdom based on a full-spectrum seeing (as compared to the singular focus of the masculine), is communal and relational. 

The unconscious, shadow, unhealthy feminine would be emotionally manipulative, withholding, seeking to snag the man’s resources, or the harsh feminism of trying to take the power back. 

We pay for masculine qualities, but expect the feminine to give for free:

If you hear nothing else from this article, hear this: in value exchanges, both economic and relational, our society as it stands most often will pay for what is valued as masculine energy, and it wants feminine energy for free. 

And this is why #women are #quitting – because they are tired of the world just expecting the exhaustion of what is inherently feminine to be normal and for the taking. 

When you work in a “job,” you’re typically trading #performance and time for a paycheck. Performance is output, people assume that output leads to profit. All of this is masculine energy also because it’s outward, always moving, always pushing. And if you’re always in “yang,” then you’re not taking enough time to rest, and you’re not going to get to the really good creativity. #Creativity and productivity are not the same thing, they do not at all come from the same areas of the brain or impulse. Creativity has an impulse and needs to be nurtured, production can be rote. 

So that means, most companies who are trying to innovate probably want us to feel something. When we can feel, we can be lit up, we can invest our love and devotion, we can care about what we are doing, and we can create better solutions for the world. You’ll notice that what I just referenced is feminine. 

But people typically don’t pay for creational downtime, for time to gestate the ideas, to have an emotional reaction to something. Some are innovating in this way, but many are still pushing for productivity and output as a measure of profit, and passing this pressure onto employees. 

Women are going to have emotional reactions to work, because we are relational beings and we are always considering the whole. It is the nature of the feminine, and women have feminine energy because we are women, and the world is having a massive awakening in feminine consciousness right now. If you’re missing this, your head is under a patriarchal rock. 

This awakening is also an unidentified reason women are quitting. They are #remembering something, and realizing they don’t fit into the status quo, but don’t have the exact words for it. The more a woman remembers the truth of authentic feminine and masculine, the less she will be able to fit into what has been the norm. Thank God. Because she will quit, and she will start something new that does work differently, and she will be on the front lines of innovation. 

Redefining value at work to keep women: 

We want to care and invest our emotional energy, and many times, it isn’t wanted or appreciated. Correction: it is wanted if someone needs to vent #emotions at work to someone who is naturally empathic. It is wanted for free. But what happens when a woman has an intuition inside of a work project, or wants to bring an innovative agenda item to a meeting, or try something collaboratively that has traditionally been between male decision makers in a room? Can that be heard? Or not? If not, she’ll be quitting. 

It is not fun or fair for a feminine-essenced being to have to stuff her #intuition or inner knowing (also called emotional energy) because only masculine traits are valued. It is not fun for her to emotionally labor, on her own time while she’s trying to have an easy going dinner with her kids, how she’s not listened to at work or how she truly senses what is needed, but her wisdom isn’t valued. That is deadening. She has life force, she has energy that she wants to give. She wants to devote it toward something that matters. 

Will you redefine “value” in order to keep the women? Will you better listen to the women in your organization? Will you trust her to know the fullness of what she can bring to work, and know that your company will be better off for it?  I hope so. When you do, all KINDS of creational energy will flow for your projects! All of that feminine emotional energy remember, is creational, and it wants to go somewhere!

Decision makers are welcome to reach out to me, as I consult with companies to identify and help heal the exact places causing unrest. Many people don’t know how to identify what is blocking the operational systems in an organization because they don’t yet have this language or concept. It’s not taboo to talk openly about masculine and feminine, about where it applies to gender and how it impacts us. Companies who are willing to do this will innovate first and go the farthest in the future world we’re creating. Visit https://www.sarahpoet.com/reconciliation today to learn more and book a consultation with me. 

#embodiedbreath #masculinefeminine #quietquitting #greatresignation #emotionallabor #emotionalenergy #creativity #innovation #newparadigm

Women, have you felt hurt by the feedback, “You’re too masculine?”

The feedback that “you’re too masculine” is shaming, and here’s the thing – this is something that can actually be worked with. Feminine and masculine polarity can always be re-balanced, or re-assigned between two people.

I’m seeing a theme lately in women coming to me and sharing that men are giving them the feedback that they are too “masculine.” 

Not only are they giving women this feedback, they are insulting women with it, and using it as a reason to leave the relationship. 

I was so impacted this year by the look on a woman’s face as she told me that her husband of over twenty years was leaving her because she was “too masculine.” It was the look of a woman who knew how to be stoic and save face, but had no idea how to handle this information. The look of a woman who had done her best, and from the suit jacket she was wearing and the leather bag she was carrying, I’d say she had been a powerful and influential woman in her career. And now he was leaving her, and she wasn’t showing any emotion about it. She looked like she was just going to “handle it.” 

I’m not placing women as the victims, here, don’t misread me. These nuances of realizing where we went wrong with feminine and masculine, and how to culturally and spiritually redefine these concepts and learn to apply them to our lives – it’s huge work that we are in as a collective right now.

But what a double bind for a woman who received cultural messages that to be a strong woman meant she had to be equal and climb the career ladders just like men. Women have learned to do this because it was necessary for survival, actually, and it also feels good to many to climb those ranks. 

Until women themselves are beginning to realize more and more that that was never a game we would have designed on our own. It was a game we inherited. The rules of the game sounded like, “If you want an equal shot at salary and resources, if you want independence and if you want to earn your own resources, you’re going to have to compete with men in the workplace.” 

One woman I recently heard from was a lawyer. Her boyfriend had just broken up with her using the reason, “You’re too masculine.” 

So I want to take this article in a direction you may not expect. 

“You’re too masculine” is not very evolved feedback. 

Women, I know it hurts, but this wouldn’t be thrown at you by a man who is actually aware of healthy feminine and masculine, rather, this is likely coming from his subconscious desires about the feminine. (I’m not saying this as an insult, I’m saying this based in psychology and observation.) I would recommend taking the feedback as information for self reflection, but not necessarily as an insult, if you can help it. 

And men, we actually know we’re overworked and taking care of things we would rather a man take care of. It would be better to stop insulting her and start asking how you are contributing toward it. How can you help her to feel more embodied, safe, and comfortable in her feminine archetype, if that is what you want more of? 

Isn’t it just like dominator culture to give punitive and identity-forming feedback to a woman? Isn’t it just like dominator culture to shape a woman one way such that she learns to survive with certain tactics, and then shame her for it? 

What is dominator culture? A culture built on some having power and some not having power. 

The feedback that “you’re too masculine” is shaming, and here’s the thing – this is something that can actually be worked with. Feminine and masculine polarity can always be re-balanced, or re-assigned between two people. This can be exciting work with a coach or through your own research and implementation. And a man who is accusing a woman of being too masculine is also a man who has embodied a feminine polarity that he is no longer happy with. Don’t shame her for it – learn about how to embody a masculine energetic, embody it, and ask her if she wants to practice embodying more of the feminine polarity. I promise you, she probably does. She’s probably tired of holding the world up all the time and would love to experience letting go of the masculine tendencies she’s learned. Try her! 

I couldn’t look at this woman and tell her to shrug off her husband using this as an excuse to divorce her, and I would never want to. 

But my general feeling is that women, if this has happened to you, it’s okay. Here are some suggestions on how to move forward. 

  1. See it for what it is. There is some truth to it – you have masculine tendencies and they probably serve you at work. It’s okay to ask yourself what of this “masculine” energy you also may want to let go of in certain situations or love relationships. Sometimes for women, what looks like “masculine” energy is actually a self-protective energy. 

2. Everyone has masculine and feminine inside of us, so there’s no need to abandon the masculine within you altogether. The masculine is needed for things like structure, earning an income, keeping a schedule. I’m not saying these are “man” things, but they are aspects of masculine energy. When said like that, it’s easy to see that we all have both.

3. Begin to ask yourself, “What are healthy qualities of feminine and masculine, and what are unhealthy qualities?” For example, domination is an unhealthy masculine energy, but leadership is a healthy quality. Try to consciously choose what feels healthy, more and more. 

4. Decide if you want to hold the feminine or the masculine pole in relationships. Regardless of the gender of two people, one person (in any given situation, or generally) holds the masculine pole and one holds the feminine pole. Of course, two people can also create amazing, conscious balance within themselves, but honestly, feminine and masculine polarity is part of what makes a relationship fun and juicy. So if you are masculine at work in a leadership role, how do you shift into a feminine role with your male partner if your choice truly is to hold the feminine polarity? I can certainly help couples shift this dynamic in their lives, and another resource to look into may be Dr. Patricia Allen’s work. 

5. Welcome any feedback or realization you may be receiving about being “overly masculine” as an invitation to get to know the feminine. A few friends of mine with excellent resources for coming to know the feminine are Liz Kelly, the author of Home to Her and the creator of the Home to Her podcast. Liz is always researching and sharing the “Her-storical perspective,” as she calls it. Also, Sarah Grady has developed a body of work called Homecoming which is an excellent path for women to re-embody their feminine nature. And, of course, I created over 144 episodes of the Sacred Remembering Podcast, which encourages women to trust their direct knowing and path of reawakening not only to the feminine, but to what healthy union of feminine and masculine actually looks like. 

I could tell you more from a psychological perspective what is really going on in a man’s own feminine / masculine dynamics both internally and with his residual mother wounding, but sometimes I feel like I’ve already analyzed men enough. So for today, I’ll end here and I’ll say that no one is “too” anything. 

We are humans who inherited life in a patriarchal system, and this is an exciting time for us to come to consciousness about how to utilize feminine and masculine as paths of personal and collective awakening. 

If we don’t like it, we don’t need to insult others. We need to start getting curious about what we truly desire our relationship with these archetypes and energies to be moving forward. 

If you are looking for support in re-balancing, re-harmonizing, or re-defining feminine and masculine in your life and relationships, schedule a consultation at www.sarahpoet.com/book today. I’d love to support you and help us all to move past our hurtful misunderstandings.

Wait… are you saying to withhold sex?

What does every man want the most?

The answer is not sex, it’s not money, it’s not power.

I believe that what every man wants the reunification with the deepest essence of the feminine, and that this drives his entire life, most often subconsciously.

Men form their first relationship with the feminine through the relationship with the biological mother. And then, because mothers are imperfect, as humanity is imperfect, his formation of the idea of what “Mother” is is imprinted as imperfect.

This creates within him, I believe, the greatest potential anguish and quest in this life. The deep psyche of a man longs for a holy reunification with the Mother, and with the feminine. It drives him whether or not he ever realizes it.

The deep feminine is also the thing he fears the most, or that he may try to conquer and control.

This desire in men to reunite with the depths of the feminine may cause him to do unconscious things like stay in boyhood, stay in victimhood (making all women wrong, like his mother, and waiting for the woman who will prove he is worthy of the feminine’s love), or go from woman to woman, drinking of the feminine but not staying with any one woman. He may keep himself in a position of relying on women for money, being taken care of. He may only feel better when he has been given sex, when she “proves” to him that he is “worthy” of having access to her. He may feel entitled to access to her and take it. Or he may swoon her with spiritual language or wanting to experience her full “surrender” to him so that he can feel his masculinity through her.

All of the above (and more) are expressions of the man trying to work out his relationship to the feminine. He wants access to the feminine, and he wants to know that he is worthy of that access. The man who does not know better goes to women to get this access. When neither one of them realizes what is happening, she may feel as though he’s somehow invisibly sucking the life out of her, or that he never seems to give her what it is she most wants. Often, this is his full commitment or devotion.

Women who do not know better give men (who are really still uninitiated boys in this case) this access, but it doesn’t work out for either of them. Why? Because he has access to sex.

A man has to reunite with the feminine, the depths of the feminine, the Holy Feminine, the Divine Mother – by ANY and EVERY name – he has to reunite with her within himself and his soul journey. A.k.a. NOT through your vagina.

A woman can’t be this stand-in. (Just as a man can not be the stand-in for a woman to reunite with the Holy Father, by any name.)

So it could be that a man who is looking for the deep access to the feminine, to reunite with the Mother on all levels, looks for this by poking his penis ever-further into the woman (or many women), questing for this thirst to be quenched.

Remember, men want access to the feminine more than anything else.

So, women. There is a question of when to have sex, when to give it, when not to give it. Obviously, this is a nuanced thing and you always decide for yourself.

Have you had an issue with a man having access to your sex and then leaving when you thought he should be more honoring of what you just gave him?

Have you had an experience with an adult man thinking he was entitled to your body?

Have you had a man ask you to surrender to him or to prove to him that you trust him fully by allowing him to enter you?

Have you had a man use your money, not provide for you, but then also want sex with you?

Have you emotionally nurtured a man but it did not feel reciprocated?

All of these examples are a man who is looking for reassuring access to the Mother, through you.

I could stop there. That’s really enough information for you to understand the energetics. But I’ll say a bit more, for added empowerment and understanding.

Is it withholding to not have sex with a man when you sense that this energetic is in place? I’m not sure that that is even the right question.

Do you have every right to NOT have sex with someone if you feel he is sucking you dry, asking you to prove his masculinity, without making your life easier? Yes, you have every right.

And if you DO continue to have sex with a man in the above scenarios, will you continue to give him access to the feminine (albeit not the exact type he subconsciously most yearns for), thus NOT getting your deepest needs met? Yes. If you continue to give the sex, you will continue to experience the same thing.

More sex does NOT equal this man saying to himself, “I have to be a better man for this woman!” More sex for this man usually reinforces to him, “I’m doing just fine! Look! She just reinforced that I’m okay as I am.”

Because he has his access.

You have sex with a man when he is showing up in a way that is already what you want. You have sex with the man who is already embodied in himself, already reunified with the divine mother, has already had his soul journey to the underworld and back, has already committed to you.

You never have sex with a man who is not embodying the energy you truly desire, hoping that he will, after sex, begin embodying what you desire. (I mean, unless you want to.)

Because the moment you give this man access to the feminine, he stops questing for himself.

The moment you give him full access, he thinks he’s reached it, and he does not have to quest any more.

Are you understanding me?

It’s not withholding sex. It’s only responding to the energetic that you see in front of you. And if that energetic in front of you is truly what you desire to allow to penetrate your life, then you let him in. You welcome him in and it is your deepest pleasure to BE the feminine divine for him.

When you know that you are and can be the ever-loving depth of the feminine, then only a man worthy of that is allowed in. It’s only natural and by then, it’s not withholding. It’s just a standard.

But if you are hoping, and he is poking and hunting… you may be better off waiting for the time you do feel the full, embodied, devotional, covering presence of the man who is coming to give, rather than to drink. Because the man who is showing up to give will certainly know and respect that he is gaining access to the most precious space on earth (or in all the cosmos), and he will respect you as such. And you will be the cosmos which is filled by him, and the giving and receiving will be the joy between you.

So you tell me, does this sound like withholding? Or a sovereign standard of recalibration?

About the author:

Sarah Poet is a subject-matter expert on feminine and masculine energetics, archetypes, exchanges, healing trauma, and what it might require for us to raise the consciousness of feminine and masculine for conscious and evolutionary love. To learn more about her private coaching and courses for individuals and couples looking to evolve past patriarchal patterning, visit www.SarahPoet.com today.

My “business” failed this year, I’m happy to announce.

Pressuring my mission, this soul of Embodied Breath that came to me in 2017, squeezing and pushing her, always demanding more of her, behaving toward her as the world has treated the feminine – that failed this year.

I’m happy to announce, my “business” failed this year.

False marketing failed this year – pretending I have it all together when I don’t as a “coach” failed. Participating in notions of perfectionism failed. It is not a strategy that is in alignment with me.

I am happy to announce, over-giving failed this year. I stopped endlessly giving in the hopes that I would receive – clients, attention, money, or validation that what I was giving was worth it to anyone. Business built on giving in the hopes of receiving failed this year.

Trying to figure out what you wanted to hear or receive, so that I could give it, failed this year.

Getting in front of the camera or making a social media post because some formula says I’m supposed to failed this year.

Holding up more than is mine to hold up failed this year, so that other beautiful realities of how the feminine is meant to be supported could be realized and energetically restructured.

Pressuring my mission, this soul of Embodied Breath that came to me in 2017, squeezing and pushing her, always demanding more of her, behaving toward her as the world has treated the feminine – that failed this year.

Self-sacrifice failed this year.

Emulating patriarchal, extractive business techniques that tell us that we as female entrepreneurs can “have it all!” as a one-woman show, which forces us to sell sell sell and build build build, and inherently manipulate our potential clients – that also failed this year.

Hiring business coaches to tell me how to run an inherently patriarchal business, when I could and potentially should be sharing my realizations with them, failed this year. Overlooking the inherent feminine trauma inside of this coaching “industry” while so many attempt to do it differently but are silently finding out it doesn’t work if you want to actually do it differently – that failed this year.

Participation in that which does not align with my values failed this year.

What I thought was “business” thankfully failed this year.

Assuming that if I played by the rules and legal structures laid out as options for me and other female entrepreneurs that I would be supported and successful in an inherently patriarchal culture failed this year.

Anything that is not energetically sovereign failed this year. Giving away my resources failed for me this year.

Selling myself failed this year. It’s not me or “female entrepreneurship” or talent, resume, or title that I’m selling. It’s love that I’m offering, and love that I am exchanging, because it is love that I am being, and it is love that I serve.

Love didn’t fail this year. Love was birthed this year, from what has honestly been a perpetually tender heart. Love rose as my “why” this year. And from that, trust began to thrive this year.

Connection didn’t fail. Nor did authenticity or the willingness to sit with you in the very real spaces. In fact, the most real of the real are the only spaces I will now enter, when the invitations come to invite me there.

The devotion to creating the new paradigm we need – that is thriving this year.

The need on this Earth for what Embodied Breath and I have co-created over these last four years didn’t fail – it’s alive and well. And so all of these other things failed so that I could get it in my little human head that “business” isn’t what it’s ever been about.

It’s about the mission – for unity of feminine and masculine on all levels, for the return of the regenerative and prosperous feminine, for the sovereignty of our resources.

It’s not a business, it’s a mission.

And in 2023, this mission is becoming a Ministry.

May we have the heart and wisdom to allow the old structures to fail, so that love can help build a new earth.

May my energy and my life be of service to this re-unified frequency of partnership and love.

Sarah Poet

*I am not going anywhere. This is to announce that foundations & energetic structures are changing within a regenerative frequency of Love.

You can still contact me any time.

Serving Union: https://www.sarahpoet.com/consciousrelating

Serving Women: https://www.sarahpoet.com/privatementorships

Serving Men: https://www.sarahpoet.com/private-coaching-for-men

How you can make feminine leadership more sustainable for women.

Just because women are in positions of leadership does not equate to the return of sustainable feminine leadership or respect for feminine qualities. True feminine leadership happens when we rebalance the inequitability of feminine & masculine in our actions, efforts, and energetics, and ensure the sustainability of systems, including the women themselves. 

Last spring, as the new leaves were returning to the trees and the ferns were unfurling, I visited a year-one school startup to consult with the two women who were running it. 

The ideas for the school were all about innovation, keeping children close to nature, and preserving the ideals of curiosity, self sovereignty, and relationship. The school was beautifully visioned and the positive response from the community had made for fast growth. And these women leaders were exhausted. 

They were working incredibly long hours and the school had not yet met financial goals, which meant that it was running at a deficit. In response, to take care of the children and the vision, they worked harder. Of course they did. It’s what women visionaries do. 

They were trying to get it to go, powering through, even despite not getting paid because they were paying the teachers first. And I was there as a school consultant, yes, but also a systems analyst, a women’s leadership guide, and as someone who connects land/vision/people together when there is a mission at work. In other words, I’m looking at systems, including the energetic flow in the system as a whole. Where is it leaking energy? Where is there an area that is out of integrity with the flow of the entire system of the mission? 

And so I asked them, “Are you okay running this school if it requires that the school be run on feminine depletion? You are looking at creating a holistic school model, but what of your model is requiring the feminine to continue to run on depleted resources and energy?” 

I heard back from them recently, a full half a year later, and the administrator told me, “There is not a day that goes by that I do not ask myself that question. It was the greatest guiding question I’ve received.” 

You see, our systems have historically run on feminine depletion. 

What do I mean by that? In short, I mean that in a patriarchal way of building and operating, we over-rely on masculine energetics: build, push, create, exert, make happen. And when we stay in that energetic for too long, we create an imbalance, which forces the feminine energetic to go into submission (getting what it can where it can, like 6 hours of sleep, a little exposure, or a little congratulatory high five now and again) or it’s just forgotten about altogether (which we’ve seen in our modern workplaces in the quest for more profit, more wins.) 

When the feminine is depleted, we get women who over-give, women with hormonal disorders and weird health symptoms, the pushing down of things like intuition and taking time for an idea to gestate, and the unrealistic expectation that we are able to stay continually in go-mode. 

But this of course doesn’t only affect women. It affects men in that they resist vulnerability or not having an answer, always wanting to maintain the image that everything is under control. And it has affected our ideas of leadership across the globe. 

You can also begin to deduce from my simple examples here that it is not a gendered issue, and we’d be well served to move beyond the typical conversations of gender in the workplace and include instead these considerations of what healthy and unhealthy feminine and masculine leadership look like, and how they are expressed.

Historically, we’ve made “women’s leadership” and “feminine leadership” synonymous, and I want to state explicitly that they are not. Just because a woman is in a position of leadership does not mean that she is enacting feminine principles in the least. Even to write that, I can imagine that some readers may bristle at the word “feminine” being inserted into a conversation about leadership because the stigma is still that the feminine can’t lead for it’s “softness.” 

But I will tell you that when we look at some of the most innovative research and actions taking place in the field of leadership, what is happening is the re-incorporation of the feminine archetype and feminine leadership behaviors. To name a few: shared decision making, collaboration, flexible scheduling, and allowing teams extended periods of time to create. All of these are aspects of feminine leadership whether we call it that or not. 

Then why name it? Why name it as feminine or masculine? I strongly believe that in doing so, we can save a lot of time with a conceptual framework that also reduces many of the unspoken and tricky issues that are chalked up to gender in the workplace. It’s not differences in gender that are most important. What is most important is whether or not leaders value and know how to lead, incorporating both feminine and masculine leadership qualities, and whether they extend that to their cultures and teams. 

Going back to the two women that I was coaching, as I asked them this question, “Are you okay with this place running on feminine depletion?,” they had already had an understanding of feminine and masculine, and so when I asked it, the real and deeper issue became more clear. 

In trying to do the right thing, they were exhausting themselves and also running on exhausted financial resources. We can see that such a situation is unsustainable. And it is in the reconstructing of both the finances and the activities of the school into an equitable feminine / masculine collaboration that both of these issues can be corrected. 

A world that didn’t value the feminine was also the world that created a very serious deficit in environmental sustainability. The two go hand in hand and this topic could be elaborated on quite extensively. And so for today, I’ll conclude that feminine leadership, which I would encourage all leaders to embrace regardless of gender, would not allow for the depletion of the feminine energetic, the earth, the resources, or the people. Often in our quest for power and profit, these are the very things that are depleted and overlooked. Women and men, and leaders of all kinds, it’s time for true thriving to include the wellness and sustainability of the feminine and masculine in harmony. 

Just because women are in positions of leadership does not equate to the return of sustainable feminine leadership or respect for feminine qualities. True feminine leadership happens when we rebalance the inequitability of feminine & masculine in our actions, efforts, and energetics, and ensure the sustainability of systems, including the women themselves. 

Sarah Poet is available for consultations with leaders of any gender and maintains an eye to the energetic efficiency of systems as we create a more sustainable and equitable world. To schedule, visit www.sarahpoet.com/book.

Spoken & Unspoken Exchange Agreements: Who is getting your energy and why?

Some exchange agreements are laid out clearly, and many others are assumed. Are you clear about who gets your energy & why?

Some exchange agreements are laid out clearly, and many others are assumed.

At the end of a love relationship a few years ago, after I had moved in with this man thinking it was a long term agreement, and then six months later he gave my child and I the boot, we were in a counseling session.

I was speaking about the agreements that we’d had, and the counselor said to me one of the most illuminating things I’d ever heard. He said, “Sarah, were these agreements stated or written, or did you assume them?”

In fact, I had assumed them. Based on his character as I’d known it to be and his invitation to build a life together. But I had assumed that that had meant certain things about the exchange agreements.

Now, I’m not still heartbroken about that in the least, but I was reminded of this while walking and talking with a friend this morning about EXCHANGE AGREEMENTS specifically between men and women.

And I would apply this to the workplace as well.

When I took a job on a leadership team in a startup, I got a massive raise from my previous charter school job. And then I would receive texts when I was putting my child to bed, or after ten PM. When I decided that I would not be answering these texts because they were invasive, I caused some disruption. Nowhere was it written in my contract that I was obligated to answer leadership team texts at 10pm if I was not on call. The unspoken expectation was that I would answer because I’d gotten a good gig. Then it was as if they thought they owned my energy. 

They did not own my energy. No one owns my energy but me, even when there is an exchange agreement in place.

For hundreds of generations, the exchange dynamics between men and women were very skewed. A woman couldn’t own land or even have her own last name, and her food and housing security depended on her husband or her father, and she had to keep them happy. So she made certain decisions about her body, who she permitted access to her body, how she gave her energy, and how she specifically did not exert her energy or risk being “too much” in order to preserve her access to resources for her and her children.

Women still carry the TENDENCY to get wrapped up in unspoken, unwritten exchange agreements with men and employers, because we’re subconsciously still wired to expend our energy in order to not piss off the man or authority figure that has control over our resources. If an employer decides whether or not you get a paycheck, and that paycheck feeds your kids, then you will do things like turn down your opinion or answer the text after hours in order to ensure your security. 

This happens at every tier of employment, and women who have climbed ladders to achieve more are not immune to this. 

And I’ll go on record right now and say that I believe that this is the root cause of burnout. How we use our energy based on what we perceive the unspoken exchange agreements to be is making women more tired, more depleted, and wondering how in the world their quest for leadership did not land them with a life of actual fulfillment. 

Where is your energy going? Why? What is actually contracted, or agreed upon, and what isn’t? How is this happening both at work and with your spouse? 

When that personal relationship ended, I couldn’t understand why this man wouldn’t have been happy. Because I had tried to keep him happy. He was, after all, inviting my son and I into his house. I’m not too proud to admit it. Of course not. How could I recommend that we take an honest look at these dynamics if I’m not willing to own it myself? 

I did, eventually, piss off the employer with the edge that I was walking. I was getting too big for my britches, asking for equity in too many ways, and this was the last job I had before becoming a women’s coach and masculine feminine polarity consultant. 

My friend and I this morning talked about the insidious nature of the unspoken exchange agreements between men and women, between money and sex. Who gets access to your energy? Why? Are you trying to keep them happy? Are you happy in this behavior and in your agreements? 

Because I’m here to tell you, you are the only one that decides who gets access to your energy, when, and why. Every day, you get to define and redefine your agreements. You get to ask for that. You get to stop the habitual self sacrifice right now. 

Now wouldn’t that just be the end to burn out right there? 

If you’d like to discuss personal coaching about taking back your energy from unspoken agreements that are depleting your life, contact me by setting up a consultation at www.SarahPoet.com/book.