Masculine Feminine - Sarah Poet

Boys Will Be Men: Thoughts on the Mother Complex

We want our sons to grow into conscious men. As women, how we nurture conscious masculinity through an awareness of the Mother Complex is important.

My son turned thirteen yesterday, and as a mother I find that I need to consciously acclimate to his growth and increased maturity – it’s not necessarily natural for me to do that.

For example, sometimes I’m checking up on him in a habitual way and he’ll just let me know, “Hey, you don’t need to do that anymore.” He gets older, has reached another milestone or level of consciousness, and I seem to catch on after the fact. I imagine I’m not the only mother to experience this.

The ideal is to allow his growth and individuation into Self to guide his journey – and NOT to interrupt that with my own complexes about what I might want him to be, notions of “you’re growing up too fast,” or any limitation that I might subconsciously place on him as he becomes a man.

I want to talk here about certain responsibilities that mothers have to their sons that are far less talked about, and sometimes less easy to spot unless you’re being super self-aware.

We want our sons to grow into conscious men. We want them to respect women, honor the elders, think for themselves, be leaders, own their emotions, be balanced, ask to help, etc.

We want those things of our next generation of men, and yet, as women, how we nurture those things is extraordinarily important.

There are things that are invisible to him that I absolutely need to be conscious to not perpetuate and project onto him. For example, the frustration I feel for his father not modeling more respect toward me, and how when he reminds me of his father, I need to not react with all my baggage attached.

If I want to help raise a new generation of men, and I do, then it’s my responsibility to see him differently. To allow him to become something different.

And the number one way that women and mothers unintentionally block their sons from truly becoming who they are, and becoming the next generation of men, is to project old experiences of other men onto our sons.

To hold what their fathers or our fathers did over our son. To be so identified with our wounding that we don’t even notice that our disdain for another man is coming through the tone or words we point at our growing child.

I’d like to think I’m pretty good at this. I studied adolescent development in my education career, working primarily with adolescents and specifically with male adolescents for many years. The development of the male psyche fascinated me and still does. I know that a man’s relationship with his mother affects all subsequent relationships with women and the feminine for his entire life.

But am I still a woman who is diligently shedding layer by layer of old programming about “men” and “women” myself? I sure am. I’m not perfect. And sometimes I get mad at him when he reminds me of his father. What I try to do is catch it, breathe with it, separate the two, ask questions, clarify intention, and heal my own emotions that are still able to get triggered where his father is concerned. Or other men, for that matter. I am a woman who has encountered a lot of various unhealthy dynamics with men, as we all have, and yet it is my responsibility to not be a victim to that. If I am a victim to that, my son would feel it and actually begin to take it on as his responsibility.

When I carry any victim energy regarding any men, I’ll unconsciously project that onto my son. Am I sharing this to make myself look bad? No, I’m sharing it to own it so that we can normalize that it happens if we’re not careful, and that women, we can and should do something about preventing it.

As a mother, it is not my son’s job to ensure that my emotional needs are met.

As a mother, it is my job to keep my emotions about personal disappointments with previous men OFF of my son.

I recently had an opportunity to hold myself accountable. I was going through a layer of healing around the masculine – as per usual on my life path where I intend to integrate feminine and masculine as consciously as possible – and I recognized a feeling of frustration when my son was with me that I couldn’t put my finger on.

I had to “live into” the question of what this was for a few days, and we both actually had energy healing sessions with a very powerful healer during this time period. After the sessions, I could see an emotional pattern where I was actually worried about my son’s approval and acceptance of me. Which, of course, had nothing to do with my son, and everything to do with how my subconscious was projecting onto this growing boy a shadow behavior that I have also pointed toward men in the past. (We can most often see the behavioral or energetic pattern when it is most ready to heal. And so in me becoming aware of it, it was also ready to heal overall, not just with my son.)

In other words, in putting a lot of effort out (as mothers and women do), I then wanted to be appreciated and recognized for that effort by this young masculine creature that is my son. Same thing I’ve done with men in the past, which is why I didn’t like the way I was feeling. As he was getting older, I was just subconsciously starting to behave in a shadow-pattern with him.

I wanted the assurance of the masculine, but that pattern wasn’t even who I am anymore. It was “coming up to heal” so that I could see it and stop it.

The truth is, my son does respect me. He does want to hang out with me, still, even though he’s now officially a teenager. He shares his authentic feelings with me. He loves his father and I equally. There’s actually not a problem with my son accepting me. I do NOT need to put that on him and make it his emotional responsibility to make me feel accepted.

This is now your opportunity to begin to self reflect on how you might do similar things. What do you want your son to prove to you that you’ve wanted men to prove to you?

When I get right with my internal relationship with the masculine, it improves my relationship with my son. I’m conscious AF and it still happens that I find myself projecting onto him sometimes – it’s tricky.

If we want a new generation of masculine men who honor women, then let’s do our part to mitigate the Mother Complex in them, okay moms? Heal your masculine wounding. Get clear on what you want from the masculine and do the work to heal and integrate this. The answer wasn’t ever in a man, and it’s certainly not in your son. The answer is actually in YOUR right relationship to the masculine beginning with you. And, in how healed your inner feminine is of its own wounding.

As I know the masculine energy in my life and as I heal the wounds of the past due to unconscious masculine and feminine interaction, I become more conscious, more whole, more solid. And as I do that, I actually give my son more space to be him, to grow into who he is becoming, with hopefully very little baggage from me. If I handle my own baggage, he has less to carry with him into adulthood.

Where are you asking your sons to carry what is not theirs? Where are you passing on a wounded inheritance to him of ideas like, “Mom is mad at men” or “I have to be super sensitive around mom because other men have disappointed her?”

They will be good men. They are more equipped to be so when we allow them to become, rather than expecting them to atone for the generations that came before them.

This is conscious feminine leadership in right motherhood, women, and it’s ours to do.

Schedule a consultation with me if I can be of support to you in your conscious feminine leadership / motherhood journey.

Recommended Reading: Mothers, Sons, & Lovers by Michael Gurian.

Caption: I am a mother first. My soul chose to raise this boy and I am so grateful that I get to travel this Earth with him. He is my greatest teacher and joy. I even enthusiastically wear Harry Potter t-shirts because it’s his jam. 😉

Devotion + CoCreation = Receptivity

Long ago, women learned to be productive. We learned to hustle. We learned that our perceived value was tied to how much we got done. And, we learned that we’d have to carry a really big load, and so it was just best to get used to it.

Women often have a difficult time taking time for themselves, or resting, or they end of feeling guilty about choosing to stop when there are still things on the to-do list. Every woman knows this feeling.

A few years ago, I started a “soul-aligned” business. Meaning it is a business of calling, of purpose. In such a business, there is a lot of emotional learning and learning about oneself. You can’t, of course, live your purpose and not have to stand in some fire in preparation for what you’re called to do.

I have spent a lot of time observing the energetics of healthy feminine flow and the masculine action in life and business. I have taught a lot of women about how to redefine and balance these archetypes in their lives. We need both – we can’t just sit around and flow all day, or we wouldn’t actually have a business at all. And, women I see in my practice want to lead their lives and businesses with a healthy masculine, replacing the old, outdated patriarchal hustle.

This is a great idea, but it is hard to do.

I’ve been hearing a lot of women, myself included, redefining “productivity” lately. I like this solution. There’s both healthy and unhealthy aspects to productivity.

I like feeling productive. I like crossing things off the to-do list. I know about my business that if I leave energetics messy – such as not sending invoices or typing clients notes, hence making myself overwhelmed – that the business doesn’t run and money doesn’t come in. So it’s not possible to abandon “doing” altogether, nor do I think any of us really want to. Even if we’re reclaiming the feminine archetype and the inherent right we have to slow down and rest when it’s called for, we don’t want to abandon action.

It’s the quality of the action, the “doing,” that I want to encourage us to look at. This is what I’ve been contemplating lately.

In 2022, a group of us started Structure & Flow, and this energy optimization system asks you to pick words that anchor you to your desire. These words symbolize what you’re focusing on and how you want to feel. These are the “why” for any action we take, so that we are taking aligned action.

My words are devotional, co-creative, receptive.

Essentially, what I want to do daily is to maintain a devotional practice. Inside of that devotional practice, I get insights, excitement, clarity, and motivation. (That’s the feminine, by the way – taking the time to pause and listen.) Devotion often also involves movement for me in an embodied feminine practice. Going to the yoga mat, improvisational dance, candles and sensuality, taking a hike, or being on my meditation cushion. I intend for devotion to be a feminine practice. This is where I am being the muse, opening to hearing the divine, the sacred, the intuition, the soul.

If I create that devotional space, the sacred will meet me there.

And then, from there, I will have insight.

And then I can “do” something with it, which is what I call “co-creation.” If I take action because I get an idea into my little head and then work to make it happen, I am in productivity for productivity’s sake. If I listen to the wisdom that comes from devotional practice, my action becomes co-creation, a much higher quality action.

As an entrepreneur, I have to take action. I actually love action and structure – both inherently masculine qualities. But through trial and error, I know that if I’m in the energy of productivity without devotion, I’m not actually making money. I’ll say that again. If I am in an energetic of “I just have to get this done” productivity, I don’t make money, no matter how much effort I put behind it.

And I know why that is. When the masculine takes action without consulting the feminine, as it did throughout patriarchy, the result is depletion – of the feminine, of resources, of options. Working without the feminine, or overriding the feminine, breeds more separation, and my business is just not allowed to generate income via productivity and hustle without the mutual energetics of healthy feminine/masculine integration. When the two are working in tandem, healthy energetics regenerate, including money.

If I co-create through devotional practices, I do receive flow in my business, such as new clients and money. Things happen. I don’t have to worry. For example, people book consults out of the blue just when I have space. If I listen to the divine guidance, my life is moving forward in regenerative energetics (something I talked a lot about in 2021 on the Sacred Remembering Podcast and will talk about more again as I teach about prosperity in the Heartland.)

So receptivity is the result of first devotion, then co-creation.

No more acquiring resources through hustle. No more producing just to get paid. No more exchanging energy for perceived value. No more working tirelessly (producing) in order to secure less than what brings me joy. No more “doing” without satisfaction.

The feminine is innately receptive. But “she” needs some sort of partnership with the masculine and this exchange needs to be healthy in order for her to begin to receive in new ways – i.e. without exhausting herself with productivity. We haven’t had healthy exchanges between feminine and masculine as our cultural norms, and so, we are establishing them now in our modern world.

Journal on it:

Where are you in the energetic of hustle or productivity without divine guidance?
What does feminine devotion look like to you?
How are you leading your life according to what you know is best for you instead of responding to what you have to do?
What is your relationship with your inner masculine? Does “he” push you to hustle, or does it respect your flow also? Is it strong and devoted also, or does it lie around lazily or struggle to set structure and follow through? How does your inner masculine support you?

Stop shaming “wounded feminine.”

What is the wounded feminine that we would shame? It is a depleted feminine, but one that is in active identification with that depletion.

I’ve been thinking lately about how we shame the “wounded feminine.” Collectively, I sense that we do this, after we realize what the “wounded feminine” is, we shame the feminine for being wounded.

What a patriarchal thing to do.

But these expectations of the feminine live in each of us – that it be altogether nourishing, open, motherly, sacred, divine. That it be forever giving, endlessly available. You can check in with yourself about what your expectations of the feminine are – in yourself and in others. Also, your expectations of the Earth, as feminine, in her great resources. Do you expect it to be ever-available to you?

Which brings me to my point – we have wounded the feminine. Yes, patriarchy as it consumed the feminine as the fuel for it’s machine, but also, every one of us has participated in this.

We’ve simultaneously expected the feminine to be all things (the Mother), to be ever-resourced, to be available at any moment (the Whore), and then shamed the feminine for it’s depletion.

What is the wounded feminine that we would shame? It is a depleted feminine, but one that is in active identification with that depletion. The wounded feminine has not yet realized how to become re-resourced. (Re-sourced.)

The wounded feminine is often in victim consciousness, struggles to have enough money and resources, wants a rescue, becomes emotionally manipulative to get it’s needs met, and doesn’t see any way out of its own struggle. It doesn’t know who it is or how powerful it actually is.

And instead of collectively saying, “Of course! Wounded feminine, I’m here for you! Let me help because I see that of course this would be the natural effect of thousands of years of raping and pillaging!” we instead shame it for ever being weak. For not being more “sacred.” For needing the masculine rescue, when we entrained it to need a masculine rescue.

What is the medicine for the wounded feminine? Not a big strong masculine for it to further submit to. No. The medicine is love. Remembering its innate creative power. Remembering the holy cosmic union between masculine and feminine that was free of distortion in originality, before thousands of years of skewed understandings of disempowerment and power-over.

Stop shaming the wounded feminine – in you, in everyone – which only serves to further deplete Her. Love Her up. Now more than ever. She’s on the rise and she needs your tender strength.

Private coaching with Sarah Poet available here: https://www.sarahpoet.com/privatementorships

Staying Home to Come Home: Women in the Pandemic

I heard that from many women during quarantine – the realization that what modern life expected of them no longer felt sustainable.

What happened when you stayed home during quarantine? I’ll hear whatever story of change you want to tell, but what I really want to know is what happened on the inside of you?

As I write this, we got the “stay home” order in North Carolina almost exactly three months ago. And, now, even though the cases of Coronavirus are greater than they were three months ago, the “stay home” orders are now increasingly lifted for economic reasons. There is a push for things to go back to normal, and yet, I hope we don’t miss the available lessons.

How did this quarantine and all that it exposed change you? And is it still?

For a little context, I’m the mother of an 11 year old son who lives between two houses, and I’ve worked from home via the internet as a life coach, distance healer, and women’s & relationship coach for over two years. So the format of my work was not affected when this hit, and actually, I was prepared for it because I’d already been through the highs and lows of such deep transition and could now assist others. And, I was able to actually spend more time with my child, which exposed quite a bit.

While I won’t bore you with the small accounts of what happened during quarantine, I will say that all of the things that were not working in our busy day to day life immediately became apparent when we stayed home. Discrepancies in parenting between households and the way our child had grown emotionally avoidant in fifth grade came to the surface to be revealed. We looked at it, and within two weeks, we had a new schedule and a new family therapist. I’m so grateful for that, because it’s made a huge positive impact on our child, and we otherwise would have missed it, had life just kept on.

Then, in April, a baby goat was born on the farm we lived on, and I thought, “Good grief I’m so glad he’s not in school right now.” Because when we heard the mama goat yell out in labor, he was able to run and get to the pen in enough time to watch the baby goat land in the hay. He got to help name it Pixie.

In case I need to spell it out, this was incredibly special. We’d moved out of the city a few months prior, and now, the choice to have done so grew even sweeter. My boy was watching the birth and early rearing of a mammal, learning about the placenta and birth, watching the milk come in and holding Pixie in his arms at 10pm in front of the mama goat’s nose while the farmer worked to prevent mastitis from setting in. My son had a place in things that was different as a result of staying home.

So I became “that mom” when I emailed the school – the school where I was formerly the middle grades principal – and I said, “Now that we know North Carolina isn’t counting grades this year, and my son is building forts while learning about measurement & cooperation, planting gardens, and is deeply engaged in the life of a new baby goat, I’m going to advocate that we all relax with the piles of computer work.” On Earth Day, when there was homework to research something online, I intervened and simply submitted a picture of him and Pixie the goat instead of evidence of a closer relationship with the Earth.

Real life again mattered more than assignments or schedules. And I was witnessing that my child was touching childhood in a way that he would not have if not for this pause. And as I looked around at the women’s groups that I was hosting, each woman was touching life in a new way as well.

We were touching life. Eventually. Because each life went through an adjustment period in quarantine, as you know. Uncomfortable at first, and then, there was more life.

I was facilitating two women’s groups online – one a six-month Mastermind that had begun mid January 2020, and another a group called Choosing Nourishment that came together right at the beginning of quarantine when I noticed that women, even though they were already tired and juggling quite a bit in their lives, jobs, and households, and you may have thought that quarantine would provide reprieve, were actually quite frazzled in their nervous systems as a result of the changes.

“You want me to stay home, work from my computer, and homeschool my kids?”

“You want me to stay in the house with this husband of mine that is unwilling to actively help us figure out our finances?”

“You want me to stay in the house with the man who doesn’t care at all what my opinion is and makes me feel invisible?”

The panic was up. The nervous systems alert. This did not feel like a good idea to stay home. In fact, to some, I noticed that it felt really scary. Like modern life had been some sort of very busy distraction, and even though it wasn’t necessarily working or feeling good, nor particularly fun, it was the norm, and they’d learned how to manage it. This was the same reason I’d left working in schools to start my own business two years ago – modern life just wasn’t sustainable any more.

I heard that from many women during quarantine – the realization that what modern life expected of them no longer felt sustainable.

As time passed, and as we held the space in confidence and safe space in these women’s groups to talk about how to choose the nourishment, how to be in communion with this opportunity to push pause, I noticed that all of the women began to care less about whether or not things like the homeschooling got done, and cared more about feeling good, re-connecting with their families, and listening to their authentic inner voices.

Feeling good matters. Knowing oneself matters. Being able to sit and breathe in a body with a settled nervous system matters. And modern life makes these things “self-care” periphery practices instead of, well, the norm. But in quarantine, more women began to prioritize a rebalancing that they’d previously only dreamed of.

Priorities shifted. Preferences stated more clearly. Boundaries realized.

And then, about six weeks into quarantine, in the Mastermind that is all about the quest for the Sacred Truth within each woman, after months of clearing old stories and identities, a “Coming Home” theme emerged.

And I chuckled as I said, “Hmm, staying home to come home.”

And everywhere I looked to see what women were doing, in these groups and in the collective of women, I kept hearing women say:

“Maybe it doesn’t have to go back to the way it was.”

“That was never sustainable and we knew it all along.”

“I don’t even want to go back to work. I never want to feel like that again.”

“Maybe I won’t send my child back to school next year.” “Maybe it’s time to finally own my skills as a healer.”

“Maybe it’s time to start the business I really want to start.”

It was mandated that we all stay home. Yet, it was rather unsuspected how we discovered that so many women, would, also, come home to themselves. And I love witnessing it. It feels like only a beginning to what has been such a long time coming.

Women remembering who they are.

Women coming home to the truth of who they are.

Women, refusing to live unsustainable lives.

Women, planting gardens and knowing rest for the first time in years.

Women, making plans for what they might create next.

I truly hope that we don’t go back to life as usual, that this actually changed us in the way it had the potential to change us. Because through a wider lens, this is how the feminine rebalances with the masculine, a story I told of my own life in my TEDx from last year. So much happens when women come home to themselves.

Worlds open.

The feminine principle, the archetype – which involves rest and bodies and satisfaction and families first – was touched through this quarantine experience. I’d say it was awakened, in many women.

How did this change you? What are you willing to go back to and unwilling to go back to? What will you do differently?

I chose to integrate family and home life with my partner, moving in together during quarantine. I chose to begin to walk in nature daily, even though I’d lived in nature before and yet failed to prioritize it. I chose to begin organizing a potential home-school cooperative for the fall with the same children that my child was able to play and bond with during the spring.

I’m beginning to dream of new systems of education and women’s entrepreneurial collaboration that before seemed so far off, and now, it feels like the time to choose based on deeper preference and intuitive knowing.

I found myself choosing to relax and read fiction, to sleep in, to start a new yoga practice.

I chose to come further home, and I choose it still.

And I’ll ask you, women, did you come home? And I’ll encourage you. Come home to the truth of who you are. Don’t go back to an unsustainable status quo. If you allowed yourself to dream, what would you create?

If this article speaks to you, let’s work together.

How Is Trauma-Informed Couples Coaching Different Than Couples Therapy?

Trauma blocks a relationship from true connection. Trauma-informed couples coaching gets below the story to heal the pattern and allow for true intimacy.

While I can’t answer this question broadly or speak for everyone, I can speak to some ways that my couples coaching, which is trauma-informed, is different than couples therapy that I’ve experienced and as I’ve researched. Of course, those who wish to will find exceptions to what I’m saying. Those who wish to look for solutions will read this information as innovation and ask questions.

It is important to understand that talking about problems, as in conventional therapy, doesn’t necessarily heal problems. People go to therapy to heal problems, but talk alone won’t do that.

With every relationship problem, there is an underlying trauma. This traumatic event could be conscious or unconscious, it could have to do with the previous partner or parent and therefore not get talked about in couples therapy between two partners. And what we know about trauma is that it is very frequently trapped in the body memory but not in the cognitive memory. Therefore, couples can have and express behaviors that are rooted in traumatic memory, but couples therapy that only involves mental processes might not ever reach the true issue and will certainly be less likely to heal the actual trauma.

Often in troubled relationships, couples wait until there is a serious problem before engaging with a therapist. By this time, the couple has often erected a wall between their connection, and while talking through a problem or developing communication skills might help to increase understanding, will not fix a true pattern of disruption, because you need to heal the disruption in the brain in order to connect.

Patterns in the relationship that are dysfunctional result in breaches in connection. What every individual wants, unless they are sociopathic, is connection. Even neurodiverse individuals want connection, despite common social myths.

Connection can not be healed unless we heal the trauma in the brain. As Dr. Stephen Porges, author of the Polyvagal Theory says, “Trauma compromises our ability to engage with others by replacing patterns of connection with patterns of protection.”

In trauma-informed couples coaching, I guide couples to involve aspects of trauma healing modalities in how I coach their connection. Rather than attempting to pick apart with conversation what happened in the past and who may be at fault, we look at the present moment, using mindful attunement and noticing, and I teach couples to develop practices that heal breeches in connection.

The walls naturally begin to crumble. The blame unnecessary. Couples orient toward solution-finding.

Did you ever hear couples say that one or the other of them “won” therapy? It is common, I found in my research, that couples often feel that there is more blame and sidedness after therapy sessions than there is connection.

Many couples who go to therapy looking for true healing do not understand the role of relational trauma, epigenetic trauma (trauma passed through the DNA), and how trauma is actually creating their disconnection. Many couples would also prefer to work in a present moment / forward facing modality rather than a conversational modality that focuses on the past.

Couples Coaching removes the sigma that “something is wrong” with the relationship by inviting both partners into a growth-focused program, where both partners are learning the same skills, both partners are evolving in compassion and understanding, and both are getting their needs met.

Statistically, about 40% of couples who go to traditional therapy end up divorcing within four years. The results of my coaching are most often greater connection, greater empathy and understanding (despite we talk less about understanding the past), greater intimacy and bonding, and a rekindled enthusiasm for the direction of their union. As one recent couple said, “Honestly, before this, we were going down the road of divorce. Our communication didn’t exist and we fought daily. Now, we are mindful of one another. We have a whole new way to communicate and connect with one another.” This couple is planning to spend the rest of their lives together.

I will not tell you that Couples Coaching is better for you than therapy – that is for you to decide. I am saying that there is a conscious, progressive, effective alternative out there that is growth-based and available to you. I am seeing this methodology heal relationships, and I want that for you if you are in a relationship that needs a serious boost. In twelve weeks, you can change the trajectory of your relationship.

Visit www.sarahpoet.com/consciousrelating for more information.