On Femininity, Masculinity & Labels
Honouring our nuanced energetic nature & offering the world a service that supports human life starts with releasing the hyper-vigilant adherence to labels.
When I was a kid, my mom dressed me in my brother’s hand me downs a lot, on account of our poorness.
When I got a little older and more portable, the dresses started. I was all, “Mother! Make me a custom ensemble — one of a kind!” And she’d whip it up.
Just kidding. I was 4 and we were low on funds. She made what she wanted. But they happened to be very cute.
I went through a phase where I always wore dresses. At least that’s what my mom tells me. I don’t remember much of my childhood, save for snapshots of the past in family photo albums. But apparently I chose the dresses myself. I do recall that they felt good to me in my grade school years. They still do.
When I entered my early teens, I started dressing like a hobo. This did not please my parents, who, after many years of pay check to pay check, were starting to make some cash. And their daughter was purposely embracing a look that screamed “Just robbed a thrift store.” I mean, it wasn’t a great look. But I’m sure I made some pretty funky fashion choices — brazen ones. Cuz that’s one part of who I am.
Something called me towards dressing more androgynous at that time. Old man poverty pants was my go to, but I’d often add a super tight crop top to the mix (showing off your body can be one of the ways we play with power dynamics in our youth, and later years, too). Generally speaking, that phase was all about embracing and becoming comfortable in my signature look, of androgynous femininity.
Until I moved to the city, and went full female glam mode. My friend Graeme nicknamed me posh spice. We’d make plans to go to the club and I’d lacquer my body in a corset and faux leather pants. It was on. I was ready to embrace some adult level femininity. At least, in the evening.
During the day I wore skateboarding shoes and danced the same dance from my teens, of masculine lower half, tight shirt top half. I remember a boyfriend’s friend saying to him, “She’s kind of androgynous looking, no?” He laughed because he knew night time Andrea very well — he knew I could be BOTH.
I’ve evolved over the years. Go figure, I’m human. But I’ve made peace with something the medical system would likely pathologize and try to medicate me for:
On the inside, I feel like two different people. And that manifests on the outside.
I feel very old fashioned, and masculine. A 60 year old Scottish land owner, who lives a solitary life. He’s wealthy yet frugal, with strong views about what it means to be practical and proper. Shoes must be comfortable, as does clothing. Quality over quantity. He tends to his fields — what he is creating & growing — until someone walks down his driveway, in need of help. He’s like a car mechanic for the soul — “Here’s the issue you couldn’t diagnose. Now it’s your job to work towards healing it. But you can always come back if you need support.” This is the life of a seer. And it can be lonely.
When I embody this energy, I feel like covering up my skin. It doesn’t seem practical to show it off. I want to keep a low profile. My psychic abilities are strong, and when someone walks by, thinking sexual thoughts about my body, it feels like a violation. I want to punch them.
On the other end of the spectrum, I feel a very feminine, youthful energy within. Nurturing and loving. Bliss orientated. She is prone to dismissing the practicalities of life, believing play to be more practical than schedules. She believes everything will work out and that dressing feminine supports her vitality. This energy is ungrounded and ethereal. And it can manifest like a mother fucker. She is an alchemist. She wants to wear dresses with nothing underneath and sun tan naked every day. She knows she needs the sun to heal, and that the sun needs her. This is the energy that dreams of a property by the ocean, which will likely come to fruition — that’s how powerful it is — much to the chagrin of the elderly Scottish guy who would shame her for walking the grounds nude when there are fields to tend to and sow.
There are days when I more readily embody one or the other — when the scale is leaning more heavily to one side. But my healing journey has helped me get clear — plain and simple — about the fact that within myself, I am both. And I don’t need anyone outside of me to understand that. A system convinced me for a while that I needed outer understanding and acceptance.
I’m weird. I’m quirky. I’ve been called bipolar. Sometimes people don’t know how to deal with me — they can’t get a gauge on me. Because I move between two different archetypes. I am playful and fun, serious and stoic. Masculine and Feminine.
This my journey. I am having a human experience.
There are never moments when I feel the need to lay claim to one element as being all that I am, or all that I’ll ever be. Because I have my history — my journey from childhood to now, dancing between these energies, witnessing how that manifests within the context of appearance — which proves I will change as the years go by.
I don’t need to limit myself by applying a public facing label, and demanding that others see me and label me that way. I just need to be who I am.
That is enough.
Lately, my femininity is amped up. This inner call to boost and honor my feminine nature is a healing impulse, to infuse the world with more nurturance and love, and belief in the impractical possibilities of life. Of wealth and abundance — the power of manifestation — within a sea of headlines screaming of lack and death.
I am inherently, through a spiritual-based impulse, trying to bring some semblance of balance to the collective energies.
There has been a distortion and denial of the feminine — the place where we all come from — in favor of an inflationary obsession with demanding that people must be seen and viewed and labeled a certain way. Superficiality dominates, while practical truths, about what we need to do in order to live and how that must be informed by love, are spit on.
I don’t care how you want to be seen or labeled by the world. I care about what you’re willing to offer the world — how you’re willing to support human life.
Movements build upon rage are not supporting humanity. They do not create, they only destroy.
Creationary energy is love energy. The energy of love builds things. It shifts narratives. It’s grows things.
Love is the most powerful fertilizer you can get.
When people say, “I’m not creative,” it’s proof they have been conditioned to believe an untruth. And they need to do the work, of learning how to stop allowing their conditioning to restrict their potential.
Creativity is about create-ing something. It isn’t a word solely allocated to the creative arts.
We create through the way we view the world, the thoughts we think, and the things we do with our energy, every day.
What we give our attention to, we feed, and therefore support the life span of. So every day, our focus is create-ing & growing some-thing.
The depths of me, in all their nuanced form, understands the need to honor all that lives within us.
That labels do not matter. They are a distraction.
What matters most is what you do with what lives within you — how you use who you are to offer something of service to humanity.
This is not about sacrifice — it’s about using your energetic imprint to provide some sort of service that supports human life.
And it’s gotta be practical.
There are elements within us that we are uncomfortable with. Perhaps an early life experience — or past life events — influenced our capacity to accept an aspect of ourselves.
Maybe out of survival, we had to deny an element of who we are.
I felt I had to limit my femininity, based upon the reactions I received when I expressed that element of myself. If it wasn’t honoured, I tended to not want to share it with the world.
Those days are over.
I must share what I have to offer with the world — my ideas, my voice, what I’ve learned about healing. And my insights and ideas on how to support the creation of a world and human experience that is based upon love, not fanatical adherence to superficialities driven by rage & resentment.
I realize now, that no matter what we do, we cannot limit ourselves. We can no longer accept limiting beliefs about our potential as humans.
Our focus needs to be on honouring our nuanced, energetic nature, and offering some sort of service to humanity that supports life. That starts with releasing the hyper-vigilant adherence to labels.
It’s the most simple yet complex thing to figure out. And it’s what we’re here to do.
