I now believe that it is these much engrained patriarchal systems that continue
to keep women as a whole down. This is a very hard thing to face. It is painful
to think that your own family was complicit in holding you back.
I thought I was ‘over’ my conditioning to be quiet, submissive and
subservient. Giving birth to my own daughter made me realise that was
not the case.
I have raised my daughter the opposite way of my patriarchal upbringing. It is
often she who reminds me of my true essence. In her, I get a glimpse of what
was squelched during my own childhood.
As I recognise the Goddess in both of us, it is at once heartbreaking,
healing and delightful.
I often mourn for the girl that I was; I wish I