A huge factor at play in our domestication is the good girl/good boy syndrome.
A good girl, so we are told, is pretty in pink, softly spoken and oozing sweetness. She cries easily and her tears are touching.
A good boy, so we are told, excels: he's a winner, a leader, a hero, a champ. He never cries: his invulnerability is admirable.
Of course, it's acceptable to be a tom-boy - to an extent - so long as we don't take it too far.
But the equivalent concept of a "jane-girl" doesn't even exist. Instead, a boy who's more attuned to his feelings, might be demeaned as a "pussy".
We learn about being a good girl or boy, both overtly and subtly:
- by the behaviours or accomplishments our parents praise or chastise us for, - by the role models we see being "successful" and - by the tribe/family/community acceptance of some and judgement or exclusion of others.
This becomes so internalised, that we don't even recognise it's a part of us. And we, too, collude in self-censorship and the policing of others.
We so badly want to be loved and accepted that we toe the line of the good girl/boy and grow up to become the good women or man.
Except, as we move through life, all those parts of our true self we learned to repress, keep on making themselves felt and causing trouble!
So that, suddenly, we're the bad boy or the evil woman.
And/or feeling distinctly unsettled, trapped, physically unwell or depressed.
We can respond either by attempting to shut down, numb out or spiritually by-pass our thoughts and feelings, or we can choose to get curious and turn towards the plaintive cries of our lost selves and our wild nature.
This is a process I support in my one-to-one coaching and Awakening Shakti group programme.
And it's also something I'll be addressing in the upcoming workshop: Re-wilding & Reconciliation I'm co-creating with masculinity expert, shaman and change-maker Nick Clements on June 12th, 2019 here in London.
This is for those brave men and women, who are sick of being the good boy or girl and living a life of disconnect and stultified mediocrity.
It's for those, who are ready to play, explore and dare to get it wrong, fuck up, not know, feel vulnerable, enraged, sexy and shatter the limitations of eons of constructs of how you ought to be.
And, in so doing, discover a community of others, who are ready to do the same, in the name of freedom and love.
We're not asking you to come along simply to act out all that's been labelled "bad" just for the sake of it, by the way, but to discover the vital aliveness, connection and inner authority that arises when you access an instinctive Self that is more than a binary label.
We'd love you to join us on June 9th, but if you can't, but are curious to explore your wild nature in some one-to-one mentoring, then please drop me a line.