i stopped rejecting my femininity

As a kid I grew up seeing two types of girls in movies, the girly girls and the tomboys. I was maybe 5 or 6 when I saw a movie where the “tom boy” got all the attention. She was tough, fast, liked by all the boys and she wasn’t a drama queen. Oftentimes the girly girls in the movies were the pretty, stylish and mean girls. Since I was bullied over my looks, I never identified as a girly girl in the movies. I had made up my mind that I was a Tom-boy. 

Proving Something 
My only favorite part of school was P.E. (Physical Education). I loved sports and this is also a quality that was associated with Tomboys. I was extremely competitive and as I played sports I could tell there was this part of me that wanted to beat the boys. I wanted to prove to them I could be just as fast, just as strong and just as good. I had this narrative in my head given by society: “Girls can do anything boys can do!” so I felt like I had to prove myself. During our weekly mile runs, I never beat the boys. I was always the fastest girl but never the fastest person compared to boys. Looking back I can’t believe I was comparing myself. 

Business 
I entered sales in the financial Industry at a very young age, I was 18. The more successful I got in the company, the more I was asked to be less like me. I was always very friendly, laughed a lot, wore bright colors and encouraged everyone. Well, this was a problem. I was told many times by different mentors to start wearing pants over business skirts and dresses. I was told to stop being too friendly, nurturing and bubbly. I was told to be more serious and more distant towards my team because this caused men to be distracted by me. Don’t get me wrong, I understood their concerns but now looking back I saw how this bit of my femininity was the reason why I was unique in my style. Why I could see things that a lot of men in this industry weren’t seeing. My mentors couldn’t see that at the time they were protecting what they had always seen and known as normal to them. They wanted me to blend in and achieve success the way masculines have. I don’t think that’s how they saw it at the time but I could feel that they were asking me to be more masculine. 

Family 
My culture is Mexican-American, I was first born here in the U.S. and mostly in Mexican culture, men lead everything and to be quite honest it’s done in what we call a Machismo-way. The Machismo way is what we describe as a dynamic where the man decides and runs the household because they don’t value the opinion of their wife. They think it’s irrelevant. Now, my family has changed a lot since my childhood years but this was something that I dealt with for at least the first 15 years of my life. On my dad’s side of the family, my grandparents had 9 chilen, 7 of which were men. As a little girl, I witnessed these uncles portray a lot of these machismo qualities. The women weren’t respected much and there was a lot of infidelity. As I got older I talked to my girl cousins and we found something in common, we all had adopted machismo traits in our dating life because we didn’t want to be at the opposite end of the stick. A lot of us subconsciously thought, if I am the “tough” one, I won’t be disrespected like the women in our family. A lot of us thankfully have healed from this but it was a fear we allowed to that made us think being feminine was weak. 

Embracing my feminine grace
I think I was about 23 when I realized that I wasn’t my true-self. That I wasn’t this soft nurturing girl I once was as a child. I knew it at the core of my being. I sat down one day like a detective for 5 hours writing down where the shift happened. As you may guess, it was a sequence of so many events. I bawled my eyes out, I cried and I was ashamed to learn that I had done this in a very settle way. I had rejected my femininity a little due to one event, then a little more, then a little more until I buried this gift that God had given me, my femininity. I can’t explain how it clicked but simply that it was by asking God to show me what true femininity was. What it’s true purpose was in the world. How it looked like in marriage, raising children, in society and what it would look like for me to embrace it. Then, little by little I began to honor my feminine energy and it’s purpose for it. I had to learn to forgive others for their opinions that dealt with my embracing this energy. Many women thought I was wrong, many men took it for granted but those that heard my story were able to relate in some way . Both men and women were able to see themselves in my story because this also happens to masculinity. 

Message from Victoria 
I hope that you can walk forward with an open heart to both challenge your God given energy to truly embrace it. Please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask for an ear to listen. If you wonder about price, don’t worry, the first session is free and I never talk about prices over a session. I am there to just listen and if you are then curious, you can email me to ask about any interests regarding rates. 

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