Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (178 page)

MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR WOMEN:
START WITH YOURSELF

The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist team of Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas D. Kristof, authors of
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity
for Women Worldwide
(Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), point out that focusing on the needs of women and girls is
the
issue of this century. Discussing why educating and empowering women is a good idea for society as a whole in a 2009 article for the
New York Times,
Kristof and WuDunn share what they call “the dirty little secret of global poverty”: “Some of the most wretched suffering is caused not just by low incomes but also by unwise spending by the poor—especially by men. Surprisingly frequently, we’ve come across a mother mourning a child who has just died of malaria for want of a $5 mosquito bed net; the mother says that the family couldn’t afford a bed net and she means it, but then we find the father at a nearby bar. He goes three evenings a week to the bar, spending $5 each week.”
⁸
Their research has found that wherever girls and women are educated, terrorism lessens, and economic development increases in ways that benefit men, women, and children alike. This is reminiscent of an old African proverb I once read: To educate a boy is to educate an individual, but to educate a girl is to educate a whole nation. Kristof and WuDunn’s research takes this sentiment out of the realm of the proverbial and proves it.

On their website (
www.halftheskymovement.org
), WuDunn and Kristof write, “We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women’s power as economic catalysts. It is a process that transforms bubbly teenage girls from brothel slaves into successful businesswomen. You can help accelerate change if you’ll just open your heart and join in.”

The entire planet is finally waking up to this truth: Self-development for women is the answer to many, if not most, of the world’s problems. But you needn’t go to Africa or Afghanistan to support the development of women. The emancipation and education of all women starts with your own emancipation and education. As astrologer and writer Rob Brezsny puts it so eloquently, “The quality of your consciousness is crucial in determining whether you’ll be able to attract the resources that are essential to your dreams coming true. In order to get what you want, you have to work on yourself at least as hard as you work on the world around you.” I couldn’t agree more.

If we are ever to create safety in the outside world for ourselves, we must first create safety for ourselves
right in our own bodies
. If, as we undress for bed, we look in the mirror and beat ourselves up for our breast sizes or our cellulite, we are not walking our walk.
We are not safe with ourselves.
If we can’t create a safe space
within ourselves
for our own bodies—their shapes, their sizes, their natural functions, and their weights—if we are forever putting down our own flesh and blood, starving our bodies, and giving them adverse messages, how can we ever expect to flourish? You can’t flourish when you are carting around your own internal terrorist!

The truth is that we can change only ourselves, not anyone or any thing else. This is such good news and such a relief! After centuries of being told that someone else could, should, and would take care of us, we now know that we can take care of ourselves—together. We can create fulfilling lives on our own terms. A past Boston Women’s Fund brochure said it best: “The people we’ve been waiting for are us.” Aren’t you energized just reading that? We can start saving ourselves now. We can start living our own lives now. This is the starting point for true partnership and communion with others—including men.

Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D., founder of the Center for Nonviolent Communication, has identified three stages in the way we relate to others that most of us work through as we progress in our personal developments. The first is emotional slavery, seeing ourselves as responsible for what other people feel. For example, we put others’ needs before our own because we don’t want to disappoint or hurt anyone. The next stage, he says, is being obnoxious. In this stage, we allow ourselves to feel and express the anger we experience because we no longer want to be saddled with the weight of the enormous responsibility we were previously so eager to accept. In this stage, we’re likely to think (and often say) that if others don’t like our actions or our ideas, tough luck! We’re putting our own needs ahead of the needs of others so we won’t be held down or hurt anymore. The final stage, Dr. Rosenberg notes, is emotional liberation, where we take responsibility for our intentions and actions and for meeting our own needs. Finally, in this stage, we feel free to be gracious and compassionate toward others without compromising our own integrity and well-being. At this final stage of evolution, we move together in a cooperative effort to share responsibility in a true partnership. And this partnership, I might add, resembles a grand dance, filled with beautiful, passionate, and joyful rhythmic movement that ultimately moves the world forward.

When we change ourselves
inside
by allowing ourselves to experi ence and own our long-suppressed emotions and woundings as well as our hopes and dreams for ourselves, our families, and our planet, the conditions of our lives change on the
outside
. Working for social changes must go hand in hand with the willingness to heal within ourselves all the internalized messages of blame, self-doubt, and self-hatred that are encoded in our very cells. Otherwise, our actions originate out of unhealthy places within us and simply re-create polarization and pain. Being led by the Spirit means living in tune with our inner guidance. Listen quietly. What do you need to do next? Perhaps just being still for a moment is the best way to heal or to serve. Perhaps there’s nothing you need to do right now. There is no one “right way” to heal your body. The same goes for any area of life. You must find the way yourself. Emerson once wrote, “The essence of heroism is self-trust.” Self-trust is more than the essence of heroism. It is also the basis for trusting our intuition and the healing voice of our cells. Sorting out the genuine messages from our innermost selves (and cells) is no small task. It is indeed the work of heroes.

It takes courage to learn to respect yourself and your body, regard less of how wounded you’ve been, regardless of your current weight, regardless of whom you married or what your sexual preference is. Several years ago, I met a true hero who is the very embodiment of my message: When you change conditions inside yourself, the conditions outside yourself change in response. This hero is named Immaculée Ilibagiza, author of
Left to Tell
(Hay House, 2006), about the Rwandan holo caust. A beautiful woman with peace and divinity shining out of every pore, Immaculée, along with seven other women, was forced to hide in a small bathroom for three months during the Rwandan genocide. Her entire family was murdered. Her weight dropped to sixty-five pounds, she was covered with lice, and she couldn’t move or talk for fear of being discovered and killed by her former friends and neighbors, who repeatedly came to the door, demanding her death. Amidst conditions of unimaginable suffering, she reached deep into herself with faith and conviction and found the living presence of God in her heart. By tapping into this Source, she manifested miraculous events that saved her life and allowed her to eventually create a joyous life in the United States despite the loss of her family and country. Meeting this woman and reading her story has taken my faith to a new level. If she was able to face what she faced and not only survive but thrive, the rest of us can do the same.

I was nearing the completion of the new edition of this book during my second Saturn return around the time of my birthday. The second Saturn return signals the time in life when one moves from merely surviving to truly thriving and living life from one’s soul. As I was planning my birthday celebration, a good friend asked me if I wanted to join her in going to a lecture by a famous monk. I simply didn’t want to go! I didn’t care how holy and inspiring he was. What I really wanted to do was have a private tango lesson and get my first pair of tango shoes. (I got them. They are black with very sexy three-inch-tall red lacquered heels. And I did not go to see the monk.)

I have already mastered the joy of selfless service. Continuing to do it in the same old way would be like getting four Ph.D.’s in the same field. I will continue to enjoy the intoxicating joys of serving others. But I also know that my ability to experience pleasure is just as healing for me and for others as is direct service. In fact, at the level at which all humans are one, the happier and more joyful I become, the easier it will be for the next woman to find that place within herself, too.

Several days before my birthday weekend, I wrote an e-mail about the monk decision to my colleague Sandra Chiu, a New York City Chinese medicine physician and licensed acupuncturist (who also dances tango). She summarized my feelings precisely when she wrote:

I could not agree with you more about going to see monks. I used to do that and it was good heart energy, but I’m over that—it doesn’t turn me on a lick. And you’re right—like we as women need a lesson in how to be selfless. Those things sometimes end up making a woman even more pathologically selfless. But if it were a Vietnamese nun stripping out of her robes to do a pole dance in a corset—
that
kinda monk/nun I’d see!

We’ve got to go out there and cultivate life force. I’m over world peace and Zen compassion. Let’s go gyrate, lady! This is exactly what you’re about—spreading the word about how life force and health are enhanced by fun and pleasure. We need a respected woman and M.D. like you to say, “Hey, it’s not only okay to make sure you get hits of fun and pleasure in your life—it’s crucial.” I’m your accomplice one hundred percent in this mission.

Sandra’s response reminded me of the truth embodied in the famous quote from civil rights leader and writer Howard Thurman that I shared earlier: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Women are the source of life force. Of Shakti. And when we’ve tapped into our pleasure, we turn on the world. We are the force for good that the world has been waiting for. Whatever you call the inner power that Immac-ulée tapped into—God, Goddess, Source, the Universe, or your Higher Power—know that it lives in each and every cell in your body. I believe it’s the force that American writer Frederick Buechner was talking about when he wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” This power is the one thing that we can count on always. I call it God. The women whose stories I’ve shared with you are ordinary women; they are healing women. They have all tapped into this source of goodness and miracles. Their stories are the stories of transforming pain into joy. These women are my heroes.

Self-healing is a highly personal and individual process. Self-healing requires personal disarmament, refusing to be at war any longer with a part of your body or your life that’s trying to tell you something. Let war end with you. One of my former patients, a fifteen-year member of Alcoholics Anonymous, summed this up beautifully: “Each morning I pray for willingness to do whatever it is I must do.
And I also pray to remain teachable.
There have been times in my life when no one could teach me anything. I thought I knew it all. I never want to be there again.” Commit to creating heaven on earth for yourself. Know that it takes great courage to be as happy and fulfilled as you can be. It takes great courage to resist the voices of doubt and fear that inevitably crop up in our minds and hearts when we decide to become as magnificent as we really are. Be courageous anyway.

Commit to living your dreams—one day at a time. This is the process that is required to create vibrant health in our families, our communities, and our planet. May you go forth now, to take a nap, to embrace a child, to feel the sun on your face, or to eat a good meal slowly, knowing deep within you that the next step for healing and living joyfully is already there, waiting for you to listen to it, waiting to be born into the world—through you, dear woman.

Resources

This resources section is updated with subsequent printings of this book. For the most up-to-date information, visit Dr. Northrup’s website at
www.drnorthrup.com
.

Christiane Northrup, M.D., F.A.C.O.G.
P.O. Box 1999
Yarmouth, ME 04096
www.drnorthrup.com

Dr. Northrup welcomes your letters, although she is unable to answer your questions personally. She addresses many of her readers’ questions online.

BOOKS
The Secret Pleasures of Menopause
(Hay House, 2008).