Meeting Fée, again

Fée has long hair, frolics about, is a little sassy, and harbors strong opinions. Her nails are always painted in either hues of red, or hues of beige, comfort in clothing is mandatory, but never without a hint of the subtle provocateur. Her humor is witty, she sticks her tongue out when she’s being cheeky, and is mesmerized by daylight sun, food, and social activities before 8 pm. She’s playful, curious, and deeply intuitive. Perhaps even with a healthy dose of naïveté. 

You know when you meet people you feel you’ve known for a long time, meeting Fée feels like that. A homecoming. Our relationship required some mindful tending to. Almost like Fée needed to trust me first before she came into her full expression. A relationship we continue to deepen. Much still yet to be discovered. It’s not that we haven’t met before, we definitely have some etched memories. They were however fleeting, and with no way of meeting more often even if I wanted to. Someone I simply couldn’t access.  

That is Fée, the once fleeting youthful feminine part of me. The inner maiden that evokes lightness and a sense of adventure. Reifying her has been a path of youthful reclamation. It wasn’t a process of learning something new, as much as it was a remembrance of a deeply embodied essence within me. Within all of us. 

Liberating my inner maiden 

What I find deeply profound about the journey of meeting oneself is how much of a perfectly orchestrated dance our life is. The rippling of one thing, incident, decision into the other. It’s always a humbling reminder of trusting the process (another spiritual trope for you) even if you can’t see the full picture yet. 

I entered the process of rekindling with Fée, my inner maiden, through the gateway of my health journey. The one that had me reframe my relationship to my body and symptoms. From being careful to keep the vulnerable body from getting sick, to one where the body is never sick but always adapting. A reframe that has me see symptoms as interesting information back to alignment. That reframe alone was the initiation to more than I can reflect on in one paragraph. A story I will get to very soon. 

But one of  many things that came out of this reframe is reshaping my relationship to nutrition, movement, mind, body, and all the good physiological aspects we typically start with.  In the context of my feminine essence, this meant a complete overhaul regarding my relationship to my cycle, hormones, and all the ways we hand over agency of our natural rhythms to people, things, and substances outside of us. I traded that for the commitment to know myself better. Reestablishing the felt sensation in my womanhood, literally.

The depth of that health journey had me first nurture the inner mother. Another archetype that sits within us, and one I got to rekindle before I got to Fée (more on the importance of that order later on). The inner mother that knows everything about nature, nurture, creativity, resilience, and sensuality. From there and feeling capable enough with my own internal compass today, I started to gently make space for Fée to come out and play. Literally. 

You see the maiden, which is also a time we enter into a few years after our first bleed, is one that starts their journey with a lot of shame. A double-whammy if you grew up in the Middle East. Coerced into the good girl, while internally suppressing the so-called bad girl. Robbed of the chance to integrate the innocent heart with her wild instincts. Enter her 20’s and she’s then molded into the feminist understanding of feminism that is paradoxically highly masculine. One that matches her wide-eyed grandiose sense of exploration with an externalized idea of success, acceptable demeanor, pace of life, and ways of social engagement. 

That maiden remains unattended to, locked in a box somewhere, and not really given full fruition. Or in the opposite reaction, a wounded maiden that refuses to shift. Stuck in daydreaming and sourcing value externally. Never truly shifting. Or truly enjoying the dance of all archetypes in one cycle, one day, one life. 

Up, Down, Push

Once I reestablished enough connection (a process  on-going) to my wombspace from a health perspective, learning the infinite power that resides in an intuitive and body literate approach to it (her), I started to make contact with the variety of ways my feminine essence presents itself. It’s wide, vast, comes in so many flavors and is a universe of possibilities. Today my writing pertains to the exploration of my inner maiden, who is named, Fée, a name that calls to mind her fleeting encounters and one that resonates as deeply playful and magical. An archetype, part, youthful Zeena, whatever you want to call it, that has been the theme of my unraveling in recent times.

There’s a strategic framework by Fred Pelard, who I'm sure wouldn’t be too stoked that I'm using this in the context of female embodiment, but hey that’s range thinking for you. Anyway, his framework of Up, Down, Push is essentially a process of getting to strategic solutions by going wide, exploring all options, Up. Down, a narrowing down, and push a cementing and make happen. This a very convoluted way of saying that  looking back, I somehow followed that sequence. Going up and wide in exploring what Fée liked to do. I owed her that and held her hand as she vulnerably tried many firsts.  Dance, singing circles, dating apps (lasted for two days because I’m not a robot and I’d rather die alone than give up on my old school ways of meeting someone at the beach), wearing skirts, pulling out the colorful wardrobe, dreaming, trying new things, starting new projects, dancing for hours to her favorite music under the beaming sun, flirting albeit not always successful, and laughing with little to no inhibition on the way she does so. Oh how could I forget food. Lots of sensual food experiences where I hum at each bite in pure delight. Fair to say and according to Fred, we went Up significantly. 

It goes without saying, but I should clarify that by no means did I approach my reconnection to my feminine like a strategy consultant. It’s just how my brain made sense of it reflecting back. Old habits die hard. Anyway, back to the analogy because I’m now stuck with it. 

Today I’m in the Down phase, honing in on some of my favorites. Wearing color, dancing, and centering joy & pleasure. It’s also a process where I learn the hidden medicine in the feminine power of surrender. To life, to myself and intuition, and eventually to another human of shared values. 

It’s a cycle not a line. 

There’s a lot of disembodiment that often happens in the name of embodiment, where we force ourselves to do the thing despite our complete dissociation with it. Befriending that threshold of presence I had to learn to meet that part of me again, taking my time to lean into this process was the most important lesson. I like a slow and steady learning curve. I know this about myself now, the needing of space to make the pieces come together. And so in taking my time to attune to all parts of that which have been vying for my embrace, I got to also learn how deeply cyclical the feminine process is. What catapults our evolution is the adaptability to know how to sync with our own rhythm. When leaning into my maiden serves me to fill my cup, and when it feels more potent to step into the inner mother that births, creates, and holds space. 

This brings me back to the order of things, learning to be my own mother before I had the capacity and spine to relate to Fée consciously. I don’t think that is the order for everyone, it sure isn’t the way if we look at it from the timeline of our lives and life stages. That said, once we see the larger cycle as representing the smaller cycles of our lives and vice versa, there is something to say about cultivating your inner capacity to mother yourself, to shed, and to be the wise woman for your maiden first. 

Last but not least.

At the heart of this work sits the arduous process of unlearning all the ways we put the feminine essence in the binary of good and bad. Acceptable and not acceptable. Unshackling the wildness of the bad girl so that she comes to union with her innocent heart. It makes me want to tear up writing this because like many of you, you know the process is actually driven by a deep yearning to something we have yet to put our finger on. To start to awaken to all the ways we can come into our full expression is one of coming home. Bittersweet in nature as it is filled with the joy of reunion to something we deeply know as our nature, but subdued by the time away from it.