The Feminine Effect

Many years ago, I was on a path to discover meaning and purpose in my life by sitting in various classes, whether they were educational or spiritual, with teachers that I felt knew more than me. On one of these occasions, I managed to enter a room and hear something that changed the trajectory of my life forever. The phrase went something like, “If the frequency of women changes, so will the entire human race because they are the ones who birth the children into this world.” I doubt that this sentence stuck with anyone else in that room the way it has with me. I have created a tremendous amount of meaning and purpose out of it both personally and professionally. 

The definition of frequency is energy or vibration, and I have spent the past two decades deepening my understanding of it, raising mine, and teaching others to do the same. Professionally, this is now the fifth book I have written where this sentence is in the forefront of my thoughts. I have always been looking for new and creative ways to teach women how to become high vibrational, whole, loving, and dynamic individuals. And most importantly better mothers. 

Women are the ones who create and birth: we are the drivers, leaders, and pilots of humanity. My beliefs around how to become this type of woman have shifted from those of a dyed-in-the-wool feminist to those of a feminist in recovery. I have had to undo, unlearn, and let go of all the male characteristics and identities that I took so much pride in accumulating, to develop into the woman I always longed to be—enthusiastic about life, secure in myself, and authentic to my true nature. 

The nature of the female, in its primal or original way of being, is to create a family unit. And when women are not in their nature, the family system is broken. Humanity is about family, and when you have a problem in a family that you created, the next generation will have that problem too. You may be thinking of your parents and the problems that they created, or perhaps you are thinking of yourself right now. Because problems are generational and come from both sexes, you do not have to be a woman to read this book (though women will benefit the most), and you do not have to be a mother to find knowledge here. We all come from a mother and a father. We all, male and female, have some sense of family. Each family unit is unique, and no one knows what a truly traditional or healthy family looks like because of that. 

What is a healthy family, and what is the difference between a family that is healthy and a family that is not? Most importantly: how does a family become dysfunctional? To understand these important questions, we need to broaden our perspective. We can do that by exploring what family means for various cultures and ethnicities around the world. This is one of the journeys I propose to you in this book. Without perspective, you would believe that there is only one way of doing things and that is never the truth. What is of value to a family in North America according to their structure, teamwork, or respect for one another, may be drastically different in other cultures. 

Most of us in North America have learned that dysfunction in the family caused by specific individuals is normal and we go along with the group to keep the “peace” status quo. Most individuals are not even aware that their family is dysfunctional until they are shown that there are other ways of behaving and interacting. This is because each family is an island—a concept I will discuss in more detail as we move along—and until you leave your island you will not know that you live on one. Each of our small families holds as much dysfunction as our large global family. If the problem is this enormous, who is going to be able to fix it, since the government and society at large have not been able to do so? Let me break it down for you. 

Who births the children to create the family unit? Women. Who can fix this dysfunction? Women. I know: I just put a lot on your shoulders, but this has been the case for a very long time through the feminist movement. Women fought to put more on their shoulders, and they did it for the sake of “equality.” Traditionally, the Western woman has been excited to take on more and more and more. The act of doing more for the purpose of equality is part of the movement of feminism and we all wanted these rights! The problem is that the act of “doing more” is essentially a male quality and it is making a lot of women sick and mentally unstable. Nothing seems to be equal in most of our households and women have distanced themselves so far from their nature that they do not know what a real woman is anymore.

Women are getting tired of doing more: they are getting tired of doing everything. This fight for equality is making women sick. I have worked in women’s health or integrative medicine for over a decade. I am not just seeing this in the clinic through infertility, chronic fatigue, addiction, and autoimmune diseases—I am also seeing it through mental illness. Not just mental illnesses in the form of anxiety and depression. I am seeing sickness and dysfunction in women arising through personality characteristics such as selfishness, extreme manipulation, entitlement, and competition. These are also forms of mental illness and I would argue as negative as lying, adultery, or stealing. These are just a few of what I will call “contaminations” that have affected females like a virus and taken them out of their feminine nature. 

Other people may group these traits under the umbrella of narcissism or obsessive focus on one’s personal needs at the expense of those around them. They declare that a narcissist is an adult that has not been loved as a child, that narcissism is a product of survival, and that narcissists do not work as a team and they are not open to anything or anyone that does not serve their personal needs. There is a current trend of speaking about this mental disorder as if everyone has it, both male and female, and I would agree that there are a lot of self-centered humans. But all this leads me to ask more questions: Were these personality traits always so prevalent? Has the Internet spread this information, making knowledge about it more widely available? Or, most importantly, was there a moment in time within society where the family systems changed so significantly that it resulted in creating offspring with these contaminations? 

I am proposing a new thought-provoking theory: these dysfunctional characteristics are a direct result of the feminist movement and the breakup of the family system that was caused by it. Women have not only taken on the careers of men, but they have also taken on previously predominantly male personality traits and those traits have developed into a dangerous culture where being self-centered is the norm. The “working woman” is not the problem, it is the feeling of being in survival that created the imbalance. The issues discussed above clearly affect both sexes, but both sexes are birthed from women. I believe that these personality characteristics are a product of the competition and drive created by the feminist movement. Women have produced and raised a dysfunctional society.