Increasingly, I find I am writing this blog with a specific audience in mind: those women (mostly, plus some others) who are undertaking a serious spiritual journey outside the context of one of our major religions. Even though my own journey has brought me under the umbrella of "Goddess/women's spirituality", I don't necessarily assume that all unconventional seekers end up in the same place. But for many of us, there certainly hasn't been a guidebook. And while I can hardly serve as a "guide", I do feel an obligation to share about the experiences that have been a struggle, in case it helps others who might be living a similar reality.
So...closed doors. Believe it or not, I have become more and more grateful for the experience of growing up in such a narcissistic environment, because I became used to invisibility and rejection. If that sounds cutting, it's not meant to be. I mean, seriously. I would go on to live outside so many norms and institutions, that closed doors became almost a way of life. I think I occasionally became so convinced that my life would be about rejection, that at times I prepared in advance for it. I became inured to rejection, and could survive it. Maybe I even drew it to myself.
If you had asked me ten years ago how my life would change as I came to know myself, I probably would have said, "Great! Once I know myself, I'll easily connect with those who are like me! I'll find a family, a tribe!" And yet, over this last year, as I have become aware of a few such "people like me" (people with some intersection of England and the divine feminine), my efforts to reach out and introduce myself to them have hit surprising brick walls. At the very least, I have not immediately been met with open arms into predominantly female/unconventional constructs, any more than I was half a century ago into male/conventional ones.
If everything that happens is either about love or fear, I guess this phenomenon is about fear. Women who have "made it" (even to a small degree) may simply not wish to rock their own boat. This odd, intense woman in the American midwest, with her University of London master's degree and her invisibility, may just be too much of an unknown element to embrace with open arms. When I put myself in their shoes, I get it.
When doors seem to close in my face, I vacillate between sort of an angry/ironic "of course!" and a shrinking childish feeling of being sick to my stomach and unloved. Increasingly, though, there's a third way emerging. I take a deep breath, align with Goddess love energy as I understand it, and try to assume that energetically, even these folks are just not quite my tribe. If and when the energetic overlap is just right, I'll be warmly embraced. These closed doors may be pushing me to the one, right, open one. At least the hope of that keeps me going.
