Healing the Female Apology

Have you noticed it - the steady stream of apologies that flow from the mouths of women & girls? If it hasn’t yet caught your attention, stop and listen, for a day, an hour, a few moments and it will. These apologies may appear to flow with ease, but I assure you that is not the case. It took generations and generations of painful conditioning to install this pattern of internalized self-deprecation and self-erasure into the bodies and psyches of our sisters, mothers and daughters.

My 99 year old grandmother (photo above) apologized when I arrived at her house because she was not dressed, tidy and chipper. Ouch.

A woman in the grocery store apologized when I bumped into her. A woman working in another store apologized for carrying a stack of heavy boxes in the aisle I was in. Ouch.

A friend doing the tremendous (unpaid!) labor of caring for her three-week old daughter apologized for not reading an email I sent her. Ouch.

A deeply skilled, generous, hard working healing practitioner apologized for not giving me a same day response to a text message. In our last appointment, she spent an additional hour with me. Ouch.

Feel that in your body.

How many times have you apologized today?
For not “accomplishing” an impossible task
For not being an oppressive notion of “perfect”
For speaking honestly
For having a need
For existing

Ouch.

This reflexive apology installed in us females has become so ingrained into our collective that we don’t even notice it. More often than not, when I point one out to a woman, she was unaware she had even uttered the words. Yet regardless of our conscious awareness, this pattern is harming every female and harming us as a whole, deeply infringing upon the wellbeing of women and upon the full expression of the abundance of gifts ready and waiting to bring much needed repair to the world to flow out.

So let’s end it.

Vision each of those women speaking, moving, standing, breathing from the knowing of the gift that she is. Imagine her noticing and honoring all that she does and gives. Feel her knowing that she is enough. Right now. As is.

Feel that in your body.
Breathe deeply into that possibility.