The Wise Woman Ways Loves Rough

"Sanctuary"
© New Moon Visions & Mara Berendt Friedman
This image graces the northeast corner of my workroom.

 

An excerpt from Susan S. Weed's Healing Wise:

Just as receptive power seems a contradiction in terms to some, so too does rough love.  Compassion, forgiveness, and unconditional love evoke a sense of squishy soft acceptance to many.  In the Wise Woman tradition, love is rough, real, truthful, and unattached to outcome.  In the Wise Woman tradition, love says "no" as often as it says "yes."


The Wise Woman tradition sees compassion as passionate.  Passion shared is compassion.  Passion is rough; passion is wild.  Screams and shouts and tears and touches are part of living with passion, being com/passionate in the Wise Woman way.


Forgiveness is focused on self, in the Wise Woman way, and believe me, that can rough.  Forgive yourself for being hurt, for suffering, and love yourself enough to tell yourself the truth about it.  Is it time to say "no"?

In the Wise Woman tradition, forgiving ourselves opens our vision to our limits, to our cramped spaces, to our self-inflicted prisons.  Keen-sighted from the truth, we see how to free ourselves by setting boundaries that truly protect our fragile aspects yet are moveable, permeable to nourishment, so we receive the intimacy we desire.  Saying "no" leads to unconditional love.

Unconditional love that nourishes the inner being does not tolerate abuse, ugliness, lies.  Unconditional self-love brings self-respect and demands it of others.  Unconditional self-love knows that it is unloving of anyone, self or other, to allow abuse to continue, no matter their age or circumstances.  Loving ourselves unconditionally strengthens our power to say "no" when our heart knows that beauty and the truth are not present.


The wise woman understands that, for most of us, saying "no" is hard to do.  We're afraid that if we say "no," we won't get enough love.  Or worse yet, we won't be allowed to give our love away, and we need to give our love away so we can expect to get love from others.  The wise woman understands that we expect love to come from outside, not inside.  She knows that this expectation, this assumption, this hope--that love comes from outside--prevents us from speaking our truth when our heart demands that we say "no."


Loving ourselves, generating love from inside, not trying to get it from outside, that is the Wise Woman way, a way that allows "no" to reveal its loving nature.


Become aware of how often you do the expected thing, the good thing, the right thing, says the Wise Woman helper, and acknowledge the part of yourself that is a liar, that is afraid to say "no."


Truth and unconditional love support each other.  To love yourself unconditionally, you must tell yourself the truth.  You cannot hear your own truth if you are lying to others.  Begin to tell the truth in the smallest thing.  This brings you wholeness.  Tell the truth often and you will be filled with beauty.  You will have health.  You with walk the beauty way of health/wholeness/holiness.  Your truth will bless all you encounter.  You will be blessed.  Do not be afraid to reveal your own uniqueness, for that is part of your blessing.

I realize this seems to be a bit of a non-sequiter coming out of left field, and in its way, it is and does.  I've been reading Healing Wise for a couple weeks now, picking it up hear and there, now and then and reading a few pages.  This is not how I usually read a book, but I find Healing Wise dense and in need of pondering, much like scripture.  In a way, it is scripture for a new(-ish, to me, in a formal sense) outlook on health and healing.  I find I agree with a lot of it, some of it I don't quite understand, and some of what I do understand, I am not sure if I agree.  Such is the nature of being introduced to new ideas, however, and I am very much enjoying the journey.

Anyway, I found the section quoted above especially powerful and pertinent to my life.  I would have quoted from the section preceding it about unconditional love, but that is thick stuff to get through, and not exactly short.  Maybe I'll type it up later, but right now, no.