“To know yourself as the being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love, and joy underneath the pain is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.”
-Eckhart Tolle
~ Goddess Marina ~
It is 7 a.m., the alarm has gone off and I am out of sorts and in complete exasperation. I cling on to my yoga mat and dread the situation that I am faced with …. I am at the dance studio sleeping on the yoga mat as I cannot afford a real home and the only roof over my head is this studio whose owner graciously offered me as a shelter. I play my happy role well as I get up 30 min before the first class, hiding the evidence of my homeless life, cheering my students with a big smile and a hi-fi. No one has any idea… But today is different. My alarm betrayed me and the loud knock in the
window caught me completely in shock..
The students are coming in thick and fast and banging on the door - and I am so not ready to face them. I did not wash my face, my hair is a mess… “How will I get out of this one?” I am thinking while I rolling on my yoga mat (aka my bed). My mind is swirling all over and I cannot fathom how to deal with situations anymore.
I feel embarrassed considering how abject failure I am... I almost reached my midlife point and I still do not have anything substantial to show for my endeavors in life. I spent my adolescence in Russia and when my mom brought me to the US to live the American Dream, somehow my inner cruise control got set on a “survival mode” and got stuck on it ever since. I worked numerous odd jobs to cover the expenses of higher education which culminated in my Ph.D, building roads, cleaning washrooms, waiting and bartending at the restaurant and a few more, sleep deprived for decades…. After all the struggle, I finally thought that I had made it as I was able to complete my Ph.D. My business was thriving. I got married and moved into the home of my dreams – everything was just falling into place it seemed. But one moment took it all away: no more family, no more husband, no more home, no friends in the proximity (they moved away the same year all of this happened), and no job only a small position as a Zumba instructor at the above mentioned studio
I was not prepared, no warning shots were fired and suddenly I was back to zero and dare I say, in a worse state than I was in when I moved to the States. I did not have any safety net to fall back onto.
“Why did I come here? How could he do this to me? Why did I even get married? I hate this floor…” and suddenly, as I was rolling that mat I realized… that during all those times of anguish, and numerous pondering about my life, the problems were not outside of me but were innate and self-created.
It hit me: As I pushed, persevered, conquered and to an extent succeeded… in the midst of proving my aptitude to others, I never got the space for my own happiness and self-gratification. I was completely bereft of the elements that constituted my pleasure and self-esteem because I was stuck in the maelstrom of obligations and making others content.
As I moved across the world, I needed to settle in, get a degree, a well-paying job and in achieving that, I left out every trace of pleasure from my life. I had become a slave to the survival, to the “making it in the USA”. My playful and pleasure-seeking nature was forced to shrink inside and so did my self-worth.
I was suffocating as if I was put in a room which induced claustrophobia. Even though I had had several high paying professions that reflected what I truly loved and had the necessary degrees to back that up, I would assert that it still was not my soul’s purpose. I realized that something was missing from my life and hence the perpetual struggle to push and succeed. I would look at other people who easily could attract anything they wished into their lives, but nothing seemed to come my way. I had to struggle my way to topple the patriarchy and constantly persevere in all walks of life. It was truly agitating.
I began to realize that the problem lies with how society views the female gender, how we are all supposed to look according to a standard …one for all.. and many of us, women, spend plenty of time, money and effort to fit into that image that has been created for us by the outside world. In a bid to fulfill others’ expectations, our very own unique identity is concealed leaving most of us unhappy and empty and putting us into the struggle and survival mode.
Even so-called successful women seem to not have space for pleasure in their lives, as we forget that the real essence of femininity is the energy, the ingenuity, pleasure, play, sensuality and the sense of goddessness. They are all needed in a subtle mirage to find the life purpose.
See, most men can go to work for the sake of earning their sustenance and “doing deeds”, and will not have any problem doing so but for us women, it is an entirely different ball game. We need something else. We need our souls to be expressed and if that does not happen, no amount of money or incentive can make us content and full. For a woman to be disconnected from her core feminine principles is equivalent to a suicide. We need to be able to create that personal space among ourselves where we can foster growth and happiness.