We are The Women of The Pivot
We are The Women of The Pivot
When it comes to equality, we have a difficult but incredibly rewarding challenge ahead of us.
Equality is one of these beautiful deep spiritual truths upon which so many of our traditions are built. And yet, like so many ideals, the question becomes: how do we put this truth into practice?
I am a woman of the pivot.
I am alive in a time when what it means to be a woman is changing.
And I just took another step.
I just took another step.
I just took another step.
Now, we can demand equality. Many of us are fighting that battle right now. But that's an outside job. There is also an inside job aspect of equality that's more difficult to talk about.
First, there are the countless hours of invisible labor the average woman performs daily on behalf of others, for which she is uncredited and unpaid.
Then, when it comes to asking for what she wants, that same woman will oftentimes minimize her ask before she even asks for it.
And finally, there’s the way almost all of us have experienced the Freeze when we wanted to speak up, and afterwards blamed ourselves for it.
So many examples in which we do not treat ourselves as equals. But this isn't a blame game. We tend to forget that for millennia, in order for a woman to even survive in society, an entire set of behaviors was necessary: accommodation, harmonization, pretending you don't need much so you can be a low-maintenance, "good" girl...
But above all, we cannot expect women to "stand in their power and use their voice", without calling attention to one critical behavior: self-attack.
This is a legacy that came from our ancestors and very much from our ancestresses. Yes – our own mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers taught us beautifully to police ourselves.
What happens when we live in a world where a woman who wears a too-short skirt suddenly experiences the horror of sexual assault and then is blamed for it? What happens in a world where a woman can be stoned to death for making eye contact with a man?
Her mother decides that the best way she can protect her daughter is to make sure her skirt is never too short, and to criticize her, to watch her, to police her, to make sure that she never does anything that could get her into a dangerous situation. That is an act of love. A desperate one, sure, and one with terrible consequences, but an act of love nonetheless.
Now, times may be changing, but the conditioning hasn't. So as we grow up, we internalize the policing until it becomes a vicious habit of shame and self-attack. Oh, I'm so stupid. I can't believe I just did that. I couldn’t possibly wear that dress. It’s my fault. Why didn't I say anything? Why didn't I say anything? Why didn't I say anything?
And as this shame and self-attack further compounds, the cycle of Freeze and speechlessness returns over and over and over again.
Self-attack is the one conditioned behavior that stops the transformation of all the other behaviors. The ‘good-girl’ combination of harmonization and knowing how to form a community? Those can be alchemized into superpowers. The only one that cannot is self-attack.
Now, if we can take a moment to appreciate that this self-policing, self-attack reflex that we were taught to do, that we internalized from millennia of conditioning, was actually embedded in us in the name of love and the name of protection, then it's so much easier not to hate it.
Because the only thing worse than self-attack is then attacking yourself for attacking yourself. So I'm saying – stop. The moment you next catch yourself freezing and then thinking: I can't believe didn’t…
Just stop.
Breathe.
And tell yourself:
I am a woman of the pivot. I am alive in the time when what it means to be a woman is changing. And I just took another step. I just took another step. I just took another step.
Our ancestors gave us a precious gift – the gift of self-policing, of self-attack.
But we can put this gift down now. We can stay: it stops with me.
If we can recognize ourselves as women of the pivot, we can turn this world around.
Over millennia, our ancestors and ancestresses passed down to us the gift of self-policing in the name of self-protection. But as women of the pivot, we can put this gift down now.
We can say: it stops with me.
Welcome to The Academy – The School of Power for Women. Since 2013, hundreds of women have retrained the ‘good girl’ conditioning that for millennia has kept women silent. Today, we’re told to “use our voice” and “stand in our power” if we want to make change in the world. We teach women how.
