My Life As A Man

I am a child of the 50’s. So, like a lot of girls of that era, I grew up to be a man.

Back then, genders were defined by the roles they were allowed to have. It was all so clear. Boys and men did or didn’t do certain things, and girls and women did or didn’t do others.

I grew up in a family full of boys. I was the only girl, so naturally I wanted to do what they were doing otherwise I was left out and alone. However, I also consciously remember rejecting what it meant to be a girl. One time when I was about 15, I was playing football with the boys. One of the older boys (maybe he was all of 17 ½) said to me, “You have penis envy!” To which I responded, “Yes, I have always had the desire to be red, wrinkled, and four inches tall.” Now mind you, I said this having not yet had the pleasure of meeting a penis [in the flesh so to speak]. Everyone hooted and howled, and I thought I was quite clever, but I knew in my heart his observation about me was pretty darn close.

Truth was that I didn’t want a penis. I wanted what the penis gave me in life: power, control, access to earning lots of my own money, an open door to any kind of education and career that I wanted… a real and self-navigated life. I started to study men.

I did not know how to be a woman and still be powerful and self-determining. The female models in my youth were submissive, manipulative, unfulfilled, second class citizens, arm candy; their worth determined by the status of the man who claimed her as his own. I knew that would make me miserable, so I watched very carefully, and I started to act like a man.

I got quite good at it. I entered college when the only majors open to women were teaching and nursing (and being a nun…that one was never on my plate). I have 4 Master’s degrees and have created and held well-paid positions full of creativity and power. I have been married (ok…twice) and I have a son that I adore.

But I have also been miserable being so ingrained in the intellect, the ways of men, and so disconnected from my feminine power: the power of my intuition, my emotional guidance system, the access I have to wisdom within myself.

It’s not that the masculine is bad, it is just that now that is not enough either. For me, I have realized this issue of balancing my masculine and feminine powers is at the heart of my intention to reconcile the irreconcilable separateness within.

So now what?