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During the month when everyone was celebrating Women's Day and Women's History month, in my home, it's become a month we remember the dad's in our lives.

Both my father and my husband's passed away in March. As a result, the past 30 days have been filled with love and appreciation for the men in my life, and for my own inner masculine.

Everyone carries masculine and feminine energy within them, and for the past several years, I've been very intentionally working on mine. Learning more from male teachers, authors, and podcast hosts; recalibrating the masculine qualities in myself; and having more compassion for men overall.

My algorithm bubble is filled with messages about toxic masculinity and how terrible the patriarchy is, but once I began listening to interviews with men talking to each other, I learned about the very real crisis young men are facing here in the US, and maybe the rest of the world.

Of course, celebrating women is important, and I'm well aware of the negative effects of machismo culture. Toxic behavior of any kind is a problem, and there's no denting the patriarchy has to be dismantled. But "women ruling the world" is not the answer either.

That kind of binary thinking is same problem in a different outfit. A woman walking around with toxic masculine energy can be just as (possibly more) destructive than an unhealed man.

Men have also been hurt by the patriarchy, growing up in a world where they see dad having to be separated from the family to support the family, forced to join armies in many countries, literally taught that their lives are disposable. An entire generation of men have grown up without fathers, no healthy male role models, and completely emasculated. Is it any wonder young men are now 3x more likely to struggle with addiction, 4x more likely to commit suicide, and 14x more likely to get incarcerated?

As the mom of a son, I see first hand how much little boys need a daddy to let them fully develop their masculine nature. Mommy has no desire to wrestle, daddy loves it! Daddy also loves to go fishing, shows my son how to build and fix things around the house, and sincerely enjoys playing with hot wheels when mommy has no patience for them (or legos) anymore. And I am soooooooo grateful I get to set boundaries like that.

Women being forced into these roles when we don't want to be, leads to us feeling extra exhausted, or worse, emasculating our boys because it's out of alignment with our feminine needs. Even little girls need healthy male role models in their lives, showing them how to be assertive, structured, and competitive in ways that are inherently more masculine.

When we think of holistic healing, respecting the masculine and feminine energies is a vital piece. It's an easy entry point into accepting that men and women are designed differently, for a reason. And not in the toxic religious dogma "women should know their place" kind of way.

More like the way every sweet treat is better with a dash of salt in it, or as I learned in Thai cuisine, every dish aims for a harmonious balance of sweet, salty, spicy, sour, and bitter. And who doesn't love Thai food?!

Masculine energy is all about action, and the feminine's role is to give that action direction - the way the sperm searches for the egg to create life. So here, my masculine energy is taking action in writing this email and the feminine is you dear reader, receiving this transmission and creating your own interpretation of what to do with these words.

The energies are always flowing and interchanging, and the binary only exists to bring us back to wholeness. Masculine and feminine, male and female, are two sides of the same coin, wholeness.

It's said that God (Universe, Creator, the Divine) created separation to experience itself more fully, and to enjoy the process of coming back to wholeness. This is what it means to "enjoy the ride."

We don't find happiness, fulfillment, or purpose when we reach a destination, and then that's it. All of those feelings come and go, and the point of this great life is to embrace the masculine, feminine, good, bad, beautiful, and ugly and integrate all of it into our being.

In nature, nothing is wasted. Everything that was once living can be tossed into the compost pile, and transformed into rich fertile soil for your future.

So too in your life, no bad experience needs to be demonized in a category of "my life would totally be better if [insert trauma here] never happened to me."

How different would your life be if you let those shitty moments integrate with all your life's experiences, and lovingly accepted them as the sweet, salty, spicy, sour, and bitter ingredients that have made you the harmonious person you are now?

That's what healing really is: integration and acceptance. Not constantly trying to change the worst parts of you or your past. It's looking at the darkest corners of your psyche, the parts of yourself you're least proud of (even the toxic masculinity or toxic femininity), and loving those parts unconditionally.

Only when we accept our reality, do we have any hope of changing it. Only when we embrace our duality, can we experience our wholeness. Only when we learn from all the times we fucked up and did not trust our gut, can we remember how to listen to and courageously act on our intuition.

My intuition has coincidentally been pulling me in alignment with monthly themes. For April, it's a collaboration with my dear friends at Fertile Earth Worm Farm for earth month, before launching round 2 of the Inner Wisdom Way in May - mental health awareness month. Fun fact: June apparently covers Pride, Men's Health, and a few other themes, so I guess that one's a little backwards, hehe...

If you're interested in learning more about composting in real life, not just metaphorically, we're now selling my favorite composter, the Earth Machine.

If you live in the Miami area, we're offering 20% off in April, and you can pick it up in Homestead, Pinecrest, or North Miami.

This one simple act of deciding where your waste ends up has so many positive side effects, and you'll be hearing me speak about that a lot on social media this month.

Happy Earth month, while also honoring Father Sky.

Love & Light,

Pri

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This 600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2246

If you're curious, the above address is just an automated anti-spam feature. I'm still in Miami, but this newsletter software says using a real address here is best, and I didn't want to use my home address.

Feeling like this doesn't resonate at all, no worries. You do you boo, and we'll cross paths again when the time is right :-)
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