Healing Our Masculine Selves

by Carolyn Baker, Ph.D.

On a chilly, foggy, typically summer morning in San Francisco, I entered one of Nob Hill's posh hotels and registered for a conference called "Tough Guys, Wounded Hearts". I was there because the conference was open to women and because I was curious. The event had been going on for two days prior, but I was only able to attend on this day.

The first workshop I signed up for, "Healing Our Masculine Selves", was for women only and focused on becoming conscious of one's internal masculine energy. The female facilitator led us in a visualization process which helped me connect with my feminine self, my inner male, and an image of the divine within me. About thirty women sat in a circle sharing intimately their reasons for attending the conference. 

My experience with personal development events is that they are usually under-attended by men. One woman remarked how delightful it was for her to attend this conference and be outnumbered by men. Many of us expressed profound joy and relief in finding each other -- discovering other women who were drawn to a men's mythopoetic event, not to "save" their husbands, boyfriends, sons, fathers, brothers, or male friends, but to feel and experience the healing of their own inner male.

A few months earlier I had been surfing through the channels on my TV remote control device. I happened to pause on a PBS channel where Bill Moyers was interviewing Robert Bly. I was mesmerized by the interview and by Bly's presence and words. By the end of the program I was in tears, and I didn't know why. I immediately bought Iron John and read it twice. 

Later I caught an interview with Sam Keen and read and re-read Fire in the Belly. Through all of this, I felt as if I were the only woman in the world who felt a kinship with the men's movement. Suddenly, here in this room with these women, a dry, parched, lonely, aching place inside me felt watered and nourished.

Throughout the day as I traveled the hallways, elevators, and stairwells of the conference hotel, as I sat with men in workshops or at lunch, there was a unique quality of intimacy in my interactions with them. Sometimes we hugged; sometimes we looked courageously into each other's eyes and shared very personal stories of healing; sometimes we just smiled at one another without words.

At two different times, men approached me and said, "You are a very beautiful woman, and I'm glad you're here." They weren't hitting on me or fulfilling a "workshop/therapy assignment". Their conveyances were genuine, sincere -- innocent yet incisive.

That morning I shed, but for the most part held back, a reservoir of tears. The part of me I had come to identify as my "inner male" was delighted that I had taken him here, but he was also needing to grieve all the inattention he had gotten throughout my life. Yes, I had been and continued to be a strong and powerful woman, but something had been missing. I hadn't come to know my masculine self. Small wonder.

My father loved me very much, but was nowhere present emotionally for himself or for me. As the conference took me deeper into this new territory of the soul, the little girl inside me wanted to scream to the top of her lungs: "Where the hell was my daddy?!" 

The grown woman was moved, softened, empowered, intrigued honored, validated, and very much in awe of the entire event. 

At lunch I sat with men and women who had been complete strangers, but after leaving the table, I felt a huge lump in my throat and remembered a familiar Twelve Step saying: "There aren't any strangers -- just friends you haven't met yet."

As I approached the huge ballroom where the afternoon's final closing exercises were to be held, I decided that things couldn't get any more intense than they already were. (Hadn't I learned by now in my healing journey that I never know what's going to happen next?)

Continued on next page

This article was excerpted from 

"Reclaiming the Dark Feminine"
by Carolyn Baker.
Info/Order this book

About The Author

CAROLYN BAKER, consultant, educator, and storyteller, lives in Northern California. She is an acclaimed workshop facilitator and has written and taught for many years from an archetypal, transpersonal perspective on the Dark Feminine. She holds a Ph.D. in Health and Human Services. This article is excerpted, with permission, from her book: Reclaiming the Dark Feminine -- The Price of Desire, published by New Falcon Publications, Tempe, AZ.

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