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A group of women + men spreading sunshine together.
The greatest empowerment is self love that attracts love.
Robin, Raina Benjamin
What is empowerment?
It is using our time, energy, creativity, and devotion to stand up for what we believe and feel is just and right. It is energy in motion. It is walking the talk. And it is not afraid of obstacles.
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The ultimate empowerment is not female or male empowerment, it is human empowerment. It is drawing out, from our Best Self, from our Core Self, all the beautiful and brilliant qualities that exist there.
Female empowerment draws from our Best Self an inner knowing of what is right. It will not be dissuaded in its action by societal prejudice or ignorant beliefs.
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Why might we fear our empowerment?
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As woman we have lived in a world that was and is male dominated. We have lived in a world in which societal laws, customs and the majority of power rests with men. And, although there is a shifting toward balance, those women who have challenged male domination have very often paid a steep price.
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What gifts do empowered women experience?
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Many women feel that they are acting as channel for the Divine.
There comes into being a sisterhood of the committed and blossoming of deep friendships. And when the motivation for action is love, it is love that we come to know more deeply.
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By R. Moss PHD
Original Artwork by Amanda Fenker
We have found that small acts truly do make a BIG difference. Our team has been blown away by how seemingly tiny acts of kindness have had a tremendous ripple effect through a huge number of communities. When you are questioning your purpose, impact, or ability to inspire: Remember there is beauty in simplicity. A smile, kind gesture, or a helping hand will travel further than you ever expected.
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Self-Love + Empowerment
By: Rick Moss
At the heart of all successful relationships
Self-love may not sound like a good thing to a lot of people. It can sound like something self-indulgent, narcissistic. Let’s put selfishness, narcissism, and self-indulgence into a different word. Let’s call that self-interest.
Self-love is an experience of accepting the hurt, limited, judgmental, and seemingly unattractive parts of ourselves. And we accept these parts just as they are. And we give these parts attention, affection and we demand nothing of them. By caring for them with kindness and not trying to beat them up with judgment and shaming, they can actually begin to heal, mature and grow.
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For many people this might seem self-indulgent. But, is it self-indulgent to give a starving plant nutrition and water? I don’t think so. I think that’s how the plant begins its healing journey. And I think this is equally true with people.
Whatever we have experienced emotionally, physically, energetically and mentally as children, no matter how unkind or abusive, this our subconscious equates with love. And unless we make changes within ourselves, we will seek this out. That’s why it is said that we often marry aspects of our mothers or fathers.
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Healing these wounds from childhood are essential if we are going to truly love others and ourselves.
And here’s a big truth that may comes as a surprise: we can’t fully love anyone else until we have come to love ourselves.
If we think we are unworthy of love, how can we trust that when someone gets to know us they won’t be disappointed or even repulsed and leave? And so we try to please to get others to love us and this only leads to resentment and exhaustion. Or we hide ourselves and this makes emotional intimacy impossible.
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Even in parenthood, we may start out feeling love but if we don’t love and take care of ourselves we will feel drained, exhausted, and resentful and this will cloud our love for our child. Self-love includes appropriate self-care so that we don’t fall into unhealed issues of our ego and get stuck there.
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I believe that true, unconditional love is not created by our egos, our personal sense of ourselves. I think that true unconditional love or Love with a capital L comes from Spirit or Source or God.
This Love heals. This Love can heal the wounds of the past. This Love connects and makes One. One very powerful way to give ourselves this love is in doing what’s called inner child work.
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Because there is no time sense in the unconscious, the hurt moments of the past still live on in us and their feeling, fears and beliefs play a powerful part in how we feel and give or not give love. These inner children need Love in order to heal. And when they heal they stop running from Love and stop attracting toxic love experiences. When healed they contribute to the Love we can give and receive.