The Conversation Nobody Wants to Have (About the Feminine)

The search for the divine feminine keeps hitting a wall that nobody wants to name

Reading time: 10 minutes

There's a conversation women are trying to have right now. You can see it in the explosion of content about the "divine feminine." In women's circles and moon rituals and Instagram posts about softness and receiving. In the quiet admission, whispered in therapy sessions or late-night texts to trusted friends: I don't know how to be soft anymore. I've forgotten how to just BE.

The exhausted boss babe from my last piece? She's part of this search. She built the life, climbed the ladder, proved she could do everything a man could do. And now she's searching for something she lost along the way. Something about her own femininity that got buried under decades of armor.

She knows she needs this conversation. She just can't figure out how to have it.

Every time she tries, she hits a wall. Not an external wall. An internal one. A fear of saying the wrong thing, of being misunderstood, of accidentally aligning herself with people whose politics make her skin crawl. So she ends up in the shallow end of the pool—candles and crystals and vague language about "receiving" and "flow"—when what she's actually craving is depth. Framework. Understanding.

She can feel that there's wisdom here. Ancient wisdom. Wisdom that women before the current political moment had access to. But she can't reach it because the conversation itself has become impossible to navigate.

So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to name exactly why this conversation became impossible. I'm going to lay out the logical contradiction at the heart of our current approach. I'm going to tell you my positioning so you know where I'm coming from. And then I'm going to offer you a framework—one that's survived for thousands of years—for talking about the feminine in a way that's specific, grounded, and useful.

If you're still here after that, we'll begin.

Why This Conversation Became a Minefield

Gender has become one of the most charged topics of our era. The word "binary" is often deployed as an accusation. Any attempt to describe characteristics of masculine or feminine energy gets met with suspicion: Are you reinforcing stereotypes? Are you being exclusionary? Are you a secret tradwife masquerading as a spiritual teacher?

The result is that we've become so afraid of saying the wrong thing that we've stopped saying anything meaningful at all.

But here's the thing nobody wants to acknowledge: There's a fundamental logic problem at the heart of how we're trying to talk about the feminine right now. And it's not political. It's philosophical.

The contradiction is this:

Many women are actively searching for "divine feminine" wisdom. They want practices, frameworks, reconnection. They sense they've lost touch with something essential and they're hungry to find their way back.

But they're trying to do this within a cultural framework that insists gender characteristics cannot and should not be defined. That any attempt at definition is either stereotyping or exclusionary. That the only acceptable position is that gender is completely fluid, constructed, and without stable characteristics.

Here's the logic problem: You cannot define something while simultaneously insisting it's undefinable.

These are incompatible positions. You have to pick one.

If gender is entirely fluid and constructed, if it has no stable characteristics that can be articulated, then "divine feminine" is a meaningless phrase. What are you reconnecting WITH? What are you trying to embody? If there's nothing there to name, there's nothing there to work with. You're doing spiritual LARP with props but no substance.

If, on the other hand, the feminine has qualities, patterns, characteristics—even archetypal or energetic ones—then it CAN be described. It has contours. It can be recognized. It can be contrasted with something else (namely, the masculine). This doesn't make it a cage or a stereotype. It makes it a coherent concept you can actually engage with.

This isn't a political position. This is basic logic.

I'm not telling you which position to take. I'm telling you that you can't have it both ways. And if you want to do meaningful work with feminine energy—if you want more than aesthetics and candles and the word "goddess" slapped on everything—you have to be willing to engage with the possibility that the feminine can be named.

The Cost of Entry

This is where I need to be direct with you.

If you fundamentally believe that nothing about gender or feminine/masculine energy can be defined without committing violence, this series won't work for you. I'm not here to argue you out of that position. You're entitled to your beliefs.

But if you're willing to hold the possibility that the feminine has characteristics—that it operates in certain ways, that it can be recognized, that it can be contrasted with the masculine without that contrast being oppressive—then we can have this conversation.

This is the cost of entry: Being willing to engage with the idea that some things can be named without the naming being a crime. That wisdom traditions spanning thousands of years and multiple cultures might have noticed real patterns. That your direct experience of energy—when you feel soft versus when you feel assertive—corresponds to something that can be articulated.

You don't have to agree with everything I say. But you do have to be willing to stay in the inquiry long enough to see if there's something useful here.

What We've Lost in the Silence

The cost of this impossible conversation is real. Women who are searching for reconnection with their femininity are finding one of three things:

Sanitized content that says nothing. Vague language about "receiving" and "softness" that never defines what those words actually mean or why they matter. Content that's so terrified of offense that it ends up being meaningless.

Reactionary content that swings too far. Women who've rejected modern feminism entirely and are advocating for a return to traditional gender roles that most of us don't actually want. This is the only place you can find people willing to say feminine energy has specific qualities, but the price is swallowing a politics that feels wrong.

Woo-woo content that's all vibes, no framework. Moon rituals and goddess circles and beautiful aesthetics without any grounding in what the feminine actually IS or how it operates. Instagram spirituality that looks pretty but doesn't change anything.

Meanwhile, the actual wisdom traditions—including astrology—have things to say about masculine and feminine energy that predate our current culture wars by millennia. Real frameworks. Nuanced understanding. Practical application.

But we can't access that wisdom because we're too busy trying not to offend anyone.

The women I work with are starving for this conversation. They want to understand why they're exhausted from decades of performing masculine energy. Why softness feels dangerous. Why they've lost touch with something they can sense but can't name. And they can't find their way because the map has been declared politically incorrect.

Where I'm Coming From

Before we go further, you should know who's talking to you.

I have a sociology and anthropology degree. I've studied gender as a social construct academically. I understand the arguments about gender being performed, about how expectations shape identity, about the violence of rigid categorization. I'm not naive to these positions.

I've been a lifelong feminist. Not the kind who thinks feminism means becoming more like men, but the kind who believes women deserve full humanity—which includes the right to define themselves in whatever way feels true. This isn't coming from a reactionary place or a desire to put women back in boxes.

I'm a Tibetan Buddhist. My training has taught me to hold paradox, to see beyond binary thinking, to recognize that truth often lives in the tension between apparent opposites. Buddhism doesn't ask me to choose between naming things and recognizing their ultimate emptiness. It asks me to hold both.

My astrological chart is dominated by fire and air—masculine energy. I've never questioned my gender identity. I love men. And I channel my masculine energy into creation and business. I own two companies. I've self-published books. I understand what it's like to work with assertive, outward-moving energy and to do it as a woman without that making me want to BE a man.

Here's what I'm not doing: I'm not telling you what to believe. I'm not forcing a worldview on you. I'm not trying to convince you that my way is the only way.

Here's what I am doing: I'm offering a framework that's helped me and my clients understand why we're exhausted, disconnected, and searching. A framework that comes from wisdom traditions older than any of us. A framework that treats the feminine and masculine as real energies with recognizable patterns.

Take what resonates. Leave what doesn't. And if you find yourself getting defensive, get curious about why.

The Framework: Why Astrology Is the Container

Here's what I'm NOT saying: "This topic is too charged, so let's hide behind planetary metaphors and pretend we're not really talking about masculine and feminine."

That would be cowardice. And it would defeat the purpose.

Here's what I AM saying: Astrology gives us a framework for discussing masculine and feminine energy that predates our current political moment by thousands of years. It's not invested in our culture wars. It doesn't care about your voting record. It just describes how energy moves.

When I say "Venus," I mean the feminine. When I say "Mars," I mean the masculine. I'm not using code. I'm using the language that astrologers have used for millennia to describe these forces.

The advantage isn't that we get to avoid the conversation. The advantage is that we inherit a fully developed cosmology that our ancestors already worked out. They watched these patterns. They named them. They noticed what happens when Venus energy is strong versus when Mars energy is strong. They tracked these observations across generations.

We don't have to reinvent the wheel. The wisdom is already there.

What Astrology Actually Offers

When we use astrological language, we get precision without politics.

Fire and air signs operate differently than earth and water signs. That's not a value judgment. It's a description of how energy moves. Assertive versus receptive. Expanding versus containing. Outward versus inward.

We get a both/and framework. Every chart has both masculine and feminine energy. Every person works with both. This isn't about which one you ARE. It's about recognizing which energies are dominant in your design and which ones you might have been suppressing.

We get permission to be specific. We can actually describe what feminine energy DOES: it receives, it magnetizes, it creates beauty, it nurtures, it harmonizes. We can describe what masculine energy DOES: it asserts, it protects, it builds structure, it defends boundaries.

These aren't stereotypes. These are functional descriptions of how energy operates. And we need them if we're going to have any meaningful conversation about why you're exhausted or disconnected or searching for something you can't name.

This Framework Has Survived Because It's True

The ancient wisdom traditions weren't guessing.

Chinese medicine noticed it. Yin and yang. Receiving and asserting. Cooling and heating.

Ayurveda noticed it. Lunar and solar. Feminine and masculine principles in balance.

Western astrology noticed it. Venus and Mars. The goddess of love and the god of war. Two different forces with two different functions.

Indigenous cosmologies across the world noticed it. Different names, same patterns. Feminine force and masculine force. Neither superior. Both necessary. Each with its own domain.

These systems survived for thousands of years because they worked. They described something real about how humans experience energy, consciousness, and embodiment.

When astrology says Venus represents the feminine principle, it's not making a political statement about women. It's pointing to a recognizable pattern: the force that creates beauty, harmony, connection. The force that magnetizes rather than pursues. The force that receives rather than asserts.

You know this force. You've felt it. You know the difference between when you're operating from Venus energy versus when you're operating from Mars energy. That felt experience is real, and it deserves language to describe it.

The Doorway, Not the Dodge

Astrology isn't a way to avoid talking about the feminine. It's a way INTO talking about the feminine that doesn't require you to navigate the minefield of modern gender politics first.

Once you understand Venus—what she wants, how she operates, what happens when she's starved—you're having the real conversation. You're just using inherited wisdom instead of starting from scratch in a politically hostile environment.

This is still the conversation we said we need to have in the previous section. We're still defining feminine energy. We're still contrasting it with masculine energy. We're still saying these forces have characteristics that can be named.

We're just doing it with a framework that's been field-tested for thousands of years.

The Invitation: Choose How You Want to Engage

If you've read this far, you've already made a choice. You could have closed the tab. You didn't.

So here's what I'm asking: Bring curiosity instead of defensiveness. When something I say triggers you, notice it. Get interested in why. Ask yourself if the trigger is pointing to something that needs your attention.

I'm not asking you to agree with everything I write. I'm asking you to stay in the conversation long enough to see if something here is useful.

If you fundamentally can't engage with the premise that feminine and masculine energy have describable characteristics, that's okay. This series isn't for you. No judgment. We can still be friends. You can still read my other work.

But if you're willing to hold this inquiry—if you're willing to consider that ancient wisdom traditions might have been onto something—then stay.

I trust that you can hold complexity. That you can disagree with parts of what I say and still find value in others. That you're sophisticated enough to know the difference between describing energy patterns and enforcing rigid gender roles.

The women who are searching for reconnection with the feminine deserve more than candles and vibes. They deserve actual wisdom. Frameworks that explain not just WHAT to do but WHY. Understanding that goes deeper than aesthetics.

That's what I'm trying to offer.

What's Coming: The Road Ahead

This is the first piece in a series about reclaiming the feminine. Here's where we're going:

Venus Unveiled: What the feminine actually is, according to ancient wisdom. Not the sanitized version. Not the Instagram version. The real thing. What she wants. How she operates. What happens when we try to starve her or force her into armor. Why "divine feminine" without substance is just spiritual bypassing.

Mars Honored: Why we can't heal the feminine by demonizing the masculine. The relationship between container and contained. What healthy masculine energy actually looks like and why we need it. How armoring ourselves against men has wounded us more than we realize.

The Reunion: How to come home to your Venus after years of exile. The grief that has to be honored before the homecoming can happen. What it actually takes to soften without feeling like you're giving up everything you fought for.

Both/And: What it looks like to live with both energies in conscious partnership. Not suppressing one for the other. Not choosing sides. Integration. Balance. The kind that actually works in real life, not just in theory.

This conversation is overdue. The exhausted boss babe deserves to understand why she's tired. The woman searching for the divine feminine deserves a framework that goes deeper than moon water. The seeker who senses there's ancient wisdom here deserves access to it without having to apologize for looking.

That's what we're doing here.

If you're still with me, let's begin.

What does this bring up for you? Email me. I read every response.