For many years (actually most of my life) I was lost to myself, trying very hard to live up to a picture (actually a variety of pictures) of what defines a true woman and how it ‘should’ be, without connecting back deep inside me, and listening with care to my body, but instead from a variety of ‘external’ pictures or fixed ways to be defined as a ‘true’ woman.
There was then a time in my life that I got caught up in a way of being as woman that I thought (with the ‘help’ of my head) was ‘natural’.
As a young child I watched my mum who was always crazily busy on this committee and that charity – doing ‘noble deeds’ but running herself so ragged, utterly unable to sit still and intensely self critical in this seeking of perfection. There was a drive and a very fixed idea of what it was to be ‘good’ and ‘nice’ and ‘proper’ – and so, sadly an absence of any tenderness to self and so for others. I actively rejected (and reacted) to this way, as definitely not being ‘it’.
No role model in sight in Church, Boarding school or the ‘Cream of Society’
I went to Sunday school at the local Anglican Church for a few years when very young, where I was told that women were sinners, dirty temptresses, and that being a ‘good girl’ meant self sacrifice and putting everyone else first. This I scanned and also added to the reject pile – it felt untrue that women were less than men and much much less than God – something I couldn’t make fit with how I felt inside, which was as heavenly as the flowers that swayed in the breeze outside church – an idea once shared with the Sunday School Leader that resulted in my sitting in the ‘naughty chair’ for many weeks on end! I stopped attending Sunday school.
Later I went to boarding school and was exposed to lots of images of women in videos and glamour magazines, which told me that being a woman was to be flawless, underweight and tantalising for men. Makeup seemed only to be worn as a mask – to portray self as desirable and to measure one’s worth based on feedback from men, or in comparison to other women, to see self as ‘better’. It all felt pretty shallow and yucky to me. All the messages were that beauty was measurable and at its best, only skin deep. This contributed to me turning my back on make up, nail polish and other potentially ‘supportive of natural beauty’ items.
In my late teens I stayed with my wealthy grandparents at their country estate in England and had a taste of the life of the ‘privileged few’ – attending balls and being ‘introduced to society’. I met women who ‘had it all’, in that they were wealthy, stereotypically very ‘beautiful’, had very ‘successful’ careers and even made ‘independent names for themselves’. Not one woman in this set, this elite privileged few, at the pinnacle of all that life tells us to aspire to successfully attain happiness as a woman, not one seemed any more content than any other woman I had ever met or observed.
So you probably get the picture… I was looking outwardly and with no small dose of desperation for an example of something to aspire to, something that reflected some real value of what a true woman might look like. Except, everywhere I looked I saw a lot I did not like about the ways of the world.
Eco feminism, ‘natural’ woman but no sign of the true woman yet!
Next stop – university and an honours degree in Women’s Studies. Perhaps academia had ‘the answers’?
Eco-feminism and a ‘back to nature’ approach seemed to have the answers for a while – but that turned out to be another merry-goose chase that actually took me further from nature (which I’ll save for another blog).
In short I tried out a lot of different ways – with the emphasis on tried. At no stage did I consider that the ‘it’, the true woman I was looking for outside me was in fact something within, that never left me, but that I left her, in my external quest. And then with a laughable irony – I sought to block out the pain of having left her (me) and seeking it unsuccessfully on the outside, by numbing out with drugs or toughening up to be as ‘worthy as a man’ (but that’s yet another story).
Thank God for Universal Medicine (UniMed) who reintroduced me to that true me inside that was there all along. When I first attended a Universal Medicine event I was a shell. Not only was I heavily using drugs, I had recently shaved my head and had become super hardened in my body, through working the land (supposedly ‘close to nature’) – in short I was lost!
With the ever loving support of Universal Medicine and Esoteric Women’s Health practitioners, and through attending UniMed presentations I gradually began to come back to my body, and feel that the way I live my life and my relationship with myself as a woman is up to me and the choices I make in each moment. I am not a victim to life, but a participant in it and in fact, I am the captain of my own ship more than I had ever dared feel previously.
I have gradually made simple but profound changes in my daily life; when I sleep, how and why I exercise, the quality I choose to move and rest and more, all of which support me and my body to live more and more in a quality and ever growing self care – although this is very much a work in progress. I recently realised how far I have come from the hollow numbness and incredible hardening and shielded hurts I began with just seven years ago.
And as I sat to write this I was able to look back on this time and these experiences from the difference in the way I live today. Today, I more and more love being the true woman I am:
- I take great joy in having a beautifully set up dressing table, with make up, jewellery and perfume that all supports and celebrates the delicateness of my nature and the warmth and beauty that I am as a woman.
- I have come back to love the feeling of walking as me – unbound by things to live up to or to do to prove myself. Just walking in my own warm flow.
- I have come to reconnect to the fact that the beauty I have always felt in nature is in me too and I sometimes feel powerfully childlike again – celebrating as I once did as a young girl running through the tall grass or playing amongst the trees – glowing from within – needing nothing more.
It is so understandable I (and I imagine many women) took (so so so) many ‘bum steers’ along the way, seeking outside of me, but with heartfelt appreciation I can say that I am steadily coming back full circle to the knowing that the knowing was always there as a child of what it is to be a true woman:
It is grace, like a spring breeze barely shifting the grass as it passes.
It is flow, like the steady passage of a clear warm stream around obstacles.
It is power, like a mighty oak standing and watching, seeing all, unwavering.
It is the delicateness of a rose in the morning dew.
It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky.
This is me – coming steadily home to the woman I am.
With heart-full thanks to Natalie Benhayon, and all the amazing women; true role models that reminded me of me.
by Kate Burns, Bellingen, Australia
Women in Livingness Blog 
The reflection of a night sky, a rose with morning dew delicately sitting on the petals, the freedom of playing as a child, the sense of internal stillness knowing you are delicate, sensitive and that these are great strengths. You remind me of all of these simple memories and reflection that fire up a way of moving and living in my body.
“I have come back to love the feeling of walking as me.” Education in institutions and in the home are more inclined to lead us astray from truth rather than teaching us to appreciate all that we are and have to share with the world.
Natalie Benhayon needs to be super famous – why? the world needs to see this ladies reflection.
Yes beautifully expressed and a loving reminder of the qualities that we all have innately and can choose to re-connect to.
Thank you for reminding us all that as we return to ourselves our natural beauty (I love your Be You play on words) shines through and we can reclaim our true nature and reflect this to others around us as a guiding light in the current darkness of outside ideals and beliefs that are so prevalent.
There are many of us who join you in thanking Universal Medicine, ‘Thank God for Universal Medicine (UniMed) who reintroduced me to that true me inside that was there all along.’
Thank you Kate, I haven’t read this for a while, it really relates to women globally in terms of how we aspire to become a woman from the outside in, and abandon who we are within which is where the true woman is. It’s also a reflection of how society is set up this way. It is a huge learning process to return to who we are as that separation to ourselves can begin quite early in childhood.
When you juxtapose your earlier comment of “utterly unable to sit still and intensely self critical in this seeking of perfection” which would describe me and I suspect many women, against the list of what it is to be a woman, with grace, flow, power, delicateness and timelessness, they are like chalk and cheese – so very different. Only one makes my heart and body breath.
This unfortunately has been the sad case for many of us, ‘At no stage did I consider that the ‘it’, the true woman I was looking for outside me was in fact something within, that never left me, but that I left her, in my external quest.’ So wonderful that many of us are now more in contact with our true selves.
It is great to look out for the’ trying’ when we try we miss out, trying is. push, a need, doing, where as accepting and appreciating what is already amazing about everyone of else and being with that, this truly develops a relationship with self worth and love that melts old patterns and liberates us.
Having pictures of how we and life ‘should be’ sets us up for always feeling ‘less than’. Searching for an unattainable goal – what a set-up. Yet as young children we had it all – not worrying about others, until we learned – maybe and probably in school – that we aren’t enough just being our natural selves. Undoing all this takes time – all to return to where we started….
There are so many pictures around sending messages about how women ‘ought to be’ but nothing confirms or tells a woman that she is already everything. This needs to be our starting point and from here how a woman chooses to express all of this- it won’t be from pictures but from what she feels.
‘Later I went to boarding school and was exposed to lots of images of women in videos and glamour magazines, which told me that being a woman was to be flawless, underweight and tantalising for men.’ What a truly horrendous and reduced version of what it means to be a woman! The emptiness in this and lack of empowerment is so tangible as to be almost laughable except that we fall for it and allow it to hook us in, to the detriment of us all. How inspiring then to meet women who are living the essence they are with no apology, in the full acceptance of what they bring in the power of their wisdone, grace and beauty.
It is only through the reflection of a woman living as a true woman that we can see the difference. The woman who knows her essence lives from the inside out. There is an ease, a focus on never losing themselves in what they do. It has been inspirational and dare I say it, life-saving.
I’ve realised of late, and I continue to realise this more and more – that the incarceration of the woman (by the woman herself – this is not abut blaming anyone) runs so deep that we haven’t even clocked it. A woman untainted by the imposts of society and of the past, is pristine and pure – and she moves and lives in this. There is not an iota of shame in her body – because why would there be?
I’m coming to terms with the fact there there is much for women to heal within – but the biggest step is to keep nominating, to keep being willing to go deeper and in so choosing, we realign back to the sacredness we truly are as women.
Yes, there are layers upon layers and we often don’t even realise we are not living the glory that is us without the doing. I love the fact that we can take it in stages, simply nominating and ever deepening.
A beautiful appreciation of rediscovering the true and beautiful woman within.
There are so many false pictures and ideals that can bombard us in life about what it is to be a women, so far from being what it true it is empowering to begin to let them go and connect more deeply to the beautiful and unique qualities we each bring.
‘glowing from within – needing nothing more.’ This feels like a very succesful way of being. Not seen yet in many but it is the potential that we all can live by returning to the simplicity and preciousness of who we are.
Thanks for sharing your experience Kate, is very precious. Another amazing ‘before and after’ thanks to Universal Medicine and your choice to return to your body, the only place where we can find the truth about what being a woman is.
It is amazing how far we stray from just being ourselves and so supportive to have true role models to shine a light on the way back to reclaiming ourselves.
I had never accepted myself as a woman and it is only through the esoteric women’s health modalities and my own healing that I have come to accept and embrace my beauty as a woman.
As a child I too knew that being busy was not the answer yet I followed the trend but not for very long as illness and disease caught up with me… what a blessing but this is what can happen when we choose to follow pictures, ideals and beliefs that are outside of ourselves and not true to who we truly are.
It is extraordinary how far we can journey from ourselves ironically in search of just that…. how stunning however to be able to make our way back though the gorgeous support of UM when so many are still seeking what lays within yet are seemingly unable to reach it misguided by all the false images and messages that are imposed upon us along the way.
Yes, the support offered by Universal Medicine and Esoteric Women’s health is simply there if we are called to more. There is no imposition, it simply waits, like our essence does, for us to want to know more.
The great beauty is that we may have a few layers over our lives that consists of patterns and or pictures of how we think we should be and yet over time we can peel back these layers and reveal the beauty-full women we are always. All it takes a collection of movements that continue to confirm and appreciate the connection that was there from birth, but may have been hidden by false layers from family, friends and or society from years past of ways that inevitably disconnect us from our true power.
This was delightful to read Kate. I loved your sharing of your knowing of the woman from within that never went away, despite not finding any true role models. There is so much to appreciate about what Universal Medicine has given us; true role models, permission to feel lovely, powerful and delicate again and awareness of the many layers of ideals we have taken on from the church, family, school and the media.
I love the way you sum this up Fiona, it is so true, Universal Medicine has gifted us true role models, permission (and responsibility) to walk letting all our loveliness out, to be seen and to understand the many layers that have come from the outside as we have grown up and lived that tell us to live less. Thank you for this spot on summary – I appreciate beyond measure the gifts of Universal Medicine and the ripples that now stem from such support, with so many gorgeous and developing role models leading the way and showing it is possible to shine in a world that is telling us to do and be anything and everything other than who we are from the inside out.
I agree Fiona, there is so much to appreciate about what Universal Medicine has given and continues to give us, like true role models, permission to feel lovely, powerful, and delicate again, and so much more.
What a profound and honest sharing Kate about the constant seeking for the woman without, only to return home to the innate delicateness within and live the true woman from this quality.
Thank you Kate, it’s a very powerful piece of writing, it’s very reflective of the journeys women make to understand womanhood and to find themselves in the world. Life seems to advertise an array of boxes to be ticked, things to do, ways to look and be, yet like many women I did not consult with my own self. I really appreciate the support and nurturing I have received from both Universal Medicine and Esoteric Women’s Health to return to and live from the true woman within.
A great sharing of a woman in her true essence and exploring that in every way. Thank you Kate this is a great account, that many women can relate to, including myself who spent many years trying to live up to the image of how a woman was meant to look and to now enjoy exploring and deepening my own rhythms and routines that support me as a women everyday.
How different our lives would be if we lived by the first impulse of being as ‘heavenly as the flowers that sway in the breeze’, rather than believing the lies about being less and sinners etc.
“This I scanned and also added to the reject pile – it felt untrue that women were less than men and much much less than God – something I couldn’t make fit with how I felt inside, which was as heavenly as the flowers that swayed in the breeze outside church”
Stunning article, loved every word, the end was like a sweet song to my ears. Thank you for sharing, it was like being on the journey with you, it is truly awesome you have found your way back to you but I suppose, its a journey that never stops and keeps unfolding every day.
Everything in life appears to be geared to continuing the ‘big fat lie and set up’ of being okay when living in comparison and judgment about ourselves and another.
So very far from the true quality that is available between women when all the protections are released.
Beautiful Stephanie- gorgeous to feel in and between your words there is another way for women with ourselves and each other.
“No role model in sight in Church, Boarding school or the ‘Cream of Society’. This is why is is so important for us, who feel strongly about this, to lead the way in our own corner of our lives. Our influence is non the less far-reaching.
So true Irena – we are all role models whether we like it or not – time to live all that we are from the inside out and show our sweet girls and everyone it’s possible to be who we are in full, in a world that asks and moulds us to be anything and everything but.
#whoserolemodelareyou
Beautiful Kate, this is like a before and afters kind of blog without the photos, but just from feeling you in this blog, even with all the side stepping from the woman you were born as, you have always been there and it is a delight to see that shine through now without the outer getting in the way.
Ah Aimee thank you – makes me want to add photos – boy that would really tell a story!
What a very beautiful blog Kate, thank you for sharing your experiences and your wisdom; it is deeply appreciated.
Grace, flow, power, delicateness and stillness; I to am steadily coming home to the woman I am.
And hence, we got this rich power (love) inside us, that we know we can only let out and deepen all of this love to be lived.. Hence again, we know we are the torches that can bring the light and love forth – in our simply living ways.. incredible connection we are there to be coming back to by making.
Thank you Kate, oh so true.. It made me stop and feel how far I have come and on which path I have chosen to be on now.. Love is the way, who we are is love, we are women of love.
Yes so true Kate, when we ‘try’ we are not really doing anything. We are attempting something but without any real intention to change, you could almost say it can be half baked attempt. But what you have shared, really expresses how one can truly change and build self care and love into ones life.
Gorgeous blog, in the end it is nature that reflects it all to us, not seeking to unite but to observe brings us the true way to live, the grace and harmony that is being human.
Our reality is a collective choice made by us, and as women we have made the choices to not know who we are. So we react and hold back, taking us further away from the truth of ourselves. What we are reacting towards is actually just the choices we have made but don’t want to take the responsibility of. The simplicity of this all is then just to take responsibility again in what we know to be true, to recognize that we have made it harder for ourselves for the delay we have chosen, but the simplicity is still to just start moving in a way now which we know to be true.
Something to be deeply pondered on, we leave ourselves in the search for who we are. Crazy isnt it. Your story resonates with me and like you I no longer look outward for myself having come to the same delicious truth as you have. Thanks for sharing your story.
When there are no role models in sight isn’t that all the more reason to live to your potential and fill the need for role models for others.
I love how you have divided BEAUTY up to be BE-YOU-TY, after all, beauty is only beauty if it has you in it.
Thanks Meg – true – only by ‘Be’ing – not doing, not measuring up to pictures etc – and just being ‘You’ the true inner connected ‘you’ do we begin to tap the depths of what beauty is and feels like to live – warm – alive and wonderful.
“Warm – alive and wonderful” I think you just invented an amazing new dictionary definition for connection 🙂
It’s a huge process coming to the understanding that as a woman I have given my power away to everything in life outside of me, instead of giving my power to what naturally resides within. Trying to be a version of womanhood based on beliefs, ideals or pictures is very different (and harmful) to connecting to what is already naturally there inside me and emanating my innate qualities.
We are the captains of our own ships – I love that – so whatever direction we steer our ship in is our choice.
Beautiful Kate. You clearly always knew what it was to be a true woman as you knew what it was not.
Kate it seems like there are so many ways women can be fed the ideal image – from early early on and continuing right into our older years – this won’t go away – marketing has done well to pry on the insecure – but if we connect to who we are without being told who we are, then we will find that we don’t need to listen to anything but how we feel and appreciate ourselves as the naturally beautiful, tender women we are.
I agree with you Kate so beautifully expressed. I attended boarding school also only that I was a boy. Being a all boys school it certainly was a special occasion when we had a ‘social’ with girls attending however, the girls were treated as you say Kate. It was all about picking up and how far you could go with a girl in one evening. This same trend carried on after school in the clubs only that alcohol and drugs were involved. Women were viewed as objects. I had to drop and reduce all that I felt to fit in. In fact the only way to do this this way was to get wasted to pick up a girl. It was the norm and still is of society. I actually got to a point where to fit in and have sex with a girl was to be in the state of alcoholic-infused far from the real tender respectful man that I am. I am not a part of that scene no more.
Church is responsible for so many beliefs in this world that cause drama and emotions. Not much love and evolving going on. Same stuff each Sunday. Nothing like The Way of The Livingness that is profound in the realisations that you feel in your body and not a doctrine format of this is who you are and you must follow it. It really is shameful that we as a one so-called-humanity have put up with being separated by religions for hundreds of years. We all are the creation of this mess its time we cleaned it up.
Thank you Kate for a very beautiful blog of coming to the truth of who you are and filling your empty shell with grace, flow , power, delicateness and timeless stillness, qualities of the true woman. My shell too is beginning to fill as i open up to what is deep inside of me.
A beautiful comment Jill, “My shell too is beginning to fill as i open up to what is deep inside of me.” As a society we seem to automatically dismiss ourselves and instead spend most of our time looking outside of ourselves for the answers. This is futile and just prolongs the emptiness. Opening up to what is already inside us is a beautiful process!
How crazy is it that we spend our lives looking for ‘it’ when ‘it’ is right there on our doorstep just waiting to be tapped into.
Exactly Fiona – and as we seek outside – we actually take steps further and further locking ourself away from the absolute gold that forever awaits within for us to just stop, and turn the key.
What a set up of immense proportions.
Recently I was talking to two friends, there were talking about different aspects of themselves, things about them which I had never known, it was a lovely conversation between friends and what I felt whilst they were speaking is how deeply powerful each of them were despite being entirely different in expression. All women have this stillness within and when we connect to it, it is indeed ‘like a mighty oak, standing watching and seeing all, unwavering’
I still catch myself looking outside of me for answers to what a women should look like. When I catch myself I bring myself back to the preciousness I feel within me and when I do that I realise all the glamour and appeals of the outside world no longer have their pull.
We come to a point in our life when we allow our natural innate knowing to be taken over by everything outside of ourselves, we then aspire to be like the women we see, they are busy, many of them fulfilling a family role and a work role and we fall for aspiring to be successful, but what is the true cost when we do this? The key is to reconnect back to the inner knowing we have where we know the true beauty of ourselves as women.
Kate thank you for your blog, it made me realise how deeply entrenched we are with old ideals and beliefs of how women should be, and how women have suppressed themselves in order to fit into society. Underneath women have a natural ability to connect to themselves and when they do, no one can miss their innate natural beauty.
We are these beautiful qualities inside out that you refer Kate. It is in the connecting to all our own unique and innate stillness, loveliness and divine purpose that supports our inner fullness and completeness. There is no room to bring the ‘stuff’ in from ideals and beliefs that we need to make up any deficit. There is simply yet powerfully us in our fullness – exactly how the world needs us to be.
Dear Kate, I just loved re-reading your blog….and the five pillars you offer of a woman
Grace, Flow, Power, Delicateness & Stillness. Your sharing was for me exquisite.
The seeking outside of ourselves to find who we are is an incredibly painful experience. Connecting back to the knowing of our body and the honoring and confirmation of the delicate and exquisite women we already are is deeply healing. Living in this connection with consistency is the key to redeveloping our lives to be who we truly are and let go of everything we took on that we are not. It’s deeply inspiring to see so many women embracing this process.
Be-you-ty
I love the simplicity of these words. The true beauty is within every man and woman. There is nothing outside that can ask our questions about who we are. The way of the Livingness is the way to returning to who we truly are. An everlasting way where we can jump, celebrate, run through the tall grass or play amongst the trees as you did when you was a young girl Kate. But the best we can feel ourselves and connect with this playfullness and innocence every single day. I’m feeling more joyful, vital and beauty-full than ever. Thank you Universal Medicine to introduce me that another way of life where I can feel and honour me is possible.
You are spot on when you say the woman you were looking for was always on the inside, I often have a thought such as – what is a true woman? What does being a woman mean? But inside my body there is actually a sense and a knowing, and while at times we may be far away from that sense of a true woman – it’s always there.
From a very early age we are presented with having to be ‘something’, to fulfill an image of how we should be and we become lost in an identity rather than being ourselves. It is such an amazing blessing to encounter role models such as the Benhayon family to see that it is possible and to achieve to live life as you express so well Karen, “I am not a victim to life, but a participant in it and in fact, I am the captain of my own ship more than I had ever dared feel previously.”
Yes Shirley-Ann,
We all have had moments where we have felt the truth, and even expressed it. This for me has been a point of deep appreciation, for the truth of my soul and how no matter that I was choosing to live so far from its truth, it still spoke clearly, and I heard it. The call came from deep within me, it is this that lead me to find Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. I for many years let myself put myself down, saying that another lead me there, and this too is true, but I would not have been able to lead, unless I had the sense from deep within, that what Serge presents was true.
I am returning to your article tonight Kate and the depth of knowing you always had for what it feels like to live as the woman you are is deeply inspiring and also deeply confirming.
Kate I loved re-reading your blog this morning, it made me realise how much importance I had placed on the outside of myself, and how grateful I am to Universal Medicine for presenting to me that the love we seek has never left us, we just stop connecting to it within, until we reconnect back to the love that we are.
Dear Kate, knowing you now and not knowing you then, I find it hard to imagine you hard, shaved and drugged. You are such a power house of strength, delicateness and love and I am appreciating that you are now choosing to live this. Amazing work lady.
It’s amazing the places we can go from ourselves and still find our way back to who we truly are. Since being introduced to Universal Medicine I’ve seen and met people who you would never link with those hard and disconnected behaviours. It just goes to show that no matter what we do or have chosen we can return to who we truly are, nothing is truly a barrier.
Love this Leigh and how true this is, it is never too late to return to who we are, simply a choice to connect back to our true self.
Kate this is a great sharing, I have spent many years looking outside myself for what makes a true woman, magazines, people and pictures all have their own view as to what a woman should look like, say, and be. However I now know that being a true woman has nothing to do with what the world currently claims a woman should be, the answer to discovering the true woman has all along been within myself, all I needed to do was connect to my inner-self to discover the beautiful woman I am.
This is really beautiful Kate, we all know it from when we are born, but everything on the outside tells us different, it is beautiful to have come to Universal Medicine, and be reminded of who we truly are.
In our early childhood we are not fooled or influenced by the outside, and it is beautiful to come full circle, back to knowing exactly who we are.
Kate there is a grace through which you express yourself in this blog and when this flow is effortless because it is based on stillness and connection, I sense that the hardness and driveness has no place to dominate. So it is with all women. Instead there is space and everything has room to move and adjust to its natural rhythm and to expand with genuine warmth and appreciation. This is something for all women to understand is there for them and that everything else is just a distraction which will ultimately let them down. Thank you for reminding me!
Dear Helen,
Your comment too holds the grace of you. I love this sentence. ” So it is with all women. Instead there is space and everything has room to move and adjust to its natural rhythm and to expand with genuine warmth and appreciation.” I felt in it the call to deepen my trust in that everything has room to adjust to its natural rhythm. Thank you.
And thank you for reminding me Helen that we as women have all the answers we will ever need if we only allow ourselves to connect to our stillness, “everything else is just a distraction which will ultimately let them (us) down”.
Absolutely required reading for women! Love your sharing Kate and your wonderful words on what defines a true woman! Uplifting the heart.
Great to feel the transformation in you Kate. Gentleness and tenderness is the key factor for starters, in our journey back to our soul.
Absolutely agree Roslyn, Kate’s words lifted me out of a fog and took me back to me, seeing that this exquisiteness is within us all. The true woman isn’t out there, she has been here all along, steadily walking with us, waiting for us to see, know and feel her presence and to claim and live her in full.
Gorgeous Shirley-Ann and too true that we dont like to see the bigger picture – and will take steps to avoid it – and from this same need, squash the simplest of truths that bring it crumbling like a badly stacked deck of cards.
This is such a wonderfully beautiful sharing, Kate. I especially love the part where you say that the woman you were searching for outside of you, was always within and in fact you had left her. This is so true! I too, used to numb my body and my feelings with drugs and alcohol. Now though, since discovering Universal Medicine I am realising that there is another way to be. A much more self-loving way of living, rather than self-abusing. I have noticed that I am not so short tempered as I used to be, when I regularly go to bed early I have more energy and feel less tired and I am making much more self-loving choices moment to moment throughout my day. I am also building such a loving relationship with myself that sometimes I just love being with me. It is an ever unfolding, evolving journey but I know that I am now on the right path, the only true path and I feel incredible. At 47 years of age, I feel the most amazing I have ever felt before. AWESOME!
“I feel incredible. At 47 years of age, I feel the most amazing I have ever felt before. AWESOME!” – that really is something to be glad for Belinda – great to hear.
I am with you here Belinda. I too am 47 and love deeply the woman I am. The tenderness that is actually coming from within to be shared with such grace is the most beautiful feeling I have ever before lived with.
Your connection to the grace, flow, power, delicateness and timeless stillness you so beautifully described was stunning to read. Life does not teach us that we are all of this innately so and that we are enough as we are without needing to seek outside or be anything else. Thank God for Universal Medicine reminding us of our ability to reconnect to ourselves in this way and remind us how extraordinary we truly are.
Yes, thank God for that reflection in our lives because it offers a moment of pause to consider if this is more true than the pace, tension and drama we take as our normal in this day and age as a woman.
I love Kate that you ended up in the naughty chair at church sunday school. Well done for taking a stand so young to such rubbish about women. The woman is timeless purity and undeniable beauty and nothing less. I would of been happy to join you in this.
‘I have gradually made simple but profound changes in my daily life; when I sleep, how and why I exercise, the quality I choose to move and rest and more, all of which support me and my body to live more and more in a quality and ever growing self care’ It is this that has then inspired you to further take care by, for example, setting up .a dressing table. By bringing a quality to our body we then bring a quality to our life and the choices we make. So simple.
Your story shows the turnaround you have made with your life is truly a miracle Kate. Like you, I spent my whole life searching for someone who knew the truth and I am so grateful I chose to find Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine at last.
Words will not do justice to what has been shared here – your words that describe ‘what is it to be a true woman’ are ‘Glorious’. A truth shared direct from heaven. Thank you for the deliverer of this blessed and healing gift Kate.
I find it interesting that you mention Eco-feminism took you further away from nature Kate. I’d like to hear more about that. There was a time in my life where I was surrounded by a lot of women into “the goddess energy” and “Mother Earth” but it just never resonated with me and that too was about women connecting to the earth. It always felt heavy and not of our divine origins.
Thank you Suzanne for reminding me to come back to this – it is likely a blog in itself. The main thing was is that it was an outer image used to live in to actually avoid the true connection – but to stay in the numbness of a bliss type state – picturing self as an identity – but not connecting within… I barely once felt my feet fully through that chapter. Another aspect was an unfortunate undercurrent that women somehow viewed themselves as more ‘sacred’ than men…but I certainly had no idea what sacredness might truly mean, and defintely not what it might feel like in my body – so many lessons from this particular ‘bum steer’.
I loved reading this blog again Kate for its realness and relatability of constant being ‘wooed’ by the outside, but then discovering that is not it. As I read all you write I can feel you and your unfolding, sentence by sentence. Thank you for how you have shared the beauty of YOU 🙂
Thank you Julie – and as l continue to let go of all the outer stuff we take on, I’m finding I could almost write a ‘PS’ to the blog..of a whole load more things we are not … and greater depth to all we are and can live in connection with.
Absolutely beautiful to read Kate, brings me to tears, that your loving last lines could and is a part of me also. Thank you Kate.
Dear Kate this is so amazing how You describe what a true woman is not and what a true woman is. Beautifully how You claimed the true woman back and celebrating and sharing her with all of us. It confirms the way I have chosen to re-connect back to and inspires to refine and go deeper. With love Nadine
What an important blog you published and wrote here Kate!!! It is incredible how many dependences we create in the outside to define ourselves as women. I love the clearity and the beautiful pictures you created here. Thank you !!!
I had such a big laugh when I read about what you shared with the Sunday school leader, hilarious. And what a truth you were presenting, which at that time could not be received. Your blog just shows how much there is a lack of true rolemodels for young girls.
Thanks Mariette – yep it was a truth not ready to be felt for sure, understandably – and yes pretty cute and funny looking back.
Kate, this is a great expose of who we are not as women and how society works against us feeling who we truly are from a young age. It is beautiful to feel that you knew who you truly were all along.
I agree Anne, and Kate for you to have kept this strong within you through your schooling years is amazing. As I feel for me the education system served to crush my tenderness and femaleness and I am still trying to put back the pieces.
Yes and the unease of not finding that outside but investigating all avenues in the process! A stark reminder that our beauty comes from inside not outside.
A simply beautiful set of descriptors of what it is to be a true woman. You can feel the grace, flow, strength and stillness in each bullet point. And I agree entirely – ‘Thank God for Universal Medicine’ for the reintroduction to my true self.
This was awesome to read Kate. I liked reading about how you knew as a young girl that the ideals most hold around beauty and what it is to be a true women arnt it. It was interesting to note how you felt about them all and what you observed from them- that most women, even the ones who ‘have it’, are not content with who they are.
Thank you Kate , this was so beautiful to read, brought tears to my eyes. Grace, flow, power, delicateness, and stillness. Could this be me and all of us as true women, from deep within, it certainly is.
Grace…Flow…Power…Delicateness…Stillness…Kate. All one and the same thing.
This is such a confirming blog to return to Kate, imagine if your blog and all the comments were part of a syllabus in school or part of a Women”s Studies” program. How empowering it would be for women, to expose as you have done, all the ways that we women have looked on the outside for some model of how to be, and how divine does it feel to surrender to the flow, grace, delicateness and stillness which is our true power.
Awesome idea Bernadette! Would it be possible Kate to co-create such a document? What would it take? l would definitely use it in my teaching syllabus at school.
Bernadette – this is exactly what we should be sharing with our kids; that looking outside ourselves will never ever bring us who we are because we are always then living in ideal that is not true to our bodies. That is true education – allowing people to understand what is not right and empowering them with their choices. That true power is not manipulation and dominance but being so sure of who we truly are that no one can shake us.
I love the power that is embodied through your words Hvmorden. There is such a wonderful stillness and steadyness.
Definitely worth sharing ! Great idea- what an impact it would be if this would be taught in schools! And the same for boys aswell- that would be true education.
Yes classes for kids! l put my hand up for writing the program.
Lets bring it on!
I really enjoyed reading your post again, Kate. I started reading feeling my sore shoulder that has been there for more than a year and I only started paying proper attention for the last month or so, I could feel how I forcefully waded through my life, against what was naturally there from the very beginning, trying to fit myself into various images I held as what I should be and look like – a tough job indeed. It was beautiful to read how you now appreciate and confirm you as a woman – it reminded me how far I have come too.
Thank you Fumiyo. I just had cause to go through a few old pics – and oh my golly how far I’ve come back so far is undeniable – and very much appreciated. I was lost – utterly lost and have to notice more often just how far I have come thanks to Serge Benhayon, Natalie Benhayon, Universal Medicine and Esoteric Women’s Health.
Thank you dear Susan for your loving comment here: “you have shared so intimately as though all your readers are dear friends.” That made me stop and feel and appreciate that quality in this piece – and in me.
Kate, I can so relate to the different pictures you previously chose to live up to and love the lightness with which you express which enables me to look at my past and current choices away from the true woman with no judgement, and even to chuckle and laugh playfully.
There is a lovely warmth I felt in my body on reading this article which you have shared so intimately as though all your readers are dear friends. Beautiful.
True beauty cannot but be part of our return Home (to the divinity we are and we carry inside). Compared to anything else, there is in there a qualitative gap that cannot be breached.
It’s been so convoluted in our current world that it is so easy to lose sight of this truth.Simple and powerful.
I have been feeling the quality of True Family and what this actually means and feels like. It feels like you are alluding to it here Kate. Could Susan be embodying this in her loving words?
“the knowing was always there as a child of what it is to be a true woman” I love this. It is so true I had such an amazing sense of what a true woman is as a child too. I had even forgotten I had. This feeling has been with me all along waiting to be lived and lived in full. Thank Heaven for Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine and it’s awesome practitioners and thank you Kate for this blog. a great one to come back to.
Love this blog and in particular how you describe what it is to be a woman truly exquisite.
Yes I agree. It stopped me in my tracks.
Such a beautiful blog Kate. What an amazing transformation you have experienced from all these different roles of what you thought meant being a woman, to finally reconnecting to your true essence- love. Isn’t it crazy how far we go outside ourselves searching for what defines a true woman, when all the time it was within us.
Kate your words stopped me in my tracks. “I have come to reconnect to the fact that the beauty I have always felt in nature is in me too and I sometimes feel powerfully childlike again.” I feel these qualities myself and sometimes don’t appreciate that this delicate way of being in nature is also within me. Thank you so much for reminding me that I am that. A beauty-full delicate woman and always have been.
If you asked me what was my True, inner beauty a few years ago, I wouldn’t have likened it to that of the magnificence of nature. Only since discovering Universal Medicine have I realised it is.
As you say “I am a beauty-FULL woman and always have been.”
It is amazing to read that Eco feminism actually took you away from nature Kate. It reminds me of a time when I knew a number of women who where into relating to the woman as the earth mother and she is to protect all that is being destroyed on this planet – like Eco warriors. What was lacking was true self care – they were quite often appearing unkept in so many ways from hygiene to clothing choices. What was missing was a quality from within that emanated the joy of being in a woman’s body – the earth was more important than she and she felt responsible for expressing in the earths behalf rather than from her own divine nature. Quite revelatory!
This is a great point Suzanne – and as you say really quite revelatory, and perhaps a blog in itself. I could have been one of the women you describe, and can honestly share that never was I further from nature or from myself as a woman, or from my divinity, than at the point that I was involved in the whole earth mother goddess type identity/lifestyle. Though I might have ticked the boxes of ‘healthy/organic eating’ and physical ‘fitness’ (though I was as hard as any man), I was more abusive to myself at that time than any other, less caring – and tenderness was not even in sight, though soft fluffiness and bliss abounded. I was totally “unkempt in so many ways from hygiene to clothing choices”…basically not in my body at all, and very lost. The contrast in truly connecting within (and not just using the buzz word ‘connection’ – or even ‘stillness’ from a mental construct and identity) could not be huger – I feel entirely different now, as this blog describes. As you say, ‘Quite revelatory!’.
So True.The Earth /Mother/Goddess movement never rang true for me also. It still wasn’t it for me.
Wow, I felt similar in observation of the woman who reflected this to me, however I hadn’t understood why. Your comment Suzanne makes it clearer for me.
There is never a true caring if you are not caring for yourself. I agree, this should be a blog, Suzanne. So many people get lost in caring for the world, animals, plants, feminism…and forget about them, because they think, they are doing something “good”. Actually it distracts themselves of nurturing their own body.
When we truly honour ourselves as women, we not only claim our power back, but we give permission for every other woman to do the same, thus we each have a responsibility and part to play in order to support and reflect to all our daughters, that real and lasting beauty comes from inside us.
Well said Jacqueline, when we don’t hold back expressing our amazingness, the reflection we offer other women is very powerful.
Mmm…this blog is yummy Kate! It emanates such gorgeousness from the journey you have paved to get to the celebration you are at today. Congratulations on the beautiful choices you have made for you – they are appreciated from here and no doubt, in everyone who has the honour of meeting you.
Kate this is such a beautiful piece of writing of what it is to be a true woman.
Kate, your poetic expression of the essence of being a woman lets me drop deeply into my body. So majestic and eternally be-you-ti-full.
There is deep resistance to loving ourselves. It is as if we are scared to claim something so huge that will in fact rock the very social foundations and messages of self worth we have been subject to our whole lives. Is it possible that if we were to all claim the gorgeous, beautiful, graceful tender women we naturally are, then it would ask the world to step up; it would mean we are no longer in the comfort of not being enough, it would mean we have no excuses to play small or accept anything less than what is true.
could we fear that more than we fear our children coming into the same world of glamour and illusion? Are we ready to step up and away from that?
Such awesome questions to ponder.
“Is it possible that if we were to all claim the gorgeous, beautiful, graceful tender women we naturally are, then it would ask the world to step up; it would mean we are no longer in the comfort of not being enough, it would mean we have no excuses to play small or accept anything less than what is true.” – wow hvmorden – this is huge to feel, I had to read it several times – and repeating this bit here “it would mean we are no longer in the comfort of not being enough, it would mean we have no excuses to play small or accept anything less than what is true.” The words ‘comfort’ and ‘excuses’ ring out to show just how much we have chosen or even calculated to be less because it is familiar and it ‘excuses’ us from the greatness we are (that as you say naturally tends to stir things up – and “rock the very social foundations and messages of self worth we have been subject to our whole lives”). In playing less there becomes an external place to finger point and direct focus and even blame – ‘the world’ (and often ‘men’) treating us unlovingly – yet looked at this way, we allow and even choose it. What you expose here is something we have rested on for far too long. All that it takes is to accept and appreciate that we are more than enough just as we are inside right now, and accept that part of this is that it will definitely ‘ask the world to step up’ – and possible ruffle a few tail feathers – but boy oh boy are we ready for a bit of a ruffle and reshuffle – there is everything to gain – the choice is ours.
Thank you Kate – you build on what I have shared so beautifully – that we have been sitting on this too long and that there is everything to gain here. As more and more women become aware of this, it is then about accepting it, truly accepting our potential within ourselves first and allowing that love to be so much more than our comforts or hurts. Accepting and surrendering to who we truly are as women.
I love this…”All that it takes is to accept and appreciate that we are more than enough just as we are inside right now, and accept that part of this is that it will definitely ‘ask the world to step up’ – and possible ruffle a few tail feathers – but boy oh boy are we ready for a bit of a ruffle and reshuffle – there is everything to gain – the choice is ours.” These words are so powerful!
An inspiring blog Kate, as you trace your story and experiences of life before Universal Medicine – and then how you bloomed once you began to fully embrace yourself as a woman. I can so relate to your tender and loving words –
‘It is grace, like a spring breeze barely shifting the grass as it passes.
It is flow, like the steady passage of a clear warm stream around obstacles.
It is power, like a mighty oak standing and watching, seeing all, unwavering.
It is the delicateness of a rose in the morning dew.
It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky’.
A truly honouring Woman in all her Be-You-Ty.
Beautiful Kate, everything that is nature is reflected in the power we naturally are.
You describe beautifully the ‘bum steers’ that women generally are navigating in the quest for affirmation and recognition from the outside to confirm who you are, an empty path with many ways of walking it. Compare this to the inner journey, the focus on the breath the quality of your next breath and allowing that to fill your body, by paying attention and noting how you feel with the support of tools like the our cycles app have profoundly changed how I feel about myself and how I can now express as a woman, before I was a girl in a too big world now I am an emerging woman full of power and beauty and like you I thank all the practitioners of Esoteric modalities that have supported this shift.
Vanessa this is beautiful: “before I was a girl in a too big world now I am an emerging woman full of power and beauty”. Wow – this is gorgeous.
Dear Kate,
As I read your blog, I realised that I too had seen so many ways that women were being that didn’t feel right as I grew up. So much so that it looked to me that women were seen as unimportant except for to be the house carer, child carer, kitchen maid and general person that has to care for the man, as he is all important. By watching this I found myself completely disregarding anything womanly, becoming very hard in my body and living my life very much wanting to be a male. Like you it has only been through my connection with Universal Medicine that I have now been shown the beauty, solidity and grace of being a true woman something that I now feel deeply for myself.
Women seen through their roles as you describe and often as unimportant roles. That seems to be or was the image. Still there is the idea of how a woman needs to look from the outside and in the outer world. It almost is a new role ‘how to look like a beautiful (young) woman” which we are bombarded with in magazines. Nowhere, almost nowhere, attention is given to what does it mean to be ín a woman’s body? What does it feel like? What lays waiting inside to be express from there? These questions are not shared and talked about with us, women.
Good questions Caroline. Ones that need to be asked and explored and understood, for we as women hold a deep inner knowing for truth that is so very needed in our world, a knowing that the world is actually desperately looking for.
These are great questions Caroline, and certainly not questions discussed during my ‘Women’s Studies’ Honours Degree! We discussed so many angles of ‘the woman question’, but to speak of what “does it mean to be ín a woman’s body? What does it feel like?” would have been unheard of and avoided like the plague, and pretty much sacrelige. Why? Because acknowedging mens and womens bodies differ, was seen as adminting we are ‘less’ – and so the greatest keys to true equality that lay within us were overlooked, and never would anyone have asked, ‘What lays waiting inside to be express from there?’.
A super point Carolien, it does feel like a new role; ‘how to look like a beautiful young woman’. Which of course is a great distraction from actually feeling and living truly as a woman – that is living from our divinity and grace. What does it mean to be in a women’s body, what does it feel like, are great questions for women to start discussing this topic.
I read this blog again because it is so power-full in what it presents. The idea of beauty and what it means to be beauty-full is diverse throughout society is as there are cultures and beliefs held by people. There is simply so many but the only idea of beauty that is true is that which come from deep inside us and never from what we look like on the outside alone.
Love the blog Kate and the way you write about all of the concepts you experienced and explored regarding what it is to be a woman – I could relate to many of the experiences as I’m sure many women could also! I too have only truly started to explore and appreciate what it is to truly be a woman by beginning an inward journey and relationship with myself, as inspired by Universal Medicine and an increasing number of role models such as Natalie Behayon.
Kate I was inspired again to read of your transformation from the lost woman searching for a role model, to who you are today, enjoying all that beauty and grace and power within you, that is your true nature.
Stunning Kate, to feel you through this most apt depiction of a ‘day in the life’ of what it means to be a woman, shining ever bright in the Glory you are is deeply inspiring, thank you.
There is no denying how truly precious, delicate and tender a woman truly is when you let her in with all your heart. What is before me in these moments is a Divine Beauty and no matter whether they are living this in full yet or not there is truly something grand there inside.
I love this comment Joshua
Me too leighstrack!
I found this to be an astoundingly beautiful blog, thank you Kate indeed.
Your sentence:
” … celebrating as I once did as a young girl running through the tall grass or playing amongst the trees – glowing from within – needing nothing more.”
… has ignited something in me, a memory, a remembering, a returning to who I used to be and how I used to express, “glowing from within”. Very precious and very joyful, thank you again.
What an alive and gorgeous sharing Marian – to feel you again knowing the familiarity of a childs warm inner glow and way of openly expressing, is, as you say, super precious. Thank you for sharing.
Still working on re-connecting to the woman I am from the inside out, I loved reading your blog and feeling the support it brings. What really touches me deeply is :”…what it is to be a true woman: It is grace, like a spring breeze barely shifting the grass as it passes, It is flow, like the steady passage of a clear warm stream around obstacles, It is power, like a mighty oak standing and watching, seeing all, unwavering, It is the delicateness of a rose in the morning dew, It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky,” …. to know that this is inside of me and every woman.
Welcome home Kate. “This is me – coming steadily home to the woman I am.” Your blog resonates deeply with me as I have fun reconnecting to the beauty of the woman I am that has been eluding me for so long.
Kate I loved reading this: “It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky.”
This feels so expansive with a sense of space and to claim that co-creation of space and stillness with-in me.
The definition of what it is to be a true woman at the end of the blog is incredibly beautiful and should be posted up on everyones fridge and more importantly in every womans heart.
Resonating forth in service to humanity
with every loving heart beat.
I’m glad you e highlighted that bit Sandra. Such an awesome part- really beautiful to read. It had a stop moment for me.
Wow Kate, what a treat to come back and read this again! What journeys we have all had searching for ourselves outside of ourselves. The pictures we tried on for size could never meet the true magnificence of what we feel within when we truly connect to ourselves as divine women.
So gorgeous to feel this Melinda – “What journeys we have all had searching for ourselves outside of ourselves. The pictures we tried on for size could never meet the true magnificence of what we feel within when we truly connect to ourselves as divine women.”
Im pondering what the Divine woman in me really look like, feel like, be like. Then how would that effect all those around me. Now to bring it closer with more loving choices on the flying carpet of deep appreciation for me as l am right now.
Hi Irena,
you’re already ‘there’, and it’s just about clocking it and letting it out. When I met you for the first time in person – after we met on this blog – I was in the audience at an event in Sydney and from my seat, watched you delicately and with such warmth, arranging flowers, little touches with where a rose sat, and similar. Your hands were amazing to watch, I was transfixed, you seemed so present and so very beautyful, the movements of your hands were so fine, yet so full and sure. However this moment felt for you from the inside of your body, THAT is what the divine woman you are feels like. Do always apprecate you ‘as you are right now’, that there will always be deeper to accept does not make us less in the now, it’s all there.
Celebrating the beauty in all women. With Love, Kate
Well said Melinda. Nothing could compare to what’s inside. Good highlight fur this bit… ‘What journeys we have all had searching for ourselves outside of ourselves. ‘ what a great and seemingly obvious point.
Truly beauty-full Kate, thank you.
Thank you Kate, it is beautiful to read what you have written about coming home to yourself as a women. As you say there is never any need to go in search of the woman as she already there within us. We just have to connect with it and actually let the women out as I have discovered.
Beautifully expressed Elizabeth. ‘As you say there is never any need to go in search of the woman as she already there within us. We just have to connect with it and actually let the women out as I have discovered.’
And beautifully written Deborah. First of all we peel back the hardness, walls and protection, only to reveal the delicate and beautiful petals and essence of who we are as women – waiting to blossom once again.
What a stunning description Vicky.
To feel this as my future me and live it now is challenging yet awesome to behold.
Dear Irena, For some time have been allowing myself to feel where I will be at in 3 lifetimes time and this feels exquisite. But what I came to feel for myself is that I was seeing this as my future, I now know that it is me, now. Since this realisation, the process of claiming this has lead me to feel much that before I really did not want too in the way I live, and why it is that I did not feel the exquisiteness now that I felt in my coming lives. I know that there is more in this process, much more. But I would not change one single moment as I know each day I feel and live from my stillness and have greater joy than I have ever had before.
That what you wrote in your command is very lovely Elizabeth and also it feels very joyful – to re-connect to the women within and than actually let the women out – it is incredible that we as women have forgot this simple thing.
So true esteraltmiks – well said.
You have Elizabeth, I am often inspired by you.
Thank you Kate. A very beautiful blog indeed. It shows us that we do indeed know who we are and the effort we go to, to disconnect from our beautiful selves is all smoke and mirrors.
It’s incredible to ponder the “effort’ we exert to stay away from experiencing who we truly are.
The push, the drive, the effort to be anything less than the woman I am is incredibly painful and an illusion I have steadily been able to feel and call out thanks to Esoteric Women’s Health.
Agreed Irena, we do put a lot of effort into it. It’s interesting to note, and start to see, just how much.
Your blog Kate reminds me of just how important role models are when we are growing up and trying to find our way in the world. We are constantly reflecting to each other all the time and I would say under-estimate the impact of these reflections which can either inspire or discourage or deceive another.
What a beautiful description of a true woman at the end of your blog and it reminded me of all the beautiful women in my life and how gorgeous and precious they really are.
Wow Kate, a gorgeous blog… you have captured the array of ‘bum steers’ we are offered as women in the world today, to live up to something that ultimately is not true. I can relate to the angst of trying to find your sense of self as a woman with one ideal after another, and finding them all false and empty in the end.
‘I have come back to love the feeling of walking as me – unbound by things to live up to or to do to prove myself. Just walking in my own warm flow.’ Wow Kate, this feels absolutely gorgeous! Makes all that striving for success completely meaningless.
“All the messages were that beauty was measurable and at its best, only skin deep.” I found this line so profound and made me realise just how much we rate beauty on outward appearances. Beauty is so much more than this, it comes from a quality within, a connection with self that knows nothing other than a true contentment with self – stand in the presence of a woman who knows herself and you will see and feel true beauty.
How true this is Caroline: “stand in the presence of a woman who knows herself and you will see and feel true beauty.” Pure gold.
Kate I feel so much power in your blog and it was/is a true joy reading it and so inspiring. Thank You for sharing You with us.
Oh my goodness me Kate Burns who are you? I want to meet you and know you and spend some quality time just being in your presence, with you. You are profound. Your journey of self discovery so deeply joy filled, truthful and tenderly poetic.
What a most glorious woman you must be.
Your exquisite words bring me to tears. I can so relate to your honourable journey.
Your words give me hope and encourage me to never give up on myself. Thank you most beautiful, grace-filled lady that you are.
Wow – thank you Irena – reading your comment it feels like you are describing yourself, who you’ve just been reminded of and re-met. I’m a real work in progress, though I’ve come miles, – but what has changed most is that I know beyond doubt what it can feel like to live in the fullness of womanhood – so when I’m not bringing the consistency needed to allowing, accepting and deepening that – it stands out like never before and is missed. I am so so glad you are encouraged to never give up on yourself – never ever give up on yourself, in any moment in your day, if things go pear shaped, just let it go and come back to YOUR amazingness – there is an immense beauty forever inside just waiting to be brought out and it is more worth it than we dare imagine – its just about saying yes to that – as you have in your very gorgeous comment.
Thank you Kate.
I just get so much out of your words and your conviction and dedication to Womanhood. It does feel new to me. Please keep commenting on this thread. There’s something about your reflection for me that when you write it seems to deeply penetrate my own experience and I feel so met by your observations of life. Mainly your beholding of who you are no matter what you are going through.You won’t drop the baby! I fear sometimes that I have many times and I will again! I too am a work in progress. I feel it’s time to commit even more deeply to me in all areas of my life and be vigilant with not allowing negative self-talk energy/nervousness and anxiousness to flow through me corrupting me and my day. Constant vigil!
Thank you too Irena. It’s super natural that it can sometimes take a little steady self support to feel like we are more unswayable in our lovliness and presence, but with a choice that we are worth it to the bone, (what we bring to the world is so needed), it can be a very simple shift and changing that old and seriously worn out inner record or self critique to a new and gorgeous album of self encouragement, support, and ‘I’m here for you honey’s’. I have had the hugest change since I gave that old self destructive voice the boot, (and belive me I used to give it some serious air time) – if I can make the change, (and even with the work in progress that I am, I can gladly celebrate how much I have already) – then literally anyone can! Initially there was some regret and sadness to feel that I had buried something so magnificent and so needed in the world for so long. Changing the harsh judging talk, I had to consiously play with new phrases and shifting the focus really actively and deliberately to appreciating the moments there was a real lovliness there, like how my hands moved so delicately, or if I shut the car door and it felt and sounded gorgeous – I’d celebrate, then if another time the car door clanged abruptly, I’d get a bit more playful with it and just go ‘wow. well thats sure not me’, and I’d have another play till it felt more like the lovliness I am. I also couldn’t have done it without all the support to settle back into my body from Esoteric Breast Massage, and other esoteric modalities including esoteric yoga, which was so steadying for me, and gave me the space to take the pressure off , let go, accept and bring understanding. Keep it playful and light beauty-Full Irena, and celebrate the change, no pressure, no timeline, we are very definitely worth it – there is so much to us when we take the time and care to re-learn to let it out!
Wow Kate, those last 5 lines are amazingly powerful, and so incredibly beautiful. I will be putting these on my wall as a constant reminder of not only who I am as a woman, but the wisdom you have shared as a woman that is equally available to all of us at any time when we reconnect with the love that is inside of us.
Awesome Amelia – and so true that this deep resonant natural quality we forever hold deep within is “equally available to all of us at any time when we reconnect with the love that is inside of us.” – and we choose to let it out.
How many of us block out the pain not to feel that all our struggles and complication of life is because we left ourselves, we left our true essence, our true beauty and innocence…. yes, it is a bitter sweet pill to swallow, bitter because of the realisation; I did it all to myself, my life has been my creaton, but the sheer sweetness of returning to our childlike innocence, in other words, walking the path back to our soul, leaves no room for the taste of bitterness.
Very well said Jacque, there are just as many ways to block the pain of feeling we have left our true selves as there are ways to do so, looking outside to be told how and who we should be as women. It is predominantly through the presentations of Natalie Benhayon, (Esoteric Women’s Health) that the awareness and understanding of what is at play has been fully revealed. You are a living testimony to these presentations too Jacque, as is Kate, and every woman writing on these Women in Livingness blogs.
Kate, your writing captures the feeling of grace, beauty and stillness and more that is a true woman. Reading today I recognised so much in what you share, that rejection of how I saw women around as a child – I knew it wasn’t it but effectively went the other way and rejected being a woman completely. Now I’m coming back full circle to embrace and feel what that woman is in me, and how she wants to express, it’s a work in progress and with much having changed. I love being a woman where once i resented it, I love expressing beauty where once I rejected it and I love that innate grace and silkiness I can feel when I walk embracing and feeling me. Thank you, your piece moved me to feel more of how I’ve changed and how I now live more as the woman I am.
What a inspiring and relatable sharing monicag2. So glad you took the chance to do a stock take on just how far it sounds like you’ve come – the contrast feels huge and very beautiful from resenting and rejecting womanhood and expressing beauty to ‘loving it!’. I particularly love the description that “I love that innate grace and silkiness I can feel when I walk embracing and feeling me.” Me too – love the description – perfectly sums up how it feels to walk as a woman with no trying – just embracing who we so naturally are.
What a great marker Monica and the power of your honesty brings a healing by calling out for all women that it is us women who reject our own beauty, our own stillness and grace: ‘I rejected being a woman completely’. When we get to this level of honesty, this is when we can begin to claim back that which we walked away from; our own divinity and grace…..
Kate I am inspired again by re-reading this beautiful blog. This time I realise I was never comfortable in my skin as a girl then woman, and I don’t feel the women in my life were either, so my ship was rudderless. Being a woman felt fraught with ‘giving the impression’, or sending out wrong ‘signals’ and the choices were between being a spinster (definitely seen as being a loser and unwanted by any man) or a wife. Even with the ‘revolution’ of the sixties I can feel how that foundation played out in my life, and how I felt about myself. Thank God for Universal Medicine and Natalie Benhayon and the Women in Livingness website. I am constantly being inspired to thoroughly enjoy being the woman I am, which is for me an unfolding process.
Great point you bring here hartanne60 that the worth we so often asign ourselves or each other is based on whether we are in relationship (wanted by a man) or not – and the fear of spinsterhood is something that certainly still plays out today in some undercurrent way – another very external measure that focuses us away from the absolute beauty within.
Your blog is full of grace and the loveliness of you Kate, and I feel that you have written it for all women.You have shown us the power of choice, and that when we stop looking to others to show us how to be a true woman, we know it all already. Feeling glorious on the inside is feeling the grace, flow, power, delicateness, and timeless stillness.Thank you.
I can feel how beautiful it is to honour the grace of being a woman. The more I read on the women in livingness site, the more I feel supported to allow this truth to become my truth.
Wonderful Amanda. Me too, the blogs here on Women in Livingness support profoundly with so many different but relatable everyday life examples. I’m constantly inspired.
Today I re-read your post and was touched deeply by your expression of what it is to be a true woman:
‘It is grace, like a spring breeze barely shifting the grass as it passes.
It is flow, like the steady passage of a clear warm stream around obstacles.
It is power, like a mighty oak standing and watching, seeing all, unwavering.
It is the delicateness of a rose in the morning dew.
It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky’.
Thank you.
Thank you Kehinde – I love those lines too, and how they call me so strongly to the magnificence we are as women and are re-learning to accept and live.
”I have come to reconnect to the fact that the beauty I have always felt in nature is in me too and I sometimes feel powerfully childlike gain – celebrating as I once did as a young girl running through the tall grass or playing amongst the trees – glowing from within – needing nothing more.” This is so exquisitely expressed and resonated with me deeply. Thank you Kate.
It is quite interesting to see that wherever we look in society, all the different styles of clothing, etiquette and choices of expression are not there to allow us women to shine our natural beauty, they are only different boxes we can choose from and identify with and then live accordingly. But is sells us very short of who we truly are and shuns the absolutely beauty that lies within all of us.
So beautifully said Esther.
A joy to read Kate. Your prose is so affirming to me as a woman who remembers the
” the hollow numbness, incredible hardening and shielded hurts ” and that it is possible to move beyond them.
Kate I loved how the true woman you are living once again can be felt in how you describe the years of wondering and getting lost. The love, appreciation, playfulness, power and grace are so palpable in it and is shows how we can look back on our lives in appreciation and with a smile no matter how hard times may have been once.
I used to facilitate workshops for women and also at different times hold regular women’s groups. These were done from a spiritual perspective and although we thought we were breaking the mould, so to speak, we were just becoming more embedded in the spiritual way of being and going further from a true and soulfull connection, further from the true woman as I now understand, and beginning to feel, her to be. Being a true woman I feel a fullness in my body I have never felt before, I feel the loveliness of me as I walk and move through my day. I have an authority that is at once tender yet firm. As I allow, accept and appreciate this my life flows more easily – no push or drive or trying and I realise the highs we may have reached in some of those former workshops were far from the feeling of joy that we thought they were.
I love this description elaineearthly and the contrast to the earlier experiences you describe: ‘Being a true woman I feel a fullness in my body I have never felt before, I feel the loveliness of me as I walk and move through my day. I have an authority that is at once tender yet firm. As I allow, accept and appreciate this my life flows more easily’. Gorgeous.
To feel the loveliness of me as I work and move through the day is revolutionary! And to understand authority, that is at once tenderness and firmness is golden. It serves me well as a teacher. Our children need more of these role models in our world.
Thank you Kate you have captured how much we are coerced to not be in our fullness as woman and opened the door back to our grandness.
Kate this is very beauty-full, I had some beautiful tears when reading your blog. What a beautiful transformation. It touches me very deeply how you speak about yourself and your developments. It reminds me of that it is time to appreciate who I am too and how far I have come from where I had come from. I have always been so critical and harsh on myself, which was actually taking the space of truly loving me. Now I take back that space and make it about truly loving me again..
Woohoo, celebrating you taking back that space! I can so relate to what you share here about appreciation, and the great description of how this works. Spot on Danna.
Danna I can also relate to what you say here. I too have been so horrible critical and harsh of myself. Totally lost! Totally empty!
Appreciation is the light streaming through the dark clouds of my thoughts and self-loathing. APPRECIATE YOU AND ALL THAT YOU BRING!!
Kate this blog is a true GEM. How beautifully you have ‘encapsulated’ (quite literally -condensed and compressed!) with great humour and reality your past way of being in the seeking for yourself outside of yourself. Your joy with your inner connection shines out through every word on the page!
Simply gorgeous. Thank you for sharing you – I have such a deep smile coming up from inside reading this blog.
Yes – thank God for Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon. These presentations have also inspired me deeply and have been a major factor in my own choice to to return to the love and joy that I am innately within.
wow Kate what a journey, and an amazing transformation.
I absolutely agree Margaret. Incredibly inspiring.
Kate, you observed those around you with remarkable clarity. At your age I would have seen aspects of what you observed but I know I would not be able to describe it as clearly as you do.
It can be absolutely confusing to try to find a true role model of being a beautiful and amazing woman. And the confusion starts with the look outside already. But that’s what we do when we are small and seeking connection. Then we do anything to suit into our environment. What you offer with your blog is the beauty that in truth there’s no “outside” needed. That true beauty unfolds from being ourself. Listening to our senses, the body, the inner voice. Calling every women to return to their true beauty – far beyond the demands or expectations of anyone.
How absolutely beautifully expressed ChristinaHecke. “true beauty unfolds from being ourself. Listening to our senses, the body, the inner voice. Calling every women to return to their true beauty – far beyond the demands or expectations of anyone.”
“No outside needed”..So profound. If only I was taught this as a little girl. Who would I be today? Wow! Who can I be from now, knowing this truth and living it? Double WOW! Kookaburras are singing to that question!!
Kate, you inspire women to come back to our bodies as you have and make loving choices from how our bodies feel. The way you live is felt so strongly in the way you write. In just this exert you wrote that stood out for Mary too you tell me about –
consistency – the choices you make moment to moment – for me this includes a consistent quality in my posture, how I hold by body when I sit, lie down, walk, pick objects up, open and close doors and as you say every moment I can choose this awareness, every moment offers me the possibility to hold my body tenderly. This is so beautifully tied in with not being a victim to life and the way we live it is up to us. So often we shun responsibility as an obligation, burden or ‘should’, here you show me being the captain of our own ships is empowering not a duty.
Sweet sweet practical timely reminder Deanne, thank you!
Kate I love what you have written here of your journey back to the woman you are and the joy of your writing and words.
Your final words are a prayer Kate, and I will remember them when I need to come back to all that I innately am.
There are so many rules in our world telling us who to be and how to be it. That they do not work is clear, but where to go when you have tried it all and nothing has succeeded? Thank God for Universal Medicine. By the time I got there I had passed out of a brief “hippy chick” phase and had entered a “completely given up” phase. Now I have discovered the rich well that is the truth of who I am. I draw upon it in all I do – as imperfect as I am. It is my source and the place I return to in a crazy and demanding world, and it is always there for me, still, delicate and knowing.
Yes, this rich well keeps us out of the drama and the emotions and makes us stand like a tree in the storms that surround us.
Oh I love the way you put this delorme2013, the reminder that the dramas can just go on around but we have the capacity to just watch and not join in – not have it absorb us, but stay in our own steadiness. So much less tiring too!!
Absolutely! the amount of energy we spent in engaging in drama’s, can now be spent on truly caring for ourselves.
Well said delorme2013, we now have to space to truly care for ourselves, leaving those drama’s forever behind..
I so love this Rachel. ‘Now I have discovered the rich well that is the truth of who I am. I draw upon it in all I do – as imperfect as I am. It is my source and the place I return to in a crazy and demanding world, and it is always there for me, still, delicate and knowing.’
You have started a beautiful thread here Rachel and the beautifull thing is, when we live from that well in that innate glory of being a woman, we will be the ones that can be turned to by those who find themselves in that tough spot we ourselves were once too.
Dear Rachel,
I love your sharing here “Now I have discovered the rich well that is the truth of who I am. I draw upon it in all I do – as imperfect as I am. It is my source and the place I return to in a crazy and demanding world, and it is always there for me, still, delicate and knowing.”
I am quickly realising that the only thing that I can truly rely on is the true essence of who I am. These sentences are truly beautiful. No matter the imperfections, I am me, and this is so to be celebrated and held with the preciousness that comes from deep within me. Thank you.
Exquisitely put Rachel. The feeling of your essence shines through here and all you have become is truly precious and inspiring to me!
Here, here, thank God for Universal Medicine.
Thank you Kate for sharing. This is beautiful and a true reflection of who I know you to be – Stillness, Grace and Love
‘It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky.’ this is so beautiful to feel Kate, thank you ✨
Grace, flow, power, delicateness, stillness – the beauty and truth of your words, Kate, offer a beacon of light for all women out there who labour under the illusion of false ideals and beliefs. Thank you.
Yes Kate you are a lighthouse in the storm of ideals and beliefs of what it is to be a woman. You have offered here a true path forward.
This is so inspiring, a beautiful blog. Thank you Kate.
Thanks Kate, this was beautiful to read, its amazing how we search for so many ways to be in this world. But the most fulfilling way is simply by living what is inside, honouring who we are.
This is exquisite to feel the true Essence of a woman, as is so beauty-fully embodied by you Kate.
Kylie I agree. Kate you are the embodiment of a true Woman. Truly inspirational.
As more women in the world begin to claim this and express from their deeply divine and true precious essence we will begin to see heaven lived on earth again, reflected through a balanced and true feminine energy. A golden age!
Kate, the way you have described you true self is totally gorgeous and divine. I have of late, been pondering on how free and connected I felt as a child and how I now long to connect back to that more deeply. Thank you for the inspiration.
I just love the imagery and truth that you present in the following lines Kate; thank you for your honesty and wisdom.
“It is grace, like a spring breeze barely shifting the grass as it passes.
It is flow, like the steady passage of a clear warm stream around obstacles.
It is power, like a mighty oak standing and watching, seeing all, unwavering.
It is the delicateness of a rose in the morning dew.
It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky.
This is me – coming steadily home to the woman I am.”
yes, these references to nature are beautiful. The first time I read this blog a few months back I don’t think I let myself connect with what they offer. This time I let them remind me of what is there within to feel and claim as me.
Yes incredibly arresting and delicately beautiful. Like us all!
What a lovely confirming blog to read Kate, thank you 🌷
That is very beautiful Kate, thank you.
This is beautiful Kate how you have come home to you, living as a true woman in natural love, stillness and joy. And through letting go of the idealistic pictures of what a woman should be you show other women that there is a love inside us that feeds us back; that we don’t have to keep pushing to live our true power.
I love that turn of phrase..”coming home to you”, it denotes something so easy and natural and a part of us and all we live. Naturally flowing form us.
There are indeed so many images how a woman should be, do, act, perform, look like. I also had my questions when I was young and saw the older women around be doing noble needs. There was a lot of taking care of others extensively. What I could feel was that the care was not equally given to themselves. I felt this was missing, but hey, it was all about being there for others. The turn around for me was when I learnt: taking care of me via my body. There lied and still lies the key to be the woman we are. Every day I am connecting with me, my body. That in itself is the relationship I am building now. Being tender with myself ánd at the same time discovering there is already a tenderness ín me is my next discovery. What a treasure we have within to uncover!
Yes Caroline I agree. I would always hear and see the caring of others being a priority over the care of self. In fact to be self-less was considered to be appropriate. However how can one care for others without self-care first?
Exactly, Caroline and Kathryn putting the care of others before self-care is a huge consciousness that needs to be broken in women, before we can truly return to the woman within.
Beautifully said Caroline. I remember being a child checking out the mums around that were in ‘caring extensively for others’ mode (which seemed in my observation to involve a lot of baking cakes and winning children’s favour, trying to say you were full was not an option), and your very sweet typo sums it up…not noble deeds but needs. As a child the women who were on the surface ‘all give’ felt like the most needy of all and infact, all take, with no foundation within, and seeing themselves as mums not really women. Imagine that level of dedication brought first to self, what was offered to others could have taken on a whole self contained needless warm depth. Love your sharing Caroline.
I so agree Caroline. “The turn around for me was when I learnt: taking care of me via my body.” This line gave me a moment to pause. As women we can make it so complicated when it comes to caring for ourselves and use the belief that there is never enough time for me. Yet when it is simplified like in this line and it is about caring for our body, the time is and always has been there, it is just that we may have been using the time to abuse our body, for example in what we eat and how we treat our body when doing the simple things like getting dressed. Where now that same time can be used to care deeply for our body, choosing foods that truly support our body and tenderly holding ourself as we go about doing what is to be done in our day.
Great point Leigh – its almost like we tend to see ‘self care’ as a separate activity to add to our lists and schedule or ‘fit in’ in one separate block – and have beliefs about how this is meant to look, or measure up to – but rarely perhaps do we feel the simplicity of self care being simply the way we do everything we do right through every moment of the day – with not a day spa ‘pamper session’ – or ‘beach holiday’ or ‘me time’ necessarily in sight. I love your example of how we dress ourselves and can really relate to this example – am I with my body, feeling my feet on the floor, and fingertips on the clothing and dressing in an exquisite tenderness wrapping myself in the celebration of the warm glow I feel inside…or as tends to be the case, already thinking about the next 10 things that need to be attended to, with three children talking to me at once, and one hand on the next task… Caring for ourselves via our quality in all moments is revolutionary.
Kate it is revolutionary, yet the simplest most honest thing that I have discovered for myself. I so giggled when you talked about getting dressed with three children and thinking ahead. I so remember those days in my life. And still there are days when I give more credence to what is coming, in thinking ahead of myself than simply enjoying the exquisiteness of each moment till I get to what is ahead of me. I must say though the feeling of exquisiteness is winning hands down and I find myself now pulling myself up when I am not feeling it. This I feel is truly nurturing my body, for my body melts when I do this.
This is such a big one. When I see this I realise there is imbalance, when the care is not first lived then shared with others.
Kate, your words are beautifully expressed and relatable for all women in the world. Helping them to see another way forth for themselves by returning to their own natural and gorgeous inner beauty and love.
This story of change is so profound, it can be hard to believe, at least hard to believe it is there for all women. You have overcome so much Kate, and yet your story is very real, and I know many women who have a similar story. There is another way, and Esoteric Women’s Health is leading that way.
Yes it truly shares for women that there is ANOTHER WAY FORWARD.
Lovely to come back to your blog Kate and what it is to be a true women and not the stereotypes that we have been led to believe. Loved your final paragraph I could feel the grace, flow, power, delicateness and stillness within myself as I read it. So confirming.
Yes so confirming Alison, I felt the power of that last paragraph too and how it felt in the body just letting this expresssion sink in.
a beautiful article to return to read over and over
And published over and over!
Your commitment to turning your life around from one of abuse and disregard to a re-connection and honouring of the woman you always knew yourself to be is truly inspiring.
Your blog sounds like a fairy tale because it is so beautiful. Thank you.
It does sound like a fairy tale. The true essence of a woman is just so beautiful – beyond words and beyond this world. The only difference here is that we don’t have to imagine this. We can live the fairytale and make it really real.
So true. Wouldn’t it be great if our girls and boys were told these True fairytales! We need to live the Truth and Tell the Truth of who we really are.
Grace, flow, power, delicateness, stillness….
That is a woman!
Yes and what a woman! True strength, deep love and amazing eyes.
That is waiting within us. Waiting for us to claim it!
a gourgeous and very inspiring article.
Absolutely!
I love the way you share Kate and I am very much inspired by the profound changes you have made to be in the glow of the true woman you always were.
I too am absolutely inspired by you words Kate. You make me feel like it’s so natural, so already there within.
“the true woman I was looking for outside me was in fact something within, that never left me, but that I left her, in my external quest. ” Kate this is a beautiful way to look at
separation, that under the mess that we creat is still the beautyfull essence of who we are waiting for us to return. It didn’t go anywhere.
This is simply gorgeous Kate, it really stopped me and allowed me to connect to all those beautiful qualities of being a woman. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Universal Medicine has also ‘reintroduced me to that true me inside that was there all along’. I too was looking outside me for the true woman I am, but could not find it out there in the reflection from false role models. It wasn’t until Natalie Benhayon fully claimed herself as the woman she is, that we women had the reflection of a true role model who inspires us to nurture, value and appreciate ourselves and no longer be dependent on outside approval
I have really enjoyed reading this again, Kate. It made me realise that from a very young child being a woman or having an awareness of my femaleness was never discussed with me in any way associated with my own inner beauty but was purely functional- that is getting a bra or pads for my menstrual cycle. I was brought up on a farm in the country and came from a large loving family where being a boy seemed to be more fun (I have five brothers). My first memorable awareness of appreciating myself as a woman was at the school balls but this was really an externalised version of awareness and was full of comparison in the process. Most of my adult life I have expressed my femaleness on the outside and this has never been enough- no amount of clothes, makeup or jewellery allowed me to express myself as the gorgeous woman I know that I am today!
It is really since I have been with Universal Medicine that I have truly appreciated myself as a woman from the inside out and this is an ongoing blossoming for me.
A great insight into all the external paths that you looked upon until you finally got to feel it come from within.
Kate you have really exposed the craziness of all the different systems, institutions, behaviours, role models and ideals that take women away from themselves. You have shown how many women feel lost and inferior no matter how much fame or beauty or intelligence they have. The way you have described your inner beauty and homecoming is very delicious.
Great summary Bernadette. “the craziness of all the different systems, institutions, behaviours, role models and ideals that take women away from themselves.” There is sure plenty (everythign we see!) to choose from that tells us we are to live up to this or that, but very little leading the way in living from the inside first, and very little showing that nothing but living from within is working, and as you say Bernadette, its all pretty much crazy. My life continues to be more amazing – loving being a woman and being me, nothing outside me could have brought me remotely close to this inner lovliness.
Kate,
I have become quite a fan of your articles and what I see is you really allow people a glimpse of your interesting life. I feel woman everywhere would benefit from writing like this as we all have experienced looking outward on one level or another. I know that I was trying to find a Role Model as a kid was hard all I came up with at the time was Madonna. All my others were off Hollywood movies and so naturally I thought that sexualising myself at a very early age was the answer I was looking for. It is our responsibility as a society to be true role models now.
Thank you Kate I look forward to your next blog…..
So true Sarah, women everywhere would benefit from writing like this – we all would benefit from the perspective and experience we offer of all those wild goose chases. Great you enjoyed the articles Sarah, next blogs are on the way… You’d be a hands down awesome editor…would work with you anytime.
This blog feels like a tender loving caress, the words have the grace you mention in your line, ‘It is grace, like a spring breeze barely shifting the grass as it passes.’ Wow that is some true woman.
Wow Kate !! What is so amazing about reading this Blog, and I didn’t know I was until the end, I was deeply appreciating you yesterday as a mum and as the beautyfull woman you are when I saw you walking with your son. YOU ARE A TRUE ROLE MODEL. It is Joyfull to know there is woman like you around. To go through so much growing up (like most of us have) and to so quickly change the way we were living by taking full responsibility just by been shown a different way – A Way To Live that you live and it cannot be taken away from you, only you can take it away! Very special and so natural – A Living Way For All !
Wow Rik, so gorgeous to receive this loving comment – we so have to stop and appreciate how very far we’ve come sometimes (often!) hey. Love the reminder that nothing can take away (or give us) the way we live with except ourselves.
And this absolute gorgeousness is in ordinary everyday moments. I saw Kate yesterday washing her car at the end of an event – the result of some very playful birds who had a great day. Kate’s beauty and grace was shining through, the fact of washing her car mattered not an instant. A true role model and a personal inspiration. Thank you Kate
Sweet Jennifer, I love washing my car with all of me, feels so lovely (like really really lovely!), yep even after the birds have used it as a bathroom. All daily stuff feels so lovely when we’re shining from within, delicate hands just flow through it all with so much more warmth and fun. Thanks for the sweet reminder.
Kate I could feel the warmth, deep love and nurturing you hold for yourself. Thank you for the glorious reflection of what it means to be a true woman.
Dear Kate, I related so much to what you have shared here (even the shaved head!) We get so duped by what we see outside of us, it’s so easy to think that we are rejecting the so called societal norms only to find we have taken on some ‘alternative’ but equally external way of identifying ourselves. There is so much out there to distract us from the fact that who we truly are, as women, is already right here, deep within us aching to come out. I share your deep appreciation of Natalie Benhayon for offering us all the reflection of how to live ourselves from the inside out. Thank you.
Gorgeous Gemma. “it’s so easy to think that we are rejecting the so called societal norms only to find we have taken on some ‘alternative’ but equally external way of identifying ourselves” – so true and well said, while we’re still defining ourselves from a tag, a label or an identity, from outside in, no matter how so called ‘alternative’ – we’re really still ‘duped’ and conforming. Love your comment, it was the reacting to it all that brought me unstuck, had I just stayed with me – felt it all and let it all play out, it might have been a different story I got to share, one where I maybe even ‘kept my hair on’.
‘At no stage did I consider that the ‘it’, the true woman I was looking for outside me was in fact something within, that never left me, but that I left her, in my external quest.’ And that is the beauty of returning to the beautiful woman within, because she has always been there and has never left. So it is not something we have to go search for just something to re-connect and slowly feel ourselves back to, by simply allowing ourselves to honour and cherish the preciousness that we are.
‘being a woman was to be flawless, underweight and tantalising for men.’ Sadly and devastatingly, this is what many women believe. I know I believed this as a young woman and I see it in many other women, especially the young trying to find their way in this pretty loveless world. It takes us down destructive and degrading pathways that are based on no truth what-so-ever, and leaves us with scars that are usually covered up in shame with other self-abusive behaviours. The new French laws banning skinny models because of the impression it gives young women is a good sign that this is not the way we as a society want our women to think or behave. Let’s keep speaking up and changing this immensely devaluing situation we have created and allowed.
I loved reading your blog Kate, I feel like I have learned and formed a greater understanding of what a true woman is, but the best part is the fact that I can know go away and feel what it is to be a true woman in my body. I can start to ask my self what does it feel to be woman called Madeline.
Kate your descriptions of what is a true woman are deeply touching. This line particularly stood out to me……It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky. It speaks volumes of who we are and where we are from.
Wonderful blog Kate. I enjoyed the flow of your self discovery and the way you were able to discern clearly even as a young child that what you were being told/given was false. You describe some markers along the way that gave clear messages of where the truth lay (ie the answers lay in you just being the natural ‘you’, not in meeting the rules and expectations of other people or organisations) so I can imagine how lovely it must feel for you to have now come back ‘home’.
Thanks Kate for sharing what you have lived and the way you capture and express the detail of your observations. I found this sentence in particular ponder worthy, ‘……. I gradually began to come back to my body, and feel that the way I live my life and my relationship with myself as a woman is up to me and the choices I make in each moment.’
“Later I went to boarding school and was exposed to lots of images of women in videos and glamour magazines, which told me that being a woman was to be flawless, underweight and tantalising for men. Makeup seemed only to be worn as a mask – to portray self as desirable and to measure one’s worth based on feedback from men, or in comparison to other women, to see self as ‘better’. It all felt pretty shallow and yucky to me.”
Me too and there may be plenty of other men who feel the same.
Thank you Christoph.
Definitely Christoph, for men there are also hundreds of ‘tick boxes’ they are expected to fill. As Kate said in her article, us women often measure our worth against feedback from men, or out of comparison with each other – so it’s interesting to hear that for men the situation is quite similar (just reversed).
I love your blog Kate. So awesome to read about your journey to finding the beautiful and true woman that you are and thank you for inspiring me to do the same.
Wow, that was beautiful to read Kate, thank you. It is true, so many ‘bum steers’, and never quite getting what was already there within us, until Serge Benhayon presented it. It is amazing to come back to that knowing.
Kate your blog resonates deeply within me. Reflecting on my own story there are some parallels, but I see that at some stage I simply gave up because it was all too hard ‘to get it right’ and I was very lost to myself. Thanks to Natalie and other amazing women like yourself I am now enjoying being me.
Yes it is a huge bouquet of thanks to All the Esoteric Women Practitioners and Students for radiating their loveliness for all to feel and choose for ourselves. Yah!!! It is truly a wonderful experience, one worth developing.
Absolutely captivating… Thank you for sharing your story Kate
I am no longer a victim to life, just like you I feel I am the captain of my own ship and I know where I am going to.
To see the transformation from the make-up as a mask to make-up being an expression and self-worth is beautiful. To know that one is beautiful before the make up and then to enjoy putting it on is such a liberation, and lovely to observe.
Yes, it is such a gorgeous shift to make Chris, and can you imagine just how lovely, all these sweet soft brushes sweeping so lightly across our tender faces, a mirror with our eyes shining back, and a celebration of the light that sparkles. It really is an ever deepening joy to play with this sharing and expressing of who we are as women.
and further more, ‘not one seemed any more content than any other woman I had ever met or observed.’ words serving to break down the belief that being wealthy or as it might be called ‘privileged’ does not bring a woman contentment – this as you say so clearly in this blog, comes from within us. Thank you Kate.
The drive to be wealthy or privileged is huge for the majority of humanity. We erroneously think that it will bring the sense of loving belonging we actually crave.
Yes Lisa and Anna, and also comparison is so rife amongst women, this drive can be one of seeking to be ‘better’ than other women as a means of looking down on others being a kind of ‘success’. The goal of wealth is one of an easy, ‘secure’ and comfortable perhaps even indulgent lifestyle….but no amount of empty pampering, ‘luxury’ holidays or hardened career drive is ever going to cut it when we are lost to our own exquisite loveliness.
Hi Kate, one of the things I have come to understand about why women may seek to be better then another woman, and this being from my own experience of doing this myself, is that this comes from feeling less and not enough in the first place. Hence the need to feel ‘better’ then another to feel good about oneself. But this is so not the way. What I have now discovered is that it is up to us to develop within ourselves a love that is so deep, there is no need to put ourselves greater then or lessor then another – we are all equally as beautiful in essence.
‘something I couldn’t make fit with how I felt inside, which was as heavenly as the flowers that swayed in the breeze outside church’ – what a gorgeous description and testament to ourselves as women Kate. Definitely a comment worth sitting in the naughty corner for, and ever so inspiring that you would do the time in standing up for your true self. Feeling much appreciation and inspiration from your sharing.
Yes Anna, easily worth sitting on the ‘God is judging you and so am I’ chair – If only I had not eventually taken on the imposition of this and stayed steady in my gorgeous natural real relationship with and knowing of God. So very precious to be finally coming back full circle and feel him holding us all with such stupendous love again, a love so grand it never went anywhere, but I played into a charade of it not being equally in me… pretty potty stuff.
Thank you Kate, I very much enjoyed reading this. ‘It is power, like a mighty oak standing and watching, seeing all, unwavering.’
Wow Kate – just gorgeous. Thank you for sharing your unfolding into the beauty-full woman that I know you to be today.
So simple “I gradually began to come back to my body, and feel that the way I live my life and my relationship with myself as a woman is up to me and the choices I make in each moment.”. I loved your blog Kate and it shows just how far away from ourselves we can get – I relate to that, but how simply we can return.
wow Kate just LOVED READING THIS, Thank you!
Thank you Kate. Learning to acknowledge the beautiful woman I am is new to me. I’ve lived in the body of a woman, without fully embracing what that meant. For many years I compared myself to other women and saw myself as less. When complimented by others on my beauty and grace, I didn’t fully appreciate or accept what was said. I no longer do this, because I now feel how gorgeous and lovely I am.
This blog is full of be-you-ty Kate. I loved reading your descriptions of the essence of a woman. These pictures, of the stillness of the stars, are the ones that ring true to me. They certainly put the images you grew up with in the shade.
Wow, Kate you had me hooked from the beginning. What a beautiful and inspiring blog of your experiences in coming back to the true woman that you are, and it was hiding inside you all along, awesome thank-you.
Dear Kate, I love how you openly shared your search for your inner self as a woman and externally they felt unsatisfactory and not you. A journey I too can relate.
I heard a story once of a poor beggar sitting on a box in the streets. Another man walked passed this beggar a few days in a row and one day curiosity stopped him to ask what was in the box that he was sitting on? The beggar said he didn’t know. The passerby suggested, why don’t you look inside. The beggar did and to his shock it was full of unbelievable jewels, gold and riches beyond measure.
We too need to stop begging for nonsustaining handouts and scraps from outside and look for our riches “within.”
I love how you describe women Kate, it feels so beautiful and reminds me of the sacredness women carry and emanate.
Wow what a montage of disinformation we can be fed as kids and young people, and the diet may vary according to culture creed or nationality, but whatever is instilled in the child or youth, it will not be the truth of how we can return to who we truly are, and that our innate beauty is truly divine.
I like how you put it, “a montage of disinformation”… so true, and nowadays all this falsity can be widely spread by so many different means. It is also true that the world has forgotten what a treasure we hold inside of ourselves just waiting to be re-discovered, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, by the comments shared on these pages it is inspirational to hear of the many who are beginning to re-discover their own innate divine beauty within.
Kate what a very poignant sharing. It is amazing that throughout you actually knew that what was being offered to you was not “it” -the way back to you. I think that many of us will be able to relate to your story at different levels. Thank you.
It is true Kate so many women look outside themselves to know how to be a woman. I did that too very much and with the inspiration of Natalie Benhayon I have become more aware of this ideal I held. Now I start to feel that if I honour me I feel me more and more and that I know inside me, very well how to be a woman, in fact I Always knew just did not trust what I felt was true!
Kate this is so beauty-full! Thank you very much for sharing your story here. I, too didn´t know what it means to be a true woman but slowly I am coming back to my inner knowing. From my experience only few women know what it means to be a true women as indeed there are only very few true role models. One true role model is definitely Natalie Benhayon who has inspired me (and so many other women) to return to my own true and inner beauty. It is awesome to observe the unfolding and blossoming of so many women around me who also choose to connect back to their inner beauty.
I absolutely love how you describe what it is to be a woman:
“It is grace, like a spring breeze barely shifting the grass as it passes.
It is flow, like the steady passage of a clear warm stream around obstacles.
It is power, like a mighty oak standing and watching, seeing all, unwavering.
It is the delicateness of a rose in the morning dew.
It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky.”
Wonderful.
Thank-you Kate for this beautiful article. What we put ourselves through in different ways is crazy. Thanks to the beautiful role model that Natalie Benhayon expresses through the way she is, it has shown you, me and many many others how by deepening our connection back to ourselves and by being more nurturing and caring of ourselves is what being a woman in her true essence really is.
The Grace, Flow, Power, Delicateness and Stillness you speak of here is bodily felt, Kate. And what is amazing is that this is within every woman equal, young and old. I can relate in so many ways to your search outside, and also to slowly and steadily coming back to reclaim the true woman, all that is above, and to live this in as many moments as possible in my day, looking now at what gets in the way of my claiming and holding this within myself. Thank you for you Kate, and your beautiful sharing that I feel many many women will relate with.
Thank you Kate – this reminds me that behind a woman’s clothes, hair, makeup or what she does, is a profound sense of beauty, power and natural delicateness that we can all connect with.
I loved reading this before I start my day and go out into the world as the real me.
Kate, what a gorgeous, gorgeous blog! I love the truth you share of who you have always known yourself to be. This stood out like a beacon! The fact that at some point you shaved your head, took drugs and lost yourself felt like a little blimp on the radar. Your true magnificence shines through, just beautiful!
I agree Kate – in perspective, that time in (the other) Kate’s life was just a small blip in comparison to how incredibly she lives now.
Wow Kate, there is a book here that will truly support humanity; let alone women. Your expression is exquisite and like Kevin, I was captivated. Thank you and I will now reread!
I can recall going through different phases of what I would wear, different trends and styles and ‘looks’ in order to make a certain impression. Never would I dress for me and from the inside out, I didn’t even have a clue that there was such a way. Thanks to Esoteric Women’s Health and the presentations by Natalie Benhayon, I am now learning that it is actually very natural and tender to look after me and dress me from how I feel and what is needed.
I totally get what you’re saying here Gabriele. I have been loving selecting clothes lately not as a ‘what impression do I want to ‘put out’, or avoid, or ‘how does my personality dress’, or ‘what look do I want to be identified by or define myself as’….or even dressing in lovely things to ‘make me feel lovely’, from a lack,…. but now from a whole new paradigm of dressing from my light, from a lived loveliness coming back out and naturally expressing, without need or identification or branding or boxing my style as this or that, just feeling how I dress my light to bring all of me to the world. Fun, playful, grace. Such a contrast from how it used to be, and getting to be ever more lovely fun as I continue re-turning to be-you-ty.
I love how everything about us can express who we are or who we are not. It is actually very easy to feel if our clothes or hair, for example, are expressing our true light and beauty or hiding it.
Well Kate this blog certainly had me as a captivated audience. With all that this world has to offer whether it be religious, spiritual or material nothing beats connecting to that true love that’s inside us all. Nothing can fill the gap except love.
Beautiful Kevin – a very simple and true statement that says everything.
Wow! Thank you for sharing.
Before Universal Medicine I did not even consider there was such a thing as being a true woman. You where either born a man or a woman. Your blog Kate is beautiful and introduces the qualities we all naturally as woman have inside of us. And what we can choose to connect to.
Kate your connection with grace, delicateness, stillness, power and flow feel deeply honoring. I love the reflection you share, between nature and the exquisite beauty and tenderness of being a women. Thank you.
Oh my goodness Kate – you have such a beautiful gift in your ability to express yourself – your words are so lovely to read and so beautifully poetic in such an uplifting way! Thank you for your endless inspirations!!!
“It is power, like a mighty oak standing and watching, seeing all, unwavering.” I can see and feel this oak and how wonderful we can be as this oak, in stillness and observing life and be in this divine power.
Wow Kate…what a Be-You-Ty of a blog! I loved reading your experience of coming back to the true woman you naturally are. Thank you for highlighting the qualities of a true woman grace, flow, power, delicateness and eternal stillness. A timely reminder that these qualities forever live inside me and every woman and that I can choose to re-connect to these qualities in every moment.
I loved reading your blog Kate. Thank goodness you persisted so, now we all get to feel the amazing, beautiful you. I feel I wasn’t as questioning as you. I was fairly acquiescent in my acceptance of my role as a woman, which was largely moulded by those around me, and had nothing to do with connecting back to me. If I reflect back on how I have changed over the past 7 years, it’s pretty dramatic. I certainly never used to wear a dress, as I am today. I had no concept of what being tender truly meant and I wasn’t able to feel the love from another as I didn’t show any to myself. I could reflect on how ‘sad’ this was, but instead I choose to enjoy how amazing I feel right now, in the simple appreciation of ME.
I loved this Kate. The exposing of all the things throughout your life that we fall for as woman, become owned by and give our power away to was sensational. You named them from the obvious to the more subtle. Thank you.
Kate, I find I keep coming back to this blog, it is beautiful, but today I felt absolute appreciation for me and how far I have come back to me.
Thank you for sharing
This line really resonated with me …I am not a victim to life, but a participant in it and in fact, I am the captain of my own ship….” Choices…Expressing from what feels true from within and trusted it.
Thank you Kate…cool blog. Their are many roles out there in life, that we as women, can choose to play that are not true, or we can make another choice and connect to what is innately within us.. our essence…the very core of us. From here we can naturally express the true women we are.
Yes thank God for universal Medicine where I too experienced the reflection of true vital radiant women, deep thanks to Natalie, the gorgeous women in the student body and the lovely female practitioners who have supported me on my journey to let the woman I am out in full and while I have been rediscovering her.
I couldn’t agree more – where are the role models that show the world that you just need to be the amazing person you are, and that amazingness is already inside you? Thank heavens this is slowly changing 🙂
A beautiful blog that reminds me to come back to my inner me, my essence and live from there and not seek the answers outside of myself. I love your lovely analogies with nature, Kate, thank you.
‘ The knowing was always there as a child of what it is to be a true woman.’ This is absolutely true and it reminds me to deepen my honouring and respect for children and also of myself at all times as a true woman. Thank you Kate.
So beautiful Kate – thank you. The irony of the many side paths taken is so true. As I re-claim myself as the women I am it’s truly wonderful to be amongst so many lovely women doing this for themselves.
Wow Kate, your blog came to me this morning like a nourishing breeze. To remember what I truly am is so vital. Lovely, tender sharing and reflection – thank you.
A very beautiful sharing, Kate, of your journey back to you. Isn’t it incredible how much time and energy so many of us have spent seeking ourselves “out there”; looking for someone to complete us, looking for the perfect body that we are told we need to have, etc; whereas all the time everything we are, and everything we need, has been waiting patiently within, whispering gently “I’m here”. I am so glad that I finally stopped long enough to hear the whisper, turned my search within and found me.
” celebrating as I once did as a young girl running through the tall grass or playing amongst the trees – glowing from within – needing nothing more.”
Kate, I also have a beautyfully memory of myself as a young girl running in the
paddock, singing and dancing, happily running, the memory is so clear that I can close my eyes and feel how joyful I was even 50 years latter.
Thank you Kate. Reading your blog I can really feel how I know inside I am beautiful but that I am still often looking outside to feel my worth. Like doing the right things and if something does not go as I thought doubt comes in. Though I can feel it is an unfolding and your sentence “I am not a victim to life, but a participant in it and in fact, I am the captain nof my own ship more than I had ever dared feel previously.” is such a great reminder to feel that I can choose to feel my beauty and worth in every moment.
I really related to what you describe to looking outside myself for a true role model of what a woman is and how much I have looked outside of myself to try to find the “right” way to be a woman. This is something that I still catch myself doing – “checking” myself to see if I am getting it right and feeling insecure about myself. It is very much something that I am aware of and working on.
Great call out on the notion that so easily creeps in of finding the ‘right way’ be a woman. For example, Natalie Benhayon is an amazingly awesome true and inspirational role model…but it would not work if we all tried to be just like her, the inspiration is to be fully who we are. “This is something that I still catch myself doing – “checking” myself to see if I am getting it right and feeling insecure about myself. It is very much something that I am aware of and working on.” Gorgeous call out of comparison and the falseness of living up to a picture, rather than surrendering into our bodies and just being from there.
Thank you for your experience that you have shared Kate. I got the realization what depth and levels of sabotage present to unsettle our inner knowing and our perception of beauty. Our beautifulness is normal,natural and known as little children.
Yes – thank you to Natalie Benhayon, Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine for showing us all that our divine inner essence is within us and was always there and has never left us. We just choose to reconnect to it. Thank you Kate for this wonderful blog to remind us of this.
Thank you Kate for such a lovely encouraging blog. I am still really just getting the picture of just what it is to be a real woman , to feel the loveliness and love myself and my body just the way they are.
Kate your blog is an inspirational start to my day, a great reminder that we are born the full package of beauty.
Thanks Kate awesome sharing of where you were where you have been and where you are at. We get this notion to search for who we are out there and yet all along it was in us waiting to express.
I keep coming back to this blog and everytime it is amazing to read, like getting a new angle each time on the same subject. Everything is already within me, the woman, the delicateness, the warmth and much more. And yet despite understanding that I find myself still looking on the outside for who I am already on the inside. Yet as you have shared it is a gradual process. Learning to appreciate myself has been and still is a gradual process, it may just be the same for accepting that the woman I am is already within me.
I love what you talk about here Leigh – the ‘understanding that’, ‘Everything is already within me, the woman, the delicateness, the warmth and much more’. The ‘gradual process’ you describe is similar for me in that on one hand I’m ‘in’, ‘boots and all’ with the knowing – I can feel the amazingness of us all – no doubt – and the gradual part is the letting myself see, feel and say no to layers of (sometimes sneeky) old habits of hiding in ‘being(/acting) less’ than the gorgeousness – (so the whats gets in the way of living all that lovliness) – and what I got out of those old habits – few ouches there, and probably another blog. As I say no to the old inner critic, and approval seeking, and the ‘looking on the outside for who I am already on the inside’ (which all gradually drops away and holds less sway over me), I am claiming a resounding ‘yes’ to the amazing me and taking time to really appreciate that turn around and who I am, and even each ‘little’ daily choice to allow me to just be me – like the beautiful sound of a car door closing when I am ‘with me’ – our everyday miracles worth celebrating.
Powerful blog and beautiful descriptions of what it is to be a true woman. I particularly love this one “It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky.”
Truly beautiful blog Kate, I have come back to love the feeling of walking as me, a true inspiration of how we can transform our lives.
” ….lots of images of women in videos and glamour magazines, which told me that being a woman was to be flawless, underweight and tantalising for men. Makeup seemed only to be worn as a mask”
Which for me for many years, was part of the reason why I chose to be overweight, not to wear make up or be tender as I thought that doing these things would make me ‘weak’ and lesser. It is really amazing to see through the eyes of truth, that women are at their most powerful when fully embracing the fragility and tenderness which is innately in us all.
“It is really amazing to see through the eyes of truth, that women are at their most powerful when fully embracing the fragility and tenderness which is innately in us all.” – I so love this and it is so true – turns everything we currently hold of ‘value’ uspide down entirely. Our power is in our tendernes equally so for all – hardness or drivenness is not power – it cannot be externally measured, like ‘success and power’ – only internally connected to – and yet we are sold this from young. This one sentance – ‘women are at their most powerful when fully embracing the fragility and tenderness which is innately in us all’ totally sweeps away the whole topsy turvyness.
This is so beautiful Kate. Knowing the woman you are today and the grace and beauty that you hold, it is difficult to imagine how you could have been any other way. But how true is this for all of us! Until we know the absolute beauty that we so naturally are, the search just continues…because deep down we all know the truth. And the truth will never change.
Yes I felt that too Sara, knowing Kate it is difficult to imagine. But it is such a great reminder that those divine qualities that Kate writes about so so poetically beautifully (brought me to tears a few times) exists within each and every woman. I can feel great sadness that we are shown so many ways in our lives that take us from who we truly are and very grateful that I have found Uni Med and my fellow students who have become inspired to return & reconnect what is deeply within us all. Because all of us living this – within our own lives – is a living breathing example of what is possible and a counter-balance to what is not.
I really relate to the way you describe this way of living Kate. So many times I catch myself in ‘full steam ahead’ mode without having any tenderness for myself or others whatsoever. In fact I woke up feeling full of this drive today. Re reading your blog has allowed me to reconnect to the tenderness within again as I go about my day. Thank you.
I have been a good girl for years and years, putting others first. My frustration grew over the years of not being able to be myself and just giving my power away. Searching everywhere just like you for a solution for what I felt I was missing. Now I have discovered that everything is inside me and how lovely, graceful and beautiful I am, what a difference in everything in my life! I love your be-you-ty Kate.
Kate what an awesome blog. I love that you can now see that you actually knew all along what it was like to be a true women. You could feel how heavenly the flowers were that swayed in the breeze outside the church. Now you’ve remembered, after taking a few diversions along the way ( I may have passed you several times on my own detour : ) ) and can therefore enjoy the grace, flow, power, delicateness and stillness of a true woman that lies within us all, in your everyday. What a turn around.
Wow Kate! It is glorious to feel how you embody the Grace, flow, power, delicateness and stillness of a true woman – and to know these are in the beingness of every woman is simply stunning – thank you.
Those last few lines brought tears to my eyes. I am reminded that all women have the potential to live true to themselves and express all so have so beautifully shared here Kate. Thank you.
This is beautiful to read and I can really feel the commitment and dedication needed to truly connect to myself and make all the choices in building a body of true love.The joyful reclaiming of your self as a woman is truly inspiring Thank you Kate.
I love how, as a child, you rejected completely the then church held view of women – standing knowingly for what you could feel was the truth about women. Beautifully written and a joy to feel the re-claiming of you as a gorgeous woman.
Great article written in true fullness
I like your last sentence: true role models that reminded me of me. I have felt the same, after a session I remember saying to the beautiful practitioner: thank you for showing me who i am, and that is exactly what a true role model does, by reflection, I get to feel my own beauty, my light, my connection, and I feel it in me, not out there only. It is such an experience that expands me so much that I am deeply grateful.
Awesome Julia, I totally agree with you, true role models are the ones that remind us who we truly are by presenting their fullness without holding back. It is by that reflection we get to feel our own true beauty.
I totally agree Julia and Samantha, and would like to add that being around a true role model the likes of Natalie Benhayon one can tangibly feel her joy and vibrancy as a woman on a deep cellular level and this cannot help but inspire your very own cells to sing along with hers in the very same joy and vibrancy in celebration of your own womanhood.
I love your blog and your words and feelings about nature Kate: “I have come to reconnect to the fact that the beauty I have always felt in nature is in me too and I sometimes feel powerfully childlike again – celebrating as I once did as a young girl running through the tall grass or playing amongst the trees – glowing from within – needing nothing more.” I have the same joyful experience, nature is surprising time after time and I feel this glowing inside you describe so beautifully. Just wow, magic!
So lovely to read your blog again and I am inspired once more by your description of how it feels to be coming back to the woman you are.
‘It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky.’ So beautiful
If it were not for the ladies of this world, setting such wonderful examples for all to follow. Your wisdom at looking at issues and being so wise into the bargain.
Your loveliness is be to cherish by all for what you are. Gorgeous.
You also are gorgeous Mike as demonstrated by this very tender comment.
it’s amazing how many roles we can play thinking ‘this is me’ but all the while missing out on the real thing.
I smile each time I read the title to this blog. A crucial message to us all “be-you”. Re learning to not seek outside for me. I love the way you say that it is “with heartfelt appreciation I can say that I am steadily coming back full circle to the knowing that the knowing was always there as a child of what it is to be a true woman”. What a glorious cycle.
Kate, it is lovely to read that you knew as a child how to be a true woman felt, and it is horrible that you disconnected from this feeling because of all the pictures that are presented from society and through the lack of true role models. It is so great that you have been able to reconnect to your inner knowing and now start to live the true woman you feel you are from within. You are now a role model for others to reference to and you are breaking the mould that keeps women form the amazing beauty they are.
Reading your blog again Kate I have connected to the line where you say being a woman ‘is grace, like a spring breeze barely shifting the grass as it passes.’ Inspiring and beautiful.
A very precious contribution acknowledging and celebrating the beauty that is innate in all of us, thank you Kate.
I too have spent most of my life searching for ‘who I am’ with the strong belief that it is outside of me. So strong that when presented with the living fact that who we are is within us already, as seen in those like Natalie Benhayon, up comes feelings of disbelief and surprise. But why is that so if who I am is so natural and already within me? My legs are a natural part of me and yet I am not surprised that I have them, so why the disbelief in another quality that forms part of ‘me’?
This is a stunning blog Kate, as you shared how you unfolded into the amazing woman you are, I smiled in recognition of how many alleyways I went up to find myself, to then discover it was within me all the time. It took coming to Universal Medicine presentations for the penny to drop and then the process truly began. I am now on the ever unfolding journey and loving the honesty of it all. At last I am being the woman I am rather than pretending to be the woman I am not!
Yes I can relate to what you have said lorraine harris. Its also less tiring being yourself. Saves lots of energy!
Yes so much less tiring Debra – a whole new dimension to energy saving! When I feel all that I have put effort into over the years ‘trying’ to ‘prove myself’ -or be a certain way – or live up to this or that – from the words of a song by Chris James ‘when I was doing so much, just to be loved’ – ‘but now I know I can just be who I am – knowing I can come on back to me – knowing I have come on back to love’. Amen to that!
Grace, Flow, Power, Delicateness and Timeless Stillness – beautiful qualities of a True Woman.
Completely agree, great words describing the beautiful qualities of a True Women.
This is such a gorgeous reminder for us all of who we truly are. Thank you!
Yes Gill, it helps me too. To remember those early times, with the intention of reconnecting with who I am as a woman, and allowing myself to feel how it was in my body walking with me, and how I was feeling and thinking, shows me how being the woman I am is just being me! No role models, no seeking perfection, no comparisons, no rules, only living in my girl/woman body and expressing all that I am.
We are always a woman first, and i had forgotten that for a long time, Yes, i was born a girl, but for a long time, i did not really feel like a woman. And putting on a dress didn’t really help that. Feeling like a woman has to come from me, from inside, then for instance from a dress. More and more i feel like a woman now, and when i put on a dress now, it feels so differently. The dress just supports and expresses how i feel, and the beauty that is there.
A beautiful read every time – to appreciate the true essence of a woman beyond the many different pictures people paint of us. Women have been identified as so many things – but here you mark the importance of identifying with self first – and connecting to who we are before how we have been branded and marked by society.
Beautiful blog, Kate. I especially love:
‘the way I live my life and my relationship with myself as a woman is up to me and the choices I make in each moment. I am not a victim to life, but a participant in it and in fact, I am the captain of my own ship more than I had ever dared feel previously. ‘
So empowering for every woman to feel the captain of our own ship and choose where we will go to.
I recently looked at some photographs of women being with themselves and not looking outside for approval – they were not wearing that smiling ‘I’m Ok’ mask we put on when we go out into the world – these pictures were stunning. You could see and feel the innate grace and deep inner beauty of each woman and somehow the pictures inspired me to feel that within myself – something you rarely get from the posed pictures of celebrities and models in magazines.
So inspiring Kate, I could relate to the different people we turn to in life hoping they will give us the answers, or be role models for us to learn from. I have taken many ‘bum steers’ along the way too but I am coming full circle again and I can feel the beauty in your words that would have once eluded me, and so now when I read, the delicateness of a rose or the timeless stillness of the stars I can feel them as being within me too.
I LOVE your blog Kate – the title sums it up perfectly: “What Defines a True Woman? – Returning to Be-You-Ty”, because to be truly beautiful, you have to be-you, as you have so perfectly explained. It is not about being someone else, or living up to anyone else’s image of beauty that makes you truly beautiful on the inside and out.
A beautiful blog Kate. Your return home is an inspiration for me and I can feel for so many others too.
After re-reading this blog, I find myself still vey drawn to this quote “I am steadily coming back full circle to the knowing that the knowing was always there as a child of what it is to be a true woman.” I am coming to accept myself and can relate to this feeling of coming back to an awareness I held as a child that I buried as I grow older.It feels like returning home.
Thank you, Michelle. I too grew up trying to figure out how I was ‘supposed to be’. The one thing I certainly did not acknowledge or honour was my exquisite gentleness and sweetness, but it feels like it is never too late to get to know that part of us.
We get so fooled by the outer picture of what being a woman is that we forget to look inward and connect to our very essence which is the true definition of being a woman. “It is grace, It is flow, It is power, It is the delicateness, It is the timeless stillness.” I love these words, Kate. They describe our essence perfectly. When we truly feel this inside, it is an absolute given that we reflect this beauty on the outside.
Thank you Kate, the reflections of our beauty in nature that you describe are just gorgeous and so true – a powerful celebration of our innate qualities as women. I feel like I know you so well having read this blog, and the familiarity is that what you have shared with us is deeply personal and universal.
Thank you for sharing this gorgeous unfolding of your true self. it feels lovely to read and also lovely that on a personal level I can relate to so much of your story.
This is so beautiful Kate. I share your joy in rediscovering what it is to be a woman and embracing all that we are so naturally on the inside. So yummy.
Your description of coming home to you the woman you are is simply beautiful with the grace, delicateness ,majesty and humbleness being for everyone.
Thank you Kate a real inspiration.
I love re-reading your last lines of what it is to be a true woman, ‘It is …’I feel a majesty, a grace, a humbleness, a timeless wisdom within your words. Truly inspiring. Thank you.
I too found this lyrical description an inspiration, Rebecca, it gives me a wonderful feeling of movement, delicacy, power, and stillness, all I am as a woman.
what a great turn around from a false majesty of life, to the majestic and fine true woman you are today Kate, you shed light on the rot of class, background and education, and how the true education that any woman needs is the grace found inside herself. You capture so beautifully the lived true beauty of a woman reflecting much needed light in those dusty establishments of pomp and pageantry.
Wow Zofia, I had not read your comment here till just now, and boy is that gorgeous to read and a great reminder of the value of women reflecting a ‘much needed light in those dusty establishments of pomp and pagentry”.
‘I have come back to love the feeling of walking as me – unbound by things to live up to or to do to prove myself. Just walking in my own warm flow.’ This is lovely – I find that as I do my early morning walk, I can feel in my body a deep inner stillness and contentment that clears away the feeling of not being enough which has haunted me all my life.
This blog is so beautiful to come back to Kate, ever reminding us of the depth and true beauty of the woman within. With the recent full moon, huge, clear and bright, just appearing to be ‘hanging suspended in a starry sky – ‘I really appreciate these particular words –
“It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky. This is me – coming steadily home to the woman I am”.
I love your line …”to measure one’s worth based on feedback from men, or in comparison to other women, to see self as ‘better’.” – how true this is that we fall for this yet it is so far away from the power, grace and beauty we know is the real us deep within. Thank you for reminding us of who we Truly are as women.
This is just lovely, I smiled again reading this and feeling how beautifully the path has been taken by you Kate, no judgement, just a loving acceptance of how you came to know the true woman inside you. Thank you for sharing you and your journey with us all.
I agree Rebecca, these are truly beautiful words about the beauty of women
Beautiful sharing Kate thank you I can relate to so much of all you say and love reading your journey back to you . As you walk in your own flow reconnected to your beauty and childlike qualities within as a true woman ,celebrating and joyful like nature reflects with all its power, amazingness and wonder.
Thank you Kate, I can feel my true, loving essence having read your article.
amazing sharing of your journey back to home!
‘The way I live my life and my relationship with myself as a woman is up to me and the choices I make in each moment.’ Says it all, really. The only recipe that’s needed. The descriptions of the qualities of womanhood at the end of your blog are exquisite, capturing the purity, delicateness, strength and tenderness so many of us often deny in our daily lives. Makes for a wonderful checklist! Thank you.
Agree Cathy, I can also feel these delicate and tender qualities as true and disarming, in the most beautiful sense, this is part of the woman’s power.
Such beautiful qualities of a woman as described by you Kate; the grace, flow, power, delicateness and timeless stillness I can feel and recognise in myself and each and every one of us. Our differences with how we express these qualities is beautiful too.
This is so deeply beautiful Kate. Inspiring, uplifting and reconnecting. That you write from your connection to yourself as the divine woman you are is super-powerful and very healing for me, and I have no doubt many others, to read.
Agreed Lucy. This is a deeply inspiring, healing and powerul blog.
“It is the timeless stillness of stars in the silence of the night sky.” That you bring us right home to our female nature, the place from which all else springs, the Stillness within that is possible as we breathe gently and honour ourselves, is so beautiful Kate, thank you.
So beautiful to re-read your article Kate, I loved reading what it is to be a true woman, ‘It is power, like a mighty oak standing and watching, seeing all, unwavering.
It is the delicateness of a rose in the morning dew.
It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky.’ Wow, deeply inspiring.
Very true, the question of what truly is a woman is one that desparately needs to be answered. I know reading material like this blog growing up would have helped coax me out of considering it was better to stay a child than becoming like the unhappy women I saw around me.
“the true woman I was looking for outside me was in fact something within, that never left me, but that I left her, in my external quest” – such a welcome and powerful realisation. So much in life aggressively promotes the opposite to us. Yet as you say all of what we long for is deep within us, there is nothing outside of us more beautiful, more divine, more precious. And choosing to appreciate, honour and self-care is the first step back.
I appreciated and connected to all of this blog, thank you for sharing. Your journey back to self awareness and love is awesome. I particularly connected to two quotes the first “For many years (actually most of my life) I was lost to myself.” was a big reminder of how for many years I was numb and actually still find it hard to recall much that happened before my mid twenties, and I am not that old now! Making a commitment to get to know my self has woken me up for a self imposed stupor – I am Alive and Well! Also as a celebration, the second quote: “I am not a victim to life, but a participant in it and in fact, I am the captain of my own ship more than I had ever dared feel previously.” It is an incredible feeling to become responsible and not feel victim of circumstance. It felt very confirming of my own commitment and very supportive to read this blog. Thank you.
Funny how we know it as children but forget as adults – what happens in between that is so great we lose our sense of self? Is it our education? The attitudes of society? Whatever it is, the Esoteric Women’s Health Programme is great for helping us to return to who we truly are, beautiful women who can love and appreciate ourselves first, then all others equally.
True Carmel, I love to watch small children and see just how they are connected to themselves knowing who they really are, and I can remember that feeling too. It’s like I’ve done a crazy huge circle, losing myself, thinking that was great but in total illusion and then finding me again much later, with the help of the example of Natalie Benhayon and other Esoteric Practitioners.
Yes Gill I agree , children are a great reflection and reminder for us.
Kate thank you for sharing your journey in such a relatable way. It is really inspiring. your last line captures it for me ‘ it is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent nights sky ‘. I too am on my returning journey to the woman I am from within through making different choices, thanks to the presentations of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.
This article has stayed with me for many days. I keep on returning to it because I love the transformation and the return that has occurred in your life. This is inspiring. Thank you Kate.
‘the true woman I was looking for outside me was in fact something within’ – we all know deep inside who we truly are.
Great blog Kate. It’s an experience as women we have all walked in one way or another. Searching for something that’s true only to find that everything out there isn’t it. That something is us which only comes from re-connecting to our inner-essence and living from there. We know it deep inside (hence the search) but sadly have forgotten. There were no true role models for me until I came across Universal Medicine – which I thank God for every day. With women like Natalie Benhayon, so many of the student body and gorgeous women like yourself I now have many fabulous role models and am inspired each day on my return to claiming the beautiful woman I am.
It’s so true Heather and so clearly demonstrated enmasse in the many comments here that – ‘It’s an experience as women we all have walked in one way or another’ to have reached points where in our various ways we look around and say – ‘this is not it’ – and so search outside for a ‘better way’ etc – in all its many forms – sometimes believing this or that was ‘It’. Coming across amazing role models like Natalie Benhayon and so many others, like yourself in the Universal Medicine student body who live largely at ease in themselves leaves no doubt that there is a whole other way – a truer more real and vital steady way – a way we can be full of ourselves as women first. Thank God for Universal Medicine – Celebrating everyday that I’m on my way back to me.
‘It is grace, like a spring breeze barely shifting the grass as it passes.’ How beautiful, Kate, I find this line inspiring and reminding us how we can be in a way that does not impose, powerful like the oak, yet delicate like the rose. Thank you.
I love how you have shared your journey Kate. It is so inspiring. I love hearing, ‘ I sometimes feel powerfully childlike again – celebrating as I once did as a young girl running through the tall grass or playing amongst the trees – glowing from within – needing nothing more.’ Gorgeous. So different from looking outward to fit a role or expectation. Just being.
I remember that young girl too Karin, she got ‘busied away’ and lost that beautiful connection with her stillness. But its coming back. I don’t run through the tall grass anymore, but stand there and feel its flow, listen to its gentle rustling in the breeze and know that I iam enough, I am one with myself and God
I agree, a gorgeous quote to expand on, thank you Kate and Karin. The image of that free young girl is one that resonates with me and my youth, how I had this feeling of knowing and expressing the truth and how I chose to bury it as I came into contact with a world I felt did not understand me. It is wonderful to learn and experience that place once again, of expression, openness and joy. Thank you for sharing.
Absolutely Karin – that confidence we have as a young girl is very different to how most women are in adulthood; always looking out to measure their beauty rather than appreciating what is within.
“The true woman I was looking for outside me was in fact something within, that never left me, but that I left her, in my external quest.” This quote from your blog sums up what me and I suspect many women have done or still do. I too have been inspired by Universal Medicine and Esoteric Women’s Health practitioners to develop a relationship with myself which is about how I feel. Its so empowering when you become aware that you have a choice and can do things that honour the true woman inside. I love the way you sum up what it is to be a woman especially this line, “It is the delicateness of a rose in the morning dew.” Beautiful. I feel more connected to my delicateness after reading your blog. Thank you for sharing Kate.
Gorgeous Debra and Kate – from attending Universal Medicine’s presentations it is clear to me the importance of this: “to develop a relationship with myself which is about how I feel”
To read these words: Kate’s blog and the following comments, is like a shake down and forever invitation to honour, appreciate and live the true me I have always been inside; free of the book of rules and regulations I have written as I tried to make me make sense in the world from the outside in. Thank you.
For the first time in my life and after decades of looking outside myself for answers, I have found my own exquisite wisdom within and absolutely love being me. Thank you Universal Medicine.
Me too Matilda – reading all these comments is exactly as you say ‘like a shakedown and forever invitaion to honour, appreciate and live the true me I have always been inside’. Beautiful. Thank you one and all for wave after wave of gorgeous inspiration and sharing.
I agree a very inspiring blog of someone who has stopped the endless seeking outside for that answer to the question we all want answered. Who am I? I can say as a man that I have too looked outside of myself to others to find a niche or an image that I felt best fitted me. The truth is none of them fitted perfectly until I started looking within and truly honouring what I felt on the inside and started taking true care of myself.
Very well put Andrew – once we stop the endless search for something outside to tell us the answer we want to know we realise we had the answer all along. Also it is great to hear a man’s perspective on this.
I agree and have felt that the outside search is tiring and exhausting whereas when we look within, we seem to tap into an endless source of energy. Thank you Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon.
Exactly – the search outside of us is also endless, as we never quite find what we are looking for.
So true when we stop searching for the answers outside of us, we soon realise we had the answers all along, only if we stopped to listen and feel.
I agree, very well said.
An endless and exhausting search that ties us up in knots compared to the simplicity and knowingness that comes from within.
Searching is definitely exhausting and incredibly complicated – probably because we’re looking for something we already have!!
…’a very inspiring blog of someone who has stopped the endless seeking outside for that answer to the question we all want answered. Who am I?’ – Absolutely Andrew. It is incredible what we can do when we stop looking outside of ourselves to answer something only we can discern.
Brilliantly put Susie. When you put it like that I can see the madness in looking outside of myself for the answer to something only I can discern. A very helpful reminder.
Ahhh Andrew this is just Be-you-ty-full! As I read your words I had to stop as they are so true. There is nothing outside of us that matches the warmth, care and love that lives inside of us and when nurtured and looked after this love just blossoms and grows and there is a warmth that emanates from the inside out that is unmistakeable. The real joy is that this love is in every single one of us.
Very true Shevon, so much so I am close to tears as I feel it.
‘who am I’. Its taken a while, and without Serge benhayon and Universal Medicine, I wouldn’t have the clarity I have now. I am me. And that is beautiful.
Exactly Andrew, when we chase the external images and ideals of who we should be, it becomes an endless pursuit to be someone we are not. To stop and turn inwards, to take care of our selves and make the effort to connect to our inner qualities halts the pursuit of the un-attainable and instead allows us to appreciate and cherish who we really are. Our journey becomes one of self evolution and that is one well worth pursuing.
Kate you write about ‘beauty being measurable’. Since my introduction to Universal Medicine I feel that I have found a whole new way of experiencing beauty, both in others and in me….thankfully.
I thoroughly enjoy the liberation of this new way of being.
This is so inspiring Kate, absolutely delight-full to read and feel your beautiful unfoldment back to the true woman that you are. What an inspiration to so many women.
Lovely to hear that you are coming back round full circle to the woman you have always known is there, thank you Kate for your inspiring words.
I had amnesia on the knowing who I am part for quite a long while Susan! Even though there is so much more of me to come back to – it is just a joy to have started – and feel the amazing potential of who we are.
amazing Kate, all the best with your return back to you!
Thank you Kate for a great and very healing sharing. It brings home to me that I have re-discovered Stillness when I came across Universal Medicine and amazing practitioners such as Natalie Benhayon and Sara Williams. I too had very busy women as role models around me when I was growing up and I too lost myself. The re-connection to my own delicateness, preciousness, beauty and tenderness that I felt as a little girl has been a magical experience. Those qualities are our Essence.
I so love this Maryline: ‘The re-connection to my own delicateness, preciousness, beauty and tenderness that I felt as a little girl has been a magical experience.’ So gorgeous.
Such a lovely way to describe your reconnection Maryline, as a magical experience. I too have re-discovered Stillness since coming to Universal Medicine it is a profoundly different way to be in life rather than rushing or driving my way through it. I continue to work with building this quality, which is within us all.
I too had busy role models when growing up. Always encouraged to “do” something rather than just be myself. So I developed a false self and have lived that for most of my life. So beautiful to realise that the true me was inside all along, tender, loving and still.
It was beautiful to follow your unfoldment into the true Be-You-Ty that you have returned to Kate. I loved the following quote from your blog ‘I have come to reconnect to the fact that the beauty I have always felt in nature is in me too and I sometimes feel powerfully childlike again – celebrating as I once did as a young girl running through the tall grass or playing amongst the trees – glowing from within – needing nothing more.’
Thank you Kate for sharing your journey and it is beautiful to feel your beauty in what you have written. Reading the comments reflects how beautifully you have captured what so many women experience and the inspiration of Universal Medicine and Esoteric Women’s Health practitioners for women to re-connect to their true beauty.
Love your work, Kate. I have the distinct pleasure of being your friend and experiencing your warmth and care every time we speak. I look forward to our interactions because of your beauty. You are inspiring and I treasure our connection deeply. We have walked as true women together before and we are now doing it together again. Thank you.
“What it is to be a true woman:
It is grace, like a spring breeze barely shifting the grass as it passes.
It is flow, like the steady passage of a clear warm stream around obstacles.
It is power, like a mighty oak standing and watching, seeing all, unwavering.
It is the delicateness of a rose in the morning dew.
It is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky.
This is me”
What a beautiful picture this creates – the truth of which can be felt by all women because we have all experienced these aspects of a being a woman, even if just in fleeting moments. Because of the beautiful way you have expressed this we can all be inspired to connect more deeply to ourselves as a woman. Thank you.
Thank you especially for the end part where you beautifully express the stillness, grace, delicateness and power of a true woman. I could feel it in my body and it was healing. You gave us an opportunity to reconnect.
So so beautiful Kate. Reminding me of the beauty we all hold inside, no outward search required, just step inside and there it is, us in all our beauty and glory. Thank you for sharing.
“This is me – coming steadily home to the woman I am.” Awesome.
What a great blog Kate Burns and what a huge turnaround from shaved head to a tidy dressing table with make up, jewellery and perfume. For me being a woman was not in the equation because I grew up making sure I stayed boyish and then got a mans job so I did not have to ever admit I was a woman. On the outside I would wear the short skirts only for male attention but inside I was hard and shut down in my heart. My real turning point came when I done a three month ‘women’s health program’ with an esoteric women’s health practitioner and it was the start of the real woman that I am today. I finally had a role model and now I have others too so it gave me a strong reflection that it was possible for me to be the same with my own style and grace. I can finally say that I do feel a woman and I know that to be true as I was born a woman and I am no longer uncomfortable in my own skin.
Top blog Kate. You can really feel the transformation from a hardened, drug taking, wanna-be-man, to a beautiful, loving, true woman. It’s great to read that you made the choice to look inwards rather than continue to look at everything outside of you. Very inspiring, thank you.
Thank you Tim. And what a transformation it has been so far – the wanna-be-man you describe was into car mechanics even – to keep pace with and hold a conversation on so called ‘equal’ terms with men – imagine how much everyone was missing out when that tendernes was just not valued…how would those men then feel the natural tenderness inside them too…looking outside leaves us all less. Thank God for Esoteric Womens Health – the transformation continues.
Kate, what a delightful blog. I know exactly what you describe, i too looked out constantly and saw these roles which I knew were not true and so I gave up, and decided to be a person. Until a few years back I came across Universal Medicine and began a journey back to feeling and being the delicate, sweet and tender woman I am. So many of us do this, we give up and fit in, and yet we know it’s not true, it’s amazing to have your blog speak of the changes you’ve made and what is possible when we have true role models, and what is possible for us all when we realise we are indeed the captains of our own ships. Thank you, your sharing has allowed me to stop this morning and feel all my own and appreciate some more.
I love your blog Kate, very real and down to earth. And I can so relate to the end: it is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky.
This is me – coming steadily home to the woman I am.
With your sharing I gave myself permission to remember: oh that is me also! Not this running around, looking outside, always busy person. Actually there is so much stillness inside me. That is how I feel returning to the woman I am. Thank you for that.
Wow! such a Be-You-Ty-Fully inspirational article, absolutely gorgeous. As the comments here say, we all relate to this story. Editors please note:There is a plethora of the same old, same old regurgitations in Women’s magazines, we want to read articles of this caliber. Thank you Kate, this is indeed powerfully exquisite.
Thankyou for this beautiful blog Kate. I can totally relate to looking outside of myself – so unsure of myself as how to be a woman. I was a trier, coming from what I had to “do” to fix myself to feel better, searching outside me for solutions. Coming across Universal Medicine has been transformative – my hardness is dropping away and the male energy I used to run with is fading. Acknowledging my beauty, sensitivity and grace would not have occurred without the amazing support of the Unimed practitioners and like-minded Unimed students. Looking inside is now the way to go.
Thank you Kate for such a beautiful powerful sharing of your life before and now with Universal Medicine and all the true inspiration around.
This is the story many of us like myself grew up with also and can relate to and the absolute joy now of having found Serge Benhayon his family and Universal Medicine
Natalie Benhayon’s love and support for all women is simply amazing.
I love your descriptions of what it is to feel like a true women, very lovely.
Thank you Tricia, it was a joy to express, and to know that this is just the beginning – being a woman just keeps getting more amazing with every day that comes round.
Thank you for sharing your journey back to you and the knowing that you always had. I can so relate to looking outside of myself for markers of how to be as a woman and then rejecting them because they didn’t feel right. It is such a joy to explore the unfolding of my inner knowing with the inspiration of all the amazing women around me.
Gorgeous to hear Helen. Your joy is tangible.
What a story you show here Kate, of how there hadn’t been any true role models for you to follow as you developed. It was similar for me too, and the many others who’ve had a few years seeking like us know the arduous journey of going down the wrong rabbit holes and being disillusioned. With great thanks that through the Universal Medicine teachings of finding the truth is within us,and the Womens Health Practitioners, there are now some different role models for the future generations to find.
Thank you Kate for such a gorgeous blog. Just before reading this I asked myself – if my head has had so many realisations and ‘helpful’ thoughts then why have none of them been about confirming that I can feel that I am already enough. That my body holds all the answers. Rather than using the mind to find confirmation from what is outside of me, could I use it only to say ‘Yes, I feel that in my body.’ My body is already mine, thus I have everything already. Anything from outside of me is something that I pick up along the way, it is not innately me.
Thank you for sharing Kate. There are so many external pressures on women to live up to which do not honour and value who they really are.
‘There are so many external pressures on women to live up to which do not honour and value who they really are.’ Yes – So so so many James – and its getting worse all the time – and is even tougher for boys – the messages start sooner and the restrictions of so called ‘normal’ are even more limiting. Time we all started looking back deep within and allowed that as our benchmark and way forward.
I agree Kate – as parents and members of humanity we can bring our children up knowing this, knowing how deeply loving and tender they are and allowing them to honour this without putting any pressure on them to be something for us or anyone else. Yes the messages for our young are starting earlier and earlier but we do not have to allow that to affect them.
This is beautiful Kate and I absolutely love your description of what a true woman is at the end of the piece, stunningly gorgeous.
I can identify with “shielded hurts” and how I too kept looking outside myself for those “answers” when the “knowing” had been with me all along.
A truly, grace-full sharing Kate.
The feeling of your words is so exquisitely beautiful, Kate: grace, flow, power, delicateness, stillness. They ring so feminine and so true of you, and, by extension, all women, everywhere. Thank you.
Wow Kate thank you, that was some read! A brilliant account of the circle you have been round in. So true what you say of the irony of numbing yourself from the pain of having taken yourself so far away from yourself to find yourself…. Totally crazy but we’ve all done it! I too am loving coming back to myself bit by bit, sometimes I feel the pain that I’ve been numbing myself from and forget how far I’ve come, then I look back to where I was before, similar to you with drugs and alcohol and a shell of a body and realise how amazing my life is now!!
Beautiful kate, growing up I also felt that ‘beauty was measurable and at its best, only skin deep. This contributed to me turning my back on make up, nail polish and other potentially ‘supportive of natural beauty’ items.’ I can really relate to this, it is only in the last few years that I have started using nail polish and body creams, which feel lovely. I feel very inspired by your dressing table, this sounds gorgeous, ‘I take great joy in having a beautifully set up dressing table, with make up, jewellery and perfume that all supports and celebrates the delicateness of my nature and the warmth and beauty that I am as a woman.’
What a be-you-ti-full blog Kate. I love what you wrote about ‘coming home’ as a woman, and the fact you didn’t word it as ‘I discovered…’, because actually you RE-connected to your true state of sacredness, which was waiting to be embodied all along.
Great point Susie, it’s not a discovery, it’s a reconnection, of course, it was always there just ready and waiting to be expressed.
That is such a great point Susie and something that is deeply healing for all women (and men) to know – that the sacredness is eternally within us, it’s just up to us whether we choose to re-connect with it or not.
Thank you Kate. Reading your article I could feel a very clear reflection of myself, particularly how I hardened and took little care of myself as a woman when believing I was close to nature. I was so often in conflict with nature trying to impose my beliefs of how it ‘should be’ under the guise of ‘nature conservation’. Your writing also allows me to appreciate how I have found within myself my own role model of the woman I am.
Thank you for a great blog Kate. I love this bit – “it felt untrue that women were less than men and much much less than God – something I couldn’t make fit with how I felt inside, which was as heavenly as the flowers that swayed in the breeze outside church – an idea once shared with the Sunday School Leader that resulted in my sitting in the ‘naughty chair’ for many weeks on end! I stopped attending Sunday school.” This made me giggle as I love your humour. But actually this is quite sad, that your feeling at the time was considered a punishable offence. It shows how very far away we can become from our true essence.
I really appreciate this article, I can relate to looking out side and getting caught up in the picture perfect ideals, only to find them empty and without meaning. And what amazing freedom and warmth there is through connection with myself instead.
I can relate to this article too Shami, having taken a long meandering journey outside of myself, searching far and wide, only to discover that what I was looking for was within all along! Brilliant article Kate, full of gems!
What a great journey of sailing around the world in search for your true self only end up were you started…with yourself. Your journey truly was coming home.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful article Kate, which is a true reflection of your beauty.
What a fabulous blog, Kate. You clearly share that there is “no role model for women in sight in Church, Boarding school or the ‘Cream of Society’” The seeking and approving of ourselves from the outside is endemic. I can echo your words when you say.. “Thank God for Universal Medicine (UniMed) who reintroduced me to that true me inside that was there all along.”
I love the title Kate and to feel your delight and radiance in coming back to the woman that you are. Absolutely gorgeous. Celebrate that Be-You-Ty!
So true for all you have said. And like other comments here, without really understanding, I too overrode what I felt and lived by the markers of what society told us or insinuated what a woman should be.Your description of what it is to be a woman is pure poetry.
Amongst many gems here, Kate, what stood out for me particularly this morning was the glory of the fact that whatever we try and fix ourselves with throughout our lives, however extreme and mad, the inner sacred spark is never snuffed out, always twinkling inside, waiting, a forever invitation to emerge back to truth and our always exquisiteness.
Wow…look how far you have come Kate. Awesome blog. Thank you for sharing your path, to the beautiful woman you are today, with the support and inspiration of Esoteric women’s health and Unimed. (The power to connect within you not outside of you.) The true essence of a woman…
Beautiful Kate. It felt like a movie, reading the phases of your life you’ve touched on here, all the reflections on the outside of what it may be ‘to be a woman’, the ‘bum steers’! What enormous ENERGY we have all put into such crusades and roles – phew…
I remember when presentations in Esoteric Women’s Health began looking at what we’d defined (and allowed) as role models for women, and what might a true role model look like? Deep grief came up for me at the time, for I’d been like you ‘looking outwardly and with no small dose of desperation’ for how to be a woman, and met similar disappointments (and many of them…).
I heartily concur with Golnaz’s comment here. How blessed we are by the work of Universal Medicine, Natalie Benhayon, Miranda Benhayon and now so many women such as yourself who are truly shining the way for us as women. And that these reflections show us not ‘how we should be/what we should measure up to’, but rather that the true expression of a woman comes from deeply getting in touch with herself and her body from within. How simple, and yes, how convoluted a path we had woven for ourselves…
I agree Victoria – it is a real blessing to have true role models such as Natalie Benhayon ‘shining the way for women’ and scrapping all the ideals and beliefs we have collected over the years of what kind of woman we supposedly ‘should’ be.
This is such an awesome article Kate and you have brought me home to my inner essence in your beautiful words. I can feel the grace and beauty of nature inside me and the sheer beauty and joy of this is very, very healing. Thank you deeply for re-claming your divine beauty and sharing it with us all, a true gift from an angel of God and one that truly serves all women now and for many, many years to come.
Beautiful thank you Kate for sharing your journey back to the beautifully delicate you, that is so tangibly felt in your writing. Thank you for appreciating and sharing how far you’ve come. Inspiring.
Indeed thank God for Universal Medicine. I too recall arriving as a shell with a mistrust of the world and an engrained belief that I wasn’t enough. Yet the unwavering love, care, honouring and appreciation from Serge Benhayon, the Esoteric Women’s Health and presentations of Natalie Benhayon and Sara Williams have all been a great inspiration to begin to see and let go of the pressure I was putting on myself to become a certain woman and allowed me to start to open up to appreciating what it feels like to live my life as a woman which I naturally am.
Definitely, my experience too Golnaz. I am learning to stay open and connect with my delicateness, fragility and sacredness which is a whole new experience for me as a woman.
I have never heard the phase ‘bum steer’, and am still laughing about it now, I have definitely made some major ‘bum steers’ in my life, and was way off knowing anything about being a true women. With the support of the Esoteric Womens presentations, and Esoteric Womens Health modalities, that has completely changed. I now actually know and feel the huge power I have when I express myself fully as a women, how sacred and delicate I am when I really nurture myself, and how truly sweet I am when I’m naturally being myself. It is pretty amazing to feel myself, but also to see and appreciate these qualities in so many other women too, which just supports me to be this way more and more.
How gorgeous: ‘I now actually know and feel the huge power I have when I express myself fully as a women, how sacred and delicate I am when I really nurture myself, and how truly sweet I am when I’m naturally being myself.’
Thank you Kate, the way you describe the true essence of a women is so beautiful.
When reflecting on your blog, Kate, I realised that we women are supporting each other, although sometimes unknowingly. I had a stay-at-home mother (in the 50’s & 60’s) who I saw as silent, subservient, and boring. I did not aspire to be that so I went out and became like your mother – “always crazily busy on this committee and that charity – doing ‘noble deeds’ but running herself so ragged, utterly unable to sit still and intensely self critical in this seeking of perfection.” It is through trial and error, and sometimes following the wrong path, that we start to find the true woman inside. Isn’t it amazing how there is this natural quest to get to the heart of the matter? Thanks for sharing your story.
Yes Gayle, and imagine if we encountered role models such as ourselves as we were growning up – that would have opened my eyes back to me – and the see saw of reacting to the previous generation (and everything else external that was a ‘bum steer’ need not have commenced). If I, or any of us, had met just one lady like you, or any of the amazing women commenting here – imagine what a difference that might have made and how that would have stood out for us in our ‘natural quest to get to the heart of the matter’. There need never be a quest then. So much potential to appreciate.
Wonderful and amazing Kate – I absolutely love your blog. We could be sisters (no I don’t shave my head) but I also live my life looking outside of me and negate the fragile and tender woman I am. I was a vehicle that only functioned in this world no matter what that costs. How is it possible that so many woman do the same????? What is the world showing us with that????? Why do we not be the woman we truly are and look inside instead of outside???? Why do we as woman not ask such questions???? What happened to us and to our true role models???
Your answer you share is so super simple – we miss us, we miss our own true love, our bodies in stillness. Is this not funny that there a hardly no woman living this stillness in the world – so thank you for sharing and being an inspiration.
Great questions to ask wonderful and amazing Ester, some I’ve asked for years, and now find myself feeling the answers were within all along, just waiting. How deeply I appreciate where I’m at and my ever deepening reconnection with me and the amazing heavenly beauty of all women, and men too.
Awesome Kate – I love it, it is so interesting that no matter what ‘kind of woman’ we try and become, it is usually from looking outside for role models, ideas, or a gauge of an image that is accepted and ‘normal’, instead of looking inside and finding that the delicateness was there all along. Brilliant
Wow, this is a beautiful and powerful piece of writing. The changes you have made are deeply inspiring for anyone and it seems once that commitment to come back to your body was made the choices made that changed how you lived could be made
naturally and have since supported you in your reconnection to being the true woman that was always known within, as demonstrated by your tender words used at the end. Gorgeous, Kate, just like you are for sure. Thank you 🙂
Gorgeous blog Kate. I was also looking outside myself for the answers to being a true woman. It wasn’t till I came across Universal Medicine that I started to change my approach to life. I agree the inspiration from great role models like Natalie Benhayon have been key .I have also been inspired by Sara Williams who presents the Women’s group in London and the other amazing women who attend.I know now that it is a quality connected to from within that radiates out to make a true woman.
I loved your examples from nature which reflects to us true beauty particularly, “it is the delicateness of a rose in the morning dew” and “it is the timeless stillness of the stars in the silent night sky “
Thank you Kate, a very revealing expose of the outside models of womanhood, and an exquisite understanding of the inner nature of a true woman. I loved your summary of a true woman coming home.
All I can say is wow! Kate what a sharing! I was absolutely stunned to find you authored this because it’s hard to imagine you living anything less that the stunningly delicate and powerful be you ty full woman that you so naturally are. The world would have missed out had you not reconnected to the truth. I am so grateful that Universal Medicine was there to support you and reflect the truth of being a woman. Thank you so much for sharing. I loved every last drop – straight from heaven – just like you.
Thank you Leonne and yes thanks again to Universal Medicine, Esoteric Womens Health and all the women who reminded me of me – and like you, who still do.
Thank you Kate for sharing your beautyfull return to the woman you truly are.
“I am not a victim to life, but a participant in it and in fact, I am the captain of my own ship more than I had ever dared feel previously.” I like this picture of being the captain of my ship-so very true. it brings it simply back to the responsibility i have for my own live. And if something is not working than because the choices i am making.
What a beautiful piece of writing, reflecting the beauty of Kate that she has connected to within. I love how real life this blog is, as we read it we can’t help but think of all of our own personal experiences of taking on the outer world in the mission to find what it is to be a women. I feel I got so hurt early on in the seeking that by my teens I gave up and decided to just make it work. Thank God for Universal Medicine, Esoteric Women’s health and most important all the women I have seen who have come back to the almighty steadiness and power that is within – showing us there’s no need to give up and that there is another way!
‘Thank God for Universal Medicine, Esoteric Women’s Health and most important all the women I have seen who have come back to the almighty steadiness and power that is within’. Wow Danielle – that almight steadiness and power that is within is tangible and awesome to feel described and celebrated!
Beautifully put Kate it is lovely to see the joy you obviously feel in your return to your natural self
On reading this blog I felt all the more, and even deeper appreciation for the work that is being done to support girls not to loose themselves to that goose chase that you describe, and I too know oh so very well, thinking in particular of the Gil to Women Project, and the upcoming Girl to Woman Festival.
Yes Catherine – imagine if we had had access to the Girl to Woman project whilst growing up – full permission that we are already worth celebrating – no where to go, nothing to prove, no seeking – just be-you! Awesome.
Beautifully written, Kate. I can relate to the feeling of becoming a hardened ‘shell’, but also to the journey of coming full circle back to the freedom and joy that is never truly forgotten.
As I read this I can see how delicate and feminine you have become – by your words and your appreciation for yourself as a woman.
Whats funny is that all of these ideals – these external benchmarks we use to judge our worth – can be so ingrained that we don’t even realize we are doing it.
I had never considered there to be an issue when comparing myself to other girls – or a man’s idea of ‘the perfect woman.
I thought that was the standard and that’s my marker, It was never about how I truly felt or how my body felt. I was a puppet of society that would be recognized if I fitted the mould.
Like you – it is with thanks to Universal Medicine that I was able to understand self worth can never be measured based on someone else’s life. It starts from within.
Yes – there are many more renovations and rebuilding to go – but the fact that I am able to stop allowing this external benchmark define me is amazing in itself. Each day I honour me for the woman I am first, is another step towards a deeper appreciation and a connection to what is truly feminine, truly delicate and truly sexy.
‘Each day I honour me for the woman I am first, is another step towards a deeper appreciation and a connection to what is truly feminine, truly delicate and truly sexy.’ Yahoo – inspiring hvmorden!
HVMorden – I can really resonate with your comment – I am still smiling at your final paragraph – “there are many more renovations and rebuilding to go – but the fact that I am able to stop allowing this external benchmark define me is amazing in itself. Each day I honour me for the woman I am first, is another step towards a deeper appreciation and a connection to what is truly feminine, truly delicate and truly sexy”.
Thank you!
I love your blog Kate. When I feel the true beauty within me there is a real flow to it which feels so powerful and yet at the same time there is a declicateness in my touch. It reminds me just how declicate I am as a woman.
Gorgeous description Fiona.