Solidarity and Connection

The feeling of this incredible relief to be in the presence of women. There's something about it that allows you to let down some guards. Yeah They get it. They'll understand if I express this. This Women's History Month, Headspace is pleased to offer a collection of meditations intended to give women a space to honor and appreciate themselves and others. Dora and I are gonna take some space today to reflect on our own relationship to womanhood and our journey to authenticity. We're pleased to share this conversation with you. And we also wanna recognize that gender is on a spectrum. So today, we share our experience, and we also acknowledge that this is only one experience. (uplifting music) As a child, I was very anxious and very sensitive. I've done a lot of work with my inner child. I've done meditations where I greet my inner child in the state that she's in at any given moment. And at first, it was very rocky. The inner child showed up cowering and very scared and didn't wanna talk to me, but over time, she's grown. It's like, I can actually see the child turn into an adult, and that the inner child and myself are the same. It's so interesting to do those practices and to see an evolution in your meditation. I'm wondering for you what it's been like. For me growing up, I was very stubborn. I was very firm on like, I don't wanna talk to this person, or I do wanna talk to this person. And as I grew up, I saw that those boundaries would shift, be less firm as a way to accommodate others or to appease others. Some of my best decisions have been me stepping out of this thinking, rational, analytical mind and following what's in my body and what's present, and following those nudges as an adult. And I think I would do that when I was younger. I was saying like, having really firm boundaries, I didn't know why I had those boundaries or had that sense of like, I don't wanna do that, but it was definitely very heart-led and feeling-led. Just pursuing, like all the projects and careers that I tried to pursue thinking this is the adult choice, or this is the smart choice, or this is the thing my mom wants me to do. And my mom or my family would say, you're a mindfulness teacher. How are you gonna survive that way? Or what? If we listened every time to the nos that our family members were giving us, we would really cut ourselves short from living our potential (gentle music continues) Within me, there's my mom, there's my grandmother. That lineage lives through me. And so, I'm a continuation of that, but there's certain choices that I have to make in order to be who I'm destined to be. And so, of course, that looks different from my mom and from my grandmother, right?...