When I was in high school, my mom gave me the book “The Fascinating Girl” as a field guide on how to become a woman.
Newly dating and suddenly aware of the “masculine/feminine” thing, I was ready for anything that might unravel the mystery and teach me what “feminine” truly meant—and how to be good at it.
I grew up in the Methodist church smack dab in the middle of purity and diet culture—graduating with the slim-fasting, diet-pill-popping class of 1983.
The lessons I got about how I should behave went something like this:
Never intimidate a man with your intelligence.
Never be smarter than one.
Never give up on one.
Never lift anything heavy in front of one.
And for (literally) god’s sake, never have sex with one until you’re married.
But here I am at 60 watching our sweet earth burn, our culture turn to shit and fear and hatred reign supreme.
And I won’t cooperate with that narrative any more.
So here’s what I’m doing. I’m going to work on feminine integrity. (I think I made that up) Not in the moral sense, but in the unbroken sense:
Feminine Integrity is a woman’s capacity to live in her full wholeness — rooted in her own voice, values, body, and energy — without being fractured by cultural conditioning, “good girl” programming, or systems built on masculine definitions of success.
I’m moving into 2026 exploring the liberation that comes when highly capable women reclaim their time and choices and rely on their hard-won wisdom and confidence to live life entirely on my own terms.
Perhaps by bring my own life into balance, I can leave behind a legacy of wholeness instead of brokenness. For myself. For our daughters. For society. For mother earth.
I hope some of you will join me.
📖 What I underlined this week
While attitudes are changing, it still takes a strong woman, with a well-defined sense of her own boundaries, to stand up to patriarchy and come through unscathed.
❓ A question for you
What is the distance between the soul you are, the soul you want to be and how you’re actually landing in other people’s lives?
Warmly,
