Aloha readers,

I did my best to make this post gender inclusive.
Because I think it's time to share openly without thinking that what I write will only talk to one crowd.

I hope whoever you are, this article resonates with you.

Yesterday I was reading through my notes from one of my clients I’ve worked with over the past year, year and a half.

I started to see an interesting pattern. One that was showing up in most of the people I’ve worked with, my friends, and myself too…

A disconnection from what we love, our purpose, our dreams, passions. Something we really enjoy. Something we imagine will fill our future life with meaning.

But somehow, we don’t.
Somehow our life became so busy.
With kids, a job, a partner, an unplanned event, having to survive a difficult moment, a divorce, grief…

Our first instinct was to prioritize what was needed to survive.

I get it, because I did that when the pandemic kicked in and I’m pretty sure the majority of us on this planet were all living in surviving mode during that time, our nervous system begging us to go touch grass.

Slowly in those moments we all automatically shift into our masculine energy to face our life. We disconnect from our feminine energy.

We get organized. We stay busy with work and personal life. We plan months ahead. We talk about politics. We keep our shoulders up. We’re on alert. We push harder. We avoid procrastination. We budget. We set goals with our coworker Brian.

And the feminine energy sits there with resentment, waiting to be called. We don’t listen to our intuition. We don’t use our creativity. We forget about our favorite “me time.” We stop asking for help or trying to collaborate or connect.

What I see in my clients is this one thing they all have in common. They’ve been suppressing their feminine energy. They feel exhausted physically and mentally from the load of work they’ve been piling on their shoulders. From saying yes to others for extra time when they promised themselves they’d never do it again.

They keep telling themselves this is the energy they need to stay in to face adversity.
“Just keep moving forward. Push through the motion.” “When I have more money, time, energy... I will…”

The problem is we aren’t listening to our needs. We stay in that never-ending loop. We’re still tired and burnt out. We aren’t taking care of our health and our soul. Our nervous system has no time to recover and stays on alert for the next possible challenge. What happens is the next challenge becomes the lightest thing that comes our way. We’re at such a level of accumulation that anything that doesn’t go our way becomes a big issue.

The cost is high on our health long term. And we aren’t doing anything that’s actually nourishing our soul.

What happens is we wait to feel slightly better. We start a new thing, new habits, a new way of living. And we fail at it. Not because we did something wrong in how we approached it, but because we’re acting from a place that didn’t recover. That didn’t heal. That’s still traumatized from the past.

I saw that within me. How the pandemic required me to step up in that surviving, masculine energy. To disconnect from my body, my needs, my dreams, nature, what felt fun, connecting with myself and others in ways that weren’t about survival.

I’m very grateful I was able to face it. I learned a lot. But I also kind of took out an investment on my future, an investment that cost me years later when I’d feel on high alert the moment something went south.

I realized this after a year of living in the beautiful, calm, wild, volcanic Hawaii.

When a new government was put in place, my whole nervous system reminded me of what I hadn’t dealt with. My whole nervous system went back into surviving mode.

I remember when we got a text from my husband’s dad saying the trading boat with food wouldn’t be coming to the island anymore. We went to town to buy everything that might go up with tariffs, canned food.

It took me back in Brooklyn when the infamous governor Cuomo closed the city. My roommate and I grabbed our huge backpacks and went to buy food as if the shops would be closed for three weeks.

I realized I was back in surviving mode when my husband and I were at a big hardware store and I was suddenly activated. My heart pounding, focused on what we needed. And I had this moment of awareness of how it didn’t feel great to be stressed and activated. And at the same time, I heard myself admitting that I liked it. I felt in my comfort zone.

What a weird fucking feeling. I know it’s not what I need, I know it’s not a healthy state, and I like it? Wtf is wrong here?!

It was quite an eye opener. I’d created all these skills for how to face adversity but I didn’t know anymore when it was appropriate to use them.

My inner alarm was fucked up.

So I looked for a psychologist to help me go through my traumas, to talk out loud, to vent, to be paranoid.

To get things out.

I want to add that I don’t think there’s no wrong or bad energy. I’m trying to unlearn the notion of wrong or right… It’s more about inviting curiosity, awareness, acceptance, and putting in place what feels right for you in the moment.I know when people hear "masculine and feminine energy" they think it's about men vs women. It's not. We all have both.

The problem is we've been conditioned to stay in one. The doing. The pushing. The achieving. We treat the other side, intuition, rest, creativity, like it's weakness. Or a luxury we can't afford.

But it's not about choosing. It's about both. It's about not living in the extremes. It's about finding what you need in the moment and actually listening to it.

From my experience, people are hardest on themselves when they're already exhausted. Burnt down. We wait for "when I feel differently, when I have the money, when I finish this project." And by the time we get there, we have nothing left to give.

We live in this loop. This lie that repeats itself. And somewhere in it, we disconnect from ourselves.

That’s why people say after they take time to rest, time to do things for themselves, for me it’s traveling, being in nature, they say “they found themselves.” It’s not that people lose themselves. They started suppressing who they are. Their needs. What makes them feel alive. They stopped being present and doing the things they actually need to stay alive.

What makes me feel most alive? Being on a plane to a new destination. Music in my headphones. Being in the ocean. The morning sun. Laughing out loud. Being in my bubble away from the outside world. Eating a homemade meal that cooked for hours. Putting my clay mask on with essential oils. Waking up from a two-hour nap.

What about you? What makes you feel alive?

Here’s what helped me reconnect:
I put it in my calendar. Actually scheduled it like I would for a work meeting. Even if it’s just for eight minutes a day…

Because if I didn’t protect that time, it disappeared.

What’s one thing from your list you could add to your week?
Even just once?

It’s time to date yourself, my friend.
It’s time to invest in your beauty.

With gratitude,
Nina

If you recognized yourself in this, suppressing who you are,
waiting for "when I have time, money, or/and energy",
let's talk.

I help people reconnect with themselves
and navigate life transitions
without burning out in the process.

New spots open April 1st.