Overcoming Timidity

Live the life you desire.

By Johannes Mytens (Dutch; 1614 - 1670)

In the previous article, “A Woman and the Time” I mentioned how a woman usually becomes aware of her desires and the general path she wishes to take in life at an age when she is too young to assert herself upon the external reality. Often, this external reality demands a degree of submissiveness, timidity and separation from one’s self. If long enough time is spent in that space, a woman can become a “foreigner” to herself. This can prolong far beyond the young age when the feeling of powerlessness first appears.

In choosing the path of least resistance, one feels at the mercy of external reality. By not making active choices and decisions, they are made for us, and often so by the faceless collective.

A woman trapped in timidity feels small and vulnerable, while the world, in comparison, feels large and threatening. Yet in spite of the external timidity, her internal being is often very intense and “hungry”, craving expansion and power to face the world—and consequently life—without reservations.

Isabel Allende in “The House of Spirits” speaks of the “rotting in bedroom” phenomenon:

She was one of those people who was born for the greatness of a single love, for exaggerated hatred, for apocalyptic vengance, and for the most sublime forms of heroism but she was unable to shape her fate to the dimensions of her amorous vocation, so it was lived out as something flat and gray trapped between her mother's sickroom walls, wretched tenements, and the tortured confessions with which this large, opulent, hot-blooded woman made for maternity, abundance, action, and ardor- was consuming herself.

Many of you will recognise yourselves in the quote — still attached to the mother whether physically or psychologically, her scorning voice coming to warn you against the dangers of the life and how you must secure the future and be safe. But a creative and “juicy” life which many women long for is all but “secure” or “optimal”. It is in fact, full of open ends and risk.