Facing the keepers of our keys
Reminding ourselves of the way forward in the face of those who'd like us to stay small.
There’s so much we could talk about right now isn’t there? So much news calling for our attention and so many fears demanding to be heard within us.
I hear them all. And at their heart, each and every one of those things leads me back to one point:
Our world needs a revolution.
A revolution from a Divine Feminist perspective? Well that’s something I could talk a lot about (hell, it’s something I’ve already written tens of thousands of words about!) but it generally starts with us.
By revolutionising the ways that we see ourselves, our lives and our experience of the world.
Revisiting the keepers of our keys
Recently, as I’ve been preparing for the Re-Weaving Your Story course, I’ve found myself thinking about the people I once cast as villains in the story of my own life.
Those whose actions, behaviours and words have, over the years, had such an impact on my view of myself that there are times I genuinely believed I was powerless to overcome them. As though I’d never be able to move forward with my life until I got, at best, a full explanation from them or, at the very least, an apology.
I know, I know, it’s a very victim-y place to be, and not one I’m proud of in retrospect. But let’s be honest, haven’t we all had had those people and those periods where we found ourselves feeling stuck?
As though someone else’s perspective has trapped us behind a doorway that only they have the key to?
For me, there were five:
The careers counsellor who laughed when I told her I wanted to be a writer; raining on the parade of the dreams I’d held since I was a little girl and distracting me for more than two decades from the work that I always knew was mine.
The ex-boyfriend who liked to remind me that his university degree – though a lower grade than mine – was in a more academic subject from a more prestigious university, making him much cleverer than I was; and declared that “our song” was one about a man who fell in love with a girl whose “face isn’t right”; leaving me too critical of myself to do anything but judge other people for so long afterwards.
The old boss who did everything he could to keep me compliant and on side, encouraging me to work myself to the bone in order to feel even remotely safe at work… Only to lay the blame firmly on me when I was harmed there, leaving me too worn down to take action on anything – least of all him – by the time I was done.
The former friend who denied something she’d told me, and left me so doubtful of my own sanity that I didn’t even notice a much bigger lie that crossed what had been a hard boundary for me, all while using that mistrust of myself as evidence of why I couldn’t do the work I was put here for without her.
And the one-time colleague who told me once that she worried about living in the same town as me because “I wouldn’t want my son to talk like you”, and went on to post a photo of me in an unflattering dress, simply so that her friends could see what she’d been criticising and then pass their own comments too; all the while deterring me from sharing my voice or stepping out into the world as me.
I know, none of those people sound particularly pleasant. As, I’m sure, we could say about those who’ve held the keys to your own doors through life too because I’m certain that at least some details in the stories above will resonate with those from your own life.
But, of course, none of them were all out “villains”. And perhaps the first big revolution in my life came when I realised they didn’t even hold the keys to the doors that were keeping me stuck.
The Ultimate Key Holder
Who had those keys?
In the biggest cliché known to any of us (and stick with me here, I promise this is just a passing place, not the final destination of this post!), of course the only person that held the key to any one of those doors was - you guessed it - me.
Maybe I’d allowed myself to be shut behind them because I’d forgotten that; maybe I’d found myself in a locked room because I’d been conditioned to think it was the only place I deserved; or maybe I’d even closed the doors myself out of fear or uncertainty.
But as I stood behind each and every one of those doors, wishing that my oh-so-powerful jailers would whisper the magic words that freed me, the keys to my liberation were all sat there jangling at my hip.
Remembering that for myself was probably the first big revolution in the way that I see myself and my life.
It came on the back of a lot of therapy. Yet still, even after I took out my own set of keys and walked through the doors that had seemed to keep me stuck, I found myself struggling to move forwards.
Why? Because the words of those other keyholders still echoed in my mind, defining me in ways that felt almost impossible to escape.
That’s when the second revolution came in the way that I saw myself, not through therapy but thanks to the HerStory sessions I’ve run for the past few years.
Taking back the keys
Re-Kindling HerStory sessions are and have always been an invitation to look at the stories of women from history and mythology through another lens.
To view the stories of one or more well-known women not through the patriarchal lenses we’ve always been told, but in a way that puts the women themselves back at the centre.
I’d always hoped that doing that would encourage those who enjoyed the sessions to see their own stories in different way. And so, of course, it did the same to me.
I began to notice that the crowns of villainy I’d seen on those people who’d influenced my own story were, so often, the paper hats of people playing at being important.
And to realise that the reason those people were so desperate to distract me from the keys to my own liberation was because, somewhere along the way, they’d forgotten how to escape their own prisons of victimhood.
The careers counsellor had no doubt had dreams of her own that she felt unable follow and was likely trying to protect me from disappointment or heartbreak.
The ex-boyfriend was (obviously I know) insecure in himself and couldn’t bear to have someone outshine the persona he’d worked so hard to cultivate.
The old boss who had once been globally renowned as someone at the very top of his game was trying to reclaim some hint of power and importance in a world that was rapidly leaving him behind.
The former friend knew she was not only lying to me but to herself, but to admit that would have challenged the masks she’d worked so hard to design and show to the world.
And the one-time colleague? Well, she was new to the area, more than a little unpopular in the office we worked in, and was likely doing her damnedest to feel better about herself.
Of course that wasn’t a positive or productive way to feel better about herself. Let me be clear in saying that none of these people displayed behaviours I ever want to emulate or even condone.
But to look at my story from a different perspective means that instead of focussing on what was said about me, we instead ask why that was the case.
And the truth? Just like Lilith, Medusa, the Morrighan, and all of those other women whose stories were painted to diminish them, perhaps it was that those people were intimidated by or even afraid of me.
Though they might have talked of my weakness, what they really saw was my power.
So that second revolution involved revisiting every one of them (not personally; to quote the great Taylor Swift, we are never, ever, ever getting back together!) and remembering that I’d always had the power not only to use my own set of keys, but also to take back those that I’d allowed other people to hold.
To look more deeply at the things they had claimed as fact and notice how many were simply reflections of another person’s insecurity superimposed as smudges on my own mirror.
To sit with the things they told me about myself and beneath it all hear the magic they were trying to distract me from.
And revisit everything I’d silenced or walked away from as a result of their judgements and notice the ways that the radiance of those things illuminated the path back to my own sovereignty.
What about your keys?
And so with all of that said, I wonder who have been the keepers of the keys to your story?
And more than that, I wonder what greatness is lying in wait behind the smallness you’ve allowed them to tell you about yourself?
Because isn’t it time you took those things back?
If you want to dive deeper with this and the many other aspects of your own story, then my Re-Weaving Your Story course begins this weekend.
Re-Weaving Your Story is a six month journey combining the wisdom of Spirit and deep mythology with modern insights and knowledge, including the deepest awareness you hold about yourself, and the insights I've gained in over a decade of supporting women across the world to more fully embrace their own power.
Want to know more? Check it out on the button below. I’d love to walk with you on this path of your own re-weaving and to take those keys back once and for all.