Welcome, dear soul!
Welcome to this place, dear soul!
This is my first blog article on my new website, so this is a warm welcome to you! Thank you for stopping by and taking your time to get to know me and explore my world of personal development.
I have worked on my soul purpose for a few years now and experienced several periods of transformations through life’s ups and downs - or as some feminine coaches would say, a woman goes through several death and rebirth portals as part of her feminine nature :-)
Since I had quit my job two years ago, a lot has happened, inside as well as outside my life. Of course, it was a physical change from being employed to being self-employed. I was out of an environment that didn’t serve my soul and wellbeing anymore, so there was a lot of relief, recovery, and replenishment. Not for once had I regretted my decision, because with this step, I have allowed myself to grow into a healthier, more authentic, and more beautiful version of myself, that I couldn’t have imagined. Many of my close friends play this back to me as they celebrate my personal, spiritual, and professional journey, being inspired and impressed what personal development can do.
I will not lie though that although I didn’t regret my decision, I also had my moments of doubts and worries, but not that I wanted to go back, it was more about how I can now go forward with my soul in charge, but on a totally new terrain. How to travel a road less travelled by so many? I had to realize that not only is it rare that people my age quit their jobs to run their own business (at least in my immediate environment), but also that entrepreneurship is being run by different principles that I was surprised by. With entrepreneurship, you definitely gain more freedom in choices and lifestyle. What I have to soon realize as a Woman of Color was that, unfortunately, even in the field of creative and innovative entrepreneurship, the way most entrepreneurs think and act were guided by patriarchal values.
This is not to blame patriarchy or patriarchal values, for they also have their good sides. I only personally believe that a system - and that can be any - that has moved too much to one extreme can be an unstable one with imbalance and inequality across groups that live in it. We know that under the current patriarchal system, it is, unfortunately, women (although they technically make up around 50% of the population!) and groups of minorities based on ethnicity and other differentiated background, that have been oppressed, ignored, or discriminated in various ways. People who belong to the minority will naturally suffer from disadvantages that can be subtle (e.g. through unconscious bias) or sadly aggressive and explicitly exclusive.
As a Woman of Color in the field of entrepreneurship, I have experienced this discrepancy. Not in the obvious way if we think about certain studies that seem to confirm how gender can influence where financing investments may likely go (towards the male archetype), I rather mean in the way business is currently done. This can also be observed in organizational settings, where we value masculine principles, such as assertiveness, analytical thinking, and problem solving, in both men and women. While these values are again not the problem per se and important in life, if we live these values too much, we only express one side of us, although we also have a feminine side around compassion, emotions, and intuition.
Running my own business, esp. around a topic that is close to my heart, I knew it wasn’t an option to neglect my feminine side and qualities that can also run a business. But when I was out in the entrepreneurship field, I only found offers and strategies that were aggressive and didn’t feel right in my body. It just didn’t convince me to just aim for your clients’ moneys, to take as much as possible as you can, and do things that may be even unethical, but normalized today.
Fast forward to today - skipping experiences of travel sabbatical, digital nomad lifestyle, and spiritual healing breakthrough - I have finally found a way to run a feminine business honoring both my feminine qualities and masculine structures. It is called co-creation and I love this concept that involves deeper work and healing of one’s own masculine and feminine wounds, energies, and perceptions. Because what does it mean to live in today’s patriarchy? Without blaming and just as a matter of fact saying, it means that in a one-sided world, our energies of the masculine and the feminine have been distorted, leaving us with many, often unconscious, wounds impacting not only our relationships, but also our experiences in life, career, and ourselves. It is a huge topic that I am currently learning about and am looking forward to sharing it with you soon.
Until then, I just wanted to share this welcome blog post with you to briefly guide you where I have been and where I am now. It is a new chapter of a mature woman, who has come out of a journey of crises, healings, and challenges in a way, that has been very valuable to me. I love the woman I have become and I am excited to share my learnings with you, so you can also grow in the way you are meant to grow!
Talk to you soon <3
Love, Linh
