Alanna Kaivalya, PhD is on a mission to awaken the feminine soul and improve the love lives of women and men throughout the world. She is a bestselling author, educator, thought leader, and expert on women’s empowerment. In her new book, The Way of the Satisfied Woman: Reclaiming Feminine Power.
She begins her book with two provocative questions for women.
“What if there was a way to become a fully Satisfied Woman: one who measured meaning on her own terms, recovered her feminine power, dropped masculine expectations for herself, and ascended to her own queenly throne? What if you could have your needs, desires, and cravings fulfilled in a way that empowered, enlightened, and enlivens you?”
I had the good fortune to interview Dr. Kaivalya for my podcast and found her to be a lively and informed guest and a kindred spirit for the work I’ve been doing with men over the last fifty years. You can view the podcast here. At a time when there is so much confusion about men, women, and relationships, Alanna brings clarity. Instead of adding to the conflicts between women and men, between the feminine and the masculine, she brings healing salves of joy and delight.
“Let’s start with the femininity,” she says, “Most people assume the word relates to anything female, but what I want us to learn into here is the dynamic psychic (as in ‘of the psyche’) energy that is opposite and complementary to the masculine. Every human, regardless of gender assigned at birth, has both masculine and feminine energy in their psyche.”
One of the things I most appreciated about Alanna’s work was her willingness to recognize the evolutionary realities that most humans and all living things come in one of two varieties — female or male.
“I speak to people whose gender assigned at birth is female and who primarily express the feminine polarity,”
Alanna says.
“This is not because other genders and expressions are not valid — of course they are!”
she goes on to state.
“But this book seeks to reframe femininity for cisgender women and offer support in releasing the paradigms of masculinity that have repressed and oppressed us for far too long.”
This is good news for women, but also for men. I had similar goals for my book, The Enlightened Marriage: The 5 Transformative Stages of Relationships and Why the Best is Still to Come. In my book and an on-line course I offer, I say,
“We all want real, lasting love, whether we are in our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or beyond. Yet too many marriages fall apart and most people don’t know why. They become disillusioned with their marriage. They mistakenly believe that they have chosen the wrong partner, and the relationship falls apart.”
After going through the grieving process, they start looking again. But after more than fifty years as a marriage and family counselor I have found that most people are looking for love in all the wrong places. They don’t understand that disillusionment is not the beginning of the end, but the third stage of love.
Most of us grew up with romantic notions of relationships. We went looking for that magical someone, our soul partner, and we fell in love (stage 1). After that stage 2 was easy — and they lived happily ever after. But when disillusionment sets in, we feel we made the wrong choice or we just drifted apart. We go through a grieving process and start looking again or give up on love and marriage.
Here is my conception of a more enlightened path with the following stages:
- Stage 1: Falling In Love
- Stage 2: Becoming a Couple
- Stage 3: Disillusionment
- Stage 4: Creating Real, Lasting Love
- Stage 5: Using the Power of Two to Change the World
Alanna is also a believer in the power of love. In her chapter on “The Satisfied Relationship,” she says,
“Perhaps the most important relationship for the modern adult feminine women is intimate partnership. Far from being a clichéd or old-fashioned notion, it is within the sacred dynamic of masculine and feminine that the feminine flourishes.”
She goes on to say,
“This relationship has the potential to heal the greatest wounds suffered by the feminine, which are often — ironically — at the hands of the distorted masculine.”
Alanna shares the experiences that most all women know well.
“Whether it was our father, brother, boys at school, or members of the wider community, it is nearly inevitable that a young woman experiences some type of psychological, emotional, or physical harm from the opposite polarity. Whether unintentional or intended, whether violent or subtle, these leave indelible marks on the psyche that forever shape our adulthood.”
This is another area where Alanna and I are in total agreement.
“I can’t emphasize it enough,” she says. “We are wounded in relationship. And we are ultimately healed in relationship.”
I describe two primary purposes of Stage 3, Disillusionment. First, we must let go of our romantic illusions where we project our unmet needs, our hopes and dreams on our partner. We can’t have a successful relationship until we see our partner as a complex human being. In order to do that, the second purpose is to heal our childhood wounds with our mothers and fathers.
“We are all wounded,”
Dr. Kaivalya reminds us.
“While that may sound fatalistic, cynical, or like a total bummer, it is simply part of the human psychological condition.”
No one gets through childhood without having experienced wounding from our mothers and fathers, whether they were physically present or absent. Alanna details the mother wound by describing two polarities of “Enmeshment” and “Abandonment.” All of us, whether female or male, came through the body of a woman. Most of us are aware of the deep connection and need for our mothers.
But too often, women and men, grow up without the emotional presence of a father. Alanna has an important section in her book, “The Father Wound: Dealing with Daddy Issues.” I wrote a whole book My Distant Dad: Healing the Family Father Wound. I said,
“There is one problem that surpasses all others in its impact on men, women, and society. It is the family father wound. The father wound, resulting from physical or emotional absence, has been largely ignored. Without a strong sense of inner guidance, men can become abusive towards women and destructive towards men.”
As Dr. Kaivalya recognizes, the father wound impacts women as well. She says,
“I can feel the resistance in many readers even as I’m about to write these words: women inevitably fall in love with a replica of their fathers. There I said it.”
Alanna speaks to women in the same way I speak to men.
“Whether our fathers were present in our lives or not, whether we participate in heteronormative relationships or not, when we look across the span of intimate relationships as adult women, what we find is a common thread that relates back to our early childhood experiences with the masculine parent or caregiver.”
I think everyone will recognize why I recommend Alanna’s book and her work for both men and women.
You can learn more about Dr. Alanna Kaivalya by visiting her website: https://www.thesatisfiedwoman.com/
You can see the interesting podcast discussion I had with Alanna here.
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