Recovering Fragments of the Feminine

I wish I had more time to write, but I have enough time to write about how my psyche seems to be in the process of recovering lost parts of myself--especially the part that's unabashedly female, the part that has feelings and isn't afraid to have them, in a particularly female way. Of course, I'm in dreadfully tricky, sticky territory, attempting to talk about the Feminine, and femaleness, without an in-depth analysis of what exactly I mean. But that's why this is a blog and not a master's thesis. 

In a recent dream, my mother had moved in with me, Michael, and Elva, and this wasn't a bad thing. It seemed good. The house felt safe. It was night and the television was on, casting blue light into the otherwise unlit room. Elva and Michael were in bed. My mom was sitting in a chair. A feeling of safety pervaded. I left the house to go out and look for someone, or meet someone. In the dark, I encountered my friend Jen. Jen has always symbolized a certain type of primordial femininity, facets of extreme earthiness and oceanic depths of feeling. Always lithe, in the dream she was overweight and covered in scrapes and bruises. She had left an abusive relationship. He had kicked her out of the house they shared and told her to go back to Venice, where she had an apartment in my building. I embraced her and told her how amazing I think she is, and how she deserves only the best. I expressed a great deal of love for her. She said she wanted to be alone and went to her apartment. I thought she might be angry at me. I wasn't sure, but I was glad she was back. 

The patriarchy is a constant presence in my dreams, beating down my inner feminine. I feel like Jen represents, among other things, a part of myself that has been held hostage by a violent, abusive, internalized masculine archetype. He has kicked her out, so he still has some power in the picture and she may be angry at me because I didn't rescue her all these years, or fight for her. I didn't make it my business to know where she was or what kind of hell she had fallen into. But I do feel she came as a result of this active dialogue I've cultivated between my conscious and unconscious realities. Uncle Gary came in a dream and enabled me to take better care of myself in reality, and the act of taking better care of myself in reality has resulted in the return of Jen--symbolizing some aspect of the forsaken feminine--in a dream. 

She's beat up, angry, deeply miserable, and mine, all mine. I welcome her with open arms. Her energy was very present in my last therapy session. My therapist was encouraging me to feel the sadness, regret, and loss of my childhood. I kept talking about moving forward and he kept pointing me there, to the messy, shameful, embarrassing wounds. What does it mean to embrace that aspect of the self instead of leaving it behind like some loss you have to cut to survive? How would it feel not to reflexively look away?