So many women are living in a stressed, disconnected state, feeling exhausted and numbing ourselves to cope with our busy, mundane, chaotic lives. All the while, we beat ourselves up for not being ‘enough’. For the sensitive, magical ones among us, these patterns can lead to burn-out, and even to manifesting mysterious ill-health symptoms, as we close our hearts and force ourselves into boxes we don’t fit. Often, we can be left living dull, grey, unfulfilling lives where we suppress and deny our sensitive feminine magic to live in a culture where the masculine gifts of logic, structure and fast-pace can be valued more deeply.
As we enter February, the month of love, it is tempting to outsource our focus. We celebrate our love for others, when the real call is into reclaiming the feminine – our tender hearts and softness – found through our own self-love. Valentine’s Day becomes another conditioned ‘thing to do’, placing our focus on prioritising others before ourselves. Celebrating external love can encourage manifestation of our people-pleasing habits, when really, for sensitive souls who are feeling frazzled, a focus on loving ourselves is actually the most healing thing we can provide. This month, it’s my mission to invite women into self-compassion, and to access true self-healing.
The art and science of self-healing
By ‘self-healing’, I mean self-love, rather than self-improvement. This is an important nuance: when we arrive at burn-out, we often turn our attention to self-help by looking for a fix. We often mistake healing as being about making ourselves ‘less broken’.
I’ve been there: beating myself up because my sensitivity meant I wasn’t like others. When I burnt out with chronic fatigue, I used to berate myself for not being able to keep up with expectations in our fast-paced society. It was only then that I embarked upon a journey of self-healing and feminine reclamation, and began to learn what true healing really meant.
For almost a decade, healing had become a constant self-improvement project. I tried to plaster over parts of myself I was ashamed of – my hypersensitivity, my need for space and slowness – but I became frustrated that nothing I tried to fix really ever created lasting change – and actually left me more exhausted. Eventually, I realised that the real remedy was not self-improvement, because that was
grounded in the idea that I was somehow broken and needed to be changed.
Instead, I recognised the real remedy was self-love – radical self-approval – rather than to be fixed. I also learnt that true self-love can be reclaimed by working with the feminine archetypal remedy of
Rosa – the rose. Rosa is part of our inner apothecary, which we can harness for true healing and transformation.
How to access your inner apothecary
Having studied ancient universal laws and principles of self-healing – in particular through the three wisdom bodies of homeopathy, archetypes and energy healing – I believe that we each have access to an inner apothecary of archetypal remedies that can help us reclaim our wholeness.
Whilst it can be helpful to work with herbs and other external healing practices, within each of us is a whole apothecary of remedies that can help us self-heal by reclaiming our authentic selves, rather than outsourcing our healing to others. Expressing our authentic selves is what ancient universal healing law says to be the real medicine, arguing that ‘dis-ease’ is created by suppression. To be able to fully express health, we have to begin the work of loving our true selves.
Archetypal remedies hold up a mirror to look at aspects of ourselves that we have unconsciously suppressed and shoved down in our shameful feelings of brokenness. We can begin to self-illuminate these hidden parts of our souls and lovingly reclaim them, returning to the wholeness and hidden gifts we were born with.
The archetypal Rosa is an important foundational remedy for self-healing, allowing us to begin welcoming home our feminine wisdom.
Tuning into Rosa’s call
If we are being invited to heal ourselves with Rosa energy, it is likely she will call to us with the following symptoms:
● Feeling burnt-out, with low energy
● Shaming your sensitivity, causing overwhelm, anxiety, and need for spaciousness
● Tightness and tension in our body, particularly the shoulders, neck and womb
● People-pleasing, along with feelings of shame and guilt if you don’t meet expectations
● Fearing vulnerability, rejecting support from others or closure to receiving any help
● Feeling compelled into a fast-paced life, pushing and forcing our way through
● Longing for a softer, tender, slower life, but judging that as ‘selfish’ or ‘lazy’
● Tending to beat yourself up for not being ‘enough’
● Feeling fear of having dreams, and closing the heart to possibility
When we relate to these patterns, we are being invited by the medicine of Rosa to heal the shamed feminine aspects of ourselves.
Reclaiming feminine sensitivity and self-compassion
Rosa as an archetype offers a powerful symbol of the transformation from holding ourselves tightly in a closed bud. We may defend with our thorns, yet secretly long to fully bloom as the beautiful, sensitive flower we are in our wholeness.
Rosa reflects our feminine gifts and the self-love that is required for us to be able to fully express our authentic hearts, rather than shaming who we are. As an archetype, she acts as a spirit guide who can teach us how to reclaim these gifts, revealing the next breadcrumb along our path if we open the lines of communication to her through ritual.
It is in our burn-out and exhaustion that Rosa commonly calls us to reclaim self-compassion and become tender with ourselves, tending to our sensitive needs with deep, unconditional love. In the healed state, someone who has taken the remedy of Rosa knows how to tend the nervous system lovingly, meet their own needs, love themselves more deeply, and open the heart to receive the beauty and magic of life.
Full moon Rosa self-love ritual
I invite you to create a self-love ceremony at the next full moon, asking for Rosa’s guidance to embody her feminine self-love and softness, so that you can open to whatever your version of full-bloom wholeness is.
1. Light a candle and journal on the following:
○ Where do I resonate with the image of being closed tight in a bud?
○ Where do I desire to express Rosa’s gifts of loving, feminine full bloom?
○ Is this something I wish to self-heal?
2. If your answer to the last question is ‘yes’, connect with Rosa’s energy by embodying her essence of self-compassion. Run yourself a warm bath, filling it with rose oil and petals to help you feel her loving energy.
3. As you lie in the bath, connect to the energy of the rose and ask your archetypal Rosa guide to reveal any next steps that will help you more fully embody your feminine self-love as you journey.
4. Finally, contemplate one release that will help you to let go of anything that hasn’t been a loving pattern for yourself. When you’re out of the bath, collect your rose petals, take them outside and offer them back to the earth before speaking out your release to the full moon.
Notice what arises over the coming days, weeks and months. Rosa may reveal something to you in your day-to-day life: the work of magic is to have your eyes open for the signs and synchronicities brought your way as learning material.
If you enjoyed this article, why not take a look at:
The New Paradigm of Conscious Love 
