Is it really just a word?

The tapping in our video this week is all about detaching ourselves from all expectations and pressures associated with the word ‘ladylike’. If you grew up with this word it might have all kinds of connotations and memories associated with it dictating who and how you should be in the world. On the other hand this word may not have formed part of your experience, perhaps there were other words in your childhood that were weaponised against women? Or perhaps against another group that forms part of your identity?

Photo credit Pixabay on Pexels

As I reflected on this topic I began to realise that there isn’t a single word for woman (including the word woman) that I haven’t heard used in a derogatory or disempowering way at some time or another. I began to feel a new understanding for women’s empowerment workers that turn to words like ‘goddess’ and ‘queen’ to help us reconnect with our innate value and strength. At the same time, I felt a strong need for us to reclaim at least some of the words that just mean woman.

The words that we use carry energy within them that is personal and unique to each of us. That energy depends on the experiences and associations we have had with that word throughout our lives. It’s similar in the LGBTQ+ community where the words we use to describe ourselves carry a lot of weight. For example, to me the word ‘lesbian’ feels like a badge of honour I’ve earned through struggles with being in the closet and coming out later in life. My partner has a different set of experiences with that word and a result she identifies as a gay woman and would never describe herself as a lesbian.

On a larger scale our whole community has fought to reclaim the word queer from those who used it to insult us. Many of us now wear it with pride but still others feel that it continues to be full of an energy from a darker time. Tapping is a great tool for taking back words, we can take the emotional chare out of them and fill them with a different energy, making them our own once more. It can also help us take the charge out of words (like ladylike) that we might not want back at all, the ones we’d rather see fall out of use. If there’s a word that has been weaponised against you or your community the exercise below can help you change the meaning that it has for you personally, how it feel for you to hear that word.

Note: please do this exercise only if you are able to keep yourself emotionally safe. If there are words associated with massive discrimination or other kinds of trauma, please work with a practitioner.

Exercise

Take a moment to sit with your chosen disempowering word. It could be a word that was prevelant in your childhood or one that’s been used against you since.

Part 1

Make a note of any memories you have of that word. Working on each memory in turn answer the following questions:

A) Who said it?

B) Did they say it to you? About you? To or about someone else?

C) How did that make you feel at the time? How about now?

D) If you were to give that current feeling a number on a scale fro 0-10 for intensity, what would that be?

E) What did you learn to believe about yourself or other members of your group (women/queer people/any other marginalised group to which you belong) as a result of that interaction?

F) What else does that word mean to you?

Part 2

A) Instead of the word you’re working on how would you prefer to be described?

B) Who do you know (real or fictional, famous or not, preferably part of the same group that your old word applied to) that embodies this new word?

C) What about them do you admire?

Take a moment to recognise that all of these qualities already exist in you.

Now tapping around the points read your answers to part 1 out loud and see if anything shifts. When you get to the end go back to the beginning and add in any extra thoughts as they occur to you. Each time something shifts make a note of it and build your new feelings into your tapping until you feel like you’ve released the energy of your old word. Now turn to the answers you gave in part 2. As you tap around the points say the following words, addint in your answers from part 2

‘I am (A) everybody knows it. I love being (A) and I’m proud of the way I am. Just like (B) I am (A) and I am (C).’ Repeat this a few times while tapping until it really sinks in.

Return to your number from part 1D) and see if it’s changed at all.

If you’d like to do more tapping with me you can join my online empowerment circle or book your free one to one chat at https://www.healingwomanhood.com/book-online

To check out the YouTube video tapping on the word ladylike visit https://www.youtube.com/@healingwomanhood