Why Slow Living Is A Feminist Movement

& the power we as women can have when we embrace our feminine nature

I’m currently typing from my couch. My period started this morning, and I had cramps. I haven’t had cramps in over two years since getting pregnant and delivering my daughter. I didn’t miss the cramps. They came over me one by one like a wave, and all I could do was breathe through them. On days like today, when my menstrual cycle begins, I don’t do much of anything other than sip tea, eat food, sleep, rest, and read. It’s the one day of the month when my body literally tells me to stop. To listen. To just be.

I have been proud to be a woman my entire life. It’s something I love, honor, and cherish about myself. I welcome the challenges and the advantages that come with this gender. But, I also live in a capitalistic society where masculine energy, going and doing and fighting and pushing, is the norm. So, most of my life has been trying to go against my inner feminine.

The definition of feminism states: the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.

When I googled, “What does being a feminist mean?” the answer I received from The International Woman’s Development Agency said, “Quite simply, feminism is about all genders having equal rights and opportunities. It's about respecting diverse women's experiences, identities, knowledge and strengths, and striving to empower all women to realise their full rights.”

We, as women, deserve to absolutely have the same rights as our counterpart gender. I believe we deserve to be paid the same, to be treated the same, to have the same opportunities. Women are just as important as men, and vice versa. There should be no distinction there.

But somewhere along the way, we were told that staying home to raise children was less of a job than going to work and making money. Somewhere along the way, we were told that the only way to be seen as an equal to a man was to do a man’s job in the exact way he has done it, a 9-5 in a masculine circadian rhythm. Somewhere along the way, we stopped listening to our feminine (intuition) and started leading from our masculine (information + data).

And no, this absolutely does not mean I believe a man can’t be an excellent homemaker (he can) or live a more gentle life. My husband and I are two very committed co-parents to our daughter. We both work from home and take on an equal amount of the work with her. If anything, I am currently spending more time away from home for work (which I would like to change). My husband does the majority (okay actually all) of our laundry and cleaning, while I take on the cooking responsibilities and some of the tidying. I believe we can fluidly work in ways that each other thrives. But we also approach the way we work both in our home and with our jobs, differently. And that’s what makes our partnership and life together so beautiful.

I believe that when we as women honor our biology rather than fight against it or try to ignore it altogether, we can step into our truest power. Our design is conducive to rhythms, cycles, nourishment, and nurturement. The levels of our energy + inner drive change throughout the month based on where we are in our cycle. When we try to ignore that fact, and ‘push through’ to continue to perform at an optimal level all month long, we, in turn, ignore our own bodies. This leads to dysregulation and ultimately illness in some form whether physical or mental. And worse, it leads to an abandonment of self.

I first discovered slow living when I was spending months at a time in England with my husband as we awaited his US visa. I started digging into

Sara Tasker - Me & Orla

’s work, and Beth Kirby’s blog, Local Milk. Both were strong, incredible women who started and grew thriving businesses from a place of this concept called slow living. Both were also mothers.

I was enamored by them, and as I learned about this concept of living a slower life I also started to see it played out in the Northeast of England. Really, it’s prevalent in most countries that aren’t the United States. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t bombarded with this hustle culture and instead started leaning into a natural rhythm of life. I started implementing the habits of slow living by doing things like not working until lunchtime (mostly because no one I worked with was even up until after 12pm in the US) and would take the morning to journal, do yoga, take a bath, and ease into my day. On the weekends, instead of filling up my to-do list with events and activities, we would take a leisurely drive to a new little town I hadn’t been to and have a long lunch along the coast somewhere.

Slowly, I felt more like myself than ever before. I gained a healthy amount of weight and began to have actual womanly curves for the first time in a long time (probably ever), my food allergies miraculously dissipated, and the anxiety and severe depression I’d been riddled with most of my life was suddenly manageable and almost, dare I say, gone. I truly felt happy and more deeply fulfilled than ever before.

I always thought being successful was a direct correlation with how hard I worked, and I strived for money & fame by doing, doing, doing, and ignoring anything that popped up in my body to tell me otherwise. When I finally slowed down, I realized that maybe for me, the opposite is true, and success is living a simpler life where I didn’t have to strive for anything.

For me, being a feminist is absolutely having equal rights. But, I don’t believe we should necessarily have the same lifestyles or goals to achieve that equality. Feminism, at its root, should be about embracing and honoring our femininity to the utmost degree.

What if we re-examined feminism? What if, instead of striving to be exactly like the men, we embraced the differences we have? What if we tuned into ourselves, our own intuitions, and created space for magic from that? Maybe, in turn, we would empower the men in our lives to lean into their own intuitions a bit more too. It is from that space that I believe we can lift us all.

So, for me, slow living is a feminist movement. It’s my way of saying that I am done playing by the patriarchal rules set before me and am no longer subscribing to anything that doesn’t serve me as a woman. I will build my business the way that feels good to me, in my own cycle + rhythm, and whatever comes from that will be a success. I will stop trying to run from the maiden aspect of myself and step into the mothering version of who I am meant to become. I will utilize my intuition, my inner knowing, above all else. I will live with intentionality, at a slower pace so that I can be present for myself and those around me. I will nourish my body the way a woman should. I will create, create, create for when I am aligned with my true nature I can manifest anything I wish in a shorter timeline than ever before.

And I wish that for you too. All I want is for you as a woman to know how strong you are. To know that you don’t have to be like anyone else to be you. To know that leaning into your feminine isn’t a flaw, but rather your greatest power.

So as I sit here, bleeding yet in tune with the phases of the moon and the waves of the sea, I know that my purpose as a woman is a direct connection to our source energy, and from that space I can be, do, or have anything in this world. I hope you, magical woman, can see that too.