00:00 – Why the feminine phrase is No
04:32 – The hidden cost of saying yes when we mean no
09:15 – Alanna’s marriage story and the price of self-betrayal
15:55 – Burnout as a cultural epidemic among women
20:19 – Reclaiming your No as a sacred act of feminine power

Speaker 1  0:00  
It may come as a surprise to you, but the phrase of the feminine is actually not yes, it's no. And even though we have been trained throughout our lives and it is pervasive throughout our culture that women should just say yes to everything, everything that's asked of them, everything that's asked of everyone else, we need to do everything for ourselves and everyone else, and if we don't say yes, then there is a perception even within ourselves, that we will not be worthy of being chosen, that we will simply be discarded if we don't make ourselves continuously useful to others with our Yes. So I want to give you permission in this little series of podcasts, there will be four total. This is the first one to own your no as a powerful way to own your satisfaction as a feminine woman in this modern day age. Welcome to the satisfied woman podcast. I'm your host. Alanna Kaivalya, this podcast is dedicated to helping women lean into their femininity and rediscover the power of their feminine gifts. We take a look at what it means to be a modern woman and how we can live a satisfied life on our own terms. Visit the hub at the satisfied woman.com and for my podcast listeners, make sure you head over to the special page I've made just for you at the satisfied woman.com/empower me. We're doing a lot of amazing work within the satisfied woman community, and you are invited to join. When you go to the satisfied woman.com/empower me, you'll find a starter kit that gives you a few things to get you started on the path towards satisfaction, and also invites you into my free community for women just like us. So I have lived in this culture my entire life, and if you have to, then you have probably also been raised, taught, imbued with the idea that as women, we are meant to be generous. We are meant to continuously give, continuously offer, that if we ever withhold, we are often called bitchy or cold, and this is one of the many, many subtle tricks that this culture offers us as women, to keep us disempowered, small, devalued, oppressed, repressed, you name it. Now, as I always say, and you'll hear me say this a lot, not only on my podcast, but I've actually had the great fortune of being a guest on many other people's podcasts recently, that it is really nobody's fault this dominant culture. We call it the patriarchy. It is what it is. We've all grown up in it. We've all been improperly trained, and it's really important that we give everyone just a little bit of grace around what we've learned in this culture that hasn't really done anyone a service, whether it's the masculine or the feminine. Neither really thrive in their ultimate expression in this culture. So let's not blame any gender. Let's not blame any person. Let's not blame any particular structure. It's just the culture improper training, a long legacy of treating women and the feminine this way, and you and I right here on the podcast, through the work of the satisfied woman, through my book, The Way of the satisfied woman, we're gonna start to disentangle ourselves from this narrative. And one of the things that I am speaking with many women about right now that I find really fascinating is how impactful it is for them when I let them know that the phrase of the feminine is not yes, it's no, that the feminine no is something incredibly powerful to own, because that's how we preserve our energy. That's how we preserve our sacredness, and that's how we preserve our incredible rightful ability to receive. You see, the feminine is the receiver and the masculine is the provider or the giver. Now, if you think of it in a really basic biological way, ladies think of your bodies, the shape of your anatomy. The way that you receive intercourse is through penetration. You literally are a vessel of receiving. You receive the seed in your body. When you have a baby, you grow something within you. You are the receiver. Now, whether you have chosen motherhood in your life or not, doesn't matter. This is a part of who you are. It's a part of your intrinsic psychology. It's in built into your DNA. It is your birthright to receive and again, whether you have chosen to be a mother or not, you as a feminine woman are the harbinger of life force energy. Life force energy runs. Through you we experience it as feminine women when we experience pleasure. And of course, we can experience pleasure on many different levels. Yes, sexual pleasure, but also relational pleasure, communication pleasure, physical pleasure. You know, creative pleasure. We can experience pleasure through food, through art, through music, through being with family, with friends, through laughter, anytime the feminine experiences pleasure, and she feels that radiance throughout her body. And I kind of imagine it as little sparks of light coming from within your cellular structure. That's how I experience it, when you feel that that is your life force, energy, and everyone thrives off of that. And this isn't something you can simply give away anytime willy nilly without thought. When you do that, when you follow this cultural narrative to just say yes, to continuously give it depletes you of this life force, energy, this thing that makes you so powerful. Now, on the flip side, the healthy masculine is generous. One of the highest masculine qualities is generosity. And I'm not talking about that old school trope of the man just needs to go out, get a job and bring home the bacon. There is a lot that the healthy masculine provides the feminine. And you, as a woman, you can actually determine what it is that you want to be provided with. You know, yeah, money is great. We love money, and sure, it'll help. And we live also in a time now that the feminine can start to make her own money. I know many powerhouse ladies. I work with them in my private coaching. I help them build incredible sovereign businesses. And while money used to be the one hallmark of how a man provided, men can provide emotional security and safety. They can provide an emotional home. They can provide stability, support, you name it. So think outside the box and go with what feels good in your heart in terms of providership from the masculine, but when the masculine generously provides for his beloved, cherished feminine, it's what helps us to stay lit from the inside with that light, that pleasure, that creative force. All right, now I can hear my single ladies already listening to this podcast going, but wait, what about me? What if I don't have a cherished masculine, cherishing masculine partner to help me with this look? I get it okay, there are times in all of our lives where we are either single or we choose to be single, and I understand that it is going to be a little more challenging. So just to have a little bit of grace with yourself and realize that that masculine part of you can still cherish the feminine part of you, that masculine part of you can still be in service and be generous with the feminine that your masculine doesn't override your feminine needs. It doesn't take more than it can give. It allows your feminine to rest, relax and receive and for all those masculine partners around you, whether they be intimate partnerships, family members, friends, whoever they in their healthiest masculine form, will actually be enlivened and filled with purpose when they are able to activate that generosity and that sense of providership with you. I mean, I even think about one of my most extraordinary best friends, who is a masculine human, and he gets really excited when I ask him to help me with things, when I don't try to just do everything myself, and I offer to have him support me a little bit. It enlivens them. There is this balance and the symbiosis between the masculine and feminine in the universe, that is right and good and true. It makes everyone feel good. I don't know that. We just all need to be in incredibly neutral beings all the time. I think it's okay for us to take a position, and that's the place that I teach from, and that I write from as a feminine woman myself, and it doesn't negate any other expression at all. Just because I'm for one thing does not mean I'm against anything else. I embrace and love every expression of humanity on the planet. I'm just writing and talking primarily to those who are feminine women. Now I've

Speaker 1  9:16  
given you a little bit of background on why no is feminine, but I also want to talk about the hidden cost of not saying no, of saying yes, when actually we mean no. And I thought maybe I would get a little vulnerable myself and share a personal story. And I share this story, not in any way as a kind of bid for sympathy, but really more as a recognition that I am not alone, and that women everywhere often say yes when they mean no. Now I did this in a pretty extreme way. Actually, when I got married, I had this sense internally. That this was not the right partnership for me, that this person was not the right person. I had some signs leading up to the wedding that perhaps this partner that I found, that I thought was in his masculine polarity fully, actually was more comfortable in the feminine polarity. And that's okay. That happens. And as a woman who owned her own business, who was a powerhouse, a teacher, a leader, who was single most of her life, who very much donned the mask of the masculine, which many women do, again, I'm naming this because I know I'm not alone. I think I misrepresented myself as being able to hold the masculine far more than I wanted to and truly, far more than I was capable to. And this led to a lot of burnout. It led to a lot of exhaustion. And I felt so relieved when I thought I had found a masculine partner that could pick up that weight for me, carry it for me as part of his generosity. And I realized all too soon, all too close to the wedding itself, that maybe I hadn't made the right choice. Now, unfortunately, I was actually really sick at the time. I had just four weeks before the wedding, had my thyroid removed as a part of a complication of Hashimoto thyroiditis. I think six weeks before the wedding, he was actually fired from his job, he was unemployed. And after my surgery, or during my surgery, really, they had nicked my vocal cord a little bit, and I wasn't able to speak. And I look back on that time and think to myself, Wow, what a powerful embodied metaphor I was living. I wasn't able to voice my needs. I quite literally did not have a voice. I couldn't speak to anyone at my reception and before the wedding, even when I said to him, this isn't the right time, we need to cancel. We need to postpone. His adamant pressure to go through with it. He didn't want to disappoint the people who had already booked tickets to show up for us. He didn't want to cancel the venue. He didn't want the shame of not being chosen by the woman he said he was going to marry. He didn't want to be a failure in the eyes of his family. And so he couldn't listen to me, and even in reality, he really couldn't hear me at all. So even though I did voice some protestations, even though I did say no, this isn't for me. It wasn't heard, it wasn't listened to. And because of my own illness and my weakness, and probably because of my great societal training, that the woman just says, Yes, I went forward with it. And even on the day of my wedding, I remember going to my therapist in the morning just to get through the day. I remember my friends pulling me aside and saying, Alanna, are you sure you want to do this? And I know that I said no to them, and even so, I put on the dress I walked down the aisle. I couldn't even say my vows. No one could hear me. I couldn't speak to anyone during the reception. It was like I was a ghost in this experience. Now, again, I don't name this for sympathy. I name this mostly as a way to acknowledge that I'm not alone in this experience. I know that there's a woman listening who's gone through something similar. I know that there's a woman listening right now who understands that in her own past, she has said yes to something that she had meant or wanted to say no to, and to live with those consequences is actually unbearable. Here's what happens when you say yes, when really your body, your insides say no. What this is, is a negation of our own intuition and emotional depth. You see everything inside my body was saying no, but on the outside, everything looked fine. He had an incredible career. I know he had just been fired, but his actual career path was pretty bold and amazing. We lived in New York City. We had a beautiful apartment. I had a small dog, which I still have, Roxy. She's been here with me the whole time. FROM ALL outside appearances, everything looked like, oh my goodness, Alanna has finally found the missing piece, the thing that she's been looking for the relationship she's wanted. We use our logic and our reason to override our intuition and our emotional depth. We use our logic and our reason to say yes to things that we think we should say yes to. I thought I should say yes to a marriage because it would represent safety. I thought I should say yes to being a part of this person's family and life because I thought it would represent likability. I didn't want to be rejected. I didn't want to be alone. And also, if you think about just the internal patriarchal narrative of, you know, a woman. Certain Age becomes an old maid. You better lock it down. I was probably saying yes to that too. But the problem is, you know, there's a long history of women being dismissed or even burnt at the stake for their intuition, because our intuition and our emotional depth doesn't often make sense on a logical level. You see, if I had just turned to any of my friends or family members while they love me and trust me and said to them weeks in advance, look, I don't think I want to go with this. I don't doubt that on some level, with some of them I would have been met with. Oh, Alanna, you're just sick right now. You can't possibly mean that it'll be totally fine in a few months. I'm sure some of them would have said, But wait, he's a great guy. He's got a great job, so much potential, a wonderful family. Whatever you're going through, I'm sure you'll get over it. Think about how many times you're dismissed when you try to voice your intuition, when your own logic and reason override your inner voice, and you go down a path of yes, when really you meant no. And what that is for us as women, when we do this, it is actually self abandonment, which I find both cruel and terribly ironic, because when we say yes, what we're trying to do is not be abandoned ourselves, when we see our value in all of the ways we can keep doing for everyone else and do for ourselves and everything all the time, without fail, because what is our value if we're not at work? What is our value if we are at rest? Who's going to want us if we don't just do say yes and do everything for them? When we do that, we're actually abandoning ourselves. We're abandoning our needs, and we become resentful of ourselves, we become depleted in ourselves. I have a strong belief that this is actually the core of what leads to burnout for women, and in my research, I have found that 80% of women report feeling burnt out. Now, what's interesting is, burnout is not a medical diagnosis. You're not going to go to go to a doctor and have them, you know, write down, okay, you're burnt out now you need to do X, Y and Z. Burnout is a self proclaimed state of being. Burnout includes depletion. Burnout includes high stress levels. Burnout includes being constantly tired. Burnout includes high cortisol levels when we are under a constantly applied state of stress it is, it is incredibly detrimental to our health. We can't sustain it for long periods of time. And yet, as women, we have been taught to endure. We have been taught to suppress this intuition because it is dangerous. Our intuition often derails our path, and that path, the one that we're on, that may not be right for us, that forward motion, that unobstructed just get shit done, kind of energy that is masculinity. It's not always healthy masculinity. Now, in its healthy form, we definitely want that incredible forward moving, forward thinking, get through whatever's happening at all costs energy when we need to get things done, we love that in its healthy way. But when the feminine says, Hey, hang on a second, something doesn't feel right here, the healthy masculine heeds that warning that's cherishing when the healthy feminine in her intuitive knowing, in her emotional depth, says, Wait a minute, I feel off kilter. I don't feel safe. I feel un cherished. I feel sad. This doesn't feel right. The Healthy masculine responds, and whether that's from the outside or whether that's from within,

Speaker 1  19:03  
this is one of the most sacred elements of that dynamic partnership, because when we as women deny our own intuition and emotional guidance, that's a subtle violence. It's a self betrayal, and it keeps us small. It keeps us diminished, it keeps us depleted. So when we say yes to everything else and no to ourself, we're reinforcing all of those old, harmful patriarchal narratives that the feminine doesn't matter, and it fucking does. I don't care how you look at the math, we are one half of this cosmic equation, the feminine masculine in their dynamic polarities, whether inside of our own psyches or without in terms of interpersonal relationships. We are 50% of this equation, and we deserve that level of equity, that level of matching everyone else in this world and the society. We are just as important, we are just as critical, we are just as crucial, and our voice, our intuitive and emotional voice,

Unknown Speaker  20:19  
matters.

Speaker 1  20:22  
So this saying no, this act of self preservation, this recognition of where we will never again betray ourselves, is actually a sacred act of reclamation. It's a sacred act of reclamation. It's a sacred act of self empowerment. It's a sacred act of you centering your own feminine womanhood as Yes, I am just as important and just as valid as everyone else. No, I don't have to do everything for everyone else at all times to my own detriment. Y'all can do something. Y'all can step up on my behalf. You all can be generous with me, because that calls others to rise up, to support, to offer, to be generous, to be in their highest selves. If we just keep doing everything for everyone else, how will they ever learn what to do? How will they ever know what we need? How will they ever feel the incredible benefits of service and generosity? Have you ever been generous with someone else? If you're a woman, I know you're saying, Oh yeah, all the time, every day, but if you're giving yourself away, that's not generosity. That's martyrdom. Generosity comes from a place of having enough energy and empowerment to give of yourself freely without even any desire for return. And none of us really is Mother Teresa. None of us needs to be. And I'm not sure that Mother Teresa in the end, well, I don't know how she felt in the end. I know she did good work, but I also know she's held up as someone who was ultimately generous. We don't have her position in life. We are householders, we have jobs, we have families. We have desires. We have worldly desires. We want nice things. We have bank accounts. We have daily responsibilities. We have a career path, we have education. We don't have the luxury of existing in a convent or an ashram and outsourcing everything else to everyone. I wish we did. Frankly, I would love to sit on this chaise lounge and eat Bon Bons all day, but that's not our work. The act of saying no doesn't mean we get to check out. It means we very carefully and selectively curate what we do say yes to, and whenever we say yes to that becomes an empowered yes, that yes comes with a feeling of pleasure, that yes actually benefits everyone because it makes us and them happy, and that no, that sacred No, creates a vacuum. Now let me tell you the importance of a vacuum. Ladies, okay, I in college as an undergraduate, I studied a lot of physics, and I learned that the universe hates a vacuum. Maybe you've heard this, then any time there's a vacuum in outer space, the universe will rush to fill it. So if you suck all the air out of a room, let's say, then the room can't handle that. It will just implode. It will instead find a way to leak air into the room, to disperse the energy, to disperse the molecules the universe hates a vacuum. We as the feminine, as the receivers. We are the vacuum. So our sacred no allows us to create that vacuum. No, I will not pick up your socks again. No, I will not hang your towel today. No, I will not clean the counter in the kitchen. I will not clean up after you. No, I will not pick you up from the fourth soccer practice this week. No, I will not get up early to take you to the airport. You guys are just gonna have to figure that out. You create the vacuum, and when you do not rush to fill the space. It actually empowers others around you to rise up and be generous with you. Now I know that there is an instinct to put Wait, but wait. I want to fill the space. You know? I want to get things done. I get it. I get it. We're going to talk about that in the next episode of this little baby series that I'm calling the sacred No. So this was episode one. Next one, we'll talk about what happens when you create that vacuum. Because I can already hear the panic. I know the panic, trust me, I get it. I want to fill that space too often times, but there is a sacred act of reclamation in your No, no is the powerful phrase of the feminine. So where in your life have you been saying yes out of guilt, fear or habit, and where are you willing to stop? This is the question I've been asking. In my online community, the satisfied woman. If you'd like to join us, I would really love to have you. So come join my private community at the satisfied woman.com and I look forward to sharing this conversation and moving it forward with you and doing everything in my power, not only to help you reclaim your sacred no but to walk in the way of the satisfied woman. It's been my honor and pleasure to be here with you, and until next time, keep saying No, you.