Buried Reasons

I'm out in the garden the other day, harvesting the tomatoes. I have planted about 6 of them, 3 Romas plus a grape plus an early girl plus a beefsteak, so there were a LOT of tomatoes needing to come in. When I went outside, I was not prepared to find that many ripe so I had no bucket -- only my tunic shirt, which I pulled up and started to use as a makeshift basket.

As I'm kneeling on the ground, filling the pouch of my shirt, I had this image of a group of primitive women out gathering while the men are away hunting. In my mind's eye, they are mostly naked like Bushwomen, save for skirts, which a few of them are using as baskets when they find a particularly full bush of berries.

In that moment, the idea of a skirt being 'women's clothing' suddenly made sense. I mean practical-as-dirt sense. I think of those cultures who developed the overskirt like 2 layered skirts, one remaining down for modesty while the other can be used to help carry, as well as those which developed a long tunic shirt over pants, like I see in Vietnam and areas along the Indian ocean.

Huh. Seeing what I'm taking as being a perfectly viable and reasonable ancient source for the practice of women wearing skirts or long tunics, I am surprised to feel much of the rejection of that style of clothing draining away. I own a number of skirts, and I never wear them. I guess I was subconsciously too plugged into the rejection-of-all-things-traditionally-feminine to feel comfortable in them, or something.

I know I've talked about inhereted ideas, both cultural and familial, which we are born into and absorb, even if we're not consciously aware of it. My grandmother and greatgrandmother are from the Sufferagette and corset-burning eras. My mother is from the post WWII era, and I'm from the 70s and 80s, when the War Between the Sexes became the source of sitcoms and common terminology.

I never really realized just how much of that I had absorbed and was carrying forward until I encountered someone raised in the 90s and 00s. A very different perspective! It was interesting to me to go back and take a look at ideas that I had, and then try to trace their source. Too many times the ideas I have are never questioned, never asked "where did you come from? why are you here?" As a result those ideas just run around unchecked, guiding my actions and beliefs and leading me decisions which surprise me.

One of the ideas which I had no idea was in the subconscious soup was the rejection of many things traditionally feminine. I've been working to reclaim them, such as cooking and sewing, and it seems I was ready to reclaim another one -- clothing choice. I often wondered at the mild, background sense of shame or even betrayal that I had when I wore a skirt, even if it was one that I loved. Now I understand it, see the source of as the inhereted attitude of my immediate previous generations.

--> Warning: astrological tangeant which assumes a great deal of understanding, can be skipped <--

*lol* Of course, my astrological training kicks in, pointing out that I have both Uranus and Pluto on the decendant, making those active energies within my chart. Both of those planets are also generational planets, the furthest ones out. Uranus being my own generation, and Pluto encompassing the previous one or two. From that symbolic sense, that I am plugged into these old ideas definitely makes sense -- but in the position both those planets are in within my chart also means that all those ideas need to be processed and re-examined for current validity. That is the entire point of my journey into the Lioness. Interesting.

--> End astrological tangeant <--

Now I know what I'm looking for, that background sense of shame or betrayal, I now have another tool available which will help me to identify those buried notions which are helping to guide me. Can you think of some confusing ideas you may have, where you think one thing but feel another?

- Lioness (in training)