The Whole Shebang
The Whole Shebang Podcast is a space to explore our collective awakening, often through the lens of unifying the Divine Feminine and Masculine in order to experience our most whole lives.
Each week Jennifer connects with various teachers, authors, friends, heart centered leaders and creators on topics such as coming home to ‘Self,’ consciousness, sacred sexuality, manifestation, abundance, inner alchemy and personal growth.
These conversations are aimed at supporting people in connecting to their own inner knowing, power, and divinity, to enlighten their lived experience, and move people towards their fullest potential. The Whole Shebang Podcast is here to create an energetic space and channel where people are invited to re-member who we are as individuals, and as a collective.
It's with all the love, and so much joy that we invite you to to buckle up buttercups, because we’re diving in! - xx
The Whole Shebang
44. Men, You're Needed and Wanted (Minibang)
"I don't need you." My guy friends have told me how often they've heard women say words like that. Or maybe we haven't said them, but we've signaled through our actions to the men in our lives, that we don't need them. They've likely been spoken in a moment of defensiveness or protectiveness, but they've hit their target and done more harm than we realize.
This week I want to take a beat and explore what I believe is beneath "I don't need you," take responsibility for what that's done, and pave a new path forward that is mutually respectful and nurturing.
Women, I believe if we want the men in our world to further ground in their purpose, part of our work is to let our shields down and stop with the pretense that we don't need them. Of course we need one another... we're made for Love.
Men, we do need you. Also... we want you (real bad)! Thank you for the presence, depth, and awareness you're bringing to the world. I hope this message helps ground you in your truth and purpose.
xx - Jen
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My name is Jen Briggs and welcome to the whole shebang where, on Mondays, you get what else but a mini bang. These short episodes are really meant to meet you where you're at, to help you set an intention or focus for the week, to consider a perspective that maybe you haven't before, and to answer the most common questions that not only propelled my personal and professional growth, but the best of the best I see around me. This is where we unbecome shedding the layers and the old ways that aren't serving us anymore, and where we continue becoming, stepping into and magnifying more of who you really are and who you're meant to be. So buckle up, buttercups. We're diving in.
Speaker 1:On the heels of Father's Day, I wanted to take this mini bang Monday to give a shout out to the men in our worlds that are amazing men. I have just been reflecting today on this special place. Well, first of all, particularly that fathers all of us have a father, whether we know them or have met them, or they're absent, or they died when we were young, or whatever the dynamic is. I know it to be true that we all have this really deep need in our hearts, or this special place, for the love of a father or a father figure, and when we don't have that, we grieve that, we mourn that we miss that. And when we do have that, it seems to me that, with men and women, that we also have a craving for a depth of connection, a depth of love, a depth of consciousness from our father figures. And so to, first of all, for those of you fathers that are on your path, that are doing your work, that are showing up to the best of the ability for your children, you are the spine, you are the consciousness, you are the grounding that we need. And that is where I want to sort of stick a pin in this for this, um, mini bang Monday.
Speaker 1:I've heard many of you men share with me that you've heard women tell you, you've heard women tell you I don't need you, and I think it's a bit of, um, oh gosh, I'm going to make some sweeping generalizations, which is always a really safe thing to do in this, this current world we live in. But I'm going to make some generalizations. I know that these are, you know, a rule of thumb, maybe, and maybe for a contingency of the population, but not for everybody. But, um, what I? I don't know if I've ever actually said that to a man. Probably I have, maybe I don't know, I don't, I don't think I have, but but I've heard women say it and I I understand the sentiment behind it. I think so if a woman says, listen, I don't need you, my perception is that that is coming.
Speaker 1:That is a reactionary statement on the front end. It's coming from a place of protectiveness. It's coming from a shielded heart. It's coming from a defensiveness. It's coming from a shielded heart. It's coming from a defensiveness. It's coming from a I will fight, I will protect, I am a mama bear, I am independent, I can handle this. And if we want to empathize with that and I can empathize with that myself I think if we go way, way back, it goes back generations. It's ancestral. We have just women in general and hang with me, guys, I'm going to take us somewhere here, I hope.
Speaker 1:But we have been betrayed by men, not all men, but by some men, just as you men have been betrayed and manipulated by women. But I'm just going to speak to this for a second. We have been betrayed by men that we thought we could trust, or we have not been protected when we surrendered ourselves or softened ourselves and put ourselves in vulnerable positions, and then that was taken advantage of. Or you can imagine, throughout history. But then, even through our individual lives, times that when we decided we would let our shield down and be open, and then we got hurt. And so that kind of like I don't need you comes from a place of self-protection, for whatever reason.
Speaker 1:If it's in the middle of an argument or if it's a woman trying to prove herself, she's in a rut, and I mean rut in the way of like it's a groove that has been carved in her brain, in her heart, in her body. It is a way of being that she has learned, maybe from her mother, maybe from her grandmother, or maybe in this life as a I can speak for myself as a single mom trying to make it in a world and in a society that rewards masculine behavior, that rewards masculine behavior. So, as a woman, then, I am practicing over and over and over how to behave in masculine ways so that I can succeed in my job, so that I can pay my bills. So if you listen to any of the other podcast episodes, you'll see how some of these themes and ideas weave together. And that's not anyone's fault, and men that's not your fault.
Speaker 1:So what I'm coming back to is why I just want to just pause on why women might say I don't need you. So we've got a little bit of that history there and where maybe it's coming from. But what I believe is happening in that moment, anytime we have this emotion of anger or a reactionary statement, if you peel the layers back at the core, at the root, there's always like an extreme tenderness. So I think that's true for all of us, that when we have, when we maybe even shut ourselves off and turn ourselves icy, why do we do that? It's because we're protecting something that is so beautiful on the inside and we know that we've got a grr. We've got to get grr around the outside of it to keep that little thing safe, or that's our protective mechanism that we've put in place.
Speaker 1:So what's beneath the I don't need you? I believe it's like, but I'm so afraid. I'm so afraid to open up my heart again. I'm afraid of getting hurt, I'm afraid of giving control, I'm afraid of being vulnerable. There's so much fear there for so many women. But beneath that is like a really deep yearning to be so met and deeply seen and deeply penetrated by the masculine and men.
Speaker 1:If you are committed to a woman, that is really shielded and guarded the irony of this is probably not lost on you that the way for her to start dropping those shields is not to meet it with force, but to meet it with as much gentleness and softness as you can. It's kind of like if you've ever been in an argument or been angry. Has anybody ever approached you and just put their arms around you in the middle of anger and all of a sudden you feel the walls come down and you soften. It's the same in this way. So that's one way, men, that you can begin to meet women in that like, hey, I know you've been hurt before. I know that you may have reasons to not trust If she's open in this moment to have the conversation. Maybe it's later in the day, but I'm here for you and I want to love you in this. I just read a statement I don't have my phone on me, but it was on Instagram today and it's so. It's just been sitting with me all day that when we bring gentleness to women that have been in a lot of women have been in abusive relationships and toxic relationships and just bad patterns. If you're committed to being in a healing relationship with a woman that's coming from that, it's going to require a level of gentleness and patience from you that will heal her nervous system and women. I'm going to speak to you in a second here. Women also have a responsibility in this, but I'm just speaking to you right now. You have an opportunity to create an environment that is going to nurture her so that she can slowly begin to let these guards down and you will start to see a new woman.
Speaker 1:There was a woman in my life over this last weekend that I was talking to. She's a little bit older and like late 60s and she was saying that she's in this new relationship and she's loving it so much. And she said one of the things that's just so surprising to me is that if I make a mistake or I spill something on the floor or I do something kind of absent mindedly, he never gets angry with me. He never gets annoyed with me, and the other day I spilled something on his new wood floors that he doesn't want his wood floors to get stained and I was really nervous that he was going to get angry and I don't know why, where that comes from. But I was nervous. He was going to like kind of raise his voice at me and she said he stopped me while I was cleaning up the floor and he grabbed my face and he said honey, I'm not angry at you. And she just melted. She said I don't know where that comes from. She peeled it all the way back to childhood, when her older brothers would, and even into her adulthood when they would shame her for things and raise their voices, and then men that she dated.
Speaker 1:So there's a strong pattern there of women being guarded because they've been scared or hurt or afraid. I want to speak to you. This is kind of like why I'm doing this podcast, because I've seen so much of that shieldedness in me and experienced it and have been working at just layer by layer, peeling it back. I want to pause for a moment. Women, and just well, like if you're in, just like a cool, cool, calm, comfortable place right now, ask yourself if you've ever said anything like that to a man and what was the nature of your tone in your voice when you said it? Did you spit words at him and tell him I don't need you? Now? Imagine if the roles were reversed and if you consistently heard from the man in your life, I don't need you. Now imagine if the roles were reversed and if you consistently heard from the man in your life, I don't need you. Or worse for a woman to hear. What if the words you heard were I don't want you but I'll put up with you? What if our words of I don't need you are as hurtful as I don't want you?
Speaker 1:When I've spoken with men and they've shared what it feels like to them at times is like we don't have a purpose, we don't have a use, we're unnecessary, we're worthless. So if you don't need me in this relationship, then what's the point? Why am I showing up Then? Why am I trying? And I think that and I know that there are so many layers to this we can talk about the patriarchy, we could talk about all of the things, but right now I just want to focus on this little thing, on the heels of Father's Day, to say that to the men in our life what role have we played in them pulling away, in them shutting down, in them going numb and them giving up in their development because we've told them we don't need them? And how have we told them we don't need them? And how have we told them we don't need them? What if we haven't said the words? But what if, every time they try to provide anything for us or give something to us, we tell them no, thank you. I don't need you to open the door. I don't need you to lift that thing for me. I don't need you to help me solve this problem. I don't need you to lift that thing for me. I don't need you to help me solve this problem. I don't need you to talk with me right now. I can do this on my own.
Speaker 1:In how many ways, small and big, have we sent the message to the men, not even just partners, teachers, brothers, colleagues, bosses? How many ways have we sent the message to the men in our world that we don't need them? And what has that done? And I know so much of it is not intentional, women right, it's a reflex, it's ingrained, it's a rut, it's something we've been in for most of our lives, for many of us. But today, this Mini Bang Monday, is to offer you a new perspective.
Speaker 1:If you have a tendency right now to be someone to men and maybe you do this to women in your life to say I don't need you. What message are we really sending to them and what is it doing to our hearts? What is it doing to our receptivity? So what I want to say today to you, men that are listening, and women we know that the male listenership is a little bit lower than the female listenership on here, so feel free to pass this along to the men in your world if this resonates with you and may with them, your world, if this resonates with you and may with them.
Speaker 1:But, men, we need you, we need you, we crave you, we want you, we want your consciousness, your grounding, your force. When I think of you, man, I think of like the trunk of a tree, going from like the center of your chest all the way down your body, your legs, like a trunk and just like into the ground, like we need your depth, we need your roots to spread wide. We need your depth, we need your roots to spread wide. We need the truth that you speak. We need you as a witness to see, to see all that is. We crave you to hold us, to hold us in space, to hold us in your minds, to hold us with your arms, your minds, to hold us with your arms. We need the way that you bring consistency, the way that you can bring consistency and allow us to flow and flourish. We want that, we crave that, we need that. And for the times that we are, um, that we've said we don't need you, for the ways that we haven't said it but we've demonstrated it, I'm sorry, um, we're sorry, um.
Speaker 1:And this, one of the things that I wanted to say about this masculine, feminine, men, male, female sort of dynamic, is that it is really the ego, it is only the ego that creates a sense of separateness. So there's sort of this paradox with polarity, like we want to create polarity with polarity, we want to create polarity, we want to celebrate the differences that we have between male and female, light and dark, frame and flow. We want to have that polarity. But when we elevate beyond that, the soul doesn't see separateness. The soul only sees us as a unified. And that is my hope that, as we continue to sort of birth, this next iteration of relationships, this next social paradigm, this next iteration of relationships, this next social paradigm, that this isn't an either or. This is no pitting one against the other. This is a beautiful celebration of both and then a union. A union whether it's in relationship or in society or in dynamics, that there isn't a separateness, but that we need both.
Speaker 1:We need you, and in order for all of us as individuals to operate at our highest ability, we need as many humans as possible to be fully awake. So, men, if you've been sleepwalking, if you've been numb, so, men, if you've been sleepwalking, if you've been numb, if you've heard from people in your life that you're not needed, that's not the truth. The truth is we need you firm, we need you strong, we need you here, we need you awake, we want you, we want you present. There are so many women that I'm talking to that are yearning. I used to hate that word because it sounded so cheesy to me, but like I don't know a better word to describe the depth of craving, that does not come from a place of neediness, it's not from a just stumbling into this. Really, these words, that may be another part of where it comes from when we say I don't need you. Because it's not from a needy, clingy place, it's from a deep, deep place that we yearn for you, that we crave for your presence, your depth, your width, your consciousness, your grounding Masculine, whether you're male or female. If you're predominantly masculine internally, we need you, we want you.
Speaker 1:Okay, so for this week. Okay, so for this week. Women, maybe consider who are the men in my life that I've sent mixed messages to brothers, colleagues, partners, sons, uncles, whomever it is. And how might I start sending a different message that they are valued and loved and desired? Because when they know that and start to embody that and show up that way, it gives us freedom and then us living in that freedom gives them that freedom, and it's this lovely little dance, positive upward spiral and alchemization, alchemizing Anyhow. Who can you encourage this week and let them know that we want them in their full presence? Okay, have a banging day.
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