FEMININE CONFIDENCE: Engaging with Radical Self-Trust

It is a question that just does not seem to want to go away: what does the true embodiment of rooted confidence look like for the modern woman? Not a sexy, polished sort of confidence but the kind of deeply grounded inner knowing that is unshaken by other people or circumstances. 

The truth is that healthy confidence belongs to all of us; it is not some shallow indulgence, but a profound spiritual need. Our confidence—or lack of it—impacts everything in our lives, shaping how we speak, how we interact, and what we think is possible for ourselves. It is contagious and inspiring, putting its persuasive fingerprints on everything in our lives.

The root of the word confidence, or the Latin confidentia, means “firmly trusting or to have full reliance.” So confidence is actually about boldly believing in something. To feel its truth settle, kerklunk, deep into the center of you. To realize that genuine confidence is not built on pomp and noise but on the much more eternal columns of your own radical self-trust and self-love. 

The reality is that it is naive to assume that always knowing this more honest kind of confidence is easy. Because it is not simple to live an authentic life based on ruthless vulnerability and trust. 

It is a genuine act of courage. 

This explains why so many women limp around with barely engaged confidence, painfully comfortable as they hide from themselves and others. Confidence becomes something silent within us, unexamined, a fragile inner trust that is meekly assumed and severely untended.  

For many women the mere idea of confidence feels impenetrable, distant, unattainable, meant for CEO’s, professional soccer players, or maybe a dictator or two. They just completely tune out at its slightest utterance, already turned off by its association to a kind of confidence steeped in centuries of the toxic masculine.

Or they shut down from total overwhelm, a sense that they will never be rid of their self-doubt, so why bother? Questions arise like: how can I be confident if I still feel afraid or lose faith in myself? Can’t I just by-pass this whole confidence thing, maybe step right over it as I speed along on my spiritual path?

It may be seductive to think that we can circumvent what feels most sticky, most pervasive, or most terrifying to us. But the essential work of honest self-trust based in an immovable self-loyalty- a stubborn refusal to stop abandoning ourselves- is not a detour we can afford to take.

What if we first lightened our expectations around confidence, getting curious about an inner knowing that comes birthed from a different place entirely. This is a new breed of confidence, a blend of authenticity, inherent completeness and self-trust, modeled to us through the lens of the living world. And I call it feminine confidence.

Feminine confidence crushes all of the usual myths:

That you have to be extroverted to be confident.

That if you are confident than you will never feel afraid.

That if you are confident than you will never doubt yourself.

That confidence comes in huge fancy packages of notoriety and success.

Basically that you have it all figured out, all of the time.

The word feminine in feminine confidence speaks to a power that comes from the vast cosmic ocean of being and creation. It widens what we hold possible. It is out of these dark waters that there arises a sense of unlimited potential, the seeds for life, the laws of nature, the creation of cycles and a knowing of our own rhythms. This great incubator holds the embryonic seed for the infinite diversity of life and the natural world.   

These forces are so much bigger than our tendency to want to pit men against women, women against men. All beings come from and are a part of this mysterious feminine, this fertile vat of complete totality. 

Which prompts us to wonder where the true intersection of feminine and confidence is? Imagine a concept embracing dualities that push and play off of each other like rascals: gentle and bold, trusting and courageous, wild and disciplined, free and committed. This is to expand out what we expect of ourselves, to broaden the horizons of our inner landscapes, making room for the interweaving of masculine and feminine.

These are the junctions of possibility, the places where we begin to understand what it means to be a woman wielding her thunder well. These are the evolutionary tides, the fecund creative grounds where, out of the void, a new story can be birthed.

How does feminine confidence take root in your life?

IGNITES A CONNECTION TO YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF,

that part of you that lies at the intersection of your divinity and humanity.

GATHERS UP ALL OF YOU INTO THE FOLDS OF GREAT INNER TRUST,

even the ugly, the gorgeous, the scared, the powerless, the influential-it lets it all be there without the constant knee-jerk response to improve yourself first.

TEACHES YOU HOW TO FEED YOURSELF WELL,

instead of always leaving yourself the leftover crumbs. It wants to know what your life would look like taking full ownership, finally making a declaration of sacred self-care.

ALLOWS YOU TO BE CLEARER ABOUT YOURSELF,

to know that your power and truth live inside, not outside, of yourself. 

CELEBRATES YOUR SOVEREIGNTY,

feeling free and possible to yourself as you forge your own path. 

It no longer feels possible for you to accept anything less than living on your own terms.