The true sense of womanhood
/Question 1: Share a physical healing or healings in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and ultimate healing.
Last year, I started to have perimenopausal symptoms, including hot flashes, sleep problems, and irritability. At first, I did not recognize that these symptoms are thought to be associated with a woman’s change of life, but a female practitioner helped me to understand that they are part of a false sense of womanhood. To help me gain a sense of my true selfhood, the practitioner recommended working with references from Mrs. Eddy’s writings, including “Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into the newness of Life and recognizing no mortal nor material power as able to destroy” (Science and Health 249:6–8).
The practitioner also recommended Skip’s article titled “Womanhood and ‘Christ’s all conquering love’” (Journal, July 1985). After reading this article several times, I began working with this statement: “Our prayer is not to bring into being something we wish to be true about ourselves but to penetrate the fog of mortal mind, which would hide the present individuality already given us by God. The qualities of true womanhood such as purity and unselfed love, and their close correlation to divine Life and Love, are characteristic of our true selfhood now.”
Skip’s article helped me understand that I wasn’t going through a change of life that needed to be corrected. Instead, I remained an unchanged individual expression of God, which did not include a mortal sense of hot flashes and irritability. Those symptoms were illusions imposed upon my thinking, and I did not have to accept that I would have to experience them until they had run their course.
I also saw clearly that I didn’t have to turn to human solutions to find relief, but I did have to put in the work to overcome this attack on my womanhood. I put in the work and continued to work with a practitioner for support on challenging days. The hot flashes started to subside and became far less frequent.
The irritability was more challenging to overcome, as I was constantly faced with stressful personal and professional situations. There were days that this fog of mortal mind tempted me to just accept that I was going to be irritated by everything that happened throughout the day. But then the practitioner would remind me of my true identity and that God’s love for me would bring me to my rightful place. Soon I was able to pause when moments of irritability came in, turn to God, and understand that my true womanhood was not affected by any physical change of life.
I know that I have been healed of the belief of perimenopause or menopause. This healing illustrates what Skip says in his last line of “Womanhood and ‘Christ’s all conquering love.’” “May our demonstration of womanhood be such that one word from Christ, Truth, gives us the soaring joy of Christ’s irresistible victory, opens our eyes to the spiritual scene and to the unquestionable supremacy of divine Love’s purpose.”