Reader,
It's Tuesday morning. I'm sitting across from David, a successful architect who hasn't cried in fifteen years.
"I know exactly why I'm afraid of intimacy," he tells me. "My father was emotionally unavailable. My mother was controlling. I have avoidant attachment patterns. I've read all the books."
He says this like he's reading a grocery list.
"So you understand it," I say. "How's that working for you?"
His jaw tightens. "It's not. I keep dating the same type of woman. I keep pulling away when things get real."
This is a trap I've seen a few times now everywhere. The masculine approach to healing - through awareness, understanding, wisdom - becomes a prison when it's the only tool we use.
The Masculine Path: Knowing Your Shadow
There's nothing wrong with understanding your patterns. Awareness is the first step. Without it, we're just unconsciously repeating our programming.
The masculine approach to healing works through:
- Analyzing the wound
- Understanding the pattern
- Creating strategies to change
This is valuable medicine. But it's only half the healing.
David knows everything about his intimacy patterns. He can trace them back to childhood. He understands the psychology. He's got frameworks and strategies.
But knowledge without embodiment is just spiritual bypassing with a psychology degree.
The Feminine Path: Loving Your Shadow
"When was the last time you actually felt afraid?" I ask David.
"I don't really do fear."
"You don't do fear, or you don't let yourself feel it?"
His eyes start to water. There it is.
The feminine approach to healing works through:
- Feeling the wound fully
- Accepting what's present
- Loving yourself through the process
This is where most men get stuck. We think we can heal by understanding. But you heal what you feel, not what you think about.
I watch David's breathing change. His shoulders drop. For the first time in our session, he's not in his head.
"It feels like drowning," he whispers.
Now we're getting somewhere.
The Integration: Where Healing Actually Happens
Here's what I've learned from my own healing and working with hundreds of clients:
Knowing → Feeling → Integrating
You need awareness to know what you're working with. You need feeling to actually process it. You need integration to build something new.
Most people get stuck in one phase:
The Over-Thinkers (usually men): They collect insights like trophies but never let themselves feel the actual wound. They become walking psychology textbooks with the same relationship patterns.
The Over-Feelers (usually women): They feel everything deeply but don't understand why they keep recreating the same dynamics. They process in circles without breakthrough.
The Integration happens when wisdom and love dance together.
David leaves our session different. Not because he learned something new about his patterns - he already knew all that. But because he finally felt the scared little boy underneath all the understanding.
That's when real healing begins.
Your Medicine Lives in Your Resistance
Which path are you avoiding?
If you're always analyzing, your medicine is in feeling. If you're always feeling, your medicine is in understanding. If you're stuck in either, your medicine is in integration.
The shadow you refuse to love through the feminine path will keep running your life. The pattern you refuse to understand through the masculine path will keep repeating.
Your healing isn't about choosing between wisdom and love. It's about letting them work together to set you free.
Where This Work Gets Real
This integration - of masculine awareness and feminine feeling - doesn't happen in isolation. It happens in relationship. In community. In spaces where you can't hide behind your usual patterns.
That's why I'm hosting The Vigil - a co-ed retreat where men and women come together to practice this exact medicine. Where the over-thinkers learn to feel and the over-feelers learn to understand. Where healing stops being a solo project and becomes a collective awakening.
You can't integrate the masculine and feminine within yourself until you experience both energies in relationship with others.
If you're ready to stop thinking your way to healing and start embodying your breakthrough, this is your invitation.
radicaleros.com/vigil
Which one are you ready to invite in?
Ish
🍵 x 🐉
