When Men Forgot Their Sacred Role
This isn’t about men being incapable—it’s about systems built to keep us all disconnected and depleted.
Hey Beautiful Beings,
May these words find the ones who’ve been quietly asking questions, seeking validation, and longing for remembrance. And may this be a week where your breath brings you sacred calm, clarity, and ancestral guidance.
I am so grateful that my last post on manifestation resonated with you. Eager to hear how this piece lands for you. What I wrote below felt like a gospel moving through me.
Now that I’m a mother, my awareness has expanded exponentially. I have to make sense of the world in a new way—to guide and protect my radiant child. And in doing so, I’ve started seeing patterns everywhere. Behavioral patterns, especially.
Women are slowly but surely speaking up about the men in their lives, about weaponized incompetence, about the emotional labor and mental load they’re forced to carry alone. So I’ve been watching. Listening. Talking with friends. Researching. Meditating.
My core inquiry: Why are so many women struggling with the men in their lives? And are the “masculine” and “feminine” roles we’ve normalized actually natural—or healthy? The answer was clear: No. And, as always, the trail of harm leads us back to patriarchy.
Inhale.
Exhale.
We are standing in the rubble of stolen villages, still healing from the echo of lies told to our ancestors:
“You are only valuable when attached to a man.”
“You are only whole when submissive.”
“You are only good when silent.”
Colonizers have always destroyed what is sacred. They observe what they cannot comprehend—then flip it and reverse it. For fun. For profit. For power.
Before all that, pre-colonial societies across the globe—especially Indigenous ones—centered women: as nurturers and governors, as keepers of wisdom, land, ritual, and law.
So what did the patriarchy do? It ripped women out of the circle. Called them hysterical when they remembered. Made them beg for help from the very systems that broke them.
Patriarchy burned the circle.
Where women once sat in rhythm—bleeding, birthing, breastfeeding, praying—it broke the link. It isolated the mother. It centralized the man. It called the village “primitive” and named domination “progress.” It criminalized intuition. The wise woman became the witch. The emotional woman became unstable. The boundary-setting woman became “difficult.” It told us: Your knowing is dangerous. Then made us doubt it ourselves.
It weaponized support. Turned men into providers—with terms. Gifts came with control. Help became surveillance. And when we cried out, we were called “ungrateful.” It monetized love. Marriage became property. Bank accounts became leverage. Caregiving became unpaid labor.
Because the circle was too powerful. Women—in rhythm with one another, with the moon, with Earth, with breath and blood—were a force no empire could contain. They didn’t break the circle by accident. They did it strategically. Because:
A circle cannot be ruled.
A circle doesn’t have a top.
A circle doesn’t need permission.
A circle centers wisdom—not weaponry.
So the patriarchy said: “Destroy it.” And they did.
They shamed the mother’s deep bond with her child. Moved men into dominant roles they were never spiritually equipped to hold. Outlawed midwifery. Burned herbalists and seers. Made women beg for protection from the ones who harmed them.
Why? Because the circle held the codes to:
Communal childrearing.
Shared wealth and land.
Ritual as governance.
Grief as power.
Joy as fuel.
Intuition as law.
Now here’s the reversal no one talks about:
Men were once part of the circle—but not at the center of it. They orbited the feminine. They guarded the threshold—not possess it. They were invited in—only after proving presence, humility, and devotion to the whole.
In many traditions, men were emotionally expressive, not shut down. They wept. They sang to the land. They danced with fire. They communed with Spirit. They stood on the perimeter—tending, blessing, protecting—so the mothers, aunties, and elders could hold the center.
But when the circle was dismantled, men were stripped of their sacred placement. They were shoved into roles of dominance they were never meant to carry.
And from this spiritual mismatch came the modern epidemic: weaponized incompetence. The subtle, strategic disengagement from the daily work of caregiving—paired with the demand to be praised for minimal effort. Because when men are cut off from their sacred role, they cling to control and when escalated, violence as identity. And domination always disguises itself as “help.”
So no, don’t be confused when the men in your life can’t hold power with humility. They were never designed to dominate. We were designed to move in circles.
It’s time to remember. To stop ignoring our need for communal care. To stop doubting our intuition. To stop shrinking for the comfort of men who benefit from our exhaustion.
Hold them accountable. And if you need to walk away—walk. Rebuilding the circle starts with reclaiming the center. The center being, you.
Let’s end with breath.
Place your hand on your heart.
Inhale slowly.
Exhale gently.
Say quietly:
Inhale: I am not asking for too much.
Exhale: I am asking for what was stolen.
Inhale: This is not rebellion.
Exhale: This is ancestral reclamation.
And so it is.
Ase.
If this reflection stirred something in you, I invite you to leave a comment, share it with a friend, or simply take a quiet moment to breathe and remember who you are.
You are not alone. And you were never meant to carry this all by yourself.
Also, I love the idea on Substack where maybe you can’t become a paid subscriber just yet but you resonate with the writing and want to bless the writer. I created a link for that called, “ A Love Blessing.” Kinda like a “buy me a coffee” but with extra love infused. Feel free to bless me if my work spoke to you.
Gorgeous analysis. It particularly resonated after I read the chapter on Harriet in Dr. Daniel Black’s book, “Black on Black” which explores how the movie is infused with the ancient African tradition of Ifa. His telling of it is with an exquisite balance of gendered power among the Orisha and traditional African culture.
Many blessings to you, Dear One. I knew you could not do motherhood in any other way but as evolving wisdom.
There is so much grief - for me manifested as rage that I'm working with - about our shared remembrance and roles. My husband and I have many a conversation about this, especially as we parent three children. There are roles I feel forced into, and there are roles he feels forced into. We're writing a piece together on this very topic. Have you read Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers? Or Woman as Healer? All discuss these topics. Would love your reading list, too!