Persistence is a female quality
POV: when you realise "feminine leadership" is a lie. Beyond our obsession for quantum leaps, energetics hacks and an addiction to the Void - there is the real creative process.
I fell for it.
Can you blame me?
I watched 2 parents work tirelessly my whole life for… financial stress in their late 50’s and one holiday a year during my childhood.
Working hard did not add up to much, in my mind.
My association with effort was that it equaled disappointment, frustration, illness or injury, depression, betrayal, loss and wasted time.
I’ll steer clear of all of those, thanks, and take one order of effortlessness, with a side of pleasure and oh, a tall glass of optimistic escapism!
I didn’t want what the world was offering. Pay that could barely cover the bills, in exchange for working most of your time? Physically ill at the thought.
I hated going to work. I hated having to be somewhere at a certain time, hated teachers telling me what to do, hated the potential humiliation and exhaustion of physical exertion, hated basically anything that held me accountable to… something.
I didn’t grow up playing sports, I was a scrapbooking-illustrating-artsy kinda kid who read adult books from age 7 and if there was anything athletic you best bet there was zero competitive component because eeeeekkkkk… it was just me on the trampoline, or just me playing Sims on the computer, or just me tidying and redecorating my room.
I was academic for sure, but it didn’t feel good to get an award in front of a crowd or “try” for anything more.
“You got in to the Australian choir!”… I stopped singing.
“I bought you an expensive tennis racket!”… I quit tennis that day.
“You’re good enough to do dance comps!”… I gave up jazz then and there.
As soon as there was skin in the game for achievement, I bailed.
I was the opposite of what they call “high achieving” (and tbh, I’m kinda jealous of those people! Those people get. shit. DONE!)
I preferred to slink away into the hidden worlds of The Magic Faraway Tree or skate around the cruise ship on Tony Hawk 4, just for the view and fantasy of being anywhere but… here.
If all that sounds depressing, it’s because it is.
Creative energy that is not used gets STUCK.
It’s what so many of us call “an off season” or “not feeling it” or if you play in the new agey spaces that I do “the void”
For me, it’s not about whether or not you have a clear dream.
Most women seeking clarity can riff off EXACTLY what they see in their secret visions with high-def detail.
They don’t need clarity — they need EXECUTION.
That energy that feels stifled, confused or stagnant?
Needs MOVEMENT.
To be carried out into a plan of motion.
“Motion is lotion” is one of my Mums catch phrases, and it applies here… (though when she says it, it’s about moving our bodies so we don’t get old and dry before our time).
On average, the human body is about 60% water.
Water is the life force of creation.
Water is the emotional and energetic nature of being human.
Water is the current of new life.
When we don’t move on our creative energy, the current slows.
Ever see a swampy mangrove where the water has pooled, and it no longer flows?
Or a well that hasn’t been filled in a while?
Yeah, THAT is what happens within us when we give up on the ideas that chose us to carry them all the way through into actualisation.
When we deny the calling that is Truth, and run it through bullshit polarity teachings about being more feminine and don’t work too hard because you’ll become repulsive to men and if you didn’t magnetise it then it doesn’t count — we end up swallowed in our own stagnation because we dismissed the Muse.
THAT is what we call depression or “down” or withdrawn from the world.
(Disclaimer: there are a million valid reasons for a season of withdrawal, deep sadness or depression. This is one take, k?)
I’m speaking to the creatives (you, because you’re alive) that leave their waters too long without movement and they get murky.
Recently, I was in a funk. My first post of the year was titled “When everything feels uninspiring”. I was in one of those phases that FELT like depression (deep-rest).
The antidote?
One of the darlings in my life took me to the river.
We walked in the soft rain to my “secret spot” which he knew always brought me back to life.
It was dry.
It was riddled with algae, green and brown.
I felt grief, projecting my own dryness onto this bare rock, the usually-flowing channel in which I lay my bones and have the waters trickle over my entire body.
He continued on ahead, and come-hithered me to follow.
The waterhole he found was spectacular.
With nipping yabbies and azure dragonflies and an abundance of foliage hanging overhead, a tropical oasis.
A perfect small pool, with a rock in the center to sit on a chest-depth, submerged and looking back on the flowing current coming down from the ranges.
I started praising aloud to the land. “Thank you, for having us here! Thank you for this! I needed this!” and in response, the full belly of the clouds burst into a torrential downpour.
It rained and rained, I laughed and giggled, knowing that it was Mother.
That hallelujah turned into a small cry of relief — ah, here I am, back in the flow.
Whatever had been damming me was being washed away.
All the questions and doubts of “what next? Who for? Why me?” got taken with the current.
I wonder if there is any science about what rain on the top of our head does to the creative psyche.
It is in our design to follow through.
It is our nature to flow.
It is our responsibility to move on our creations.
Whether that’s the ping to start sensual dance classes, or start your podcast, or learn about a new topic that you can’t seem to shake.
It doesn’t matter if it’s an athletic aesthetic your scheming, or getting sober.
Maybe it’s doubling your income and finally getting a website live so you can quit your daily doomscrollhole and take your business seriously.
These things require persistence.
The kind of energy that “feminine leadership” will have you avoid, make wrong, shut down or turn off. Beware.
noun;
the fact of continuing in an opinion or course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.
the continued or prolonged existence of something.
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PERSISTENCE — because, no one can do it for us.
The deterrence to words like “consistency” is such a detriment to women and their creative success. I’m here to reconcile this.
The compound effect in the creative process is simply repeated effort + time = result.
Not so magical, is it?
I know you want the quantum leap, queen. Me too!
But have you heard of ANY QUANTUM LEAP STORY EVER that hasn’t been backed by YEARS of trial and error, failures, almost giving up???
Hello Thomas Edison and every inventor ever.
Hello Beyonce and every musician or artist ever.
Hello Becks and every athlete ever.
When the hell did we fall for this INSANITY that your success comes from doing sweet fuck all and expecting the world to reward you for it!?
Even - especially - the coaches that preach Quantum Leaps on Instagram ALSO share their stories of toil and shame. Do not miss this point and avoid the parts where you are not getting the result you want.
Even our bones are watery.
Our very core is to be a bridge between the metaphysical and unseen, to the tangible and felt.
This doesn’t mean everything needs to be pursued right to the end. There is a wisdom in setting something down and claiming, “not now” or “not for me, go to someone else.”
But for those of us that dry up and wither in the ache of the dark too long…
Remember it is FERTILE and rich with what is wanting to be born next.
The Void is just a primordial womb, preparing for its next labour.
There is an inherent female urge to labour.
To be put to work by God/Goddess.
To be the channel in which nothing becomes something.
Have you ever seen a crack in a concrete sidewalk, revealing a root or a flower?
The AUDACITY.
Have you ever seen the first bloom of Spring after a long Winter?
The HOPE.
This is you, too.
Persistence is a feminine quality.
It is of female biology to receive and conceive, then gestate and build, then labour and birth.
Don’t you see?
“Feminine leadership” is not self pleasure, rose petal baths and energetics. Though they are fun and delicious aspects of being WOMAN in business.
It’s not leaning back and waiting for it all to come to you.
I’m over this deep divide between masculine/feminine that conditions women to believe they are armoured and closed and too strong and too tough and not soft and not feminine.
I’m done with the ideas that perpetuate a sneaking submission into keeping womanhood out of the entrepreneurial world because if they work or push or effort they are acting like men.
Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
You know what requires the female body to push?
Labour.
You know what commands staying power, determination, hitting your absolute edge and then finding even more once you dig deep?
Labour.
You know what demands presence, strength, warrior-like focus and insert any other quality from the “masculine” side of the list you don’t want to be like?
LABOUR.
And isn’t labouring a child into the world just about the most female thing you could do?
So let’s quit pretending that effort is what takes us AWAY from the path of least resistance.
Let’s give up believing that it should be all easeful and delicious and lovely and if it isn’t, you must be doing something wrong and you should take a rest day to “sit in your feelings”…
Your fantasy needs feeding through action, otherwise you’re just making a fetish out of it.
Your ideas ask you to execute.
Your dreams desire to be brought through your beingness WHILE you do.
When your rivers run dry — persist.
Emily
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