The Fall and Rise of Women

How women can change the world

Winfried Sedhoff

• Publisher: Dr Winfried Sedhoff Medical
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780994609113
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Women in History
• Index: History

Dr Winfried Sedhoff’s The Fall and Rise of Women tells the story of women the world over, struggling to find fulfilling, balanced, and lastingly satisfying lives. Unrealistic expectations are thrust upon them to be mothers, workers, parents, and carers all at once. Being all things to all people has left women battling to know who they are, and what it’s like to be their true selves.

The book charts the downfall and denigration of women leading to dysfunctional families. Beyond the family unit, communities fragment and fall apart; leading to wars, extremes of wealth and poverty, mass starvation, and destruction of the natural world on an unprecedented scale.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Dr Sedhoff shows that in some cultures – such as the Cherokee and Iroquois Nations of the United States – to be a woman was to be revered, as nature intended. Ancient wisdoms, and the ways of nature, can help us find a path for a society that is struggling to find its way.

This book’s message is overwhelmingly positive and life affirming. As a woman you can enhance your tolerance, compassion, caring, and wisdom. You can master your pains and fears so future generations not only avoid such unnecessary hardships, but become more authentic, and live more fulfilling lives, and ultimately transform the world.

As you read this book you will learn:

• why you are often treated so poorly simply for being a woman, and what you can do to change that - the disrespect towards women needs to stop, that doesn't mean we have to bring men down to do it
• how to master and resolve your emotional pains and fears through communication with the source of your intuition, your Inner Self - learn from a deeper and wise part of you
• how to build friendships with other women and be supported - support enhances personal safety and help end violence against women at home, socially, and in the workplace
• how to make your relationship closer, more meaningful, satisfying and stable, by better meeting the friendship needs of your partner, and vice versa - when our close friends and our needs are being met why would we want to leave?
• how to create balance in your life - it doesn't have to be so hard
• how to calm your mind, and improve your mental health - a peaceful mind is a more effective mind
• how to increase your wisdom, tolerance, and compassion - offering more of this to share with our children, partner, and community
• ways to enhance your spirituality, and connect with nature - how to ground you in a traditional, peaceful, way
• the sources of peace, strength and focus
• how to connect with your authentic self - it is just waiting for you to be close
• how to be a better parent, or carer - there are qualities in us that can make this easier and feel natural

The light that can transform

Step 1: Respect

If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

Fyodor Dostoevsky⁸

As I stood before a small group of women and men at the seminar I asked them a question:

‘Do you respect yourself?’ I saw many nod their heads. ‘Please raise your hand if you respect yourself, and treat yourself with respect.’

Almost everyone raised a hand, many not very much, just enough to be noticed.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘That’s most of you. Now let me ask you another way.’

The room was the size of a small lecture hall. Everyone sat in a semicircle facing me as I stood in front of a small stage. There was a mixture of ages from late teens to mid-seventies.

‘Would you harm someone you really respected?’ I asked.

Many shook their heads.

‘Would you recommend they harm themselves?’

Again they shook their heads.

‘Would you recommend they did anything unhealthy?’

Everyone seemed in agreement they wouldn’t.

‘So how do you treat yourself? Do you do everything you know you should do to keep fit and healthy? Do you eat well, exercise as much as you should, take care of yourself as you know you should?’

Some people smiled.

‘Raise your hand again if you do all you should do to be as fit and healthy as you can be.’

Not one of them raised their hand.

‘Now what does that say about our actual level of self-respect?’

Chapter 5:

Respect yourself

Now I’m going to ask you: Do you respect yourself as a woman? Do you care for the woman you are, as you know you should?

If women don’t respect themselves as women then why should men respect them as women? Why should their children, why should anyone?

Respect begins by respecting ourselves. And we all want respect; see the Ten Desires of Community Self in the Balance of Self (BOS) Model.

When you see people abusing themselves with drugs and neglecting themselves do they inspire your respect? Not really, it is hard to respect them when they don’t respect themselves isn’t it? When we respect ourselves others respect us. We can begin to respect ourselves by taking pride in ourselves.

Take pride in yourself

She holds herself with genuine confidence; knows in her heart she is being true. In her every task she exudes a self-assurance. She has no time for frivolities like trends or girlish fashions. She focuses on what matters to a woman’s heart the most. Every child benefits from her ability, and every adult offers her thanks for her caring interest, and the world benefits from her benevolence. She is a woman filled with the power of glowing pride. The honest pride of being an authentic woman that radiates and shines and is clearly visible for everyone to see.

When you are proud you show it in your actions, how you hold yourself, and in every other aspect obvious to others. When you are proud you will act like you are worthy of respect and it will shine from you like a warm glowing light.

Pride should come from the heart; it must feel true for others to notice.

Pride that is faked – false pride – is irritating. It is as if the person is lying to us. How many times has someone else’s false pride irritated you? The person acts proud, but you know it is fake. Genuine pride on the other hand rings true, and never seems artificial or contrived. Pride from the heart is a great way to enhance the authentic woman qualities inside you in a way that false pride can never do. Genuine pride can be a most useful tool.

Pride is akin to a personal life filter. Just as a water filter filters away harmful sediment to refine the quality of water so too pride can help us refine ourselves and remove harmful impurities. One of the ways pride does this is by promoting repetition.

Suppose you take pride in keeping a clean house or room – it makes you feel good inside to know it is as clean as you would like it, and that you made it this way. Then every time you clean the house or room you feel genuinely good inside, like giving yourself a positive reward. Take pride in it and you will do it well, and feel genuinely good and want to do it again. We are more likely to repeat what we take pride in. By repeating it – and always wanting to do it well – we can get faster and more efficient, refining what we do.

Of course this process of using pride as a means of refinement can work against us.

For example, if we take pride in creating misery for others – perhaps because we want the attention – then we refine and reinforce creating torment. This will make others want to avoid us – or even punish us – making our lives more miserable. What we take pride in matters; it will reinforce and refine parts of who we are; what we do, how we act and behave, and how others will treat us.

The reason false pride doesn’t help us is that it doesn’t inspire us to do the task well, or do it again – it doesn’t feel genuinely good. It doesn’t help us refine positive qualities in ourselves. So not only does false-pride irritate others it works against bettering ourselves.

Take genuine pride in your authentic womanly qualities and you refine them, you do them well, repeat them, and filter out what doesn’t work – you refine and filter yourself to become a purer authentic woman. The more you find to be proud of inside you the more you will find to respect and value. Genuine pride and respect inside women can then spread.

The qualities in which you take pride will be reflected in other women. When you are proud of them they are more likely to be proud of themselves – you have shown them something of themselves to be proud of. Having honest pride in the authentic woman inside you then becomes a source of respect and pride for the authentic woman qualities in all women. Respect and pride for all women begins within.

If you are struggling to know what to be proud of as a woman consider the following examples:

1. you naturally care for people and children more than wealth, power, or status

2. you value your ancient heritage and the women of ages past that still speak to your heart

3. you are one of a chosen people able to create and give life to the world

4. nature has given you the sacred task of molding the hearts and minds of our young that determines the happiness of generations to come

5. you are inherently a sharer rather than a user of the world and its people as men tend to be

6. you have a natural sensuality and the amazing experiences that come with it, when you let yourself be true to it

7. you personally have great power as a woman to change the world simply by being yourself

8. you can restore balance to the world, something men currently cannot do.

Women have innate power. In the age of the domination of man it can be easy to forget this and begin to believe your innate womanly qualities have little or no influence or value. Yet inside you is the very essence that can change the world. You are the life-giver, the determiner of the quality, satisfaction, and balance of all future life. Inside you resides qualities no man can ever truly know or completely comprehend. You can give and offer what he cannot. This will often scare him.

A man may take pride in competition and conquest. The resulting levels of destruction can threaten us all. He is largely driven by desires to provide and protect. Women on the other hand can take pride in building the foundations of lasting peace, life satisfaction, and creating a sustainable balance with the natural world, all grown from the transformational innate desires inside every woman – caring and nurturing. Women can make mans’ need for conquest and destruction obsolete by making the giving and caring for life the priority. This will scare many men, especially those relying on conquest and destruction to give their life direction and meaning. Create a more peaceful and caring world and what will men have to provide and protect us from?

What more can you be proud of as a woman than qualities that can improve not only your life but the lives of your children, and generations to come? Qualities nature endowed in you that promote peace, caring, and a greater sustainable balance with the natural world?

When you are true to yourself, there is no reason for false pride.

As you develop your pride in being a woman you increase your confidence. You won’t have to answer to anyone about whether you’re authentic; you’ll know it clearly in your heart. You will know your actions are coming from a part of you that you deeply respect, your Essence of Woman, the spirit of the ancient wise woman inside. How will you know if you have lost this pride? By how you let yourself be treated, and how you treat yourself.

Some examples of indications you have lost pride include:

1. doubting yourself as a woman

2. letting others abuse or disrespect you

3. having many short-term relationships

4. letting men control you or order you around

5. giving sex to men you do not know

6. using your looks to gain status and influence

7. no longer caring for your health and appearance

8. putting status and wealth ahead of time with your children

9. no longer caring for the people, the plants, the animals, and the world around you.

10. being a user of others and the world rather than nurturing and supporting them.

When you do not take pride in your authentic womanhood you stop acting like a woman.

Lack of pride means you no longer consider the future of your children – including possible future children, and children everywhere – as your priority, instead you act as though other things are more important. When you have lost pride you will, predictably, let yourself go. No longer will you care for your health, your appearance, or your fitness. If you have an addiction for instance, then you’re surely not proud of the woman you have become.

Ideally, our society should help us feel proud of our natural womanly and manly qualities. The unique qualities of an authentic woman should be recognized and revered so that genuine pride in being authentic can be nurtured in every woman. Unfortunately, civilization will not increase the levels of pride in authentic women, not while chronic threat exists, and wealth, power, and status remain our primary drives. But you can increase it right now, in spite of our dysfunctional society and the male dominant imbalance. You can be the much-needed example simply by taking pride in the truth you feel within.

When you are proud of the woman within then you will radiate it like a beacon.

Not only will you promote pride and respect by recognizing it in others you will automatically promote it without saying a word, and women everywhere will wonder what you have that they lack and know in their hearts they need.

Imagine being the confident and self-assured woman described at the beginning of the chapter, filled with glowing pride. What would it feel like to be such a woman? How would it change your life, and the lives of the women, families, and world around you?

When you let yourself feel the great pride you should feel in being a woman you show the spirit of the ancient woman inside you the respect she truly de...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• How woman was cast from paradise
• Introduction to seven steps
• Step 1: Respect
• Step 2: Grow friendship
• Step 3: Listen to you
• Step 4: Be attractive
• Step 5: Be sex-wise
• Step 6: Get actively involved
• Step 7: Enhance your spirituality
• Create a more secure world
• Appendices
• Notes
• About the Author