The Soft Net: On Shame, Safety, and the Sacred Work of Women

by Cordula Frei

The Hidden Terrain of Existential Fear

In modern society, where infrastructure promises support, many women live with a quiet, overwhelming fear—a deep, often hidden sense of existential unsafety. Despite success in business, motherhood, or caregiving, there lies beneath their daily rhythm a haunting question: Will I be safe if I break? Will I still be worthy if I stop performing? This fear, rarely spoken aloud, is magnified by a cultural expectation that demands strength while offering little refuge.

We begin this exploration with the story of a young, rising single mother—a business consultant—who shared, while walking through the forest, how the key to consulting is to be authentic and sovereign in self-worth. Yet, how difficult that remains, especially as leadership often demands a mask of being assertive, unaffected, unshakable. But she longs to lead with tenderness, clarity, and love.

There is a unique way women can be shamed into silence, into the unseen trauma many carry. What can women do to care for themselves without becoming hardened? What can we (and in specific this means our society) learn to truly support them? But before we search for solutions, let s cross the uncomfortable spot of inward shaming and critic to a woman, who in her best intend still carrys the deep sense of either not belonging or not delivering (enough) to reach the standard of staying. I talk a lot about Exile in my recent articles and books. Why is that? Exile is a state that happens much more often then we think. It doesn t mean we are outcasts, but genetically, it may feel exactly this; to become shamed or pushed away from the tribe (your job, or marriage, or system) if we don t behave or act according to the rules.

For the feminine, these rules are life saving, life sustaining and therfore any act to violate them is also life threatening. This knowing is in the genes of women and still active, unfortunately also reactivated by the system we live in. No matter how much a woman strives for belonging, it is sadly still a thrive with the undercurrent message to deliver, to compete, to be better, or at least, to be sufficiant (enough) to the standards (of her employee, her boss, her partner, her parents, her school system, her medical system, her customers or, most of all: her inner critic).

To understand how this works through layers of culture and traditions we must take a look at the anatomy of toxic shame.

Toxic shame is not just about guilt or mistakes—it is a sense that who I am is fundamentally not worthy of love or safety unless i do something to be loved. For women, this shame is often double-bound: tied to both their worthiness and their value-delivery.

When a woman is told—implicitly or explicitly—that what she brings (to the family, the system, the job, the relationship) is not enough, she may internalize the idea that she must do more to earn respect, protection, or even belonging. If a man withdraws emotionally, economically, or strategically, it may trigger in her not just personal hurt, but a deep survival alarm: I may not be safe anymore. My circle may be in danger. And even if she might be fine in existential crises, the ones she holds out for: the children, the elders, the wounded and the animals are affected by her state of fear.

Why? Because a woman often holds much more than her own body and mind. She carries children, elders, animals, homes, friendships, businesses, and spiritual traditions. Her presence is not only personal—it is infrastructural to the emotional and social wellbeing of others.

When she breaks and with breaking this could mean as much as; steps out of her reward system, she is to experience the cultural taboo of existential crisis.

Existential breakdown is rarely welcomed in public. For women, it is especially taboo. To be “raw” in a parent meeting, to be confused in front of a bureaucrat, to express fear at a family gathering—these are considered risks, even dangers.

In school settings, for example, showing vulnerability may result not in support, but in punishment. The child may suffer socially or academically as a result of a mother’s perceived instability. This creates a high-stakes emotional environment where women perform strength not because they want to—but because the price of truth is too high.

This performance leaves many women exhausted, emotionally exiled, and afraid to ask for help. On the outside they perform and deliver but little of how the inside is shown and if, were would be the place to share deep enough to entrust support rather than another dismiss. Because even amongst women, as their best friends, mothers or daughters, sisters and neighbours, very little is shared of the inner strive of performing and feeling that never it is enough.

Institutions often claim to provide safety, but many women experience them as abstract, complicated, and emotionally cold. Bureaucratic systems—banks, insurances, child support, taxes, doctors appointments—require not only paperwork, passwords and technical equipment to handle these, but also resilience, comprehension, and time that many women simply don’t have. Sit in the waiting room of your doctors appointment waiting 3 h. to be checked for 5 minutes with a superficial testing on why your legs no longer seem to work. Her children are waiting to be picked up from school, lunch isn t cooked and her dog needs his pee. So she bears the pain, goes on, breathes 7 times deeply and performs.

A mother dealing with crisis may be told to wait five months for financial support or three months for medical help. In the meantime, she is expected to continue caregiving, organizing, soothing, working. She is not just seeking support for herself—but for the entire social web she holds. And this makes her so vulnerable. Often it is the least of her own fear or dismisses, but the clans or tribes (or families, or garden or employees or siblings) needs, she holds as a whole. She feels this, like her own body. When her child or parent is endangered, and this can simply be by illness or a job loss or a broken relationship or moving houses, she will feel the worry in her bones and body like a instrument that is shattered and shaken and vibrates in care and empathy until she knows and sees: the ones she holds and takes care for are save.

This worries in ancient traditions and native tribes had been held and cared for as a whole. There was ritual, based on sustain, renewal and sharing amongst the tribe to hold the complexity of a social web, fragile and strong like a plant growing in seasons.

Where Is the Net today ? In the invisible collapse of communal safety she lives in a so called highly developed world which seems saver than her ancestors ever dreamed of but the savety is superficial. When woman lost, what today we call a “job” in elder traditions were it would have been not a loss of job but a change of her role in the structure of the larger web, she would be held by the tribe as a whole. When she turned sick or went through birth or death “rites of passages”, there was space for her to grieve, to renew or to restore. Her cyclic being was part of the initiation from the young to the old woman and finally the wise one and she would socially be anticipated and welcomed to journey through these realms and renew by touching upon them deeply.

In our modern times which is so advanced in a so called health- or educational system, the great risk she encounters is her aloneness.

The challenge, even among friends, family, business or parents at school is, how the space for honesty is shrinking. Community gatherings have become arenas of quiet comparison, not compassionate support. To admit fragility is to risk social exclusion or misunderstanding. To speak openly about your true status quo (or state of bank account or relationship status) is not save. It is not just uncool, it is simply not wanted. We live in a civilization which does not want the broken to be a part. Not the old ones and not the children and most of all not the ones, which are meant to hold the whole together, like a spider weaving her net.

The tribal model—where elders and caregivers gathered to co-regulate, co-parent, and co-hold life—has been replaced with silent competition. Women are not failing each other out of malice—but out of fear, shame, and cultural conditioning.

This is why in our (and in many others) woman circles we meet regulary to offer a space were we explore what women can do to protect themselves. Some topics i like to share here as ground of inspiration for the many circles that have grown and been built worldwide.

To gain Self-Knowledge about our inner state of shaming it is elementary to get to know your nervous system. A empowering way to regain your sovereignty is to learn about your self as a cyclic being: Know how hormones affect your energy and emotion. Especially for woman in and before menopause this can create existentially more safety as the inner biological change can be so overwhelming that it is hard to place who we are and what is going on.

If we track our nervous system states and learn basic regulation methods we can ground, even if it is for one minute and there feel safety: in breath, in cold water, in grounding methods being in nature and finding rest. We can re-create rituals and perhaps for our survival we must. Ritual reconnect us with land, with our roots, with resource and with memory to were our sensory system can come to orientation.

Another important resource is to give permission to feel: to cry, grieve, rage and rest.

If society or your partner, your system or your schedule does not allow these aspects of your self to be expressed or shared, then at least allow your self to feel.

To be grieving, raging, resting and crying have become tabu in a modern world of perfection. But it is in these states of being, were healing can happen, were blockages are resolved or renewal and restoration can ground as you get in touch with your deeper layers of truth.

Holding the mask is exhausting.

Being friendly, polite and caring for the needs of the others and performing in and for their safety can feel like a full time job. Find moments, were you take of the mask and rest. Even if it is for some minutes in a save spot you create for your self, in the forest, at the creek, in your bathtub or in your bed; allow your self space to get in touch with these emotional layers which you usually (out there) cannot show or share or feel.

In our women circle we started off as a curated circle, first as 2, then growing as up to 4-6 at present. It does not need more. All it needs is your commitment to this place to be one of honesty. It only needs 2 to start.

If you like to have a support net in this manner, you can create a circle of 1–3 truth-holders: friends you can voice-note rawly. It does not need much. But it (we) need(s) to show up every once and again from core and not from mask.

You can share “honest asks”: Let others know when you need help. Even if your support net means you can sms 2 sentences when you are feeling out of your self and you receive a response that reminds you simply that you are not alone, it can create miracles. And why not reclaim this as a ritual perhaps as monthly gatherings, as soft spaces of exploration, creative being, sharing, rather than meeting out of performance. Women perform so much in these days, the simple fact to meet with the agreement to not perform for 1-2h. can do miracles.

And here is a message to the men: If you want to love a woman, understand her fear.

To the men who lead, partner, parent, or work alongside women:

When she breaks, it’s not because she’s unstable. It’s because she’s been holding more than you realize. When you emotionally withdraw or minimize her pain, it sends a dangerous message: you are only safe when you perform.

She is not asking you to fix her. She is asking you to see her. To stay present when her strength fades. To understand that when she collapses, she carries with her the lives of others. Her safety is not just personal—it’s societal.

This is not a guilt trip. It’s an invitation to true masculine leadership: one that protects, holds space, listens deeply, and shows up. Men are challenged equally for many topics and turmoils. But this one spot is in a biological matter one that is so important to understand:

Her safety is not just personal—it’s societal.

Here for both of you:

May you be seen before you have to scream.

May your collapse be met with open arms, not closed doors.

May your softness be a sanctuary, not a sentence.

May you remember that even when the system forgets you, your circle can still form.

May one person hold your truth like fire in their hands, with care.

May you forgive yourself for not being the heroess all the time.

May you know that being real is not the opposite of being strong.

And may your tenderness lead the way into a new world.

Living Appendix:

If you like to go further, here is a soft net Toolkit:

Inner Ground

Emotional “weather journal”

Breathwork and grounding

Cycle tracking

Permission to feel

Relational Net

Voice-note circles

Honest asking practice

Soft-space gatherings

Co-care systems

Rituals for preparing, not panicking

Favorite Bonus Practice:

Write a letter to yourself—not to your future self, but to the one surviving today and say: Thank-you. I love you. You are doing great. Thank you for being who you are.

This is not the end. This is a thread in the weave. Every time a woman tells the truth of her fear—and survives—it repairs the net for the next one.

An Invitation Toward the Unwritten

My new book, or perhaps this slow unearthing of something older than writing and wiser than the written, will not arrive all at once. It will come in pulses, fragments, short preludes and glowing embers from the future and the past, offered here in the rhythm of remembering. Each chapter will be shared in parts, like footsteps across the mythic terrain of the soul’s return — accompanied by reflections, stories, and field notes for a time of ecological and inner upheaval. What you read here is a prelude, a first warming of the soil before the long planting season begins.

As readers, you are not passive observers but co-dreamers, called to enter these pages with the same vulnerability and wildness that she — the one who wanders — embodies. With each release, you will be invited to not only read, but to pause and experience, to embody what is being offered in word and wind and inner weather.

For this journey is not a linear telling but a spiral walk — one that echoes the mutations Jean Gebser so profoundly traced in the unfolding of human consciousness. He reminds us: true transformation does not emerge by building new towers of abstraction, but by integrating what was long repressed, forgotten, or left behind in the wake of so-called progress.

To that end, the invitation of Soulskin is not just literary. It is cellular, ecological and evolutionary.

Register here:

About the author: CORDULA FREI

is a distinguished author, editor, and curator with a profound dedication to integrative practices, deep ecology, and transformative narratives. As head of media for Integral Perspectives magazine, she has been instrumental in shaping content that explores holistic viewpoints. She co-created Achronon magazine, a platform challenging conventional timelines and narratives, and served as editor for Info 3 magazine, bridging spirituality, culture, and contemporary issues. At Germany’s first regenerative society, Hofgut Leo in Gresgen, she curated cultural initiatives and oversees organizational aspects, promoting sustainable and regenerative practices.

Her longstanding collaboration with Tom Amarque is rooted in a vibrant friendship and a shared passion for critical thinking, questioning societal mainstreams, and shaping transformative narratives. As the author of Soulskin, she explores the initiation journey of the feminine psyche as a deep psychological pilgrimage into personal transformation and with her collegue Andrew Sweeny, after meeting up in a cave in Paris reading Rilke at a poets slam, she is heartfully anticipating their joint venture of the Storytellers Writing Classes coming up for Parallax Academia.

Her life is deeply connected to deep ecology, living among horses and dogs, traveling through vast wilderness to engage in regenerative dialogue with nature. Through her work, Cordula Frei holds the Podcast Serie: “Roots of Enlivenment“ at Parallax Media with a invitation to inspire and lead in the realms of integrative thought, ecological awareness, and cultural transformation.

Write her at cordula@parallax-media.eu

If you feel called to walk this path beside me, I warmly welcome your support through a paid Substack or Parallax membership — a gesture of reciprocity and devotion that helps keep this work alive.