The Sacred Rebel: Reclaiming the Feminine Without Rejecting Where We Came From
- Mindy Arbuckle
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
This past weekend, my dad reminded me of something I hadn’t fully claimed in myself.
He told me I’m a bit of a rebel.
A “rebel at heart,” he said. Someone who likes to push the limits, excel at what I do, and help people help themselves.
At first, I smiled. And then I felt something deeper land.
Because he was right.
I am a rebel.
Not the kind who rebels simply to be difficult. Not the kind who pushes against everything just to prove a point. I am a sacred rebel. The kind who questions what we’ve been taught when those teachings keep us small, silent, disconnected, or afraid of our own power.
And in many ways, I’ve always been this way.
I’ve Always Been a Little Different
At sixteen, I chopped off my gorgeous hair and dyed it pink, then brown, just to see what it would be like.
At eighteen, I chose not to get confirmed as a Catholic against my parents’ wishes because Catholicism felt too narrow to fit my wide open heart.
At twenty-five, I listened to that big heart of mine and opened my first yoga studio.
I’ve never really been the black sheep of the family.
I’m more like the tie-dyed purple sheep. 💜🐑🤩
Colorful. Devoted. A little unexpected. Still part of the flock, and also very much moving to the rhythm of my own soul.
I have chosen a path that doesn’t always fit neatly into the boxes my family, culture, or society understands.
I teach yoga differently than most people I know. I don’t just offer students modifications. I offer them freedom. I invite them to listen to their own bodies, trust their inner wisdom, and stop forcing themselves into shapes that don’t honor who they are.
That, too, is sacred rebellion.
Sacred Rebellion Is Not Rejection
I am an energy healer in a world that still gives more authority to what can be measured, diagnosed, prescribed, or explained through systems we already recognize. My sister is a doctor, and people naturally understand and respect her work. I respect her work too. Deeply.
And I also know that my work is skilled. Sacred. Needed.
It is simply less understood.
I don’t just sing at church like the rest of my family. I lead a spiritual kirtan band. I sing Sanskrit mantra. I offer my heart to gods and goddesses that many people in my family don’t believe in, and may even fear because they come from outside the Catholic tradition we were raised around.
And still, I come from good people.
And I’m a good person too.
That matters.
This isn’t a story about rejecting my roots. It’s a story about honoring them by letting them evolve through me.
The Inheritance I’m Carrying Forward
My dad’s father was a free spirit. A bull rider. A man who didn’t marry until his thirties, which was its own kind of rebellion in his time.
My dad rebelled in his own way too. He left his family in the Sand Hills of Nebraska to create a better life for himself and his family. He worked hard. He provided. He cared. He built something with his hands, his discipline, and his devotion.
He is a good man. I love him fully.
And he also never learned how to truly value listening to his body and honoring his rhythms.
He worked hard his whole life, and now, at eighty-seven, he is paying for it with lack of mobility, constant pain, and frustration with the aging process rather than being able to fully relish in it.
That is tender for me to witness.
Because I inherited his work ethic. I inherited the belief that value comes from what we produce. I inherited the drive to keep going, push harder, prove myself, and make something meaningful with my life.
I understand that belief. I’ve lived it. I’ve wrestled with it. I’ve pushed myself hard to prove I was worthy, useful, good, valuable, and successful.
And over time, I’ve had to rebel against that too.
Not because hard work is wrong. Hard work can be beautiful. Devotion, discipline, and commitment are powerful forces.
And they become distorted when we forget that our value does not come from what we produce.
Our value comes from who we are.
Our value comes from the presence, love, integrity, courage, and truth we bring into the process.
Our value remains even when we rest.
Our value remains when we need support.
Our value remains when we are no longer performing, producing, pleasing, or proving.
That has been one of my deepest rebellions.
To honor the hardworking people I come from, and also stop worshiping exhaustion.
To respect the traditions that shaped me, and also follow the voice of Spirit beyond the walls of what I was taught to believe.
To love my family, and also become more fully myself.
To carry the strength of my lineage forward, and also heal the parts of that lineage that taught us to silence our bodies, mistrust our intuition, fear the feminine, and measure worth through sacrifice.
This is sacred rebellion.
Maybe It Isn’t Rebellion. Maybe It’s Remembrance.
I believe many women are feeling this call right now.
Not necessarily to leave their families, traditions, marriages, jobs, churches, or communities. Sometimes sacred rebellion looks dramatic. More often, it begins quietly.
It begins the moment you tell the truth to yourself.
It begins when you stop overriding your body.
It begins when you say no without apologizing for having a boundary.
It begins when you rest before you collapse.
It begins when you listen to the wisdom underneath your anxiety, resentment, longing, or fatigue.
It begins when you realize you were never meant to be a perfectly behaved woman inside a world that is out of balance.
For thousands of years, feminine energy has been misunderstood, repressed, controlled, objectified, dismissed, and feared.
We have been trained to disconnect from our bodies, doubt our intuition, soften our truth, hide our anger, overgive our love, and make ourselves acceptable to systems that were never designed to honor the fullness of who we are.
So when a woman begins to reclaim her sacred feminine power, it can look rebellious.
When she trusts her body, it can look rebellious.
When she speaks what she knows, it can look rebellious.
When she honors her energy, it can look rebellious.
When she chooses rest, joy, creativity, sensuality, devotion, and inner authority, it can look rebellious.
When she stops asking for permission to be whole, it can look rebellious.
Maybe it isn’t rebellion at all.
Maybe it is remembrance.
Maybe it is the soul returning to itself.
Maybe it is the feminine rising from beneath centuries of conditioning and saying, “I am still here.”
This Is the Work I Do
I help women remember.
I help women reconnect with the wisdom of their bodies, the truth of their hearts, the power of their intuition, and the sacred energy that has always lived within them.
I help women stop outsourcing their authority and begin listening to the voice of Shakti within.
Shakti is the living energy of creation. She is the force that moves through our breath, our bodies, our emotions, our instincts, our creativity, our courage, and our desire to live in alignment with our soul.
She is not separate from us.
She is the power within us that knows how to rise.
And this is why I created Shakti Rising Circle.
An Invitation Into Shakti Rising Circle
Shakti Rising Circle is for women who feel the call to live differently. To stop performing spirituality and start embodying it. To stop abandoning themselves in the name of being good, helpful, successful, or easy to love. To reclaim the parts of themselves they were taught to hide.
It is for the woman who knows she is here for more, even if she can’t fully name it yet.
It is for the woman who is tired of doing everything alone.
It is for the woman who wants to be held in a community where her intuition, sensitivity, strength, softness, anger, joy, grief, magic, and humanity all belong.
It is for the sacred rebel.
The one who loves where she comes from and knows she is here to carry that inheritance somewhere new.
The one who is willing to question old patterns, not out of disrespect, but out of devotion to healing.
The one who wants to uplift the world, push the limits of how we see ourselves and each other, bring light to the places we’ve been taught to fear, and show that there are other paths forward.
Shakti Rising Circle begins officially on Thursday, June 4, and will continue as an ongoing weekly gathering for women.
We meet live from 5–6pm MT.
Live rooted. Rise as you.
Regular membership is $222/month.
Founding Offer: Join by May 31 and use code EARLYINSIDER to save $111/month for your first three months.
And if you are a man reading this, thank you for being here too.
I invite you to think of a woman in your life who is ready for this shift, or one who may be walking through it alone. Maybe she is questioning old patterns. Maybe she is learning to trust her voice. Maybe she is tired of carrying everything by herself. Maybe she is quietly becoming more herself and needs a space where that becoming is honored.
Send this to her.
Not because she needs fixing.
Because she deserves support.
You Are Not Too Much
This is not about becoming someone else.
This is not about turning your back on your current life or rejecting what has brought you here.
It is about becoming more fully yourself.
It is about reclaiming the feminine wisdom that has been buried, dismissed, or forgotten.
It is about remembering that your body is not a problem to fix. Your intuition is not irrational. Your sensitivity is not weakness. Your desire is not dangerous. Your rest is not laziness. Your voice is not too much.
You are not too much.
You are a living expression of sacred energy.
And the world needs women who remember that.
We are not here to force our way forward.
We are here to remember our way forward.
And sometimes, remembering is the most rebellious thing we can do.
All my love, Mindy
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