What Nobody Wants to Say

Dearest Gentle Reader,

As I wrap up watching the latest season of Bridgerton, I am afraid this pop culture juggernaut has touched a nerve. In this latest season, the author of the infamous Lady Whistledown gossip column is unmasked. It is revealed that the most unlikely female character who has been overlooked for years is actually the cunning writer behind the scenes. While I do not consider myself a wallflower, I too have felt invisible for quite some time. Even as my reach on social media expands, I feel like I have been whispering into the wind. Those days are over.

You see I have filled my content with tastefully curated thoughts and anecdotes, so as not to rock the boat too much. I have written about my experience in the deconditioning process and talked about how I want to help women by creating a community for us to heal our collective sister wounds. I do not regret expressing any of this, but it feels like a far cry from what I ACTUALLY want to say.

I recently wrote a very honest post on Instagram, exposing my skin breakout for the world to see. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. The response, however, was unprecedented kindness and compassion. Nobody tried to give me advice. Nobody shamed me for my candor. And as I wrote, I knew this experience was a physical representation of a MAJOR purging. All the anger, sadness and truth needed to come out.

Since then, I have done a lot of work around feeling worthy with affirmations and healing frequencies. Speaking gently and asking myself, “What do I need to feel safe in my full expression? What haven’t I allowed myself to say?”

Years ago, when I experienced a breakout like this, it would take up to 8 months to heal. It would be an all-consuming endeavor filled with elimination diets and an ungodly number of supplements. I turned my rage against myself and tried to beat my skin into submission. This time I took a much softer approach and decided to express everything I’ve been holding back. Better out than in.

I have gone through a very deep introspection here on the roof, and this is what has bubbled to the surface. This is what I see.

As I mentioned I’ve spoken a lot about sisterhood and bringing women together. What I haven’t made abundantly clear is WHY. It’s not just because we all have some wounding around female relationships. It’s because deconditioning is fundamentally different for women, and I have yet to meet a man in Human Design who understands that.

Intellectually men know that we have different conditioning factors, but until you have experienced life on this planet in a female body, you have no idea what it’s like. Telling a woman to follow her strategy and authority is pretty straightforward, but until you understand the complex layers of the mixed messaging we receive and the pervasive cognitive dissonance that’s driven us mad our whole lives, you don’t understand how hard it is for us to trust ourselves. Most of the time we don’t even notice how disconnected we are from our decisions because our decisions don’t even matter to men. More on this later.

It also seems easy enough to tell a woman about her eating recommendation, except that as women we already have a very complicated relationship with food. Almost every woman I know has either had a fully diagnosed eating disorder or has had some type of disordered eating patterns. We never stop to think about the connotations of giving someone recovering from bulimia a recommendation for how they should restrict their diet. Is this even something that would occur to a man?

Ra proudly declared that when you follow S&A along with the eating recommendation you get the body you’re “meant to have” which is not necessarily the body you think you’re supposed to have. I believe he said this to comfort women, but we cannot escape the thousands of images we are bombarded with daily, telling us what we should look like. It’s just not that simple.

Now let’s move on to the dreaded “not self” themes we talk so much about. When I first heard about the avoidant tendencies of the open solar plexus I identified with it greatly, but I didn’t feel like it was a trait reserved for only women who are undefined. We ALL have a hard time with confrontation, asking for what we want, and speaking truth to power. We’ve been dismissed, diminished, and spoken down to our whole lives. We learn through this conditioning that it is more convenient to keep our heads down and say nothing. I also remember hearing that as a woman with ego definition I have an inherent sense of worthiness, while those who are open in this center do not and feel the need to prove themselves. Nothing could have felt further from the truth at that time. I was afraid of my own shadow and could never fathom writing a letter like this. I was constantly trying to prove that I was “a chill girl,” so as not to cause any disruptions around me. But the truth is I have zero “chill” and I’m done walking on eggshells. It took me many years to find this deep sense of self and courage, and I did it without the help of a man.

This brings me to the Human Design community at large, which is mostly led by men. What I see is that this space is NO DIFFERENT than the rest of the conditioned and homogenized world. As women we all come into this system bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, expecting a group of sensitive, conscious, responsible men. Instead, what I have seen is the same exact conditioned behavior, except now it’s being justified with Human Design. The same system we fell in love with for giving us permission to be ourselves has been turned against us. And we are SO used to this sort of treatment, we can’t even see it.

Years ago, I was in an HD community group chat. We each dropped our charts as we entered and one of the men took it upon himself to analyze each of us. This was uncomfortable enough until he called one of them women a bitch based on her design. She promptly left. It wasn’t my group chat, but I summoned the courage to confront him at which point he called me a bitch too. When I spoke about this privately to the male leaders of that chat, I was informed that this person had access to unpublished Ra material, and I didn’t have to engage with him if it felt like “he wasn’t on my fractal.” In other words, my complaint was dismissed. Later, those same male leaders stole a woman’s idea and gaslit her by saying that it was voted on “by the collective” and their hands were tied. She too was dismissed. This is just a small sliver of my lived experience.

Since then, I have seen the men in this community speak over women, deny our lived experience, and use their believed status to charge women insane amounts of money for very little substance. Women have been used as props to sell programs, tickets, and give these men credibility. Because men know they need to borrow the trust women have in each other to gain access to our wallets (and maybe sometimes to our bodies). Ugh, the truth is SO inconvenient.

My gate of caution was begging me not to write this until I had a more diplomatic approach. But my guilt motivation wants a solution, and I want it NOW. I don’t want to wait until I have moved through this anger. I don’t care if it makes me unattractive or harsh or even a BITCH. My rage is deep and it’s sacred and I am not sorry.

If you are a man reading this, and you think I’m not speaking about you, don’t be so sure. This conditioning runs so deep in the cells of our culture that you don’t even notice you’re doing it. And I can’t even blame you. Who was supposed to teach you to do better? Definitely not Ra. He was allegedly sleeping with most of his female students and colleagues, and while I believe it was always consensual, there was never any real demonstration that he was a true ally to women. Ra never claimed to be a guru or enlightened master, but the moral implications are clear. So, I ask you again, who was supposed to teach the men? Their mothers? Even the most well-meaning, strong mother figure can’t single handedly undo hundreds of years of misogyny that has seeped into the collective consciousness. It’s insidious.

A recent example of this happened when I declined an invitation to collaborate with a male colleague, and his response was to try and change my mind. The most BASIC tenant of Human Design is that I am my own authority, and my mind has nothing to do with my decisions. NO is a complete sentence and insisting that I reconsider put me in a very uncomfortable position. Despite ALL his Human Design knowledge, he could not fathom being denied, and thus could not honor my decision. How is it acceptable that he is teaching women about following strategy and authority?

Therein lies the problem. We have put the men on a pedestal once again because of their knowledge. We amplify male voices because they have studied this complex system and are considered experts in this field. I respect that, I really do. But it’s time to step it up. What Human Design is asking of us now is not to KNOW it better, but to LIVE it. And you can’t do that in spaces where you don’t feel safe. And just to make it perfectly clear, WE DO NOT FEEL SAFE.

What breaks my heart is that I believe a lot of women feel the same rage I do. But we can’t quite trace the origin source because it’s so familiar to everything else we’ve ever experienced. Fish can’t see the water they swim in.

It occurred to me while writing this, that women do one of two things with their rage. They turn it on themselves or EACH OTHER. When I saw women in this community shaming each other online for the first time, that’s when my heart truly broke. I feel a physical pain in my body when women disrespect each other. I am by no means saying that all women need to be friends or agree on everything, but my gate of values has a zero-tolerance policy for that kind of public humiliation. Yet I understand why the anger is being misplaced; because confronting the men feels far more daunting.

In this space, I have also seen a collective effort to discredit and shame “Pop HD women” who’s only real crime has been to forge their own path. The joke, however, is that those women are completely unbothered. They are too busy publishing books and speaking to large audiences. It seems all we have accomplished here is an environment that deters many brilliant women from sharing their thoughts on Human Design for fear of being called out for “getting it wrong.” This madness has to stop. There is room for us all.

When I am judging another woman, I always pause and ask myself, am I judging because I’m jealous? Most of the time the answer is yes (cringe, I know). This awareness is potent though. Most often I am judging her for what she has given herself permission to do or say that I don’t give myself. Perhaps, as a woman reading this, you now feel triggered. It’s ok. Sit with it. What is this trigger trying to show you?

So why else haven’t we spoken up more? First, because the most pervasive way to keep women complicit is by making us believe that WE are the ones who need to grow a thicker skin. That the discomfort we feel is something WE need to work through. Second, we know we’ve been contributing to the situation we now find ourselves in. We’ve aligned ourselves with certain men in this field, maybe we’ve even been romantically involved with them. We have been bystanders but it’s nobody’s fault.

I have stayed silent for a long time, thinking I needed to be perfect to speak up. The truth is, I too have pushed other men’s agendas by putting their success ahead of mine, by participating in their events, and inviting them to speak in my community. In fact, there was an incident last year when a male guest really upset one of my members by saying something very insensitive about her chart. Instead of letting him know, I spent all my energy consoling her. I skipped the confrontation, telling myself it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. I regret this deeply. This is a wrong I intend to right, but not by exposing him here.

I am not singling anyone out. I am not trying to cancel anyone. I am saying this is a widespread problem and here is my solution. If you are a man who wants to disseminate Human Design to ANY WOMAN EVER, then I am here to offer you a space to come learn more about our dilemmas and struggles. I want to create a judgment free zone to learn how to truly support women in this process. I am asking you to listen, add nothing. We are going back to the basics.

It takes courage and strength to admit you don’t know everything, I recognize that. And I am saying that it’s totally understandable that you don’t. We are all swimming in uncharted territory, but Ra did say that Human Design was about the rise of the yin. THIS is what the new age looks like. I do not want to dominate; I want to collaborate. Like healing my skin, this will require consciously changing the behavior with a gentler and a more patient approach.

I am not trying to outsmart anyone either. For far too long, we as women have tried competing in a man’s world using the same methods men use. This is not an intellectual battlefield; it is a journey to deeper awareness. We MUST start approaching this differently. Otherwise, Human Design will be just like every other caca thing out there masquerading as female empowerment. I’ve watched too many cult documentaries; I know how this movie ends.

This brings me back to the show which was the catalyst for this letter. Although the story of Bridgerton is set in the early 1800’s, the storylines are very modern. Each male character’s story arch and development is guided by a woman’s unwavering compassion and endurance. The female characters are the way-showers and truth tellers. They are tender yet strong. That is what is required of us now. I know that as women we are collectively exhausted from feeling like we are screaming into the void, but we incarnated on earth during this time for a reason. It takes a lot of energy to birth a new reality, and it needs all of our participation.

This letter is just the beginning. I will not let this conversation die after one gossip cycle. I will continue to speak about this until I am blue in the face. Nothing matters more to me than creating REAL systemic change.

 My program for men is forthcoming, stay tuned.

Love yourself,

Zsuzsi Evans