123: Softness & Shadows

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Softness is a strength

Hello my love, welcome back to the Grow Through It Podcast with me Phi.

I’m back from Bali where I recently ran my Radiance Retreat hence why softness actually has been on my mind a lot lately. It was a huge theme that surfaced during the recent retreat how gentleness, presence, and the ability to soften are not weaknesses, but deep forms of strength. As we explored this on retreat I shared with the beautiful women the realisation that softness doesn’t exist without shadow: the parts of ourselves we hide, suppress like our fears and parts of us, our feelings that we deem as too much or perhaps negative.

The world teaches us to harden and armour up

Today, I want to talk about both: how softness and shadow live and dance together, and how embracing both can lead to real growth, presence, and connection. We’ll dive into what it means to soften in the face of life’s challenges, to meet our shadows with curiosity and care and to embody strength that is tender yet deeply powerful. For anyone listening, I’ll be diving even deeper into softness and shadow in Flow (luxury feminine self care) Vietnam Retreat next year at the end of May 2026launching very soon, so DM me for more info. Let’s get into it.

We all harden at some point in our lives, maybe you are still hard and it’s because you learnt to be this way. The world teaches us to harden. To brace. To armour up.

We tighten our shoulders against bad news. We build walls around our hearts after heartbreak.
We try to be unshakable in a time that keeps shaking us. While that armor can protect us, it also traps us. We stop feeling the sun on our skin. We stop noticing the rhythm and depth of our own breath. We hesitate to be vulnerable with others, afraid they might hurt us or break our hearts and ironically, it is that very fear that can keep love from flowing in at all.

Softness is like water

Softening is not about losing strength. It’s about remembering that gentleness is a kind of strength. It means letting the body breathe again. It means letting your jaw unclench, your shoulders drop, your grip relax. Think of it like flow and water. Water flows around obstacles but it shapes mountains. Softening isn’t becoming less.

You become vast: spacious enough to hold both strength and surrender, both clarity and compassion. Softening is power and it’s something I return to time and time again working with clients: strength isn’t hardening after you perceive the world or someone or something wrongs you or hurts you… strength is in healing yet remaining true to your nature and if you’re listening to this I have a feeling your nature is loving, kind and respectful. It’s the part of you that keeps choosing softness, even after life gives you every reason to close.

Reclaiming softness as the feminine

Softness is not your weakness. it’s your essence. It’s your truth. No wound, no betrayal, no disappointment can take that away from you…unless you let it. Softness doesn’t erase the hurt; it simply gives our hearts permission to move through it, to hold both the pain and the possibility of joy.

Softness is often seen as a gentle, almost fragile quality but for women, it’s deeply resonant because it’s about reclaiming something that society frequently asks us to suppress. From a young age, many of us are taught to be “strong” by being hard, self sufficient and accommodating. We push down emotions, shrink ourselves to fit expectations, and prioritise others over our own presence.

In a safe space such as recently on Radiance Retreat in Bali, softness comes alive because the container itself allows women to feel safe to drop their armor. In that space, there’s no need to perform, compete, or over explain. Softness becomes a shared language: a way to feel deeply, to connect with our bodies, our intuition, and each other. It resonates because it’s a return to essence as the feminine: our natural capacity to be tender, open, and receptive, without it being a weakness.

Softness allows the shadow to emerge safely

Softness on retreat also allowed for reflection on shadow parts anger, grief, fear or self-doubt: that are often ignored in everyday life. By leaning into softness, we can meet these hidden parts with compassion, not judgment, and feel the relief, clarity, and empowerment that comes from integrating all aspects of themselves. Ultimately, softness resonates because it is both radical and restorative: it is the courage to be fully human, to honour your body, your heart, your voice, your soul and to feel again all together.

Mini softness somatic meditation

If it feels safe to do so, I invite you to take this moment for yourself, a pause. Let your breath come in through your nose, slowly. Then out through your mouth. Notice where you’re holding tension. Your jaw. Your stomach. Your hands. Your thoughts. Now, imagine those places softening not collapsing, just… loosening. Imagine sense feel perceive receiving permission for this moment to hold you instead of the other way around. Sometimes softening starts in the body, and the heart follows and other times, it starts in the heart and the body finally exhales

Softening is not just personal… it’s relational. It’s how we listen when someone disagrees with us. Do you listen to understanding or do you listen to win or be right or be better? It’s how we respond when a friend needs space instead of advice. It’s how we meet ourselves on the days we can’t do everything.

Softness is feminine and masculine

Softness isn’t feminine as stereotypes would dictate. It’s human. It’s the way it moves through masculine and feminine energy has a different rhythm, a different texture. The feminine’s softness is fluid: it flows, it surrenders, it opens. It’s the softness of water: intuitive, receptive, magnetic. It expresses itself through feeling, through presence, through allowing.

The feminine softens when feeling safe and in trusting: trusting her body, her intuition, the natural unfolding of life. The feminine says  “I don’t need to control the outcome. I can stay open and receive what’s meant for me.”

The masculine’s softness is spacious: it steadies, it holds, it protects without possessing. It’s the softness of the mountain: firm yet yielding, powerful yet still. It expresses itself through groundedness, clarity, and listening. The masculine softens by releasing rigidity by allowing himself to feel without losing presence. He says: “I can be strength without dominance. I can hold space without control.”

When both soften, harmony is born. The feminine feels safe to open and the masculine feels safe to be vulnerable. Softness becomes the meeting point where heart and soul meet, flow and focus, begin to dance. That’s where real connection lives. This sacred meeting of strength and surrender each softened enough to see the other.

Soft man? Soft men?

Working with male, females and couples I get asked well do women want a soft man… yes but not in the way softness is often misunderstood. When most women say they’re drawn to a soft man, they don’t mean weak, passive or unanchored. They mean a man who is emotionally intelligent, self aware, and open hearted someone who can meet them in presence rather than power struggle.

A “soft man” in this sense is: grounded but not controlling, strong but not aggressive, kind but not submissive, can access both his masculine and feminine energies. He can lead and listen without dominating, aggression and can be the calm in the eye of the feminine emotional storm.

Softness and Shadows

Softness isn’t the absence of darkness. In fact, it lives alongside it. Our shadows the parts of ourselves we’ve been taught to hide, the fear, the anger, the grief are not enemies. They are pieces of the whole self that, when met, teach us depth, compassion and resilience.

When we soften, we don’t disappear into our shadows; we let them be seen, heard, and understood. Softness gives space for anger without letting it dominate. It gives space for grief without letting it define us. Shadows soften when they are acknowledged rather than suppressed.

Shadow isn’t the opposite of light; it’s duality and a teacher. The feminine learns where her boundaries have softened too far. The masculine learns where his rigidity masks fear. Both shadows, when met with gentleness, transform into wisdom.

We all carry shadows. They are the pieces of us that we’ve tucked away because they felt too much to bear, too unlovable, or too dangerous to show. Sometimes, they show up as anger that surprises us, sadness that lingers too long, or fear that whispers we’re not enough. Shadows are not mistakes or weaknesses they are the human parts we’ve been taught to hide. Yet, when we soften toward them, when we breathe into them instead of running, we can grow.

Softness and Shadow work together

Softness and