in a cultural environment where

I faced tremendous gender disparity.

I actually grew up believing that women

are the inferior gender.

That women are inferior to men

and I carried that belief with me well into adulthood.

As a young adult, I even allowed myself to be coerced

into an arranged marriage because it was actually

ingrained in me that I had to relinquish control

of my life to men, whether it was my father,

or to my future husband.

And maybe some of you come from cultures

who can relate to this but we are actually taught,

or it's ingrained in us, it's part of our cultural paradigm

that women have to be looked after by men.

So it starts out with being looked after by our fathers

and we are expected to stay at home with our parents

until we get married and then

our husbands look out after us.

That's the kind of cultural environment I grew up in.

If I went out in the evenings, at night,

I couldn't go out with just women friends or girlfriends,

this was before I was married.

There had to be a male chaperone who was trusted

by my family, like it could even be my brother

or somebody who my family knew and trusted.

And women were treated like we were very vulnerable

and that we were prone to danger.

So just think about this.

Think about the kind of messages this sends to us

or gives us, think about the kind of beliefs

that this forms with in us.

It makes us feel that we need to be protected

by men all the time but it also makes us doubt

our own abilities as women to think, to react,

to create, to be all that we can be.

It makes us doubt our own strength.

It makes us doubt our confidence in our own emotions

and our own reactions.

In addition to this, at home, there were a lot of chores

around the house, like for example, kitchen chores

and things like that which were just assigned to me

and not my brother for example, when I would ask my parents

why he didn't have to help with the washing up

or the cooking, they would just say, because you're a girl

and he's a boy.

Did you hear that?

That was my phone ring tone.

And if you recognize it, that was Abba "Dancing Queen".

Sorry about that.

So when I was growing up, no other explanation was needed

other than that you are a girl and he is a boy.

And that was it.

And I actually grew up believing that women were

the inferior culture and that our role was

a supportive role, that we existed to support men.

Looking around even at my world at that time

as a young woman, as a teenager, as a young girl,

looking around, all the leadership roles

were held by men, doctors were all men.

People in government were all men

and leading figures, news readers at that time

were all men but the supporting roles

were all held by women.

For example, assistants, secretaries, nurses,

all these roles were held by women.

Now think about this, what kind of an impression

does that give you and when you're young

and you're impressionable, you don't question it.

You just take it as factual.

So how many of you grew up in

this kind of cultural environment?

I'm really interested to know.

I'm interested to hear from you and to know

whether you grew up in a similar cultural environment.

I know that a lot of people say that in Western culture

particularly in American culture, we have nothing

to complain about, that women are very free

and very liberated from all these beliefs.

That is true to an extent but only to an extent

and I'll get into that a little bit more in a moment

what I mean by that.

So here's what I want to say next though.

When I died, when I reached end stage cancer

and crossed over to the other realm,

I realized that there is no gender in the other realm.

There is no gender because we have no biology.

We are just pure spiritual beings.

We are powerful beyond belief.

We are strong, we are powerful and everything about us

is needed here, our empathy, our sensitivity,

all the way down to our assertiveness, our masculinity,

our femininity, it's all equally important.

Like yin and yang, there's no judgment in that realm

about which is more positive and which is more negative.

There is absolutely no judgment in that realm.

I realized that the roles we play, the roles

we stick to, the gender roles that have been taught to us

are actually cultural roles.

They're not something that is given to us

from the other realm at birth.

Our biological gender comes with us at birth

and this is for the purpose of reproduction

but the roles that we carry emotionally,

the guilt that women carry if they go to work,

the self-sacrificing as opposed to self-love

that women are taught to believe in.

The suppression of the ego which women

are more encouraged to suppress than men are.

All these things are cultural conditionings.

They're not a "there" thing,, they're a "here" thing.

That's what I want you to know.

Our genders are actually both equally important

like yin and yang, one without the other creates

an imbalance and that's what we see happening

in our world right now.

We're seeing this imbalance come into play

and it's happening everywhere including in the USA

which is the country which is supposed to be

the freest, with the least amount of gender disparity.

So here's why I said I wan to come back to talking

about gender disparity in the US.

What's happened is that in many cases,

when women realize that they are equally powerful,

equally important in the world,

what we do is we tend to sometimes believe

we have the right to be like men

in order to get what is ours.

Here's what I want to encourage you to do as women listening

and I want to say this as well though.

Is that I honor all of you.

It doesn't matter whether your emotional gender

matches your biological gender, that's irrelevant.

It doesn't matter to me what your biology is

and what your emotions are,

so that's completely irrelevant.

But what I want to say to you is that if you are

somebody who is empathetic, if you are somebody

who is more emotional than other people,

if you're somebody who's more sensitive,

embrace those as your strengths.

Embrace them as your strengths,

whether you're a man or a woman.

We label them as feminine qualities

but not only that, they are feminine qualities

but in a yin sort of way.

We don't have to give it a gender.

They are equally important.

They are equally important in every way as having

assertiveness, as being headstrong, as being stubborn,

all those yang qualities.

The yin qualities are equally important.

So what we are seeing today is a rise in male energy.

And it doesn't matter what gender you are.

We're seeing a rise in male energy because I know

there's a lot of men out there who embrace sensitivity,

who are more sensitive and empathetic

but they're afraid to show it.

They're afraid to show it because they're afraid

of being labeled, they're afraid of being labeled as weak.

There are women who believe that they need to

become more like men in order to succeed in this world.

I want you to know that's not true.

Today we need those feminine qualities more than anything.

The other thing is that we need more women

in role model roles.

We need more women, strong women role models

who are embracing feminine qualities, we really do.

That's one of the things that I want to speak about

more and more as we move forward generally in life

as I move forward because that's become so important.

Women more so than men, are discouraged

from embracing their egos.

Women from a young age are told that

we mustn't be so egotistical.

I know that I was told that.

I know that I was also told not to raise my voice,

not to lose my temper, all these things purely

because I was a women, no other reason.

I found that so frustrating.

So what I encourage women to do is embrace your ego

because you need your ego in order

to take on leadership roles.

Your ego is not your enemy.

The enemy is in suppressing your spiritual awareness

and it's only when you are pure ego with no

spiritual awareness, then you have a problem

but if you have incredible spiritual awareness,

incredible empathy, sympathy, balance

and you really do feel what everyone else is feeling,

you need to embrace your ego in order to know

that your message is important and needs to be shared.

What we are lacking in the world today

is people who are spiritually aware

who are willing to take on leadership roles

and I believe that one of the reasons

why we lack that is because most people

who are spiritually aware are afraid to embrace

their egos because that's what we've been taught.

So please share my message if you feel it makes sense

to people around you or anybody you know.

In the meantime I would love to hear some of your questions.

Yeah, sorry I sprang it on you all of a sudden.

And sorry my emojis, thank you for all your love

and your hearts and everything and right back

at you everybody, thank you.

Patty Lamb asks "are we that powerful here on Earth

"but just don't know it or believe it?"

Yes absolutely.

So we are extremely powerful.

We were born powerful, we are everything that we

want to be, we are everything that we're trying to be.

We already are spiritual but it's been conditioned

out of us so it's not about learning about things.

It's about unlearning, undoing, releasing, letting go.

Let go of everything that you are not.

It's not about trying to be something.

It's about letting go of what you're not.

There's a quote that is not coming to my mind

but I think it's a Michelangelo quote about

how did he create that statue of David

and he said that it was already there in the marble

but he just chipped away what wasn't necessary

or what wasn't wanted.

You already are powerful, just let go

of what holds you back.

Denise asks, "did you ever feel alone after

"your experience?"

Oh that's a great question because I did, I really did.

And it really took me awhile to find my tribe

and to fit in again because what happens is that

when you start to change and grow and you grow into

being all that you can be, you may find that you're

different from the person that you used to be

but you need to honor this person that you're becoming

because it's who you are and it may mean letting go

of some of your old friendships or relationships.

You can still love them.

You can still love them but don't hold on to your