There’s an initiation happening for women right now, and it’s a deep one. We’re being deconditioned and asked to hold grief and love in the same hands.

You may know Gabi Kovalenko from Instagram, with her flaming red hair and even more flaming spiritual truth. She’s an intuitive writer, speaker and guide, and she’s been on my list for years. We talked about feminine alchemy, the rising divine feminine, sacred anger, celibacy and what it means to love without attachment.

The Divine Feminine Is the Full Spectrum

To me the feminine isn’t a set of traits for serving a husband, and it isn’t “burn all the men” either. It’s every octave: Athena and Durga’s warrior energy, the sensual love of Lalita and Aphrodite, Kali and Sekhmet’s sacred justice. After my divorce, entering new situations with new people brought new archetypes online in me that I had never met.

Gabi notices many women feel overwhelmed by all the goddesses and archetypes they’re told to embody. Underneath all of it is the feminine at the soul level: the cosmic principle, the divine mother.

What Is the Feminine Principle?

Gabi describes the masculine principle as structure and form. It translates everything into the physical, and it can also crystallize our survival programming and limiting beliefs.

Her “controversial take” is that the feminine principle heals the masculine, because it’s the principle of integration. It seeks coherence and oneness through the heart and the body, beyond the mental cages. There’s no one-size-fits-all way to access it. It asks you to let go of every belief that you must look or act a certain way to be lovable.

As she spoke, I saw the masculine as conditioning and the feminine as deconditioning. Some conditioning serves us, like spiritual discipline. The wounded masculine looks like “sit down, be quiet, don’t cry.” The dark night of the soul is often the great deconditioning, when the rug gets pulled out from under you. The feminine has a shadow too: think of Sekhmet in her wrath, needing to find her center again.

Your Body Knows When You’re Suppressing Yourself

Gabi works with many women raised in strict religious programming who stay in painful situations because their minds say it’s the moral thing to do. Their bodies tell a different story. Gabi sees the womb and sacral center as the place where unexpressed creative life force gets stuck when a woman swallows her truth.

She also speaks about the witch wound many women carry around their power. That resistance, she says, is where our original calling lives. The feminine is meant to be an alchemist and a disruptor.

Sacred Anger and Speaking Your Truth

When women leave betrayal or narcissistic relationships, anger is a natural, sacred protection. Then, when they share what happened, they’re dismissed as angry feminists. I asked Gabi how to hold both.

Her answer: the key to sacred feminine expression is holding the paradox, feeling grief and love at once without one canceling the other. You may have entered a painful relationship because you saw the divinity in him and your heart opened so wide you bypassed the red flags. That’s no reason for shame. The experience refines your discernment, so you start sensing future faking and sweet talk in the body.

Gabi asks: who were you before the trauma and pain, and are you willing to protect her as your sacred sovereignty?

I’ve lived both sides of this. For years after my own betrayal, I wasn’t ready to share. Writing my book, I could hear the good girl in me: people will think you’re a man hater, water it down. Another part of me knows women heal when we share our stories.

When You’ve Lost Hope in Love

So many women tell me they agree they deserve a partner who can meet them, and they aren’t finding him. Is sacred union a fantasy? Gabi felt the charge of that question.

For her, disappointment is a shadow state. It can make you forget your purpose, close your heart and turn off your creative life force. She sees this void as a choice point. Once you understand why you met your past partners, you end the paradigm of meeting the same person in different bodies.

Celibacy as a Juicy Initiation

Gabi says a season of celibacy doesn’t mean shutting down your sexual creative energy. It can be deeply sensual, relating to God or Mother Nature as your lover and becoming intimate with every part of yourself.

She treats herself as a goddess before expecting a man to. She loves natural medicine, homeopathy and Ayurvedic rituals like oiling the navel. Why make your happiness conditional on him filling the gaps when you can begin the sacred inner union yourself?

Flowers, the Rose and Being Held by Life

Flowers have been a spiritual path for me. Simply gazing at one can give you that falling-in-love feeling. I’ve sat with a rose dieta, and the rose teaches me that we’re beautiful in every stage, even as dried petals when an identity dies.

The first year after my divorce, a deep loneliness came over me every afternoon. My urge was to open Instagram or a dating app. Instead I asked what I was really feeling. I wanted to be held. So I lay under a tree and felt how supported I was by the Earth, by the mother and by myself. I’m the one who brought me through my darkest days.

Alchemy Is a Choice

Gabi believes that when you feel every split inside you and choose to alchemize it, that may be the highest point of feminine power. You stop needing external validation to feel complete, and you share your voice and gifts from that wholeness.

I share my own alchemical journey through the dark night of the soul, and the archetypes that came online in me, in my new book, Maybe This Love Story Is Really About Me, out December 4.

Listen to the Full Episode

Press play above on The Feminine Codes of Alchemy, Rebirth, and Quantum Healing with Gabi Kovalenko. Connect with Gabi at gabikovalenko.com.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is feminine alchemy?

Feminine alchemy is the process of feeling your pain, grief and anger fully and transforming them into wisdom, creativity and love, instead of suppressing them or staying stuck in them.

What is the divine feminine principle?

Gabi Kovalenko describes it as the principle of integration: seeking harmony and oneness through the heart and body, and deconditioning the beliefs that keep us small.

Is sacred anger healthy?

Sacred anger can be a healthy protection after betrayal. The invitation is to hold it alongside love, so it sharpens your discernment without closing your heart.

How can celibacy be a spiritual practice?

Celibacy can become a season of self-intimacy, relating to God or nature as your lover and channeling your creative life force into your own healing and purpose.

Keep exploring with what is the divine feminine, the dark night of the soul and the feminine embodiment archetypes. Keep alchemizing, goddess.