Note: My live virtual workshop is next week, March 30, 2026 from 6-7:30PM EST. We’ll be doing a deep dive on how to balance our masculine and feminine energies. Get your questions answered and leave with integration knowledge you can use right away. RSVP here and I’ll see you next week!
I think a lot of us have desires of being generators. I know I did. I wanted to generate ideas, money, solutions. I wanted to be the one who creates the thing, who launches the thing, who starts a new thing. I thought it would be fun to be a well of generated things. Until I realized that I just don’t work that way. I’m a responder.
I thought being first meant being powerful, when really I just needed to recognize the kind of power that already lived in me and what I didn’t realize at the time was how much pressure I had placed on myself by believing generation was the more valuable role. Generators generate, they create, they birth. Responders respond to those things, they can fill in the gaps, they see how to make it shine in ways that may have been overlooked. They’re both super-powers. I just spent so much time trying to fit into a super-suit that didn’t fit me instead of the one that did.
Once I stopped forcing myself into initiation mode all the time, I could actually feel where my energy naturally wanted to move. It turns out responding isn’t passive at all, it’s creative in its own way.
An unexpected side effect of that was ease. My attempts to be a generator often left me drained and offering too many unnecessary things. It would take so much from me. Literally a mental birthing session. I also thought exhaustion meant I was doing something important, when really it was just a signal I was working against myself. I realized my ease got here when I decided to show up in ways that actually suit me.
Learning to lean into my responder side helped me realize that my love for observation wasn’t just a personality quirk. It was who I was. It’s who I am. When I look at how I enjoy social media or what moves me about living in NYC, when I think about the details that captivate me, I realize that it fuels the observer in me which fuels the responder in me. That’s when I can create. The response is my creation. Once I saw that clearly, I stopped waiting for permission to treat response as authorship. I turned noticing into a part of my process and let attention become part of my craft.
I find there’s something deeply relational about being a responder. It means you’re in conversation with what’s already happening instead of feeling like you have to originate everything on your own. But generation matters too. It gives direction, momentum, and shape to what response reveals, and together they create a kind of movement that neither could make alone.
I think a lot of us assume that if we’re not initiating constantly, we’re falling behind, but responding asks a different question altogether; it asks whether you’re actually paying attention to what’s arriving for you to work with. Sometimes what’s arriving is a moment, a detail, a sentence someone says, a pattern you notice, or an invitation you didn’t expect. Sometimes it’s a discomfort you can’t ignore anymore and sometimes it’s the quiet recognition that the way you’ve been doing things was never meant to be permanent.
If you’re someone who has been trying to force creation when your energy naturally wants to respond, you might recognize the feeling of pushing yourself forward without traction. You might recognize the strange exhaustion that comes from trying to originate everything yourself. You might also recognize the relief that comes when something finally gives you something to work with.
Here are a few small ways to experiment with this:
Start noticing what actually moves you to act as opposed to what you think should move you.
Pay attention to when ideas arrive after contact with something else: a conversation, a place, a piece of writing, a question.
Let yourself follow what catches your attention instead of immediately trying to produce something from nothing.
Notice where your best work has historically come from: was it sparked by something?
Here are a few questions you can sit and reflect with:
Where in my life am I forcing initiation instead of allowing response?
What kinds of environments make my noticing sharper?
When do I feel most energized after creating something?
What am I already responding to that I haven’t been taking seriously?
What would change if I trusted response as much as I trust effort?
This is something we’ll be working with inside The Balancing Act next week. Understanding when to initiate and when to respond is one of the clearest ways to start working with your masculine and feminine energies instead of against them. If this is something you’ve been feeling but haven’t had language for yet, I’d love to have you there!
