How One Woman Reclaimed her Feminine Energy in the Workplace

For our interview, Christiáne Harris, of Rancho Cucamonga, CA, wore a tawny jumper with a jewel belt around her waist. A chunky turquoise necklace, two nose rings and pink acrylic nails accented her look in all the right ways. Her eyes sparkled with cat-eye liner and long lashes, along with two accentuating white dots on the inner and outer corners. She had piled her blond and brown, partially braided hair atop her head like an immemorial crown. Calling on notes of modern and ancient beauty, she was boldly fashionable, yet still professional, an incarnation of the empowered woman.

A black woman with glasses and short curly hair and a dark blue V3 polo shirt poses in front of a sign that is half light blue and half white. It reads V3 Electric Solar done right. The sign is in posted in front of a green bush and a tan house mostly out of view. — Christiáne Harris while working at V3 Electric

So I was shocked to learn she spent most of her career with her hair cropped short, and her work wardrobe consisting of polo shirts and yoga pants. She didn’t wear makeup or jewelry. She confessed her former appearance reflected an unconscious need to take on a masculine energy in response to an all-male sales environment.

Christiáne married at age 24 and had two children. Like many women before her, Christiáne went from her mother’s home to her husband’s home. She earned a degree but didn’t work to take care of the children, so when her marriage ended, she had no work experience. Financial hardship is common after divorce for women regardless of having children, an education or a career. She couldn’t afford to live on her own so Christiáne moved in with her aunt, and that worked for a long time until her aunt decided to move in 2019. Christiáne had to stay because she shared custody of her children with her former husband and the court wouldn't allow her to take them with her. She needed to figure out how to support herself and her family. She couldn’t find work in her field, so she took a commission job with V3 Electric, a solar sales company.

In the beginning, her solar sales job helped her. The company provided financial stability and required its sales staff to read books on confidence and empowerment. However, it wasn’t all healing. Christiáne was usually the only woman in a male-dominated environment. She said other women came through occasionally but left quickly because of the imbalance. Christiáne said she: “heard some pretty cringy things.” When asked to elaborate, she said she regularly heard “locker room talk,” and defined that as, “… basically misogyny with a bit of racism sprinkled in.”

Locker Room Talk Continues Despite Outcry

In 2016, former President Donald Trump excused his lewd remarks about forcefully kissing and groping women as just “locker room talk.” He also dismissed these comments in the 2022 video deposition for the E. Jean Carroll civil rape case. These events led to many women speaking out about this issue continuing to be a problem in the modern workplace.

A prime example corroborating Christiáne’s experience comes from Whitney Sharpe’s 2023 viral TikTok video. In it, she confronted a vendor after one of the male employees accidentally shared a group chat screen during a video meeting. The chat revealed multiple men in the sales department discussing her in what she called locker room talk.

A woman in a pinstriped colared button-up shirt speaks with anger and shock at a man in a dark navy suit and brown hair sitting across a table. Another brunnette man wearing a dark suit without a tie sits next to her. A coffee cup and saucer and laptop sits open in front of him on the table. — Stock Photo Courtesy of Canva

The company apologized, and Sharpe requested a woman take over her account because, despite the insult, she still believed in the product. However, the company’s VP of sales informed her in a letter, “I understand you would like to work with a female going forward, however, I do not have anyone skilled enough to assist you.”

Sharpe considered the lack of qualified female staff to be: “a red flag.”

Is Toxic Male Energy a Problem in Sales?

Christiáne said locker room talk might be worse in sales environments. She said sales environments encourage toixic male traits like aggression and competition, because they help salespeople close deals. However, it wasn’t just all talk.

“A lot of times because I’m a woman, they assumed I was emotional,” she went on to explain, “It feels like gaslighting, invalidating or an excuse to not listen to me.”

Another event that bothered her was when a coworker asked her to buy flowers for the only other female staff member, the office manager. It seemed odd because Christiáne had been promoted to a senior sales rep and the task was more appropriate for an intern or junior staff member. Then she realized, she was asked because she was a woman. Asking a woman's opinion isn't outright misogeny, but a male colleague asking her to perform duties beneath her role only because she is a women is when it becomes offensive.

On a brown race track with white lane lines, a man in a dark blue suit and tie runs just behind another man in a dark suit and tie who is crossing the red tape of a finish line. There is blurry light blue stadium seating in the background. — Stock Photo Courtesy of Canva

She added that the sales workplace made her coworkers intense and sometimes “a little cultish.” For example, she said her coworkers appeared to judge her when she didn’t put work ahead of her personal life.

That type of pressure became especially challenging when the company asked Christiáne to help build a new office in Santa Clarita, CA. Unfortunately, the location was over an hour away from where she and her ex-husband shared custody of their two children in the Inland Empire.

However, she had reached a plateau in her career, even as a senior sales rep, and she wanted to get away from door-knocking and advance to a role with more compensation. The Santa Clarita offer seemed like the best path toward that, so she accepted, moved there in 2020 and lived on her own for the first time in her entire life without her children around. Then the pandemic hit and her children were suddenly going to shcool remotely and could visit her for a week or more at a time. She also got to keep working because utility companies were considered essential, and she was promoted to assistant sales manager.

When to Say Enough is Enough

However, when the world re-opened in 2021 and her children went back to school, Christiáne re-evaluated her situation. She had been promoted multiple times within the company, beyond the senior title, but her commission rate hadn’t changed. Further, her new responsibilities included training new people and walking them through their initial sales, but she wasn't earning any money for that work and was getting paid less because it took time away from her sales. And, she still had to knock on those doors. Only now, Christiáne wasn’t with her children.

A blue a-frame roof with blue squares representing solar panels and an orange sky with the sun rising in the background is pictured in a circle. Next to it is the work Power in orange and SoCal in blue. — Power SoCal Logo

In late 2021, she and several co-workers realized they could earn more on their own, so Christiáne left V3 and started a new solar sales brand with those colleagues. They named their brand Power Southern California and Christiáne sells solar through them now. She was able to move back to Rancho Cucamonga and still work near her children.

Reclaiming the Power of Feminine Energy

Christiáne didn’t conciously suppress her feminie side, so after she returned to the Inland Empire, she sensed something still wasn't right but didn't know what. Around this time, a friend also invited her to attend the Upland Boss Ladies, a women’s only networking group located in Upland, CA. In it, she noticed that the members all embraced their femininity and were still successful and this observation stuck with her.

A black woman wearing a light turqoise scarf around her head, a crystal earring and a white linen shirt holds her hands in a praying fashion up to her forhead. — Stock Photo Courtesy of Canva

Then she received guidance from a life coach and a chakra healer to re-embrace her feminine energy. This is when Christiáne started learning about the divine feminine and masculine energies. In this collection of cultural and theological beliefs, female and male traits are viewed as a polarity separate from gender. Everyone has both energies, and the goal is to achieve a balance between the two. This polarity is found in ancient Greece (gods & goddesses) Taoism (yin/yang), Hinduism and western Christianity, among others.

“People have this sense that feminine energy is weak and inert, but it’s not. Look at mother nature. You have to look at all feminine attributes. Aphrodite is the goddess of love, but she’s also the goddess of war. Athena is the goddess of war, but she’s also the goddess of strategy. They were all deities that are feminine and powerful. There were no goddesses that were weak or ineffective.”

So, at the end of 2022, she embarked on embracing her full self, both feminine and masculine. She started by changing what she knew best. Using skills from her fashion degree, she transformed her outside appearance as a method to embrace the part of her that she had lost.

Against a pink wall on a green counter, a circle mirror sits with a hand holding up half a heart shape creating a full heart shape via the mirror reflection. — Stock Photo Courtesy of Canva

“I am a fashion designer,” she exclaimed. “I have a degree in fashion design.”

However, Christiáne said that was just the beginning, and there’s still a change happening within her.

“I feel like I’m in a chrysalis,” she said.

Christiáne is inspiringly optimistic and embraces wellness and healing. Another part of her transformation has been to let go of any negativity from that period of her life.

“I felt like if I held onto a lot of those memories, I would be stuck there energetically or emotionally,” she said. “I do not want to be stuck there. I learned whenever you keep replaying a memory over in your mind you keep being in that moment.”

Christiáne didn’t suppress her emotions, though. She said she sat with the memories and the feelings they invoked and concluded: “I can’t change everybody. My job is for me to do my best, and the only person I have control over is myself.”

“What You Don’t Change, You Choose.”

In the process of reembracing her full self, Christiáne realized she wanted more joy and stability from her worklife than what sales could provide. So, she used wisdom and strategy, two attributes considered a part of female energy, to determine her next career move. She researched rising industries and started a certification program in UX Design. She said in the UX field, she could rely on a stable income and release her creativity. It was the first time she made a career choice that came from what she wanted to do. In the meantime, she continues to sell solar, and she’s humbly taken a job as a personal assistant and social media manager, but on her terms.

A group of multi-racial women and men sit in a semi-circle around a brown table with notebooks and laptops on it. Wearing bright colors, like purple, pink, yellow and peach, they hold hands in the center together. — Stock Photo Courtesy of Canva

She’s also found a purpose. She wants to use her knowledge of solar to fight poverty by building grant-funded solar communities. In her door-knocking days, she met many renters who said they needed the help of solar to bring down their utilities. However, they lacked control, as only the owner could take the next steps. She wondered how people could rise above poverty with such excessive energy bills. This is especially an issue in Southern California, where every summer temperatures break record highs. Even small residences’ electricity bills spike into the hundreds. So, when she met Dr. Summer DeRuyter who specializes in renewable energy grants, in Boss Ladies, she got to take the first step closer to that dream. Together they are working on an entire renewable energy community for the less advantaged.

Christiáne said, "What you don't change, you chose." She couldn’t change her old workplace. Instead, she’s creating an environment where she wants to work, and she advises other women to do the same.

“Nowadays, with social media, you can now find people who are aligned with your mindset. Go find them and create a job with them or go work for them.”

She also advises men to find balance between the masculine and feminine in the workplace, pointing out that male traits, like action, don’t work without feminine traits, like wisdom.

A dark skinned man with long dark hear, wears short, black pants. He hooks arms with a dark-skinned woman with an afro and wearing a black tank top and yoga pants. They both stand on tippy toes and balnce each others' weight with their other arms reaching out. — Stock Photo Courtesy of Canva

“When men understand the greatest power of their energy comes out in service of women, [they realize] women are complimentary. Not one above the other. You can’t have one without the other. … But men don’t want to take direction from a woman because it might seem weak or vulnerable. But look at the world. Wisdom without action is stagnant. Action without wisdom is chaotic. Look at the world we live in. It’s chaotic.”

Christiáne Harris stands next to a V3 and in front of an office goals board. She wears a dark gray hat with black cat ears headband over the top. Her jacket, polo shirt and yoga pants and tennis shoes are all black. She's looking down at a pamplet. — Christiáne Harris while working at V3 Electric

Why Women Trade their Femininity for Masculinity

Looking back, Christiáne considered what had happened and why she sacrificed her feminine energy so easily. Christiáne said strong black women raised her, and systematically, it’s common for single black women to play the role of both mother and father. Her adopted mother also worked with the military, where women often take on male traits for a variety of reasons, including safety. Christiáne speculated that her adopted mother saw it as a type of protection, and perhaps that’s why she passed it along to Christiáne.

Unfortunately, her adopted mother passed when Christiáne was only 22 years old. Then it was her turn to fill both roles of mother and father for herself. Then after her divorce, she had to play both roles around her children. Ultimately, she said, in the male dominant sales environment, she drew upon her experience with masculinity as a coping mechanism to protect herself and compete at a period in her life where it meant her survival.

A black woman, Christiáne Harris, stands in front of a blue banner with wmoen's faces highlighted in circles. She stands confident in a black blazer and black dress, wearing bracelets, long nails and rings. She wears her braids down and back and has on a full-makeup look. She smiles proudly. — Christiáne Harris after her transformation posing in front of the 90th Anniversary banner for the Power, Leadership and Influence of the Black Woman Sentinel

Emerging a New Woman

Following up with Christiáne a few weeks after our initial interview, she said she’d noticed a change in how people were responding to her in reaction to her newfound balance.

“The metamorphosis part is over, and I’ve changed. I know what I look like on the inside of the chrysalis. It’s not like here I am. It’s like I know what I’ve become, and now, here, you get to see it.”