Do You KNOW?

She paused for a moment, as both of us knew our phone conversation was coming to a close so she could run with her daughter and I too could workout for the day. She asked me to pause and listen for ‘the question.’ I honestly didn’t have anything arise right away, for what she might be about to ask me. What flitted through my mind? Things women-circling, things writing, things tender from how the universe is stretching us these days. Though it has been a familiar, even liturgical or ritualized question, for the years I have known her, I was not prepared for it. 

"Do you know?" 

Gut-tensing tears arose immediately, from deep within my gut, clutching at my throat a bit. I let them come, glad I had not clicked onto the Zoom invite link for my CrossFit time. The tears made it up to my eyes, a bit down each cheek. A sadness in my belly, though not sadness as I once knew it. Not the familiar sense of emptiness or void, of being left behind, forgotten, abandoned. This sadness seems to be at the root level of my being...some part of me that is still able to be surprised and disbelieve that I can be loved so deeply, so dearly, so fiercely. How is it possible that disbelief can rise, still? Where can my disbelief come from, given that I DO KNOW I am deeply loved? Could there ever be a life I could live in which that disbelief would no longer to rise?

Before the question, I wrote in some pages this morning about a disbelief or belly surprise that Lisa would want ‘being time’ with me this week. Even as it rose, I also heard in my own voice—Really? You wonder about that still? Really? But then...I will no longer be holding a work container for her sacred evolutions in her own calling(s). In one sense, I never did, but in another very real-world sense, I have. For us both, for years. A viable public entity in which she and I could be held and serve a broader community.  There is no longer any regular financial or work-development container through which she needs me. So I found myself awakening to the wonder and curiosity that she wants ‘being time’ with me. When I read the Enneagram insight for the Two today, I almost laughed aloud. I had already written my pages about this, and there it was: your basic Fear is that you are unloved, unworthy of love (or some such phrasing).

I’m embarrassed by this inner dialogue, of course. After everything, after all these many years, I am embarrassed that some part of me remains ever vulnerable to the self-accusation: you are unworthy … no one will love you unless you.... unless you are serving, sacrificing for… It’s like the very structure of my soul cannot be reshaped or reformed without unworthiness being there at some foundational level. Which feels awful, again and again, even though it is so familiar, a longstanding way I have known myself from without... 

Is that what this sense of unworthiness gives me then? A way of knowing who I am, in who I was accused to be, for so long, in the refused grief of my own ancestral lineages? The theological traditions that disempower, even as they hope to transcend and offer grace too? The earliest self-help gurus I learned from would ask me, "So what does unworthiness give you then? What are you getting out of it, that you hold onto it so tightly?" Their gut-instinct, perhaps wisdom: You wouldn’t hold onto it if it wasn’t giving you something in return.

When paired with those who struggle with this too, I can receive assurance, affirmation, that I matter, that I am seen. For a short while, at least, until the vulnerability gets touched again, and the cycle must then repeat. Ad infinitum. Feeling unworthy can also motivate service and action on behalf of others. Most religious traditions I have learned from have some component of this, in some fashion, though Christianity in the West has a particularly difficult version of this, with sin, depravity, shame, etc. Right now, this feeling of unworthiness is a drive...it is creating words on a page, looking backwards, within, beyond…

Something a directee said last week has stuck with me; it feels relevant here. In the abyss of quarantine (for her), she is learning that Love is right there, within her. Because she lives, Love lives. She need not reach outside herself for it at all; it is always right there, within her. … And then, without awareness of the paradox/irony, she spent several minutes diminishing her own ability to be on the Path she so desires. All while she was living it, speaking it, teaching it to me. I did smile inside, even as it touched the sadness she and I both know at our root, wondering if/whether we matter when we are not serving, helping, providing...

I could feel the double-bind of it for her, for myself, for what seemed like ages in our short hour together. I wrestled whether to mirror any of what I was seeing, sensing. Would my mirroring play into her need for assurance and affirmation, thereby disempowering her from knowing what she already knows? I held onto most of my own observations, refusing to mirror or play into the affirmation yearning I know all too well. At the very end, however, I did name my own experience of wrestling, also discernment, to say at least this: The energy in your words, your eyes, your life right now is stunning, beautiful, so very powerful. That’s all I said. 

Love is right here, within me. Love lives, because I live. These words do bring tears into my awareness, if not all the way up to my throat this time. I know this. I mean, I really know this now. I have for well over a year, with seeds and blossomings of it for nearly seven years. At the same core level that the vulnerability and abandonment rest in my ancestral lineages. Yet gut-tensing tears arose to nudge me into something...something I don’t know too, or don’t know anymore. 

The formation of the Women Writing circle communities, community up here in Central Ohio, has been an incredible labor of love, for both Lisa and me, for nearly seven years. It has shaped me into a woman I would not have been without her, without it. These years have also shaped me into a woman I no longer know, really. I don’t know how to be present to myself, alone, for me only, on the page. I don’t know easily how to play anymore, in color or in puzzles or in fiction that has no purpose but to amuse me. I don’t know who I am in this season of my life, more whole and healed than I have ever been, peeking out now from the inside out. 

So...do you know? I know I am deeply loved, even when that love needs to be expressed in ways that terrify me, force me to look at some things I am afraid to see. But I don’t know who I am as a woman in this season of my life. I know I have birthed and participated in the birthing of women’s voices, surrounding me now with their own journeys and desires, their own strengths and frailties. I know we’ve been birthed in a motherline and way-of-being that nourishes me less and less as I experience the More beckoning more and more. I know the work I do in seminary streams is gently simmering in categories that feel livelier in me than I want to let on, for fear of being insufficient to the tasks ahead. A form of unworthiness, it would seem. And I know I don’t know how to proceed without being bound up in others’ energies, needs, desires… I know I don’t know how to proceed as a woman, herself, in this season of life. 

I do not want to be accused of abandoning others, of course. I feel a deep affection and confidence in most of those who have woven their journeys deeply with mine, with Lisa’s and mine, in this circle-way. My heart opened and expanded as Lisa spoke her passion that "the circle needs to grow up now." Yes...it does. They do. And so...

Do you know? She asked. Yes. With her, my Anam cara and spirit-friend of Old, I know. I am unfamiliar with ‘being time’ anymore, so shy and a little fearful of being found out, vulnerable, unsure in her presence. 

Do you know? She asked. No, as me...I don’t know. I don’t know how to proceed to re-acquaint myself with who I am as the woman I am today, in this season, in this moment in time. 

The ways I know to fake it til you make it feel forced, less genuine for where I am right now, though I welcome their familiarity too (Julia Cameron, tarot, work...). So I am moving slowly, sitting with the questions as they come to me, contenting myself with the deepened awareness that I am the only one who can answer for me in this season, who do I want to be...?

My best friends refuse to answer my question of me, after all, simply smiling at me, in Love.

* * * * * * * * * *

Addendum, wanting to be kept and known, yet also only as an addendum…

Independent of any of this, I realized this weekend that I wanted to put together a Start-up Facilitator’s packet for all 17 of our leadership sisters, inviting everything from brainstorming themed circles to more self-directed core-circles, marketing tips and timings, all the Create the Container and usual resources to encourage getting this circle-way more into the world, wherever a certified circle-holder lives. I want to empower everyone to bring this into the world. I became aware of a desire to make myself unnecessary in significant ways. I need to be unnecessary, for me to sit with who I am in as a woman in this season of my life.