Change that is also not Changing -- what I am learning...questions and all

What am I supposed to learn in this new free-fall, that has elements of things NOT changing alongside elements of things that feel to me, perhaps to her, VASTLY changing…? When is a collaboration interdependence, healthy for the parts and the whole, and when is it dependence or co-dependence, unhealthy for one or both, and the whole? Do I get to celebrate my capacity for collaboration, even as it may lean into dependence, at times, all without shame or blame but simply difference in need, rhythm, flow? I count on my companion and soul-friend (in this case, Lisa, but surely others in the past and present or present-to-come) needing different things than I will, do; I fear loss and loneliness when change comes, grieve what had felt safe and secure, as change arises with its force and freedoms.

If I’m honest here, I too knew a static was rising in me, a stasis and even numbness in me in times with Lisa in which we had circle or leadership things to tend but I was also yearning inside, locked into something, somehow. The grief around all things Women Writing Cincy/Mother School (I’m always careful to write now because of MaryPB’s pain body and accusations…) was becoming a rut I could not escape. Cannot escape, as is? In the #StayAtHome orders but early on, Lisa came over for a Tuesday afternoon that fed me so, nourished us both, I’ll venture to say. There was no work to do, nothing 'other’ to tend with either responsibility or a sense of fear/uncertainty. We could be just as we were, figuring out this pandemic rhythm in families, friends, work, play, food and home. I could feel the peaceableness in a gaze with her, which we simply fell into, without aim or intention. My body whooshed with all the memories of the Nook, our space upstairs which is my space but womb space, Our space, Her space too. We sat on the porch and enjoyed many of our spaces. Enjoyed some Chardonnay and sun. I felt a returning I still don’t know how to name, some for fear of boxing it into old ways of thinking or feeling. A returning is sufficient for the flow here...and a breath of fresh air too, as ever, as we welcome what-is, together.

This morning, I get to sit here at our little Parisian table, pretending to be at a coffee-shop, listening to Spotify ‘peaceful guitar’ pieces chosen by a random calculus. I get to bask in the familiar yet tender shared-listening Lis and I did this morning about the circle tomorrow night. Tender because I know how to craft agendas by myself AND I so trust her gentle way with prayerful-circle-way currents too. I value how a free space opens up for both of us when we allow it, even now, in the tender of the New, Unknown. I am coming to appreciate with more intention, if I cannot feel as she does, the burden she carries, has carried, in these seven years. I won’t even try to describe it, except to honor it, honor her fidelity and willingness in it.

Can I come to words about the burden I am increasingly aware of, for me? Not with respect to collaboration with her, though of course there are differences that I consciously choose to hold with a fierceness and care...weighted sometimes. That’s what spirit-companionship IS, in my experience, and it always serves a holy Flow each needs. But what do I know as burden in this bodacious, abundant and Sacred circling Life I’ve gotten to live, to grow in, to mature and heal in?

The administration of the business is burden for me, though it’s also been an area of tender rage, new growth, curiosity of actually focusing on doing it well. I’ve never tried to be a business woman, and am not sure I want to, really. The passion, the birthing work, the gathering work...those are the things that come naturally and are not heavy to carry, for the most part. Some can be, of course, but not the bulk of sisterhood relationships. I thrive in those energies, my extroverted-introverted self, both.

Being loyal in containers that I outgrow is a burden, given my devotion and need to be known as loyal, fierce-for… For me to choose myself over a web of relationships in which I felt safe and held and seen? For me to realize that I am not feeling safe in a place where I used to feel safe and seen? Incredibly difficult for me. Refused grief, then, becomes the burden...until something or someone, like Lis in this case, knocks it center stage and I have no choice but to face it inside.

Being so fierce for the creative life of women (and some men), in writing, in SoulCollage®, in Spirit, I have lost track of how to risk creatively for myself. How to play, for no ostensible purpose whatsoever. The burden here is a refusal of innocence, a refusal of beginning again, a fear of not being enough, not being seen…even failing, whatever that might mean.

A private creative life, in Spirit, in prayer…? Feels foreign to me now. That private life used to be ALL I had, in some ways. No one in my work environment could honor or see such things as valuable in time or money or product, and I was largely publicly identified in work things. So I did my thing privately, started new hobbies, played in artist-dates and kept a solitude I’ve long forgotten in these years. I doubt Lisa can even imagine that prior self very easily, because it is not remotely who I am now, who I can be with her. Brian would give me a hard time, projecting his envy onto me as my ‘waste of our resources,’ or ‘waste of my time.’ I learned to hide most of it from him. Then spirit-friendship opened up in a way I never knew. The Artist’s Way with a friend, (Kate then), diving deeply into our spiritual lives and weaving intimate experiences together in a new energy I knew but did not know. Then the lessons of attachment and the suffocating damage it can do...into a more balanced devotion-and-nonattachment for sake of each, both, all.

In the beautiful intimate life Lisa and I know, I re-entered and knew the deep satisfaction of diving deeply, being seen, being companioned and One in the journey that scared me so, us so. Creativity. Birthing. Re-birthing again and again. But also mothering, providing-for, being mothered, being provided for, in ways I always needed but never could know. It is now natural for me to feel the urge to share anything lively, often sharing it all...often before I’ve had time to even receive fully for myself. Classic Two thing, which is both a seed of deep intimacy, interdependence, joy...and can be a shadow of grasping for what is already inside (when I can no longer feel it myself), for holding onto, for avoiding risk, vulnerability, New.  Lis has learned more fully for herself, how to pause, how to discern what she will share with me...and all that she does not choose to share in her journey now, even as what we share remains...whole, energetic, lively...

Is that something I am to learn for myself? Or is that simply a difference between us? Is there a new Center that is beckoning for me here, a returning inside myself that when stronger, will feel free in sharing certain pieces only with her? Friday, I chose the ‘be strong and trust your own Center’ so it seemed, holding back and trying not to share. From this side of it, I can see/feel now that part of me was screaming inside, beginning to lose the battle with the fearful voices, the 'cut bait and run’ voices in my own head…'cut bait and run before she does' kind of energy. When I feel that energy, then yes, I am to reach out, methinks. Which I did. And we ‘sat on her deck/my deck’ together, in the sun… I needed to come to speech about yes, what a big deal this is for us both, and how I want to have it all together but will not, probably for a long while. Tears arise in me now with that admission. I hate my intensity being a burden for her, for me, for anyone...which ultimately circles around to accepting it simply is what it is, me accepting me. I also love this intensity in me...if it could just NOT be a burden for anyone, me included…? And around and around we go...

...is that part of what I need to be learning in this freefall/not-freefall? Are our differences increasingly hard for her to hold inside herself? Is my largeness prohibitive of something deeply necessary and growing Inwardly for her? These are questions with her, my wonderings of her, at the center, I know, so not really anything I can do about or hold. They may not even be her questions at all. But I do carry their energy with a sense of weighty dread. I never want to be prohibitive of what is most Inward for her, what is most Lively for her. This deep belly feeling-awareness is the gift that Kate and her daughter Rebecca remind me of, even today. I cannot be other than as I am, which Lis honors and is fierce for too. I cannot fear growing larger or deeper as the Path beckons, and most days, I do trust that we will be right there, in our kayaks, drawing close and bumping into one another, flowing away, finding the eddies and currents that are Creatively selected for each of us, by the One who calls us into this Spirit energy here and now...except the moments when fear does take hold and I cannot seem to allow it or process it or welcome it or....

A slightly different angle then...How am I to hold the deep conviction in my Heart that I am a stronger, deeper, wiser leader when in spirit-led/leading companionship with her, her insights, her freedom to play and create? How does this not become a burden for her or a need? sole-desire? only? for me? I mean, she’s not the last thing since sliced bread, I know. Others will bring other gifts, their own energies and offerings, which woven into collaboration will be gift for the world. I know this. I can collaborate with others. She’s been pushing me to collaborate with others. And I can do that. Will do that, as I learn more. And yet… There is an utterly Created-Creative distinctive Liveliness that comes into the world when we both surrender into it. Maybe surrendering into BOTH its birthing and unraveling purposes, as this strand is about unraveling as much as about what is not changing between us... We would not be a whole fidelity force unless the whole birth-life-death-rebirth were active in us too. Whatever is dying-changing-letting-go just hurts more, feels hard.

So...a smiling nod to my own burdens, the questions that rise, the ways I can be attentive. Yes, I will share with Lisa, because it is who I am as a writer and as her Anam Cara. And yes, I will enter into this creative stream beckoning me, however it will, learning to pause and discern before sharing with her, with anyone.

I’ll only ever get a sense of this Invitation if I explore it with intention...she's got nothin' for me in that, as I do not for her...

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.