by Heather Plett | May 29, 2015 | circle, courage, growth, journey, Labyrinth, Uncategorized
“Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.” – Saint Augustine
Since returning from my trip to Whidbey Island on Monday, I have been trying to come up with at least a few words to describe my time away. I haven’t been very successful, though. If you’re following me on social media, you might have noticed an uncharacteristic silence of late. It’s hard to say in 140 characters or less what I can’t even describe in a blog post or conversation.
Some experiences are two deep for words.It was one of those life-changing, heart-opening, paradigm-shifting trips.
I was on Whidbey Island for two purposes – a.) to work with a small circle of people on a new website for The Circle Way, and b.) to replenish myself and dive into my writing at Self as Source of the Story, a retreat facilitated by my mentor, Christina Baldwin.
Both of those experiences were dreams come true. I am working and learning and building things with my mentors and friends, and finding my way on the very path I first started dreaming about fifteen years ago. It’s been an incredible journey, learning to trust the nudgings and whispers along the way, gaining resilience in the hard parts, and trying to be patient in the slow parts.
If you’re hanging onto a dream that just won’t let you go, take heart – it may be slow in showing up, but that doesn’t mean it’s not coming. Keep your heart focused in the right direction, and life may some day surprise you with its abundance and grace.
The entire trip felt like a divinely-offered gift, and there are many parts of it that feel tender and fragile and that I need to hold close to my chest right now rather than share. Some day they will become part of my storytelling, but not yet – not until they are full grown and well processed and strong enough to stand on their own. (In a few months, you have permission to ask about the frog that showed up on my 49th birthday and the gold key that came to me in the labyrinth.)
The biggest lesson of the trip was this…
Authentic living is like scuba diving. Just when you get comfortable diving to a certain level, you’ll become curious about what the sea looks like further down and you won’t be able to rest until you get there. Soon you’ll be developing the lung capacity and looking for the equipment to take you deeper.
During Monday’s closing circle at the writing retreat, I said “I’ve been a writer long enough to know that every few years I’ll be invited into an even deeper understanding of and connection with my own voice. I just didn’t know how deep this week was going to take me.” This statement doesn’t only apply to writers – it applies to anyone on a personal/spiritual journey. We are always invited to go deeper.
I’d started the retreat with one goal in mind – to gain some clarity about the book I finished nearly three years ago. Some of you who’ve followed me for awhile know that I was working on a book about how the three weeks leading up to and including the birth and death of my son Matthew changed my life. I thought I was finished that book three years ago. I was in the process of editing it when my Mom was diagnosed with cancer.
Mom’s death changed the story. Not only did my grief make it difficult to re-enter the story of my short relationship with Matthew, it changed the very fabric of what I’d put on the page.
Several times since then, I’ve taken it off the virtual shelf and tried to revisit it, but there was always resistance. I didn’t know how to bring it to completion. I hadn’t found the right equipment or developed the lung capacity for the deeper dive.
By the time I got to the retreat, I was ready to simply put it away and allow it to be part of my own personal growth and never have it published. But I opened myself to the possibility that the story wasn’t finished yet. It wouldn’t leave me alone.
In the very first writing prompt at the retreat, I cracked the story open again. Instead of putting it onto the shelf, I was invited into a deeper understanding of it. A new voice showed up on the page. Or rather – an old voice showed up – an old voice that wanted to weave itself into mine. This old voice had always been there, but I hadn’t known how to tap into it before. It took the right container, the right intention, an open heart, and a few simple words from my mentor to crack it open.
That’s the lesson I want to leave with you today… Your personal work is never done. You will always be invited to go deeper.
I don’t know what your version of “deeper” will look like, but I know that if you create the right container, find the right circle of support, and let yourself be guided by the right mentor(s), you’ll be invited into deeper and deeper self-awareness and deeper and deeper trust in your own voice.
This deep diving doesn’t happen by accident, however, and it doesn’t happen at the fringes of our overly-busy lives. We have to be intentional about it, create space in our lives to invite it in, and seek out the people who will lovingly hold space for it. We have to seek out the equipment and do the practices that increase our spiritual lung capacity.
Throughout the week, I did the work to invite this deeper voice more fully into my life and work. I walked the labyrinth several times, I spent a day in silence, I had deep and personal conversations with like-minded people, I wandered the woods, I sat in circle and listened to other people’s stories, and I wrote pages and pages in my journal. I also shed a lot of tears and let some of my fears hold court until they felt adequately heard and were willing to let me move on.
Our deeper voices have to be tended well. They don’t show up by accident and they’ll go back into hiding if we don’t create space in our lives to foster them. They are easily swayed by fear and easily ignored by long to-do lists, unless we give them priority attention.
If you feel that you are being invited into the next layer of depth, be intentional about creating space for it.
- Go on a retreat that’s long enough for the work you need to do
- Spend an hour each day with your journal and your spiritual practices,
- Find a coach or mentor who will ask the right questions,
- Gather like-minded people into circle, and
- Guard the parts of the story that feel tender and fragile. (Only share those parts with your most trusted confidantes – people who can be trusted to help you nurture them.)
If you need some support, consider joining The Spiral Path: A Woman’s Journey to Herself (starts June 1st). Or sign up for one of the remaining spots in the Openhearted Writing Circle (online on June 6th). Or learn to Lead with Your Wild Heart. (Note: At this time, I am not accepting new coaching clients, but will open the door again in September.)
Interested in more articles like this? Add your name to my email list and you’ll receive a free ebook, A Path to Connection. I send out weekly newsletters and updates on my work.
by Heather Plett | May 15, 2015 | circle, Community
All week, I’ve been trying to write a piece about The Circle Way, but nearly every effort ends on the virtual cutting room floor.
How do you write about something that has radically altered the course of your life, that has changed nearly every relationship in your life, and that has brought you into the most authentic conversations you’ve ever experienced? How do you do justice to the kind of wisdom that is as ancient as humankind and still as fresh as the lilac buds bursting open in the Spring sun?
Next week I will have the privilege of being in circle with my friends and mentors, Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea. The anticipation of that has me reflecting on the significance of circle in my life and I want to share some of those thoughts with you. I will try, despite my inability to write it as eloquently as I’d like…
Nearly fifteen years ago, I discovered Christina’s work and knew instantly that it would change my life. I was in a particularly hungry place in my life at the time, working in a toxic bureaucratic environment that was making me realize just how much I craved real connection in my work and life. I’d sat in too many leadership meetings where every word spoken came from a guarded place and I longed for authenticity. I devoured Calling the Circle: The First and Future Culture, and, though I didn’t entirely understand the circle or see clearly how I could adopt it into my life yet, I knew this was something I wanted with every fibre of my being.
I knew that the circle was the doorway into the authentic way I longed to live my life.
Sitting in my government office one day after reading her book, I promised myself that I would study with Christina some day. Ten years later, that intention was realized and I sat in circle with her, devouring everything she had to teach me. Now, five years later, circle has become embedded into all of my work and I have become part of the global network of circle hosts and teachers who will continue to spread circle practice as Christina and Ann transition into their roles as elders of the lineage. Be careful what you wish for!
In case you are curious about circle but (like me fifteen years ago) don’t fully understand how it can change things, here are two recent ways that I’ve used circle practice…
1. Circle in the classroom
When my students were in conflict about a group project a few weeks ago, I invited them to push the tables against the wall and move their chairs into circle. With a few simple guidelines, I taught them how to have conversation in circle, looking into each other’s eyes, remaining silent when someone else was holding the talking piece, and being as honest as they were comfortable being when it was their turn to talk. People opened up in ways they don’t normally in the classroom, we addressed the source of the conflict, and we were able to move in a new direction. The students were surprised the following week when, after a second circle session, I let them abandon the group project entirely, but I told them to see it as a learning opportunity rather than a failure. In the final round with the talking piece, we each shared something we’d learned from the process. Everyone walked away looking a little lighter than when we’d started because they’d been heard by each other and by me.
2. Weekly women’s circle
Ever since I joined Gather the Women four years ago, I’ve wanted to start a women’s circle, but until recently, the timing wasn’t quite right. Finally in January, I knew it was time. I sent out an invitation and around 15 women accepted the invitation. Since then, we have been meeting on a weekly basis and, though it’s not the same women each time (everyone is welcome), we always have deep and authentic conversations. The circle offers us something we are all hungry for – a place to share our personal stories, to peel away our masks, to be honest about our shame and fear, and to heal. With the help of a talking piece, we are each given the opportunity to share stories without interruption or advice. We come to the circle not to fix each other but to listen and be listened to.
Each circle has different energy and holds a different purpose, but there are some things that every circle I host or participate in have in common. Here are just a few of them:
1. Being intentional about the space changes the way the conversation unfolds. Have you ever sat in an office talking to a senior manager who stayed behind their desk the whole time? Consider how you felt during that interaction. Though it may have been subtle, the desk separated you, gave the other person the position of power, and probably kept you from being authentic or vulnerable. In the circle, we sit and look into each other’s eyes without barriers between us and without anyone sitting in a position of power and it changes the way we interact with and are present for each other.
2. Simple rituals (sitting in circle, placing something meaningful in the centre, using a talking piece, etc.) shift us out of our everyday, often mindless conversations into something that is more mindful and deep. I’ve seen this happen especially in university classrooms where I invite students away from the tables placed in rows (where some have their backs to others) and into a circle where they face each other. Instantly they are more present, less easily distracted, and more willing to open up to each other.
3. The talking piece invites us to listen more than we speak. When you are holding the talking piece, your story holds the place of honour. When someone else holds it, their story is the honoured one. This gives you both an opportunity to speak intentionally without interruption or advice and to listen with attention without needing to interject your own story or solutions into someone else’s story. In far too many of our conversations, we feel the need to fix people, critique them, or give them good advice, which often makes that person feel like they’re flawed or not as smart as you. In truth, the gift of being listened to is often more healing than any advice you could give.
4. The circle offers us an opportunity to share the burden of the stories we carry. During our Thursday evening women’s circle, a lot of intense, personal stories come up – stories of depression, abuse, grief, etc.. These are the kinds of stories that feel really heavy to hold if you’re trying to carry them alone, or if it’s just one friend is helping to hold them for another. When they’re shared into the container of the circle, however, nobody leaves the room carrying the story alone and nobody feels solely responsible for helping another carry them. In the process of sharing them, we begin to heal each other. As one of the women shared in the circle, we do not only have “a leader in every chair”, we have “a healer in every chair”.
5. People need to come to the circle when they’re ready for it. The intensity of the circle is too much for some people and they need to walk away. That’s okay. We have to trust them to know when they’re ready to be held in that way. When they walk away, I simply wish them a blessing and hope some day when they’re ready for it, they’ll find the right circle. I would rather wait for them to be ready then to try to impose something on them that feels unsafe at the time.
6. Circle is not always be easy. I have been in many incredible circles and they are always meaningful experiences, but sometimes they’re hard. Sometimes things come to the surface that people have kept hidden for a long time and that surfacing can be painful for the person sharing and/or wounding for the people listening. The circle can hold all of that, but only if it’s guarded well and only if the people involved take responsibility for “holding the rim” and staying with the process until something new begins to grow into the cracks that have formed.
There is much more to be said about circle than this post can hold. And there are also things that cannot be articulated and can only be experienced. I encourage you to find a way to experience it. In the future, I will be offering circle workshops, but in the meantime, I encourage you read The Circle Way and to check out what my mentors at PeerSpirit have to offer. If you are a woman, I also encourage you to consider joining Gather the Women and perhaps finding or starting a circle where you live. If you are in Winnipeg, you’re welcome to join our Thursday evening circle.
If you have questions you’d like me to address in future articles, either about The Circle Way or about other topics I write about, please feel free to ask (by comment or email). Even if I don’t get back to you right away, please know that I appreciate every piece of correspondence I receive. Once a month, I plan to write an article specifically addressing a question I receive.
Interested in more articles like this? Add your name to my email list and you’ll receive a free ebook, A Path to Connection. I send out weekly newsletters and updates on my work.
by Heather Plett | May 1, 2015 | Community, growth, journey, Uncategorized
“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.” – Brené Brown
I like fruity tea. Passionate peach, blueberry bliss, raspberry riot – you name it, I probably like it. But at some point in my life, I picked up the idea that fruit teas aren’t for REAL tea drinkers. In the hierarchy of teas, I imagined them stuck at the bottom, the uncoolest of the hot beverages.
I have no idea where I picked up on that tea story. Perhaps someone made fun of me for my tea choice. Perhaps it was just a vibe I picked up. Perhaps I made it up myself. However I picked it up, I let it affect my tea choices. For years, I was afraid to drink fruity tea in public, afraid that the real tea drinkers might notice and judge me for it.
Silly, isn’t it? But isn’t that how most of our shame stories are – rather foolish, once brought into the light of day?
To be honest, some of my shame stories around food choices are rooted in being raised poor, on a farm, and as part of a small Mennonite subculture that kept itself somewhat apart by not engaging in all of the activities (ie. Fall suppers where I might have been exposed to other kinds of tea) in our community. We didn’t have access to “fancy” foods, and so, when I became an adult and was faced with choices that I wasn’t used to, I was afraid I would choose the wrong thing and people would discover how uncultured I was. I was ashamed of being uncultured – ashamed of being a Mennonite farm kid who wasn’t as sophisticated as I assumed the city kids of more worldly-wise cultures were.
We pick up shame stories for a lot of different reasons. Some of them have clear origins (like parents who made us believe we were shameful) and others can only be understood after years of excavation and personal work. Some are relatively easy to release (I now drink fruity tea in public when I want to) and others have become so imbedded into our identity, they become part of our DNA (like the shame around cultural/racial identity).
We inherit many of our shame stories from the generations that came before us in our lineage. Those are the ones that become particularly imbedded into our identity.
After spending several years working in international development, and then a few years on the board of a feminist organization, and now as part of a team doing race relations conversations, I’ve noticed a pattern about cultural shame. Though shame is common to all cultures, it has a particularly strong hold among oppressed cultures.
One of the greatest weapons of oppression is shame. When oppressors manage to inflict shame on people, they increase their own power and diminish the ability of those they oppress to rise up out of their oppression. Shame diminishes courage and strength.
Ironically, though, many of the shame stories related to oppression are passed down not directly from the oppressors themselves but from those above us in our lineage who have been oppressed before us – not because they want to oppress us, but because they want to protect us.
We pass the stories of oppression down to those we most want to protect. When we inherit them as young children, though, those oppression stories become shame stories.
In the book “The Shadow King: The invisible force that holds women back“, Sidra Stone teaches that we adopt the inner patriarchy (the voice that tells women that they are not worth as much as men) from our mothers. It is primarily our mothers who teach us how to stay small, how to please the men, how to avoid getting hurt, and how to give up our own desires in deference to others in our lives (especially men). They do it to protect us, because that’s the only way they’ve learned to protect themselves. And so it goes, from generation to generation, each mother passing down to her daughters the stories of how they can stay safe.
Last week, many of us watched the video of a Baltimore mother who beat her son in public when she found him among the protestors. Desperate to protect him, she pulled him away from enemy lines and taught him, by her own raised hand, that he must learn to submit or risk being killed.
The problem is that those of us growing up in environments where we’re learning these stories from our parents do not yet have a reference point to understand generations of oppression. The only way we know how to interpret our parents’ attempts to keep us small and silent is to believe that they will stop loving us if we become too large and vocal. We become convinced that we are worthy of shame and not love. Though that mother in Baltimore may tell her son a thousand times that she did it out of love and a desperate need to protect him, I suspect there will always be a small child inside him who will believe “my mother shamed me in public, therefore I am worthy of shame.”
Remember the experiment with the monkeys, where a beautiful bunch of bananas hung above a ladder, but every time a monkey would climb to get the bananas, all of the monkeys in the cage would be sprayed with water? Not wanting to be sprayed, the monkeys kept pulling down any monkey who attempted to climb the ladder. Even after all of the monkeys were replaced (one by one) and nobody had experienced the spraying, they still kept any new monkey from climbing the ladder, because they themselves had been stopped. Those new monkeys (if they think like humans), not knowing the history, probably believed “I have done something wrong and my tribe is ashamed of me. I must not be worthy of happiness.” And then they passed the story down to the next generation, pulling down anyone who dared to climb the ladder.
Growing up with the shame inflicted by generations and generations of shamed people, we forget that it is not the lack of love they had that caused them to pass this down to us, it is their wounded love that meant they didn’t know how else to protect themselves and us from further wounding.
And, remarkably, it’s not only psychological – it becomes planted in our very DNA. Studies have shown that trauma has changed people’s DNA and that that DNA has been passed down to subsequent generations, showing up as irrational fear and the tendency to be triggered even if they didn’t directly experience that trauma. If trauma can be passed down through DNA, I’m fairly certain that shame can too, since trauma and shame are often closely linked.
How do we heal these generations of wounds? That is something that I’m just beginning to explore and read about (as are many others) and I welcome anyone’s thoughts, ideas, or experience.
I know that it must be a holistic response, involving body, mind, and spirit. In The MindBody Code, Mario Martinez talks about how we have to heal the shame in our bodies as well as our minds. He teaches contemplative embodiment practices that help replace the shame stories with honour stories.
I also believe that healing shame involves dancing, singing, art-making, spiritual practices, and lots of touch. We can’t heal shame with simply left-brain, logical thinking – we have to engage in creative, right-brain spiritual meaning-making. It helps to create rituals (ie. painting the shame monsters and then painting safe places for them to be exposed), embody our healing (ie. dancing our way into courage), and find spiritual practices that teach us to let go and trust (ie. mindfulness meditation).
And, more than anything, I believe that healing happens in community. Ironically, we pick up our shame through our relationships and we heal it through healthier relationships. That’s the nature of community – it comes with both the good and the bad, the wounding and the healing. In order to heal, we have to find safe community in which we can be vulnerable without fear. When we expose our shame stories among those who hold space for us, the shame loosens its power over us. Intentional circle practices are the best practices I know of for this kind of work.
Happily, there have also been studies that demonstrate that those changes to the DNA can be reversed, so there is hope for the generations that come after us if we do our work to heal. Shame is not the end of the story. We can heal it for ourselves and future generations.
Interested in more articles like this? Add your name to my email list and you’ll receive a free ebook, A Path to Connection. I send out weekly newsletters and updates on my work.
