This post originally appeared on my personal blog, Fumbling for Words, in October 2010 when I was imagining Sophia Leadership into existence.

As life and time take me further and further away from that incredible circle of women who met by a lake last weekend, I continue to reflect back on the powerful things that can emerge when we sit together and imagine “what transformation can we birth if we share our hearts in circle and story?”

Let me share one of the stories I’ve brought with me from that weekend…

In the middle of the afternoon on our third day together, we had free time to replenish ourselves in whatever ways we needed to. Two beautiful older women (“crones”, we came to call them, and not in a negative way) who brought the wisdom of the labyrinth into our circle invited me to join them in creating a labyrinth out of the fallen leaves outside our meeting room. I was eager to join them, but knew that first I needed some time to myself to wander in the woods.

The golden energy of so much wisdom and authenticity and yearning and love that had been shared around the circle that afternoon carried me off into the woods on a cloud of peace and fullness. Or perhaps, to use a more personal analogy – carried me off on a horse named Sophia. We had been sharing that afternoon about how much we yearned for more feminine wisdom and energy in our workplaces, our halls of learning, and our communities.

Punctuated throughout our circle time that weekend, and again as I headed into the woods for some personal time with God and Gaia, were the sounds of gunshots from the other side of the lake. Geese hunters, we presumed.

The sharp contrast of the circular, gentle, feminine energy on one side of the lake and the violent, loud, masculine energy on the other side of the lake was a constant reminder of the tensions that exist for all of us. Not only in society as a whole, but within each of us individually, there exists both masculine energy (animus, from Jungian psychology – rational, direct, practical, assertive qualities) and feminine (anima – creative, intuitive, feeling, visionary qualities). Both have beauty and yet both have the possibility of becoming corrupt or too all-encompassing.

As I followed the path through the woods, and listened to the rustling of the leaves, the honking of the geese flying overhead, and the occasional gunshot across the lake, I found myself yearning to (figuratively) row into the middle of the lake to meet the men for a pow wow.  To move past the tensions and find a way for the masculine and feminine energy to co-exist without either swallowing the other up.  To encourage both men and women to embrace their feminine side along with their masculine side. Yin and yang together in a circle.

Despite the gunshots, the walk through the woods replenished me as I knew it would, but then something happened to deplete my energy once again. Near the end of the trail, someone had dumped a lot of big household garbage – an old couch, old appliances, etc. Standing there with the tranquility of the woods behind me, and the jarring presence of garbage in front of me, I found the sadness welling up within me. This garbage suddenly represented oil spills, the plastic island floating in the middle of the ocean, and all of the other travesties humans are causing all over the world (including, shamefully, the garbage that comes from my own household.)

What blights we allow to appear all around us when we stop caring about the way we treat our earth!

Carrying on down the path, I spotted a path marker – a weathered old wooden sign standing with its back to me. When I reached it, and read what was written on the front, I stopped short. Just one word – “Lifeline.”

In that moment, God whispered in my ear “You are called to offer a lifeline. All of those things that saddened you back there – the tension with the (distorted) masculine energy across the lake, the garbage marring the face of Mother Earth – they represent a lot of lost and hurting hearts. They need a lifeline. Badly. And it’s you. And your circle of powerful women.”

Wow. That’s a pretty huge calling! I felt a little shaky. I had to stand there for a moment before I was ready to move on.

As I got closer to the retreat centre, I paused for a few more photos in the woods. On the ground, half buried in dry leaves, I spotted something white that was clearly not organic. Moving the leaves away, I realized it was a bowl.

I almost ignored it, but then the voice came again “you can’t do anything about the couch or all of that big garbage, but you CAN do something about this bowl.” Right. Just do my small piece.

So I picked up the bowl and carried on. As I fingered it, though, it became more than just a ceramic bowl someone had discarded. It became a begging bowl, like the ones the Buddhist monks carry into the village every day, trusting that it will be filled with just enough food to sustain them for that day. It was a reminder that, if I am called to offer a lifeline, I also need to trust that God and my village will sustain me with the energy and hope that I need every day.

Back at the retreat centre, I found the women near completion of the labyrinth. I rejoiced with them as they swept the last of the leaves into their designated circles.

And then, because it seemed like the right thing to do, I walked to the centre of the labyrinth and danced with my begging bowl, honouring the labyrinth, and honouring this incredible circle of women who were filling my bowl with so much goodness to sustain me for my journey away from the circle and into my future.

Note: it is never my intention to point blame when I talk about “masculine energy” or to imply that men have it wrong (gunshots) and women have it right (circles). That would be far too simplistic and not at all what I believe. I do, however, believe that we have not sufficiently learned to blend the feminine in with the masculine when it comes to leadership and organizational structures in our politics, communities, businesses, and homes, which is why I am working on launching my Sophia Leadership site soon.

Here’s the thing… Sophia won’t leave me alone.

She’s like a kid who won’t stop begging and pleading and stomping her foot until she gets a big red lollipop. But she’s not just an annoying neighbourhood kid who goes home at the end of the day – OH NO – that would be too easy. SHE HAS MOVED IN AND IS TAKING OVER MY LIFE! She doesn’t just want lollipops, she wants everything I’ve got to give!

No, I haven’t mysteriously given birth to a fourth daughter named Sophia, and yet it sure FEELS like this is something that is being birthed in me.

A few months ago, I shared an epiphany about how I felt called into a new space, a new vocation… something I tentatively called “Sophia Leadership”. It was based on a pretty strong sense that what the world desperately needs right now is a whole lot of people (women and men) who will step forward in courage and trust their feminine, spiritual wisdom. I believe that this wisdom can shift the course of leadership and help the world move in a direction toward light and hope instead of darkness and despair.

I believe all of these things, but… a whole lot of doubt and fear keeps drawing me away from that beautiful epiphany. Even though I finally took a BIG step and moved away from my full time job with the intention of more fully committing myself to writing, teaching, and consulting, there was still a huge piece of me that thought “I have to be practical. I have to pay the bills. I don’t have enough skills for this work yet. I won’t find work in Sophia Leadership – at least not right away – so I have to market my other skills in communications, public relations, blah, blah, blah.”

But here’s where things get interesting… You see, every time I let myself follow fear into that tunnel called “practicality and paying the bills”, Sophia finds me and lures me back.

First, there was the horse.

The day after I’d told my boss I was quitting my job (in July), I went on my annual pilgrimage to the Folk Festival. As I often do at some point when the crowds have begun to overwhelm me and I need some quiet, meditative time, I wandered to the edge of the fenced-in area where there’s a labyrinth, some outdoor art, and very few people. As I wandered, I wrestled with just what I was going to birth once I’d walked away from my job. The argument was there in full force… “I’m pretty sure I’m being called to do this Sophia work.” “But that would be foolish! Nobody will get it and you won’t make any money and your family will hate you and… blah, blah, blah.”

Standing by the fence, I watched two horses and riders approach. It was a mother and daughter out for an evening ride. They stopped near me, and we began a conversation. I grew up with horses and have always felt a strong pull toward them. This moment was no exception.

“What are the horses’ names?” I asked. Well… you’ve probably figured out by now… the bigger of the two, the most magnificent horse I’ve seen in a long time, was named Sophia.

“Why did you call her Sophia?” I asked the woman, trying not to let on that this was hugely significant for me. I saw the woman’s eyes light up. “Well, I named her that because I’ve been reading about how Sophia means wisdom and how there were knights in King Arthur’s court who used to worship the goddess Sophia.”

As if that wasn’t enough, the next thing she said sealed the deal. “It’s a good thing my husband isn’t around,” she said with a blush and a sideways glance over her shoulder as if she expected him to vapourize out of thin air.  “He hates it when I talk about this stuff and doesn’t want me to talk about it in front of other people. He thinks this goddess stuff and feminine wisdom is a bunch of horse shit.”

And then it came to me, like a lightening bolt… “It is for women like this – women who have been taught not to trust their feminine wisdom – that you are being called into Sophia Leadership.” Gulp.

I wish I could tell you that was the end of the internal arguments, but that would be a lie. Apparently I’m a slow learner, because even after that encounter, I spent the rest of the summer wrestling with what to call my business, whether to be a generalist or a specialist, what kinds of contracts I should look for, etc., etc.

The truth is, I need to pay the bills, and that keeps weighing heavily on my shoulders. I created a generic website. I started accepting contracts that I knew I could do quite easily, but that weren’t really on the path Sophia was leading me down. But then, once again, it seemed Sophia had different ideas.

I was supposed to be working this week, but the contract got taken away. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I breathed a sigh of relief, and began to focus on taking October as my sabbatical/thinking/learning/growing month before jumping into any kind of work.

Which leads me to yesterday, my first day of self-employment. I decided it was time for my annual pilgrimage to my dad’s grave in the town where I grew up (two hours from where I live now). I enjoyed a lovely drive out into the prairies, wandered around the almost-ghost-town where  I once lived, spent a little time talking to my dad, and then headed to Neepawa, the nearby town where I’d gone to high school, to find a place to eat lunch.

For reasons I can’t explain, I felt an inexplicable desire to visit the Stone Angel (a monument in the cemetery that was made famous when Margaret Lawrence named a novel after it). I’ve never been a huge Lawrence fan, so the Stone Angel never held much significance to me. I don’t think I’ve visited since high school. But this time the thought wouldn’t leave me alone. I had to visit.

I drove into the cemetery, and before I even realized that I’d reached the monument, my eyes fell to the base of it. Guess what name was there? Sophia. She was the wife of the founding father of Neepawa in whose honour the monument was erected.

I stopped my vehicle, stood in front of the monument, and started to cry. There was Sophia, in beautiful weathered stone, looking down at me and nudging me once again.

As a bit of a postscript to all this serendipity… today, things got even more freaky.

I got a note from my friend Desiree telling me someone she knew online thought she should connect with me because we have a lot in common. She chuckled when she told her we already knew each other. Then I got a note from my friend Lianne, inviting me to join a blog party. One of the other women she had invited turned out to be the same woman who’d told Desiree she should meet me. She said she’d never heard of me before, but had been inexplicably drawn to my blog today (through a link on Jamie’s blog) and then found out both Desiree and Lianne are connected to me.

Her name? Tara SOPHIA Mohr! One of her deepest passions? Convincing women that they should be trusting their wisdom and changing the world. Oh my! Goosebumps!!

For some reason that I don’t fully understand, Sophia chose me for this work and she is NOTHING if not persistent.

I GET IT Sophia! Here’s that big red lollipop, and here’s ME!

So… guess what I’ll be doing for the rest of the month? Hanging out with Sophia and letting her guide me down this path.

This post originally appeared on my personal blog, Fumbling for Words, in August 2010 when I was imagining Sophia Leadership into existence.

Warning: This post is mostly just me thinking aloud. Feel free to ignore it if you get easily annoyed with the inner angst of an over-thinker.

I’ll admit it – I’ve been agonizing about what the big “next step” will look like once I walk away from my day job. No, the agony has not been about second-guessing my decision – I’m pretty confident it’s the right choice – but rather it’s about “what am I going to put out into the world once I have to be responsible for marketing MYSELF rather than a non-profit or government organization”.

At the heart of this agonizing is a question about whether to be a generalist or a specialist. I have a lot of skills that I think are marketable – writing, communications planning & marketing & public relations, media relations, creativity, facilitation, leadership development, teaching, storytelling, global thinking, travel, synthesizing information… and that’s where I get a little bogged down. I LIKE to do a lot of things and have a lot of variety in my life. That’s why I’ve been happy in this job because it has offered me opportunity to grow in my leadership, do lots of creative writing and communicating, travel to fascinating places in the world, do story-gathering and photography, advise people on how to effectively communicate their message, etc., etc.

So part of me thinks I should just start marketing myself as a generalist who’ll do all of these things, and be kind to you while I’m at it.

BUT… I’m a little nervous that being too much of a generalist just waters down what I want to do in the world AND gives people the idea that I’m a “jack of all trades and master of none” and that I won’t really do a bang-up job of whatever it is they consider hiring me to do. So then I try to synthesize all of these things and come up with some kind of well-rounded statement like “I’ll help you use your personal and organizational stories and strengths to transform your leadership and impact”. Hmmm…. blah.

The thing is, the skills that I think will get me jobs (ie. INCOME), are not necessarily the things I want to do a lot of. Corporate communications, for example. I can write a bang-up press release or produce a lovely annual report, but please don’t make me do that ad nauseum! On the other hand, if you want to hire me to go to Zimbabwe to visit your project site to take pictures and gather stories so that you can better communicate what your organization does, I AM SO THERE!

And then there’s this other piece that keeps nagging at me like a pesky child who won’t stop showing you pictures of delectable chocolate until you take her to 7-11 for a chocolate bar (like my smart little manipulater did the other night).  Sophia Leadership. THAT feels like a real calling and something I really feel like I need to put out into the world. It’s needed – I know it is. It’s the gap that I never fully found in my thirteen years of leadership – a safe space for leaders who want to explore their feminine wisdom (intuitive thinking, creativity, spirituality, comfort with ambiguity, embodiment, etc.). Despite the many times when my fear gremlin tries to convince me that I’m not qualified to be a leadership consultant or that there isn’t enough of a market for it or I’ll kill my other chances of making an income if I focus too much on that, I KNOW deep in my heart that this is a calling I’m not supposed to take lightly.

And then… well, then my mind starts to throw all kinds of other doubts and questions on the table. Should it really be just about leadership? What if that alienates the people who SHOULD recognize that they are leaders (the artists, stay-at-h0me moms, administrative assistants, dancers, etc., etc.) but are afraid of that word? Maybe it should be something like “Sophia Rises” to express more of the emerging quality of feminine wisdom in a world that needs much more of it, without attaching it just to leadership? And… should I really call it “Sophia”? Won’t that confuse people who don’t understand that Sophia = Wisdom and who think it’s my first name? Oy veh.

As Marianne Elliot said so eloquently, “I’m learning to trust that the work I’m here to do is bigger than me.” Somehow it feels like the Sophia work is bigger than me and it’s the direction I need to place my energy. I expect that (at least at first) it won’t be the only thing that I do, and really, I think if I do it right, all of those things can be incorporated into the Sophia work.

The lovely thing is that this thinking work is not really stressing me out, despite the use of the word “agonizing”. To some degree, I thrive on change and innovation, and this is just the kind of thing that gives me a buzz. So I’ll happily keep thinking and overthinking and praying and meditating about this thing for awhile, and at some point, perhaps the path will be clear.

If you have any wisdom on the subject, feel free to share it. I’d be especially interested in hearing about what you think my “essence” or”strength” is – what is the quality that shines from this blog that you think people need more of?