The students I teach in the continuing education program at the university are working on certificates in human resource management, project management, or public relations. Few of them have ever dreamed of being writers. Only a handful of them have ever considered the power of the written word.
Most of them just want to be handed the formula for “how to write an effective email” so that they can pass the course with flying colours and move on to what they’re really interested in.
“There are no formulas,” I tell them again and again, when they come to me holding their graded papers hoping to be told exactly how they can ensure an A+ for the next paper. “I can’t tell that the answer to A+B=C, because in writing, it doesn’t work that way. The only way to get better is by practicing, not by trying to find an illusive formula.” And sometimes, when they’re especially resistant (and sometimes argumentative), I add, “I’m not here to ensure that you get an A+, I’m here to teach you to be a better writer.”
Instead of giving them a formula, I push them in ways they don’t expect to be pushed. “Stretching Exercises”, I call them, and then give them creative writing assignments that have nothing to do with the course material. “If you don’t stretch yourself creatively, you’ll never be an effective communicator. No matter what your line of business is, effective communication is one of your most critical tools.”
“Writing is a transformational tool,” I continue. “If you don’t understand its power, you will misuse it.” And then I give them their final assignment – find a piece of writing that impacted your life and tell the whole class about how it changed you.
They look at me with an air of disbelief, and some of them sit with their arms crossed and pens sitting idly by while the rest of the class stretches their writing muscles.
They don’t want messy creativity or untrustworthy transformation. They want rules.
At the end of the day, I debrief with myself as I ride the bus home. “Am I teaching this the right way?” my inner doubter says, after a few too many blank stares. “Maybe I should be a little more formulaic – give them what they’re asking for. Stick with the textbook and skip the creative stuff.” And yet every time I sway in that direction, I get that icky feeling that tells me I’m not serving them well if all I do is try to invent a formula when there is none.
Each week I show up and push them all over again. And each week I get the same resistance. Sometimes the resistance grows as we get closer to the final assignment.
But then something else slowly begins to happen. A spark starts to appear in a few of the students’ eyes. They remember what it felt like to first discover the power of the written word back in grade 1 or 2. They dig into their memory vaults and remember the things they’ve read in the past that have changed their lives. They start sharing the stories they’ve written, surprised their creativity has shown up on the page. The spark grows and soon they’re telling me that they’ve dug up old journals and are writing in them again.
And then the last class comes, and I hear the most beautiful stories of people who have been transformed by novels, signs on cafeteria walls, eulogies, newspaper articles, websites, and blog posts.
That is why I teach – the re-awakening, the a-ha moments when they realize the role that good writing has played in their lives. Even if it’s just a handful of students whose spark is re-ignited, I want to be there to see it happen.
And that is why I knew it was time to stretch myself, step away from a textbook, and start offering my own classes that have nothing to do with effective business communication.
I want to see more sparks.
This week is the first class of Creative Writing for Self-Discovery, a course that has already attracted a fascinating and diverse circle of people. I could hardly be more excited. This is what I was born to teach, and these are the people who long to learn it. This is one of the things I’ve been called to gift to the world, and these people are willing recipients instead of reluctant learners.
And you know what? I wouldn’t be in this place, trusting myself to create a course that is fully in line with my own gifts (writing, teaching, facilitating personal growth, hosting a circle), if I hadn’t signed up for Teach Now last year just when I was transitioning from my job as a director in non-profit to teacher and business owner.
Teach Now is starting up again, and I’m excited to say that I am serving as a Teaching Guide for this year’s offering. If you are at all interested in learning more about what it means to be a teacher and/or stretching yourself in the role of teacher you already hold, I would highly encourage you to sign up.
Teach Now is transformational. It’s what helped me to be bold in what I teach and not give in to the demands of my students for something more formulaic. It helped me to be true to what I believed about writing and the results are clear in the students who tell me the class has been transformational. It helped me dream of the courses I want to offer in the future (including more Creative Writing and Leadership offerings).
Sign up for Teach Now, and if you’re in Winnipeg, I’d love to have you join the circle for Creative Writing for Self-Discovery. Both courses will stretch you and excite you – I promise!
Note: Full disclosure – As a graduate of Teach Now, I am also an affiliate, which means I’ll make a little money if you sign up through the links in this post.
Another note: Though I’m creating my own courses, I happily continue to teach at the University as well. That handful of awakened sparks in the room makes it worthwhile.
“Are you sure you don’t want a ride to the camp? You can just skip the rest of the kilometres for the day, rest up, stay off your blisters for awhile, and start fresh tomorrow.”
We heard that often along the 100 km. walk. Well-meaning organizers, volunteers, and medics wanted to help us avoid some of the pain we were experiencing. They wanted to give us short-cuts, assuring us there was no shame in missing a few kilometres.
Every offer only set our resolve deeper, though. It even made us reluctant to visit the medics when the blisters got particularly ugly. We weren’t there to do 87 km – we were there to do 100.
Yes, it was painful. Yes, there were toes on our feet that were hardly recognizable as toes anymore. Yes, there were moments when there didn’t seem to be a single muscle in our body that was exempt from the overwhelming ache.
But we were there to complete the journey. We were there to test the limits of our endurance. We were there to be present in every painful step.
We live in a culture that likes shortcuts, especially when it comes to pain. We try to rush through grief, thinking that we’ll be better off if we can just put a bandaid on it and get back to real life. We over-medicate, thinking a dulling of the pain will help us feel “normal”. We short-circuit the birthing process (both literal and figurative), with unnecessary c-sections and inductions. We over-consume, thinking that shopping therapy will dull the ache of loneliness or heartbreak. We clamour over quick fixes and fill our lives with cheap throw-away solutions to our problems.
We prefer ten easy steps to one thousand painful ones.
But it’s the thousand painful steps that will change us. It takes those thousand painful steps for us to grow into what we’re meant to be at the end of the journey.
In ten easy steps, we can build little more than a house of cards, not the rich, beautiful temple we are meant to become. A strong wind blows away the house of cards, but the temple withstands the storm.
A fascinating thing happened at the end of our three day journey. We three women, walking together every step of the way, always within about 100 steps of each other, all began to menstruate before the end of the day. In just three days, our cycles aligned (though I wasn’t expecting mine for another week and a half and I’m not sure about the others). Interestingly enough, the next day was the full moon.
I’ve lived with enough roommates, daughters, and sisters to know that it is not unusual for women living in community to end up with cycles that are in sync. I’ve never seen it happen in such a short time, though. Three days of sharing an intense, painful experience, and our bodies were in tune with each other.
Extrapolate that story forward, and you have three women, living in community, whose bodies are preparing to go through the pain and glory of childbirth together. It’s a beautiful, poignant story. Expose three women’s bodies to shared pain and they find a way to support each other that goes much deeper than words.
Women, we are amazing vessels. We birth children and carry each other’s pain. Every month, we shed blood – our little painful sacrifice for the beauty we bear within us.
As an added element to this story, it was pain and childbirth that brought these three women together in the first place. Cath’s loss of Juggernaut led her to a place where walking helped her live through the pain. Christina’s deep compassion for her story and sharing of her pain made her want to support Cath on the journey. My own story of the loss of Matthew bonded me to Cath and made me want to be with her for the journey as well. It was pain that bonded us, pain that we journeyed through together, and pain that caused our bodies to align themselves with each other so that we could most fully support each other.
Our bodies carry wisdom that our minds know nothing about.
Our bodies understand the value of pain.
Without the pain, we don’t have the beauty. Without the blood, we don’t have the birth. Without the sacrifice, we don’t have the growth. Without the sharing of agony, we don’t have community.
We can’t shortcut through the pain. It’s not serving any of us. Shortcutting through our own pain makes us careless of other people’s pain. It makes us careless of the pain we cause Mother Earth.
Mark Nepo talks about pain as the tool that carves the holes in our bodies to make us the instruments through which breath blows and beautiful music is made. When we are present in the pain – when we don’t try to take shortcuts through it – our holes are seasoned and polished and the music comes out sweet and rich.
Imagine an orchestra playing on half-finished instruments, with holes that had never been polished and strings that had never been pulled tight. The music would be dull, lifeless, and out of tune.
Pain begets beauty.
Pain shines the edges of the holes through which God breathes.
The next step may be painful, but it must be taken nonetheless.
I only hope that your next painful step will be taken in community and that you will be supported in your pain.
And when the pain subsides and you can stand up straight again, let God breath through you and make your music beautiful.
“In stories and in life, pain is our friend. It’s an unwelcome friend, but a friend nonetheless. The good news is if we make friends with our pain, it won’t stay long and it will leave us with a gift. But if we avoid pain, it will chase us down until we finally accept the gift it has to offer.” – Donald Miller
******
Note: Full disclosure – I did take a few painkillers along the way, so I don’t want to paint myself as some kind of martyr. AND I do not want to stand in judgement of anyone who accepted a ride – we each must choose our own thresholds for pain and our own values and reasons for completing a particular journey. There is no shame in being supported through the roughest parts of your journey.
Another note: Cath has created a beautiful offering to help you walk through your pain, called Remembering for Good. She is letting her pain be turned into music.
something that makes things visible or affords illumination: All colors depend on light.
of little weight; not heavy: a light load.
Last week, the word “light” kept showing up for me in what I thought at the time were two different streams. At first there was the stream of light that means the absence of darkness, and then there was the stream of light that means the absence of weight. (Of course, now that I write it down, it seems so obvious, but it took a week of processing for me to finally catch on that I was dealing with one and the same thing.)
The first time light appeared, I was listening to Yolanda Nokuri Hegngi talk about the two years she’d spent in darkness (a story she has written about in her new memoir “Treasures in Darkness”). Yolanda could just as easily have been telling my story. Full of many transitions, deaths, near-deaths, career shifts, and times of great pain, the past two years have taken me through quite a lot of darkness. Every time I thought I was emerging from the darkness, some new shadow would appear.
Yolanda ended her talk by saying “We need leaders who have learned to navigate in the dark.” Wow. I was sure she was speaking directly to me. I’ve learned more than I want to know about navigating in the dark. (Some of you may recall a related post about being called to light a candle for people stumbling in the darkness, just as others have done for me. Yes, callings like that have a way of showing up time and time again, especially when we’re stubborn.)
That afternoon in our leadership intensive, we were invited to write down some intention that we wanted to put our attention on throughout the course of the workshop. In response to Yolanda’s words, I wrote “I am putting my attention on trusting my gift to help people navigate in the dark.”
“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.” – Matthew 5: 14-15
The other stream of light started to appear around the same time. Our workshop held a significant focus on play – how play can transform otherwise dark circumstances and how we can use play in our leadership to engage people in deeper conversations and shifts. (To learn more about it, I encourage you to read the book Walk Out Walk On that the workshop was based on.) I’d signed up for the workshop partly because I have been yearning for more play in my life (it is, after all, the reason I chose the word “joy” as my intention for the year).
I long for more lightness. I want to carry less weight.
But… after Yolanda’s talk, all I wanted to do was cry. I struggled through the afternoon’s session of the workshop because I thought I’d chosen poorly. I wasn’t ready for play after all. I should probably be in the workshop Yolanda was leading – where tears and deep story-telling were more expected.
Quite frankly, I was fighting resentment and resistance. I wanted lightness, but here I was in a place of heaviness again. The year before, I’d gone to ALIA carrying a lot of pain in my broken heart, and I was SURE that this time would be different. This was SUPPOSED to be the year that pain was replaced with joy.
After the session, I went outside, leaned on a large sycamore tree I’d fondly dubbed “Grandmother Tree”, and I cried. I cried for the pain I was still carrying and I cried for the disappointment. I cried and I wrote, and I let the tree hold me up.
And then, still leaning on the tree, I spontaneously wrote the word “lightness” on my arm.
Shortly after that, when I returned to the main meeting room, I sat down on a meditation cushion next to my friend Brad. He looked at the heavy backpack I was carrying on my back, and at the look on my face, and asked “why are you carrying so much weight around?”
I laughed out loud, knowing the question was meant (intentionally or unintentionally) both literally and figuratively. In my backpack was the weight of all of the story-harvesting I love to do – a big camera with multiple lenses, a video camera, a journal, and various related items. On my face, at the same time, was the weight of my personal stories, heartache, and resentment.
“That’s a good question,” I said, “and it’s funny you should ask, because just now I wrote the word ‘lightness’ on my arm.” We shared a chuckle, and then I promised him that the next day I would show up with a lighter load. “You can feel free to bug me if you see me still carrying this weight.”
After the session that evening, I spent a long time wandering around the beautiful OSU campus looking for the other kind of light – the “absence of darkness” (and maybe the “absence of weight” at the same time). I found it reflected off the water, I found it gently falling on the path in front of me, I found blue versions of it shining from the safety phone posts, and I found it sparkling in the windows of old buildings full of stories.
And when I returned to the dorm, and settled into my room, light appeared there as well. This time, it was the “absence of weight” kind, when a spontaneous jam session started in the room I shared with my friend Ann. When someone with a guitar wandered past the door, I said “come in – nobody carrying a guitar is ever turned away”. And then, before I knew it, someone else showed up with a violin, and a third person pulled out a banjo. It was a beautiful light moment and I took great joy in the fact that I (and Ann) had attracted it into my space. (Light attracts light, perhaps?)
Here’s a little video I took lying on the floor in the middle of the musicians. Appropriately, mostly what you see are shadows, because there was very little of the “absence of darkness” kind of light in the room, but plenty of the other kind.
The next morning, as I dressed, I wondered what I could leave behind to make my load lighter. It was a hard decision, but nearly everything stayed in my room. I decided to trust the fact that others would be there with cameras and videocameras and I didn’t need to do as much documenting as I am inclined to do. (As a matter of fact, by then I’d already found at least one person who was taking exceptional photos and another person capturing great video. I could trust them to harvest as well as – or better than – I could and I knew that they would share.)
In an even bigger leap of faith, I decided to leave my journal behind and trust that something else would show up if there were things I wanted to capture (and doodle about). The only things I decided to take with me (besides the key to my room), were some coloured markers in a small colourful pouch I wore around my neck.
Sure enough, during the very first session, something else showed up for me to doodle on. My arm. I am a dedicated doodler (it’s how I process information), and before long, I was doodling all over my arm, surrounding the word “lightness” with all measure of shapes and wiggles and trees and random words I picked up in my listening.
And… I loved it! I may never go back to doodling in my journal again! You might find me with new doodles on my arm every day – signs that I have been doing some deep process work, connecting with my artistic mind and my beautiful body all at the same time. (Try it! And come back and tell me about it!)
It was a great way of celebrating lightness – by not taking myself too seriously and letting my inner child surface in the doodles on my skin.
Another fun thing that happens when you doodle on your arm is that people notice. And in a place like ALIA, where we are encouraged to be curious, vulnerable, and authentic, they tend to respond in positive ways. Several people asked if they could take pictures of my arm AND one person (whom I hadn’t met before) invited me to participate with her in doing graphic facilitation for the next day’s session. “Anyone who does that to their arm can be trusted to help me co-create at the front of the room.”
Yikes! A doodle on my arm was a catalyst for me doodling on a big piece of paper on the wall in front of 250 people! It was both terrifying and exciting – like nothing I’ve ever done before.
With my confidence heightened, I continued to use my doodling throughout the rest of the week, doodling a learning tree during a session I hosted on feminine wisdom, doodling graphics while I helped a new friend imagine a business opportunity, doing henna doodles on the hands of all of the participants in the workshop I was in to represent their intentions for the week, and doing a whole new doodle/mandala on my arm the next day (that now started with the word “clarity”).
The lightness of doodling transformed my week. (Ironically, it was also a doodle at last year’s ALIA that cracked a door wide open for me and helped me imagine Sophia Leadership. Are you spotting a trend? Now start doodling and see what shifts for you!)
There’s at least one more way that lightness showed up for me last week… During the course of the week, I found myself drawn to several young people who brought incredible energy, vitality and passion to the community. It was exciting to be in circles with them. These are the gifted young leaders we can trust our futures to.
Twice I had the pleasure of being in conversations with women in their early twenties who were wrestling with the big, heavy questions of “what should I do with the rest of my life?” and “how do I use these passions I have to transform the world?” In both conversations, my advice (when it was asked for), coming from a place that surprised me, was “Hold it all lightly. Don’t take your life or your decisions too seriously. Each decision you make will help shape you, but none of these decisions will be ultimate and unchanging. Find a thread you feel called to follow and hold it lightly.”
Wow. I heard myself say those things and I knew I needed to take my own advice as much as they did.
Hold it all lightly. Hold light lightly. Offer light. Pass the light along. Light the way. Welcome lightness. Be a light. Walk lightly on this earth. Don’t hide your light under a bushel.
Be a light. Be light.
That’s it. Light. That’s what I want, and that’s what I want to offer.
I used to think it was just about offering light in a dark place (because I’ve become so accustomed to the dark and because I tend to take the world too seriously), but now I recognize that it’s that other kind of light as well. The absence of weight. The ability to go through life without letting it weigh you down.
There’s just one more piece of the light puzzle that started coming together last week that I’d like to share…
During one session, I participated in a fascinating circle time in which Thomas Arthur shared his Elementals – photos he’s taken of beings in the world, in which all he does is mirror the image of what he sees to create fanciful creatures from nature that speak to him (and to those who have the pleasure of listening with him). He asked us to choose an image that most spoke to us.
Elemental Goddess, by Thomas Arthur
I chose the image you see above. She drew me to her because of her sensuality and the sense that she is rising from some deep place with a smile on her face.
At first, it looked like she had a yoke across her shoulders, which was appropriate, for someone like me who’d been carrying a heavy backpack and lots of worries and old stories around with her early in the week.
When I looked closer, though, and added the purple shapes to the gold, the yoke was transformed into wings.
Like this beautiful Elemental, I want my yoke to be transformed into wings.
Be a light. Carry the world lightly.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. – Matthew 11: 29-30
* It’s a place where you dive deeply into conversations within minutes of meeting new friends because you know that the longings in your heart are shared and your common passions build bridges with these people long before you arrived in the same space. * When you are there, you walk around feeling always a bit raw, with your heart bravely exposed. You dare to live this way there (though you might not anywhere else) because you have an intuitive sense that the people in this community can be trusted to hold you gently, both body and heart.
* It’s a place where you are reminded daily to be mindful, to make meditation a priority, to be a witness to all that is present in the world, and to recognize that the molecules that make you who you are are also the molecules that make the world the beautiful place it is.
* The very first speaker you hear is almost certain to remind you to bring your vulnerability, your curiosity, and your broken heart to this space, because these will be valuable assets in the work we will do together.
* It is a place of incubation, where the tender shoots of your good ideas are fed by other people’s good ideas, and what emerges is exciting and beautiful and is owned not by anyone but by the collective whole.
* In this space, “leaders” come in the form of dancers, artists, students, writers, teachers, dentists, architects, small business owners, and anyone else willing to step forward to catalyze change.
* When you gather in a large sacred circle and hear the stories of your new Japanese friends, who survived the pain of a triple tragedy, you know that nobody’s job is to fix it, but everybody’s job is to listen deeply and hold them tenderly in a gentle space. And then after you depart, everyone’s job is to carry these stories in their hearts and let it change the way we interact with the world.
* Unlike a conference, you don’t spend the week sampling ideas like candy. Instead you dive deeply into a full, nourishing meal of ideas in an intensive workshop with a small community within the larger community.
* Holistic learning is part of your daily experience, whether that means dancing, singing, playing, painting, or doing aikido or big brush strokes. You won’t be at all surprised if one day you’re cavorting around the auditorium with other people, holding wooden sticks tenderly between your index fingers. It will all make sense when you’re there.
* You will have meaningful conversations with amazing people of different generations, different races, and different nationalities. Your world will be stretched, your belief system modified, and your perspective changed.
* The heirarchy you experience in other learning events will be flattened, and nobody will be too conscious of who the “experts” or “teachers” are. You have all come to learn and co-create, and your good ideas and passions are as valuable as anyone else’s.
* Though heirarchy is of no importance, the elders in the room have arrived knowing that they have responsibility to share their wisdom, and the youth have arrived with an intuitive sense that they have responsibility to share their vitality. And the sharing of these and other gifts makes this a vibrant and energetic place to be.
* You’ll hear things like “open space” and “world cafe” and you will learn that those are simply words that mean that you will be invited to dive into meaningful and intimate conversations in a large room with hundreds of other people doing the same. * In some of those conversations, you will have the opportunity to play host and other people will offer gentle support and ideas to help you grow the seeds of your ideas.
* When you show up willing to play a role in the community, you may be asked to do your doodling on a large piece of paper at the front of the auditorium, or to host an intimate story-telling session.
* At the end of the week you will dance with wild abandon because you have new faith in your own body and new trust that your community will honour your fierce and feral movements across the floor.
* When it’s all done, an artist will make a mark on a large piece of paper, and without words, you will know that your experience has been honoured by the ink on that page.
In the weeks to come, I will most certainly be writing more about what ALIA was for me personally. Some of those thoughts are still emerging and so I will give them time to grow. Suffice it to say that my heart has been deeply shifted.
Beth & Diane after building a leaf labyrinth together
Back in October, I had the pleasure of spending 4 days in a circle of powerful, warm, funny, wise women. We listened to each others’ stories, built a labyrinth of leaves, cried together, laughed together, ate together, dreamed together, and plotted ways of changing the world. It was one of the best experiences of my life. I felt like I was wrapped in the warmest hug of feminine support.
Even though I’d never met any of the women before, we were able to create an incredibly loving and energizing environment. This circle of women continues to meet periodically to offer each other support over the phone lines. I feel very, very blessed to have them in my life.
This is not the kind of feminine relationships you hear most about in the corporate world. No, we’re more likely to hear of cat fights, gossip, and “bitches” who do anything to protect their own interest. Some of that is true, and some of it isn’t. I’ve experienced both sides of the coin. I believe that the part that is true is largely due to the fact that there is incongruence between corporate culture and the most instinctual way for women to relate to each other. We haven’t found a way to bring our feminine wisdom fully into the boardrooms and cubicles (and frankly, our feminine wisdom might very well abolish both boardrooms and cubicles).
One of the greatest beauties of the circle/story retreat I was at in October was the range of ages and life wisdom of the women in the room. The youngest was a medical doctor who hadn’t yet reached 30, and the oldest was into her 70s. We had all archetypes – maidens, mothers, and crones – represented in the room, and it was a beautiful thing that reminded me of the best kind of community.
It was a particular delight to me to have such beautiful older women present – women who fully embodied and embraced the “crone” archetype. Beth and Diane in the photo above are two of those women. Wow! These women are amazing! Their energy, wisdom and pure delight in the world continue to inspire me these many months later. They didn’t try to hide their ages behind layers of make-up or plastic surgery as the fashion industry has convinced many women to do. They celebrate who they were, dance in the leaves like phoenixes rising from the flames, and share their wisdom and strength in the most generous way I have ever seen.
How I wish they could live next door to me and I could sit at their kitchen table whenever I need a boost of courage!
Yesterday I had the pleasure of having a conversation with Diane (whose face you see above). Even over Skype, Diane sparkles with energy and love. I adore her. She teaches Reiki, leads women’s circles, has a labyrinth in her back yard, builds sweat lodges, and does all kinds of amazing things in support of other women. She has become one of my most treasured mentors. I can’t tell you what it means to have a cheerleader like Diane who absolutely believes that I am on the right path and will do anything she can to help me along that path. If she believes that I will succeed, how can I not?
Qualla with her birthday cupcake
On the other side of the coin, I too have had the pleasure of becoming a mentor to a younger woman who sparkles with energy and love. Last year, when I was at ALIA, I met Qualla Parlman. We spent her nineteenth birthday kayaking off the coast of Nova Scotia, followed by a delicious barbecue on the dock. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with her at ALIA (as we weren’t in the same sessions), but since then we’ve gotten to know each other better online and I absolutely adore Qualla and I would do anything to help her succeed. She is an emerging young leader who’s learning to trust her feminine wisdom and I just know she will do big things in the world. I am honoured to be a companion on her journey.
It’s the way of women, isn’t it? The true, natural, instinctual way of women – not the way we have been socialized to become (or to believe we are). We are meant to support each other through the generations and across the generations. We are meant to find wise women who will teach us the ways of the world, and then we are meant to BE those wise women and offer our wisdom generously and without apology to others who need it.
Who are your wise women, and to whom are you offering your wisdom?
