The lessons I’m learning about holding space and letting go in the middle of a big life change

Iā€™m at the airport, ready to fly from the west coast of Canada to the east coast (where Iā€™ll spend time with some dear friends), and then, next week, Iā€™m heading to Europe for a few months, followed by some time in Costa Rica. I drove to the west coast from my home in the middle of Canada to move my youngest daughter back to university, and then I left my car with my middle daughter. All that I will wear and use for the next six months is packed into carry-on luggage.
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If youā€™ve been following along on social media over the last few months, you will likely know that I sold the house Iā€™ve lived in with my family for twenty-four years (where I raised my children), gave away most of my furniture, and packed my personal belongings into an 8ā€™x10ā€™ storage unit. All three of my children have left home over the last year, and now itā€™s my turn to leave the nest. In about six months, I expect Iā€™ll be looking for another place to live (in a new city), but for now Iā€™ll be living out of a small suitcase and smaller backpack.
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It’s been a year of big transitions for me. Last year, I wrote about letting my daughters go. Now, in the wake of that big change, I have let my house and most of my belongings go. It was hard, but it was time. I knew the house had served its purpose in our lives and the next chapter of my life belongs in a different place ā€“ a place I will find when the time is right.
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Someday I will write more eloquently about what itā€™s like to release as much as I have, but right now itā€™s still difficult to articulate. Some of it was good, some of it was hard, some of it was healing, and some of it was painful. The last four days in the house felt especially gruelling, when I (together with two of my daughters) worked from sun-up to sun-down, sorting and cleaning and carrying and donating and dismantling and packing and releasing. Part of me wants to block the memory of that hard time from my memory, but a wiser part knows itā€™s important to hold space for it all. Itā€™s the kind of transition that changes a person.
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As best I could, I tried (and continue to try) to walk through this time with mindfulness and intention, paying attention to whatever emotions came up, being tender with myself whenever necessary, and making choices that align with my values and needs. I am, as always, intent on living a mindful, liberated, tender, intentional life.
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Here are some of the things Iā€™ve been noticing about what it means to hold space for myself during such a time:

  1. Even when youā€™re choosing something that you really want, there will be periods of grief. It can be surprising when the grief sneaks up on you, but itā€™s normal. There are losses even in a joyful transition. I was ready to leave my house and had planned for it for several years as I helped my daughters launch into their lives, but there were still moments when I simply needed to sit down on the floor and cry over all of the memories that were held within those walls. I wasnā€™t just letting go of a house ā€“ I was letting go of the last home where Iā€™d live with all of my children, and the last place either of my parents would ever visit me. I was leaving the place Iā€™d built my business, written my book, gotten a divorce, grieved my parentsā€™ and sonā€™s deaths, and loved and been loved abundantly and well. Each room I cleaned and each piece of furniture I moved out held a myriad of stories, and those stories had emotional triggers attached, so I grieved and released.
  2. Fear shows up with many disguises, especially during big life changes. Fear can masquerade as anger, frustration, immobility, impatience and/or difficulty making decisions. ā€œLook over there!ā€ fear says, to distract us away from the truth thatā€™s hidden underneath. I had moments when Iā€™d suddenly be irritated with my real estate agent, belligerent with caring people who were asking questions I didnā€™t know the answers to, or unable to make a simple decision over what to do with a favourite bookshelf. When Iā€™d get quiet with myself, Iā€™d almost always find that fear was at the root. Whenever Iā€™d give fear a voice, it would settle and release some of its hold, so Iā€™d listen, soothe, make adjustments if necessary, and carry on. I tried not to shame myself for the fear or get too attached to it but to simply let it surface and then let it go. In the quiet space after the fear was finished with its blustering, I could usually make my way back to my original intentions and reasons for making the decisions I had.
  3. The emotional waves will come and sometimes youā€™ll feel like youā€™re drowning, but when you treat yourself with tenderness in the midst of it, the tidal waves pass and soon the seas are calm again. I canā€™t tell you how many emotional roller coasters Iā€™ve been on lately. There have been far too many to count. (The last one was just hours ago when I said good-bye to two of my daughters who I likely wonā€™t see for six months.) Almost every day for the last few months Iā€™d get knocked over by the waves at least once. When I tried to push the emotions away, theyā€™d eventually find a way to resurface, but when Iā€™d meet them with tenderness and mindfulness, soothing myself and not getting overly attached to the feelings, theyā€™d pass and soon Iā€™d be back on solid ground again. ā€œThis too shall passā€ seems like aĀ trite mantra, but it works. No emotions ever last forever.
  4. Sometimes joy surprises you in the most unexpected way at the most unexpected moment. One of my favourite moments, in those last few unrelenting days in the house, came in the most unexpected way. We couldnā€™t decide what to do with all of the food in the pantry or the cleaning products or the random things that we hadnā€™t found homes for yet and we were running out of time. Two days before we had to be out of the house, I set up a table in front with a sign ā€œFREE ā€“ Iā€™m leaving the country ā€“ PLEASE take my stuff!ā€ and then we filled the table to overflowing with canned goods, dry pasta, spices, cushions, etc. My daughter posted a photo and invitation on Facebook Marketplace, and within fifteen minutes, people were streaming to the house, happy to take anything weā€™d give them. While I was bringing out more things, I stopped to chat with some of the people. Many were newcomers to Canada, some having arrived as political refugees from the Ukraine, Algeria, and Chile. Though our conversations were brief, they were all lovely ā€“ human lives touching other human lives. Because many of them had, fairly recently, been on their own life-changing journeys, they all wanted to know about mine and they offered encouragement and support. One lovely man whoā€™d sold his home in Chile to give his children a more safe life in Canada offered gracious advice about the grieving process. He and his wife then offered to help clean my house in exchange for the chairs and barbecue I gave them. At one point, when the table was almost empty, my daughters noticed that a family had come by taxi. ā€œMom!ā€ one said. ā€œWe canā€™t let them waste a taxi ride! We have to find more stuff!ā€ So we rooted through the cupboards and fridge for whatever was left and they took it all. I donā€™t think my daughters or I will ever forget how much joy it gave us to simply give things away and connect with the people who needed those things. It reminded me of my childhood, growing up poor on a farm, when I got a windfall ā€“ a couple of bags of barely used clothes that were just my size, dropped off by a neighbour.
  5. The bigger the transition, the more you need to be intentional about prioritizing time for processing, rest, and tenderness. Itā€™s tempting to keep ourselves overly busy to avoid the feelings that want to come up, but in the end, we’re able to meet the transition with more grace if we give ourselves space. One of the best things I did during the month of August was commit to a morning bike ride to the park with my journal and give myself time to process whatever was coming up. Even though it sometimes felt indulgent, especially on those days when I had the most to do, I knew how much I needed it and how cranky and disoriented I could sometimesĀ be without it. Sitting by the river every day, watching the waves below and the hawks above, helped me to stay grounded and less wobbly when the emotional waves threatened to overtake me. Because Iā€™m introverted, it also helped to resource me for the times when Iā€™d have to face numerous interactions with lawyers, bankers and other service providers.
  6. In the words of Elsa in Frozen, ā€œLet it go, let it go, let it go.ā€ With so many changes going on, not only did I need to let go of a lot of stuff, I also had to let go of expectations, let go of plans, and let go of a vision of the way things ā€œshouldā€ turn out. As Iā€™ve already written, the letting go started when I made less money on the house than Iā€™d hoped. It continued from there. When construction workers showed up to tear up the street in front of my house weeks before the move, I had to let go of my plans for a garage sale and a backyard party. Then I let go of most of my expectations that Iā€™d make money off my furniture and gave most of it to an organization that helps support Indigenous families who are trying to get their kids out of foster care. ā€œLet it goā€ became the theme of my summer as box after box of things left my house to go to local charities, friendsā€™ homes, and then the homes of strangers who responded to our FB Marketplace invitation. I canā€™t say it was always easy, but I can say that the less I resisted the letting go process, the happier I was for the freedom and lightness that followed and the more I could appreciate the fact that others were making good use of the things theyā€™d received. Sometimes I had to grieve the letting go (and that often happened during my morning times with my journal at the river), but once I acknowledged the feelings, I was able to face the adjusted reality with a measure of courage and grace.
  7. You have to be prepared to drop the balls that bounce. A time of transitions is NOT the time to prove we are a superheroesĀ who can do ALL the things. Instead we have to take on fewer responsibilities, say no to more commitments and set healthy boundaries, prioritizing our own well-being. If youā€™re anything like me, you will likely need more energy and time than you expect to need, so be meticulous about guarding what you need. I had high hopes, for example, of throwing a big backyard party to say good-bye to my friends. I had to let go of that plan largely because the construction on our street made it too difficult for people to find parking but letting go was for the best because I know I would have exhausted myself trying to host people in the midst of the chaos. I let go of other things too (like responding to email on a timely basis), acknowledging my own limits during a stressful and exhausting time. Iā€™m still letting go of things, even as I set off on my adventure, because I know that I now need rest and restoration to replenish myself after an exhausting few months. (If youā€™re waiting for an email reply, please bear with me ā€“ Iā€™ll get to it.)
  8. Sometimes you need to send out a distress signal to remind yourself that there are people who care for you. On the morning of the last day before the new owners took possession, my daughter convinced me not to try to be a superhero about doing everything ourselves and to hire a cleaner to come after weā€™d gotten the last of the things out of the house. Once she got the okay from me, she hired someone to come at five oā€™clock and all day we kept counting down the minutes until we could rest and let someone else finish the work. Just before five, I made a last trip to the storage unit, and when I came home, I expected my daughters would have let the cleaner into the house. That isnā€™t what happened, though. When I pulled into the driveway, both daughters were sitting on the front step looking dejected. There had been a mix-up and the cleaner wasnā€™t coming. Now here we were, weary to the bone, and still had hours of cleaning work to do. ā€œItā€™s time to call in reinforcements!ā€ my other daughter said, reaching for her phone. ā€œEveryone ask at least one friend to come and weā€™ll have it clean in no time.ā€ So thatā€™s what we did ā€“ we sent out a distress signal and within minutes, there were four friends in our house scrubbing our toilets and washing our floors. We were still there for a few more hours, but a surprising amount of energy returned to our bodies when we were surrounded by friends lending their energy to ours. Plus the shared Chinese food feast at the endĀ was a good finale to a hard day.
  9. Trust yourself. Trust your own resilience, your courage, your wisdom, your strength, and your ability to adapt to changes. In the midst of the hardest moments, I found resources I didnā€™t know I had. I saw the same in my daughters. Even when our bodies were ready to give out, we found inner pools of strength and courage that got us through to the next moment. Whenever I felt overwhelmed, doubtful, depressed, or afraid, I was always able to reach deep down for what I needed for that moment (though sometimes I needed to break down and cry first). Though itā€™s not really fair to compare what we did with an extreme endurance race by people who seem to have superhuman strength and courage, I sometimes found myself thinking about the show Worldā€™s Toughest Race (on Amazon Prime) where teams compete around the clock in some of the most gruellingĀ conditions imaginable. Even when their bodies seem broken, they rally the strength for one more challenge. Though itā€™s not good to push ourselves in this way on a long-term basis, in critical moments, we find what we need to get through. We are surprisingly adaptable and resourceful human beings.
  10. When transitions feel too big to process all at once, and the feelings are too complicated to articulate, a ritual can help. There were so many layers to this transition that made it feel complex. I wasnā€™t just selling a house, I was leaving the city where Iā€™ve spent almost all of my adulthood and the province where Iā€™ve spent almost all of my life. I was also removing the safety blanket from my young adult children who wonā€™t have a back-up home to retreat to when their lives feel hard or even a mom in the country for the first six months. (We havenā€™t figured out Christmas yet.) And I was moving away from my business partner and having to figure out how to transition our business relationship to virtual-only. And I was leaving behind my sister and some close friends who mean a lot to me. One day, I was feeling particularly restless and unsettled, so I decided to make a solitary drive out to the small town where I grew up, where both of my parents are buried. At the last moment, I took along a basket of stones that I had decorated several years ago and wasnā€™t sure what to do with in the move. On the way to my hometown, I came up with an idea for a ritual to help mark the places that had helped shape me as a child. At each place, I left a small cairn (a pile of stones meant to mark a significant place). It turned out to be one of the most meaningful things Iā€™ve done in a long time. (You can watch a video of it here.) It helped me release some of what had been weighing me down and by my last stop (a beach where I used to attend summer camp), I was ready to let go of all of the remaining stones and walk away with a lighter load. Something changed in me after that ritual and I felt much more at peace with my uncertain future.
  11. Lean into Mystery. In my book, The Art of Holding Space: A practice of love, liberation and leadership, I talk about how holding space is like ā€œbeing a three-layered bowlā€ with the outer layer of that bowl being what you lean into. The two elements that make up that outer layer are Mystery and Community. I already talked about leaning into community above, but the other aspect is also important ā€“ Mystery. Mystery can be defined however you want to define it ā€“ God, Allah, Spirit, Universe, nature, Love, your higher power, Tenderness, etc. Whatever name you use for Mystery, especially in the midst of a big life change, it is helpful to have a sense of something bigger than you, holding you and caring for you. I have a tendency to become quite self-reliant in times like this (some of which is related to trauma and social conditioning), but I have learned that I am stronger when I lean into trust that not everything has to come from my own internal resources. In the hardest moments, I would try to lean into a sense that someone wiser than me was maintaining some sense of order in the universe and all would eventually be well.
  12. Let yourself recuperate and integrate. To be honest, this is the one thing on the list I havenā€™t yet done. After emptying the house, I drove across the country to move my daughter into her university dorm and then did lots of mom-things like stitching up a duvet cover and making multiple trips to IKEA and Walmart to help her get what she needs for the year. The next stop is a visit with a friend whose health is deteriorating, and then Iā€™ll spend time with my oldest daughter in Toronto (also helping her settle into a new space). In other words, I havenā€™t gotten to the ā€œrecuperate and integrateā€ phase of this process yet. Iā€™ve barely found a moment to myself in the last two weeks. I’ll get there, though, because I know it matters. My first two weeks in Europe will be all about food, wine, beaches, and relaxation. In October, I’ll start teaching a series of workshops, but first I will rest, play and recuperate. I will give time for my body and soul to recalibrate after an intense summer.

I started this post at the airport on the west coast, but I am finishing it at the home of my friends Randy and Brenda on the east coast. Randy has long been a wise spiritual guide and generous friend to me (and some of you saw an interview I did with him for Know Yourself, Free Yourself) and now he is dying of ALS. Moments ago, in one of the fifteen-minute segments that he has enough energy for conversation, we spoke about how the journey that I am embarking on has some parallels with the one that he is taking. We are both releasing a lot of things so that we can journey forward with more lightness. We are both transitioning out of times in our lives when we were bound by duty and accepting that weā€™re no longer meant to be filling as many peopleā€™s needs. We are both leaning into the unknown and we are both learning to trust that we will find the resources we need and that people will care for us when we need it.

Thereā€™s at least one crucial difference, though ā€“ while I can at least make tentative plans and book flights and accommodations for the places Iā€™ll be landing, he has to trust that wherever he arrives once his body releases his soul will be a place of peace, ease, and beauty. He’s a person with a strong sense of Mystery and he has told me that he believes that death will be a release into ā€œpure joyā€ where the worries of this world no longer weigh him down. ā€œCan you send a message back once you arrive?ā€ I said to him just now, before he closed his eyes to rest. ā€œLet me know what the accommodations are like in your new home.ā€ We both laughed about what form that text message might take, when he has to find creative, non-verbal ways of getting me to hear whatever wisdom he has gained in his big transition. Up until now, we’ve always had words as our tools for communication.

I am not dying as Randy is, but I do believe that I am taking steps to invite more joy, liberation and ease into my life, and I know that I will learn many things in this big transition. I will be sure to send messages to you, my dear friends and readers, from wherever I am to let you know the lessons I learn along the way. Unlike Randyā€™s, mine will come by traditional forms of communication, like this newsletter and my social media feed. Watch for it and join the conversation! Ā 

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On a somewhat related note, Krista (my business partner) and I have been grieving our Monday morning meetings when weā€™d talk about business but also talk about the state of the world and how we feel called to make a contribution through the Centre for Holding Space. Since weā€™ll no longer be able to meet in our neighbourhood coffee shop (thanks Little Sister for hosting us for several years), weā€™ve decided to experiment with our conversations and to share some of them with you. Eventually we will likely start a podcast, but for now weā€™ll be chatting with each other via short videos on TikTok (search for Centre for Holding Space), Facebook orĀ Instagram. Weā€™d love it if youā€™d follow along! Ā 

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Also ā€“ we have lots of offerings for the Fall. Iā€™ll be teaching four times in Europe and then Iā€™ll be heading to Costa Rica where Iā€™ll be teaching some brand new content at a retreat called Liberation and Tenderness (together with my friend and colleague, Mary Scholl). Iā€™d love to see you on one of my stops! And if the in-person gatherings donā€™t work for you, perhaps you want to join us in the Holding Space Foundation Program which starts in October.

Forgiveness and the death of my son

Matthew's clothes

Handmade clothes my son’s body was dressed in after he was born.

If it hadnā€™t been for doctorsā€™ errors, I would have a sixteen-year-old son.

Halfway through my third pregnancy, I could sense that something was wrong. My body didnā€™t feel right. ā€œI feel like I have to re-adjust my hips every time I stand up to avoid the baby dropping from between my legs,ā€ I said to my doctor when I called her. ā€œSomething feels too loose down there.ā€

She sent me to the hospital where an intern taped monitors to my stomach and I lay waiting for the prognosis. ā€œEverything looks normal,ā€ said the intern. ā€œThe baby is moving well and the heartbeat is strong. Iā€™ve consulted with your doctor and weā€™ve decided that there is not enough of an indication of a problem to do an internal exam. At this point in the pregnancy, the risks of that kind of invasiveness donā€™t seem worth it.ā€

That was the first mistake. They should have checked my cervix.

A week later, I booked some time off work and visited another hospital for a routine, mid-pregnancy ultrasound. The moment the technician turned the screen away from me, I knew something was wrong. The sudden subdued tone in her voice confirmed my suspicion. An hour later, after an awkward call with my doctor, leaning over the receptionistā€™s desk and trying not to cry, I was on my way back to the hospital where they would now address the problem that had been missed the week before.

My cervix was open. The signals that my body had sent me were accurate – I WAS too loose down there. I was already four centimetres dilated – four months too soon.

After a variety of doctors visited and asked me the same series of questions over and over again, I finally found myself at a third hospital where I was placed into the hands of the only specialist in the city who had the skill to deal with my problem. That evening, Dr. M. spent nearly two hours explaining the situation to my husband and me.

I had an incompetent cervix. Though it had held firmly through my first two pregnancies, like a rubber band that has lost its elasticity, it no longer had the strength to hold itself closed for the nine months it was required to hold a baby in place. Nobody had an explanation – apparently it just happens sometimes. Because it had been open for awhile, the amniotic sac was bulging out of the gap, which is why Iā€™d been feeling the discomfort a week earlier.

The next morning, after a fitful night that included a panic attack after I listened to the frantic sounds of another mother down the hall giving birth to a dead baby, I was wheeled into the surgical theatre where I was to undergo a cerclage. Like the drawstring of a purse, the doctor would stitch a strong thread through my cervix and then pull it closed, simultaneously pushing the amniotic sac back behind the barrier.

After I was prepped for surgery, Dr. M. entered the room with a young intern. It was a teaching hospital, so I was getting used to students following the teacher around. But I wasnā€™t prepared for what happened next. Instead of Dr. M., it was the young intern who picked up the needle and stepped between my legs.

Dr. M. read the concern on my face. ā€œOften itā€™s actually better to have the more experienced doctor watching and guiding rather than doing the stitching,ā€ he reassured me. ā€œIt will be okay. Sheā€™ll do a fine job.ā€

That was the second mistake. Minutes later, the faces of both the intern and Dr. M. told me something had gone horribly wrong. ā€œPull it out,ā€ said Dr. M. ā€œWe have to abandon surgery.ā€

The amniotic sac had been pierced by the needle she was using for the cerclage. My water was now broken. My baby was no longer protected. I would probably go into labour soon and deliver a baby too tiny to survive.

To the surprise of all of the doctors, I didnā€™t go into labour right away. In fact, hours stretched into days, and the baby seemed to be thriving despite the lack of amniotic fluid or protection from the outside world. Dr. M. watched vigilantly, doing two ultrasounds a day to make sure all of the babyā€™s organs were functioning properly.

After the failed surgery, I had another fitful night in which I wrestled with the demons that wanted to convince Ā me to point the blame at the doctors. ā€œItā€™s their fault,ā€ they shrieked in my ear as I fought through the anxiety. ā€œIf they had checked you a week ago, or if Dr. M. had done the surgery, you wouldnā€™t be in this situation, expecting your baby to die at any moment.ā€

But there was another voice – a quieter voice – underneath the anger and fear. This voice said ā€œYou have a choice to make. Blame the doctors and let the bitterness control you, or let it go and choose a more peaceful way through this.ā€ By morning, I had made a choice. I would let it go. Bitterness wouldnā€™t do me or my baby any good. I wanted to choose life.

The next day, Dr. M. came to see me and at the end of our visit, he paused for a moment. ā€œThe intern would like to come see you. She feels horrible about what happened and would like a chance to apologize. Will you see her?ā€

I took a deep breath. Was I ready to see her?

ā€œYes,ā€ I said. ā€œIā€™ll see her.ā€

A few hours later, she walked into the room. Her eyes filled with tears as she blurted out an awkward apology.

ā€œI know you were doing your best,ā€ I said, ā€œand you made a mistake. I donā€™t hold that against you. Donā€™t let this ruin your career as a doctor. Learn from it and keep doing better.ā€

For much of the next three weeks in the hospital, I felt surprisingly peaceful. I started a gratitude journalĀ and I had many long, luxurious conversations with the friends and family that came to visit. I joked with people who commented on my peaceful appearance that my hospital stay felt a little like being in an ashram – a retreat space away from my busy life that gave me time to reflect on the meaning of my life.

At the end of those three weeks, though, my peaceful state met the crashing waves of despair. I went downstairs for my morning ultrasound visit and discovered that my baby had died during the night. A few hours later, I had to go through the excruciating pain of labour and delivery, knowing the outcome was a dead baby. It was the hardest work Iā€™ve ever done.

As I prepared to go home from the hospital, my breasts filling with milk my son would never drink, I checked in with myself about the choice Iā€™d made three weeks earlier.Ā Now that my baby was dead, could I still forgive the doctors for their mistakes? The stakes were higher – could I make the choice again?Ā Yes, I decided that I could. Choosing not to let go would be to choose bitterness and hatred. I wanted to choose peace and forgiveness. I made that choice again and again in the coming months as the waves of grief came.

IMG_8303This week, Iā€™ve been reading Wilma Derksenā€™s new book,Ā The Way of Letting Go, about her thirty-two year journey to forgiveness after her thirteen-year-old daughterā€™s murder. The term forgive, she says, derives from ā€˜to giveā€™ or ā€˜to grant,ā€™ as in ā€˜to give up.ā€™ Forgiveness is the process of letting go. It ā€œisnā€™t a miracle drug to mend all broken relationships but a process that demands patience, creativity, and faith.ā€

Iā€™ve known about Wilma since the story of her daughter Candaceā€™s disappearance erupted in the media, five months after I graduated from high school (in 1984). Seven weeks after the disappearance, Candaceā€™s body was found in a shed just a few blocks from her home.

A few years ago, I heard Wilma give aĀ TEDx talk about forgiveness. What stood out about that talk was that, during the trial of the man accused of murdering Candace, Wilma realized that she could not hold both love and justice in her heart in equal measure. Though she longed for justice for Candaceā€™s sake, for the sake of the family that was still with her, she chose love.

After hearing her speak, I reached out to Wilma and we have since become friends. Last year, while she was working on the book, she invited me to lunch to explore the idea of me being a guest speaker at a class she was teaching about forgiveness. Over lunch, she told me about how she had, after more than thirty years of processing her own forgiveness over the murder of her daughter, come to a somewhat different conclusion about forgiveness than what weā€™d both been taught in our religious upbringing. As she says in the book, itā€™s a long journey of letting go and making the choice, again and again, to choose love and life, just as Iā€™d done in the hospital.Ā Itā€™s not about denying that you feel anger and hatred or that you want justice, but itā€™s a conscious choice not to let those things control you.Ā 

Toward the end of our lunch date, I decided to share something with Wilma that Iā€™d hesitated to bring up earlier in the conversation – that my marriage had recently ended. I was reluctant to talk about it for two reasons: 1. I didnā€™t want it to dominate the conversation, especially when the focus was on her course and her work, and 2. since she was an “expert” on forgiveness and I knew her to be a religious person, I was afraid of what she might think of me for having failed at marriage. (I still carried some old shame about the sin of divorce.)

Wilmaā€™s response caught me by surprise. Not only was she compassionate and non-judgemental, but she offered a simple reframing of a story I shared that helped me see even more clearly why the ending of my marriage had become necessary.Ā She held space for me in the beautiful way that only someone who has walked through pain and has learned not to judge herself for her reaction to it can do.

I realized, in that moment, that I had placed Wilma on an impossible pedestal. For more than thirty years, Iā€™d seen the mediaā€™s version of this somewhat saintly Christian woman who had some kind of super-human capacity to forgive the most egregious crime against her and her family. But the truth was much more complicated and nuanced (and, in my mind, appealing) than that.Ā She was, just as I was, a very human woman whoā€™d been nearly drowned in intense pain, anger, and fear, and yet she kept swimming back up toĀ the surface in search of the light.Ā 

Forgiveness, for her, was not a pie-in-the-sky utopian ideal that meant she could live in peace and harmony with all whoā€™d wronged her. Instead, it was a daily – sometimes hourly – decision to let go of fear, grief, ego, happy endings, guilt, blame, rage, closure, and self-pity.

I didnā€™t get to raise my son Matthew, but because, like Wilma, I chose forgiveness instead of bitterness, his short life transformed mine and his legacy is present in all of the work I now do. That three week period in the hospital with him was not only a retreat, it was a reconfiguring, sending my life in a whole new direction that lead me to where I am now.

At the end of the book, Wilma admits that her concept and experience of forgiveness are still changing and evolving. Iā€™m with her on that. Life will keep giving us more chances to learn.

On letting go, forgiving, and healing our wounds

ā€œEverything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms ā€” to choose oneā€™s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose oneā€™s own way.ā€ – Viktor Frankl


After last weekā€™s post about serving as wounded healers, I received a thought-provoking email from a reader.ā€œI have been wondering a lot about the language surrounding letting go, moving on, and forgiving. The way the phrases come out seem misleading to me. I mean, how does one just simply choose to forgive, or let go when there is a big part that just isn’t willing toĀ do that yet even though we want to? We can intellectuallyĀ getĀ why and how, but doing so isĀ almost an entirely different thing.ā€

I have been thinking a lot about his question ever since. Even after I sent a response to his email, I kept wondering what else there might be to say. Is ā€œletting goā€ a one time decision, or is it a daily commitment? Is it possible to ā€œlet goā€ entirely, or is it more true that we loosen our grip for awhile until something unexpectedly triggers us and returns us to that wound for another (hopefully deeper) healing journey?

In last weekā€™s post, I made reference to the time a man climbed through my window and raped me in my bed. After years of seeking healing for that wound, Iā€™d like to think that Iā€™ve let go, moved on, and forgiven that man, but in truth, I am still occasionally triggered and the old wounds come back to haunt me. Last Fall, for example, when Tina Fontaineā€™s body was found in the river near where Iā€™d lived at the time, and then, a few months later, Rinelle Harper survived a similar attack, I found myself triggered once again. Around the same time, it was revealed that Jian Gomeshi, a celebrity in Canada, had been sexually assaulting women for years and getting away with it. I found myself angry, shaken, and some days nearly unable to get out of bed.

Have I let go? Have I healed? Have I forgiven? Yes… and no. I have worked through much of the pain, I have grown immensely from the experience, I have learned to trust people again, and I have used the experience to help me serve as a more compassionate wounded healer. And yet… I can still get angry, I can still fear intimacy, and I can still allow some of the emotional wounds to change how I treat my own body. Last Fallā€™s triggering taught me that I still have more layers to heal in this story.

So… does that mean that we can never be fully functioning members of society because we are all always carrying around old wounds? No, thatā€™s not it at all. Our wounds change us and become part of our stories, but they do not define us nor do they own us. Though healing may be a lifelong journey, we are still responsible to do the work and to offer the gifts of what weā€™ve learned to others.

Here are some of my thoughts on the healing journey…

1.) Life is more like a labyrinth than a linear path. A labyrinth journey takes you toward centre, but it never takes you directly there. First you wind in and out, sometimes close to centre and sometimes far away. Life is the same way. Sometimes you feel like youā€™ve reached your goal and that your wounds are healed, and then suddenly the path turns and you are once again wandering in a wasteland of doubt and despair. That doesnā€™t mean youā€™re doing it wrong, it simply means that you have more to learn from the place at the edge of the circle.

2.) Pain can be our greatest teacher, but we have to allow ourselves to feel it in order to learn its lessons. We canā€™t short-circuit the learning that grief and struggle bring to our lives. When we try to ignore it by staying busy or dull it by turning to substance abuse or avoid it by pretending we can simply return to life as usual, we simply put it on hold and can expect that it will surface again later in life in an more urgent and unhealthy way.

3.) When we are mindful, our wounds have less ability to control us. In mindfulness meditation (my limited training comes mostly from the Shambhala Buddhist tradition), we are taught not to try to stop the thoughts, but to witness them and simply let them pass. The same is true for how we should treat our anger, judgement, fear, etc. We shouldn’t try to shut it down or deny ourselves the experience of it. Instead, we have an opportunity to witness it, inquire into it (What is this moment teaching me? What do I still have to learn from this emotional experience? What is the fear hidden beneath my anger?) and then allow it to pass. (I intentionally say “allow” it to pass rather than “let it go” because allowing is less about our control and more about acceptance.) That doesn’t mean it won’t come back again, but when it does come back, it has less ability to debilitate and control us.

4.) Those who search for meaning in any situation are better able to heal from it. Is there a reason for the suffering in the world? I donā€™t know. Itā€™s hard to justify the suffering caused by the earthquake in Nepal, for example. There may not be a cosmic reason for it, but that doesnā€™t mean there isnā€™t meaning for each of us as we live through the suffering. As Viktor Frankl reminds us, in Manā€™s Search for Meaning, those people who were best able to survive the atrocities of the concentration camps during the Second World War were those people who found meaning in their suffering. ā€œBetween stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.ā€

5.) As wounded healers, we can offer healing even if weā€™re still on the healing journey ourselves. Although itā€™s important to work on our own wounds first (so that we donā€™t use those wounds as an excuse to inflict more wounds on others), we canā€™t wait until we are ā€œcompletely healedā€ to serve the world around us. There is no such thing as ā€œcompletely healedā€. Instead, there are those who are further along the healing journey than others who reach back and offer compassion and guidance to those behind them. When I started teaching, I adopted as my mantra George Bernard Shawā€™s quote… ā€œI’m not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you.ā€ Change the word ā€œteacherā€ to ā€œhealerā€ and it still applies.

6.) Our wounds make us beautiful. Mark Nepo shares the story of a brokenhearted young woman who finds an old man in the woods. When she shares her story of heartbreak with the man, he tells her the story of how each of us is like a flute and each time we are wounded, a new hole is carved into us. ā€˜It is a simple fact that a flute can make no musicā€¦if it has no holes,ā€ says the wise old man. ā€œEach being on earth is such a flute, and each of us releases our songs when our Spirit passes through the holes carved by our life experiences.ā€™ā€ No two flutes have the same holes and therefore no two flutes make the same music.

If you’ve been wounded and are on the path to healing, remember that you are beautiful, right now, exactly as you are. This healing journey will bring you many gifts that are needed for the healing of this world. Be mindful, search for meaning, and let yourself be changed.

Note: I’d like to dedicate one post a month to wrestling with readers’ questions, so if you have been contemplating something that you’d like me to talk about, simply add a comment with your question. I don’t promise “answers” or “solutions”, I’ll simply offer my thoughts from my place on the journey.

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.



Transition: The empty place between stories

“Something is shifting in my life. I feel lost. Everything I once depended on and believed in feels unstable and unreliable. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

I hear some version of this story almost every week in my coaching work. Somewhere in the middle of their lives, women (and men, though I hear fewer of those stories) go through a period of transition when their world shifts and the ground feels wobbly under their feet. They’ve left behind an old story but haven’t found themselves in the new story yet. They don’t know how to define themselves anymore and they’re not even sure they have much value.

The stories are almost always accompanied with tears and some measure of shame. They think they’re doing it wrong. They think everyone else has it figured out. They think there’s supposed to be a straight path between the old story and the new story. Or they think they were foolish and selfish for no longer being satisfied with the old story that once felt comfortable.

They’ve been fed a false narrative.

While still in high school, they were told that they’re supposed to figure out “what they want to be when they’re older” and then they’re supposed to follow a straight path to the “American dream.” They’re pretty sure that means that once they’re forty, they should have everything figured out and the question that once plagued them will have all been answered or at least have faded in importance.

But once they get to a midlife point, they realize that the questions are getting bigger and more urgent. They don’t know what to believe anymore. They don’t really know who they are. They don’t understand the meaning of their lives. They discover that motherhood, or their career, or the book they got published, or the dream they brought to fruition doesn’t satisfy them as much as they’d hoped. They’re feeling empty and lost, like a boat adrift at sea.

It’s such a common story that if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard it, I could go on a very lovely vacation to the Caribbean.

The first thing I do when I hear this story is give them permission to cry and feel the grief. The second thing I do is tell them “This is where you’re supposed to be. This is a woman’s journey. You have to give yourself permission to be lost for awhile. It’s the only way you’ll find the path to your more authentic self.”

We all need to go through the empty place in order to connect with our deeper selves.

Every woman I know who has found her way into a deepened wisdom and a deeper sense of calling has gone through the empty place between stories. They’ve all found themselves adrift at sea somewhere in the middle of their lives, where they had to let go of old paradigms, old belief systems, and old ways of defining themselves. It was only when they let go of the resistance and the need to “be productive” and “be successful” that they were able to sink into the deep stillness of the empty place between stories.

transformation diagram

Nobody wants the complexity of real transformation.

The mess and the grief of letting go of the old story is scary and uncomfortable. We want the simple solution that many of the self-help books are selling us. We want ten easy bullet points.

But real transformation is more like the labyrinth. Real transformation invites us to step off the path into a complex, labyrinthine journey.

“Most of us arrive at a sense of self and vocation only after a long journey through alien lands. But this journey bears no resemblance to the trouble-free ā€œtravel packagesā€ sold by the tourism industry. It is more akin to the ancient tradition of pilgrimage – ‘a transformative journey to a sacred centre’ full of hardships, darkness, and peril.” – Parker Palmer, Let your Life Speak

The labyrinth teaches us much about the journey through transition.

When we enter the labyrinth, we are invited to release. We let go of Story A. We let go of our expectations, our “American dream”, our comfort level.

Once we reach the centre, we are ready to receive. But our cups can only be filled up again if we reach that place empty and open. We’ve emptied ourselves of the old story so that the new story can begin to grow. At the centre, we receive guidance from Spirit, we receive grace, and we receive the strength we need to continue the journey.

When we are ready, we return. But we don’t go back to Story A. We return with the new story that has begun to grow at the centre. We return with a deeper connection to our authentic selves. We return ready to step into Story B.

What’s surprising, though, and always somewhat unsettling, is that Story B bears little resemblance to Story A. Story A fit into a much cleaner box. Story B has a lot of loose ends and a permeable border. Story A was black and white. Story B has a lot of complex shades of grey.

We are invited into a place of non-duality.

As Richard Rohr says in Falling Upward, the story for the second half of life is one of non-duality. When we are in a story of duality (the first half of our lives), we see the word in black and white, right and wrong, good and bad.

Rohr describes non-dual thinking as ā€œour ability to read reality in a way that is not judgmental, in a way that is not exclusionary of the part that we donā€™t understand. When you donā€™t split everything up according to what you like and what you donā€™t like, you leave the moment open, you let it be what it is in itself, and you let it speak to you. Reality is not totally one, but it is not totally two, either! Stay with that necessary dilemma, and it can make you wise.ā€

Many people resist the invitation into Story B. They want to stay in a place where the world feels secure and safe. They hang onto a black and white world and they judge those who introduce them to shades of grey. Those people often become the fundamentalists who fight with all their might to resist change. They close themselves off in a box of self-preservation rather than step into a place of ambiguity.

But there is little value in hanging onto Story A when the new story wants to emerge. Your comfort will soon turn to bitterness, your safe home will become your prison.

Our world wants us to move, individually and collectively, into Story B.

new storyThere are many thought leaders who believe that our world is in that empty place – the place of chaos – between Story A and Story B.

Yesterday, I participated in the first session of ULab, hosted by Otto Scharmer of MIT and Presencing Institute. On this MOOC (massive open online course) there are 25,000 people who are connecting to talk about the transformation of business, society, and self. We’re learning what it means to be in that “place of disruption” between stories. While on the webinar, thousands of us were tweeting from all over the world about what is ending and what is emerging. There’s a general consensus that the world can’t continue to function unless we step into a new story, a new way of connecting with ourselves, each other, and the world. But before getting to that new story, we have to let ourselves be lost for awhile.

In The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible, Charles Eisenstein talks about The Story of Separation that the world has been living in. Thatā€™s a story that keeps us locked in a financial economy that demands growth and the pillaging of the earth for the resources that feed that growth. Itā€™s a story that has us living as separate, self-sufficient individuals instead of in community. Itā€™s a story that requires a greater and greater investment in military actions that help us protect our resources and our self-sufficiency.

The new story that the world is longing for is a Story of Connection.

Itā€™s a story that brings us back to a healthy relationship with each other and the earth. Itā€™s a story of trust and compassion, community and spirituality.

As the diagram above shows, we wonā€™t get to the Story of Connection until we are ready to release the Story of Separation, step into the centre of the labyrinth, and receive the new thing that wants to be born in each of us.

If you find yourself in that empty place between stories, know this – you are not alone. You are living a story that is playing itself out all over the world.

We are all trying to find our way into the new story. Some of us are desperately hanging onto the old story, some of us are ready to hospice the old story into its death, and some of us are ready to midwife the new story into its birth.

In the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, there are a few cells, called imaginal cells, that hold the dream of the butterfly alive while all of the other cells see only the end of the world that was once their caterpillar life. Those imaginal cells lead the transformation into the new, more beautiful thing that is meant to emerge.

In my work, I am blessed to be in connection with many imaginal cells – people who sense the end of Story A has come and who believe that there is something new and better emerging. Perhaps you are one such cell.

Perhaps you have been invited into the difficult stage of transformation so that you can serve as a model for others coming after you.

I invite you to consider that whatever you are going through right now, you are going through something that is helping you emerge into the more beautiful world. And your transformation is part of the transformation of the world around you.

Step into the labyrinth. Let yourself be changed.

Need some support on this journey through transformation? Registration is now open for The Spiral Path: A Woman’s Journey to Herself. In this 21 lesson course, you’ll be guided through the three stages of the labyrinth journey.

 

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