My dear friend Faith and I found ourselves simultaneously at quite significant (albeit quite different) turning moments in our lives, moments that we each felt the need to mark with some meaningful ceremony or ritual. We both opened ourselves to whatever possibilities Spirit might bring to us. We each were listening in as well as looking around for something that would feel just right. A flyer on the local health food store bulletin board announcing a Women’s Vision Quest caught my attention.
The Quest was to be led, under the auspices of The Ojai Foundation, by two young local women who’d been trained as Vision Quest Guides. There would be four days of camping out in the Ojai wilderness. In the middle of that time, we would all spend a 30-hour period of "solo time."
Though Faith was more drawn to the communal ceremony time and I more to the solo time, the mix seemed really magically promising for both of us. So in early April of 1986, several months past my 45th birthday, I was planning to go off camping in the wilderness, both alone and with a group of women I’d (except for Faith) yet to meet.
As we prepared for the trip, Faith was sometimes feeling a bit of intense anticipatory anxiety about the physical challenges of camping alone. We agreed that she had absolute permission to bail–at any point, even and up to the very last moments–if she decided it was more than she felt up to handling.
I wasn’t at all concerned about any of the anticipated physical challenges. Instead, I was incredibly eager for the chance to be safely alone in some very wild place. A place I wouldn’t have felt able to go off to by myself without the "container" of experienced guides in the background.
But, from time to time I’d find myself feeling irritable and out of sorts contemplating all the time we’d be spending with all those other women "building community!" So much was moving and shifting deep inside of me during these early days of my journey to re-mother myself. So often I found myself feeling raw, skinless, way too permeable to be around other people’s energies. I was feeling intensely "hermit-y," seriously reclusive so much of the time. The idea of having to relate intimately with an odd assortment of some dozen unknown women felt almost nauseating to me! Yet, not nauseating enough to give up the chance for safe solo time!
When the day of our actual departure came, I was in high tantrum mode: raging around, cursing, crying, stomping and flinging things about the house. Feeling totally crazed. The morning was filled with endless minor but intensely aggravating mishaps. Spilling things. Not being able to find things that I’d suddenly decided I absolutely had to have with me. Having to totally repack my pack again and again as I tried to fit in these last minute "necessaries" while still leaving room for my share of the cooking utensils and food that would be distributed at our gathering place. Cleaning up cat vomit. Having a REALLY bad hair day. Some further iteration of craziness with my new and intrusive landlord. And, some background worries about the dependability of my recently re-injured knee that had just stopped getting swollen whenever I walked more than a little ways.
Faith arrived at my door excited, eager and thrilled with herself about her courage and readiness for the adventure she had thought might be too much for her. She found me in utter emotional disarray, raging and grumping and in tears of frustration and overwhelm. She reminded me that I didn’t have to go if it didn’t feel right to me, that I had the same permission from her that she had had from me. Of course, in my state, I just got irritated with her for thinking I needed HER permission to give myself permission not to go! (The truth was that her reminding me of her permission actually DID help me to make more space for myself. It released me from any worry that I’d be "letting her down" if I decided that I really needed not to go.)
Because she knows and loves me so well, she stopped being "helpful" and quietly sat down to see where I’d get to on my own. I ranted on and on about all my miseries of the morning and all my worst case scenarios about how it might be for me around the women we would be meeting up with at the gathering place. Faith, as always, was her incredibly loving, gently generous and patient self, sitting in witness with me and my process.
In the end, I decided to at least try going. I needed for us to take two cars to the gathering place (some six miles from my house). That way, I would keep my own options open until after I’d had a chance to see/feel out who all it was that we’d be traveling with. I grumped and grodgered my way up the hill to the Ojai Foundation nattering on and on to myself about the so many other women I might have to put up with in order to get to the yearned for safe, solo time in the wilds.
At the gathering place and through the opening circle ceremonies, I continued to be looking at everything and everyone with somewhat jaundiced eyes. Yet, in the end, the lure of the solo time outweighed my reluctance to be around so many unknown women. I decided to risk staying for the whole ride!
We wagon-trained (in three vans) out to a canyon I dearly love. We hiked in–further than I’d ever gone on my own–to a wilderness campground on the river. There were some especially wonderful moments those first hours as we cleaned up the somewhat trashed campsites, built an enormous stone altar, dug latrine trenches, learned about low-impact, respectful, protective wilderness camping and then prepared a communal dinner. I got as wildly excited and hilariously giggly as any potty-training two-year old when I pooped outdoors for the first time in my grown-up life!
Then, we sat again in a formal circle. This time our intention was to tell each other the stories of what had brought us to this moment, to this Questing. To name what were the greatest uneases/fears we were bringing to this moment and to speak to what our plans were for caring for ourselves in the face of these uneases/fears. I found myself feeling incredibly agitated, emotionally claustrophobic, really not wanting to have to listen attentively to all these stories. Attending to all these heartful, meaningful self-revelations was making me feel like vomiting. The last thing I wanted to be doing just then was getting to know anything about anyone new!
I sat there thinking: "I spend all of my work life listening avidly and deeply to all the intricate details of the tales and lives of all the women with whom I work and about whom I care so deeply. I listen avidly and deeply to all the intricate details of the tales and lives of the women who are my intimate friends, the women whom I dearly love. That’s all the listening and caring I have room for! I can’t bear to listen to all of these tales! I don’t care or want to care about any of you! I have NO ROOM for this! All I want is to wrap myself in the profound stillness of this wild place, ALONE! "
Some of the women talked on and on, the circle being one of the few places where a woman can come knowing that she may take all the time she needs, that here she will be witnessed fully and hearfully. Despite wanting to scream and run away, I made myself hold to my commitment to the sacredness of the circle. I stayed and listened as best I could. I sat with my nausea and my emotional claustrophobia. I did what I, as a member of this Questing community, was supposed to do.
When my turn came, I did speak my truth–in more graceful words than I was experiencing it, but only just. And, I acknowledged that to take better care of my very raw, skinless self, I would probably need to keep very much to the fringes of the group much of the time. Giving voice to what was so in and for me helped me to quell some of the intensely noxious, agitated feelings I was having. (Giving voice to what’s going on inside of me almost always does do that!)
When the circle ended for the evening, the social, "get to know each other better" chat began. I felt so impatient with, so irritated by just about anything anybody was saying. I thought I’d go out of my mind. I realized I was starting to have an anxiety attack! I checked in with Faith for a hug and then took myself off to sit alone on the bank of the river. Listening to the wind in the trees, the rush of the water over the rocks and boulders, I sat just breathing slowly and deeply. Gradually the anxiety loosened and melted. I could listen to the frightened parts of me.
They let me know how very betrayed they felt by my forcing myself to participate in the circle. They let me know how upsetting and scary it was for them to have me overriding what my body and my belly feelings were trying to tell me. They let me know how absolutely not right it was for me to be opening myself to the other women and their intense, intimate stories when I was desperately needing the healing of stillness and solitude. They let me see that once again in my life I had been violating my own tender self in order to do what was expected of me so that I might then get what I truly needed.
Going along with the "conventions" of the Vision Quest program, honoring what I felt I had implicitly agreed to do when I signed on for the Vision Quest, I had been dishonoring my own distress in the moment. That betrayal of my deeper self had moved me from intense discomfort into the start of an anxiety attack.
I promised my big and little overwhelmed selves that I would listen better to their needs. That I would do whatever they needed me to do (or not do) so that they could feel safe, comfortable and comforted there on the Quest or anywhere else I might find myself. That I wouldn’t again make us do anything that felt like it was too much for us to bear. Or, that felt emotionally claustrophobic. I promised my frightened, upset selves that I would commit myself then–and as much of the time as I possibly could-–to always putting what they needed before the demands of any external agendas, rules or expectations. Regardless of any agreements I, explicitly or implicitly, might have made with others beforehand.
With this powerful reassurance that I would listen to and act on what I heard from them, the frightened, overwhelmed parts of me were willing to return to where the group was gathered. Over the rest of the time surrounding the unbelievably extraordinary experience of the 30-hour solo journey, I was able to weave gently in and out of the circle. Knowing that I would have my own support to withdraw immediately whenever things felt "too much" allowed me to actually stay in contact more of the time than I would have imagined possible. Refusing to force myself to stay connected actually gave me the freedom to choose (more often) to stay connected and connecting. This was, for me, the most empowering gift of the Quest.
Later that same year, I chose to go on a longer Quest with older more experienced women leaders in order to have a 4 day solo in Death Valley (see Our Slowest Parts for more about that journey). On this second journey, I was able to speak with the leaders in advance to explain what I’d learned about making it safe for myself to travel with a group. With them, I was–easily and successfully–able to negotiate and advocate for my need to have the freedom to move in and out of the circle from time to time.
So much of current self-help rhetoric and literature promotes the path of "feel the fear and do it anyway." The sub-text seems always to be that "giving in to one’s fears" can only lead to increased incapacitation and escalating fear. I find the promoted path incredibly harsh. And, I find the sub-text an outright distortion of what’s so.
When we listen lovingly and protectively to our fearful selves, they can let us know what they need to feel safe enough to move forward into and through what feels so frightening to them. When the fearful parts of us experience the steadfastness of our sympathetic concern and our willingness to attend immediately to their needs for safety, they become more trusting of our caring.
When we can faithfully promise to remove our frightened selves instantly from any circumstance that feels upsetting, scary, overwhelming, these parts can then tolerate pushing the edges of their envelope. When they have to put up with endless argument and negotiation from us, they have to start working to get us to leave well before the moment that they actually won’t feel safe to go beyond.
So much of new age and recovery rhetoric focuses on the importance of "honoring our commitments," the importance of keeping our promises. Yet, most often the focus is the commitments/promises we make to others rather than on those we make to ourselves. As I deepen my commitment to unconditionally loving and parenting myself, I understand that it is this promise/commitment that must always come first. That whenever conflict emerges between commitment/promises that I’ve made to others and my commitment/promise to take the best possible care of myself, the commitment to myself always has final and total priority.
Over time, I learn to be more graceful, gentle, kind with–and more responsive to–others’ feelings when I need to break my commitments to/with them in order to honor my commitments to myself. And, over time, I learn to be much more careful about the ways I commitment myself to others. I’m more able to let people know up front that any commitment/promise to them must always be conditional on it continuing to be okay with my deeper self.
Understanding and acting in harmony with the knowing that we are all constantly transforming and emerging and changing allows us all to have permission to be more realistic and more loving in the ways we commit to each other. To act in ways that neither violate ourselves or the others about whom we care.
Consider being more tender, loving, gentle, protective and attentive to the frightened parts of you,
P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!
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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 handcolored bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.
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