I spent seven years through the end of my forties living a very inward, rather hermit-like existence. Committed to the journey of healing my life and healing from the profound re-woundings of a by then ended relationship, I was absolutely in the "slow lane."
I’d spend two long days each week seeing clients. The next five I’d be mostly solitary, immersed in what was nurturing and healing for me. I’d work a couple of hours each week with a creative arts therapist, essentially doing play therapy for grown-ups. And, I’d get two hours of massage and/or other bodywork (Rolfing, energy work, Polarity work).
Somewhere early on in that period, I got involved in a seemingly endless project: "relocating" an enormous volume of rocks, boulders and construction debris. All of this had, till then unremarked, littered the rather abandoned, neglected back and side yards around my rented cottage. As, over the months and years, I levered and rolled the boulders, moved and sometimes hurled the rocks, I gradually created several beautiful rock-walled outdoor havens—sacred spaces for myself close around my house. Moving these mountains of debris, one rock at a time, was an enormously nourishing, comforting activity. It provided an absorbing education in the art of slowness, patience and the process of transformation.
I occasionally spent some small amounts of time with one of two or three friends. But, most of my "people time" was spent at four-times a year, five day retreats, sitting in a lodge-circle with a small group of intense women in northern California. We were committed to exploring and experimenting, in community, with the edges of how women hold and share power. All of us were women working as healing mentors while simultaneously engaged in deep healing work with our own selves. Sitting with this circle, I got to practice being the fuller self I was growing into during my alone time.
Then, shortly after I turned 50, a very different chapter began in my life. At first rather gradually, I was being nudged back out into the world. It began quite gently with an invitation to speak at a Women’s Council on Aging into Power. In the process of moving toward that conference, I was led by Spirit/the Grandmothers into an extraordinary period of creativity and synthesis.
First came the birth of the deck of Rememberings and Celebrations Cards. Then I was moved into re-claiming all the cards, treasures and amulets I had, every solstice over the past many years, created for friends and clients. These were now reincarnated and reprinted in quantities that were clearly meant to be made available to people beyond my own circles. These went with me to the conference as give-away for the women who came to participate in that Council.
Over the next two years, I gradually was led along by the Grandmothers’ energy into developing a mail-order catalog/business to sell my creations. Every step along the way seemed incredibly magical and perfectly timed. I never "decided" or "figured anything out." There seemed always to be amazing gifts, possibilities and "coincidences" presenting themselves to me. An overflow of money came from my work as a therapist to fund all the stages of the process.
Quite serendipitously, at just the most fitting moment, I was led to a listing of feminist women’s bookstores around the country. I was encouraged by the Grandmothers to do a mailing, sending out some 200 decks and letters inviting these stores to consider selling my work. (Several chose to do that!) An old friend with a magical shop in Key West, Florida exuberantly created a special "Robyn Corner" in her wonderland and began selling great quantities of the cards. Another old friend who ran Overcoming Overeating workshops across the country began regularly selling the decks at the OO conferences, seminars and centers. From those who bought the decks there were often requests for the catalog of my other works.
It was a time filled with periods of intense activity, creativity and production. And, as more invitations and opportunities arrived for me to speak about my work, my life and my learnings, there were often even brief periods when I clearly was being pushed out of my solitary refuge.
Yet, these times were still always followed by long periods of the more usual deep resting: quietly reading and daydreaming in the hammock, in front of the wood stove or in the mountains and canyons. Despite the additions and changes in these times, it still felt as though I were continuing to live my familiar, slowed down life—if somewhat more intermittently now.
Then, suddenly and unexpectedly I was swept into a new cycle of more and more intense "out-in-the-worldness." It continued to feel as if everything I was doing was being directed and pushed by the energies and the magic that came from Spirit/the Grandmothers. Although now it seemed to me that I no longer had even a veto vote in the proceedings!
This new cycle began with the emergence of designs using my images and words for imprinting T-shirts. Shortly after I followed the urgings of Spirit/the Grandmothers to get the T-shirts produced, I was pushed out into the universe of the itinerate peddler.
On my "non-work" days I was buying or building portable components for displays, gathering inventory and filing applications to be a vendor at an ever-increasing number of Women’s Festivals, Spirituality Festivals, Pride Festivals, women’s and professional conferences of one sort or another. Then, I actually began being "on the road" at least once a month in California and the Southwest.
At the various festivals and conferences, the Grandmothers’ energies seemed endlessly to be pushing me to apply to give talks and workshops. When I’d actually do a talk or an experiential workshop, I’d feel totally inspired and guided. I understood I was to do little preparation for the presentations. My "job" was simply to calm, center and clear myself. My part was to get my mind out of the way so that I could come into the space being available to speak whatever of my experiences and knowings needed to be spoken about just then and there.
Even though the talks and workshops were usually quite exciting opportunities to edge-walk with Spirit, none of this seemed anything I actually wanted or would have consciously chosen to do with my otherwise open, empty time. I was frequently terminally cranky about the endless planning, packing, schlepping, loading, setting up, tearing down, reloading, driving, unloading, unpacking. I felt over the edge much of the time— as though I were spinning out of control, careening at impossible speeds in totally unknown territory.
I would have tantrums and rail at Spirit. I’d rant and rave: "Whose life is this?!" "I hate this!" "I want my ‘real’ life back!" "Please, please just let me rest and stay at home!" I’d try to go on strike, dig my heels in, refuse to travel anymore. I’d try to shut out the unstinting pressure, the interminable nudging. But, there seemed no way out of the flow that just kept relentlessly pushing and herding me out into massive people contact.
At some point it finally became clear to me that this was what my "real" life was to be for now. I gave up the useless resisting. I gave in. I surrendered.
Surrendering into the middle of the new shape of my existence did not ever include loving it or even liking it. Surrendering meant accepting that this was what my life was to be about for a time (or even, perhaps, forever more). Surrendering meant letting go of struggling and railing against what was so about my life in these moments. Surrendering meant looking, instead, for what lessons and learnings there might be for me to harvest in the midst of all this clearly unavoidable unpleasantness. Surrendering did not mean that I was required to give up my gripes about what I was having to surrender into the middle of. In fact, surrendering was much easier when I could allow myself to continue hating the situation!
During those next three years I moved in and out of intense crabbiness. I moved in and out of absolutely hating the course of things. And at the same time I no longer resisted the direction of the flow in any way. The flow continued— unremitting and endlessly outwardly expansive.
And, while I hated it, I learned. I saw. I heard. My vision of my journey expanded. I had the opportunity to take the new me I had grown in solitude out to explore herself in an enormously wide variety of settings.
I had endless opportunities to witness the impact of my work on passers-by that got to stop and with eyes closed, randomly pick a Rememberings and Celebrations card from a basket of them outside my booths. I was as stunned as they were by the magical "exactly right on-ness" of the cards they picked. I had endless opportunities to hear profound, healing journey stories from the people who came into my booths to buy my goodies. Stories from people who were stirred by the words and images in my work to share deeply of themselves.
I got to watch how separate I felt from my work, how little it felt really "mine" in any self-aggrandizing "ego" way. I could accept "credit" for the tremendous work I’d been doing to "get out of the way" enough to allow Spirit to use my life, my experience, my emotional fluency as a vehicle. I could feel truly excited by what had come through me. I could gradually become comfortable receiving acknowledgement and gratitude for the healing impact of this naked sharing of my own journey.
And, over those incredibly intense and busy years that I was often griping about, I actually began what has proved to be a most miraculous, catalytic collaboration. My friend Barbara—whose nudging and coaching over the years brought me (kicking and screaming) into the world of websites and computer literacy—first introduced me to the marvels of collaboration as we created shared sacred spaces for showing our wares at festivals.
It deeply distresses me that so many spiritual traditions seem to imply that with surrender there is always equanimity. Or, conversely, that still having "considerations" implies that you haven’t really been surrendering! It distresses me, as well, that our larger culture continues to view surrender negatively, as a passive, disempowered caving in.
It seems to me that surrender is always an incredibly active, vital, empowered and empowering conscious choice to accept and allow what is so, to be so. It involves committing ourselves to fully embracing what is so. Yet, it does not require, ever, that we suppress or give up our considerations, irritation, sadness or crabbiness about what we’re embracing. Allowing ourselves to grump about it all is often what allows us more easily to surrender.
Giving up the struggle of resisting the inevitable (rather than giving up our feelings about it) is what enables us to use our energies to harvest the gifts hiding in the middle of what feels so awful.
Lovingly honor your willingness to surrender your resistance without surrendering your feelings!
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!
© For the Little Ones Inside - All Rights Reserved
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.
If you'd like a deck of your very own to support you in your journey, click here to download Order Form.
Please feel free to e-mail me at rposin@hotmail.com. to share your reflections and responses to any or all of what you find here . I'd really like to hear what touches and nourishes you!
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