I spent seven years through the end of my forties living a very inward, rather hermit-like existence. Committed to healing both my life and the profound re-wounding from a by then ended relationship, I was living 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., I'd arrange for two hours of massage and/or other bodywork (Rolfing, energy work, Polarity work) every week.
Early on in that period, I became absorbed in an extensive project: relocating a huge volume of rocks, boulders and construction debris. All of this had, till then, 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 created several beautiful rock-walled outdoor havens-sacred spaces for myself all around my house. Moving these mountains of debris, one rock at a time, was very nourishing and comforting. It provided an education in the art of slowness, patience and the process of transformation.
I occasionally spent 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 women in northern California. We had come together to explore and experiment with the edges of how women hold and share power. All of us were women working as healing mentors while simultaneously engaged in our own inner work. Sitting with this circle, I got to practice being the fuller version of my self that was emerging during my alone time.
Shortly after I turned 50, a very different chapter began in my life. Little by little, I was being nudged back out into the world. It began with an invitation to speak at a Women's Council on Aging into Power. As the time of that conference approached, I was found myself moving into a period of heightened creativity and synthesis.
First came the birth of the deck of Rememberings and Celebrations Cards. Then I resurrected all the cards, treasures and amulets I had, every solstice over the past many years, created for friends and clients. I reprinted and produced these in quantities that could be made available to people beyond my own circles. All of it 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 developed a mail-order catalog/business to sell my creations. Every step along the way seemed magical and perfectly timed. I never decided or figured anything out. Amazing possibilities and coincidences kept presenting themselves to me. An overflow of money came from my work as a therapist to fund all the stages of this emerging enterprise.
Quite serendipitously, at just the most fitting moment, someone turned me on to a listing of feminist women's bookstores around the country. I felt nudged again by Spirit/the Grandmothers, this time to do a mailing, sending out 200 decks with letters inviting these stores to consider selling my work. (Several chose to do that.) An old friend in Key West, Florida created a Robyn Corner in her very special boutique and began selling great quantities of the cards. Another old friend who ran Overcoming Overeating workshops across the country began selling the decks at OO conferences, seminars and centers. Those who bought the decks in these places frequently sent requests for the catalog of my other works.
It was a time filled with periods of concentrated 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 seasons when I was being persistently nudged out of my solitary refuge.
These out-in-the-world times were followed by long periods of my more usual deep resting: reading and daydreaming in the hammock, in front of the wood stove or while wandering in the mountains and canyons. Despite the additions and changes that came in these times, I still felt as though I were living my familiar, slowed down life-if only more intermittently now.
Then, I was swept into an even more high gear out-in-the-world cycle. Everything I was doing continued to feel directed and pushed by the energies and the guidance that came from Spirit/the Grandmothers, though it now seemed I no longer had any veto power 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 promptings of Spirit/the Grandmothers and arranged to have the T-shirts produced, I found myself moving out into the world as an 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 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 to be cajoling me to give talks and workshops. When I'd do a talk or an experiential workshop, I'd feel inspired and guided. I did 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 learnings was appropriate to be spoken about just then and there with that particular audience.
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 often terminally cranky about the endless planning, packing, schlepping, loading, setting up, tearing down, reloading, driving, unloading, and unpacking. I felt over the edge much of the time-as though I were spinning out of control, careening at impossible speeds into 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 amounts of 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 in the midst of all this 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 these next three years I moved in and out of extreme crabbiness. I moved in and out of hating the course of things. At the same time, I no longer resisted the flow in any way. The flow continued-unrelenting and always outwardly expansive. And, while I hated it, I watched, I listened and I learned. My vision of my journey expanded. The me that had emerged in solitude moved out to explore her self in a wide variety of unfamiliar contexts and settings.
I had many 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 outside my booths. I'd be as stunned as they were by the synchronistic appropriateness of the cards they picked. People who came into the booths to buy my cards and shirts and amulets were stirred by the words and images in my work to share intimate healing stories from their own healing work.
I got to watch how separate I felt from my work, how little it felt 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 become fairly comfortable receiving acknowledgement and gratitude for the healing impact of this naked sharing of my own journey.
And, through those busy out-in-the-world years about which I so often griped, I began what has proved to be a miraculous, catalytic collaboration. My friend Barbara-whose nudging and coaching over the years brought me (kicking and screaming) into the world of web sites and computer literacy-first introduced me to the marvels of collaboration as we created shared sacred spaces for showing our wares at festivals.
It distresses me that so many spiritual traditions seem to imply that with surrender there is always equanimity. Or, conversely, that still having considerations or gripes 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 in fact an 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 whatever it is that 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.
Consider lovingly honoring 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!
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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 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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