Author Archives: barbmorris

Reclaim Your Authority, Christmas Edition

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Cabin in the woods
How’s your December going?
 
I don’t know about you, but at this dark time of year I yearn to be a sturdy fir tree in a quiet, snow-covered forest. I’d feel the sun on my bark during these short days. I’d feel the brilliant starlight from the spangled sky during the long, cold night. I’d shelter chickadees and nuthatches in my branches, and I’d wave my crown to the passing ravens.
 
A close second would be a couple of weeks in a well-insulated, well-stocked cabin in the same forest, overlooking a frozen lake nestled in a valley below snow-covered peaks upon which mountain goats frolic. Long walks. Fireside talks. Deep sleeps.  
 
My first yearning isn’t happening because it’s a fantasy. Perhaps I can be a sturdy fir in my next life, but for now I’m stuck in this human body. My second yearning isn’t happening either, because it’s December. And I’m outsourcing my authority.
 
If this time of year feels like a burden, you’re outsourcing your authority, too. You’re letting someone else decide for you how you’ll spend your time, energy, and money.
 
You and I can opt out of anything we want to. Really. We only have to be willing to be uncomfortable. 
 
The only way I know to a life that’s truly, authentically mine is to reclaim my authority over my choices. Reclaiming my authority starts with my theology.

You have to know what you believe. 
 
Reclaiming your theology: 
What do you actually believe about God, Life, Being, Universe? You get to decide what you believe. Your beliefs about God, Divinity, Holiness, Energy, whatever you call it are foundational. They’re the most crucial beliefs we have. And you must get concrete with them.
 
So much theological language is airy-fairy and abstract. What does “God is love” actually look like? What do we really mean when we say we’re all “children of God”?
 
And, of course, the real biggie … the elephant in the room … What/Who does the word “God” mean, to you? Go beyond and underneath the definition you learned in Sunday School. What does that word mean to you, right here, right now, today? It’s crucial that you answer this question for yourself.
 
Here’s one way into that question. I use this process with myself and with clients, and the results are always surprising. We’ll get back to Christmas, I promise.
 
1. What qualities do you ascribe to God/Being/Universe? Do you believe God is generous? Life-giving? Light-filled? Warm? Abundant? Pervasive? Beautiful? Diverse? Powerful? Nurturing? Healing? Renewing? Strengthening? Flowing? Make a good long list, then pick your foundational three to five descriptions of Divine energy—the ones that resonate most deeply. The ones that bring a smile to your face and a warm glow to you heart. 
 
2. Imagine a metaphor for God that incarnates the qualities you chose in Step 1. For example, if you believe God is healing, renewing, and flowing, you might imagine God as an infinite underground aquifer, as Meister Eckhart did. Or as the green sap rising, along with Hildegard of Bingen.
 
If you believe God is warm, nurturing, and life-giving, you might imagine God as a womb.
 
If you believe God is light-filled, life-giving, and pervasive you might imagine God as the sun.
 
If you believe God is nurturing, strengthening, and abundant, you might, along with Paul Tillich, imagine God as ground. Or dirt.
 
You might imagine God as Mother. Or perhaps Father, a time-honored choice. Gardener. Wind. A city on a hill. A potter or sculptor or artist. Rock. The only requirement is that your metaphor be something concrete and real in the world.
 
So many options. What comes up for you? Every answer is right. 
 
3. Now ask yourself: Who am I in this metaphor? If God is dirt, am I possibly a tree? If God is sun, am I perhaps a rose? Or a sunflower?  If God is wind, am I a hawk? Or maybe a sailboat? If God is an infinite aquifer, am I a well? Or a spring? If God is a woman’s womb, am I a daughter born of that womb? And so on. You get the idea. 
 
4. Use your metaphor as a springboard. Mess around. Play with this. Try several on for size. You could ask these questions: What does my metaphor for God tell me about prayer? What does my metaphor for God tell me about what “sin” might mean for me? What does my metaphor for God tell me about love? What does my metaphor for God tell me about how I want to live my life?  
5. Finally, what does my metaphor for God tell me about how I want to celebrate Christmas?
 
This is deep soul work. Deep soul work is nurturing. Nurturing for you, for those you love, and for the world. Thank you for doing it. 
 
Cultural capitalist Christmas has little overlap with deep soul work. Church Christmas misses the mark for most of us, too, with its underlying message of our sinfulness and consequent need for salvation. This disconnect is exhausting. It’s exhausting to pour so much time, energy, and money into a celebration that ultimately doesn’t reflect your deepest values and beliefs.
 
We care for ourselves when we do our deep soul work, gently and consistently. We care for ourselves, those around us, and our world when we gently and consistently bring ourselves home to our hearts. We care for ourselves when we tell the truth about our values and priorities, with our words and our lives.
 
Remember who you are.
Reclaim your authority.
Recommit to your life.
 
If you’re feeling burdened by December, I hope this helps. Let me know how it goes!
 
PS. I’m intrigued by the possibility of doing this work in community, so I’ll be hosting a free Zoom in early January to do it together. I’d love to know if that’s something you’d be interested in. And I’m available for a no-cost, no-obligation Clarity Call if you want to explore this process in person.
 
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Image: Swampy Lakes Shelter, Deschutes National Forest, 12.5.22. 





   

 

Your original blessing lives in your body.

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Little girl sitting in the forest with sun shining on her

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

~Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

These famous words of Mary Oliver perfectly express my wish for this first step in remembering. We start with the body. Your body. Most of us, by the time we get to midlife, have lost touch with our embodiment.

Why is embodiment the first, most crucial remembering? Because your body does not lie. Your body is tuned to truth. Your body is your soul enfleshed. When you were born, your body was a pure, true expression of your wants, needs, and desires. Babies don’t tell falsehoods. Not at first. Over time we learn to hide our true selves as necessary to keep our caregivers attached and our little kid selves alive.

That’s why, of course, you lost touch with your body. It’s really hard to hold your body’s inner truth and the outer lies you learn to tell to survive. Especially when you’re a child.

Good news! Your original truth is still alive and well underneath all the faking you’ve had to do for decades. Your original blessing resides in your body.

Often when we start our work together, my clients tell me that they’re fluent in their body’s language. They do yoga. They meditate. They eat right and they exercise often. But as we dig deeper, they realize they really have no idea what their bodies are trying to tell them. What they’re actually fluent in is their thoughts about their bodies. Their ideas about their bodies. Their judgments about their bodies.

We’re often much more adept at mindfulness than bodyfulness.

So task one is to re-inhabit your body. Your beautiful, sweet, holy “God pod.” This marvelous “meat sack” that means you’re alive on Earth. Because this meat sack in which your mind has its being is the key to the garden of delights which is your life.

Remembering the beauty and original blessing of your body can take some time. And it will probably feel uncomfortable to return home to all the pain and memories you’ve stored in your flesh. Getting back in touch with your truth as communicated by your body will almost certainly create some havoc in your life as usual. Perhaps that’s why you’re here. Because maybe you know, deep down, that a little havoc is just what you need to reset your compass to your true north.

Here’s an Embodiment meditation you might like to try. (Click here for video version.)
Grounding Cord, adapted from Shakti Gawain:

Sit. Take three breaths. Imagine a long cord extending from the base of your spine down into the Earth. You could imagine this cord like the root of a tree. (If you prefer to stand, imagine the cord extending from the soles of your feet down into the Earth.)

Now, as you inhale, imagine Earth’s energy coming up through the cord into your body, up and up with every inbreath. The energy flows into your body as it rises, and continues out through the top of your head. Do this three times.

Now, as you exhale, imagine that the energy of the sun and stars and planets is coming down through the top of your head, down your spine, infusing your body as it flows down into the Earth. Do this three times.

Now, be with both energies. As you inhale, be with the energy coming up from the Earth. As you exhale, be with the energy coming down from the cosmos.

Keep inhaling and flowing Energy up, exhaling and flowing Energy down. Feel both energies intermingle and flow throughout your body.

We are Earthlings, made of stardust. We are Earthlings, made from dirt.

Take three breaths to finish.

Upcoming events:


A Summer Solstice Gathering:
Tuesday, June 21, 4 pm Pacific, Zoom. Free. Subscribe to email for the link.

Three workshops going deeply into the first three modules of my Self-Recovery Coaching Intensive: Embodiment, Awareness, and Ownership: July. Dates, times, and investment TBD. More info coming soon! Reply to this email and let me know if you’re maybe interested. (Today’s post is from the Embodiment chapter of my Coaching Intensive workbook-in-progress, delayed by Covid.)

Coaching Intensive Group starting in September: Ten weeks of step-by-step, carefully constructed classes covering the three phases of self-recovery: Remembering, Reclaiming, and Recommitting. Tentative investment: $1000. Details coming your way in August. 

Private Coaching: Contact me to schedule a no-cost, no-strings-attached Clarity Call.

For current writing and events, please subscribe to my weekly-ish newsletter here, and thank you! 

Photo Credit: Melissa Askew on Unsplash. 

No authority is higher than your own holy heart.

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Arrow tattoo on woman's wrist showing true north

Have you ever tried really hard to believe something that you knew in your heart wasn’t true? I’ve been trying to make myself believe a very important untrue thing for most of my life. I didn’t know I was doing it. I just felt wonky and off, a feeling I ignored for decades. I felt unaligned, and I thought all I needed to do was try harder to believe this thing that, deep down inside, I knew was untrue. Everyone around me believed it, or at least they said they did, so it must be true.
 
I thought the fault was in me, not the untrue thing.
 
I’ve known since I was a little girl that much of what I was hearing about God from church and family and culture just wasn’t true. Experience upon experience upon experience didn’t line up with what the people around me said about “God.” I thought that the remedy was to discount my experience of holiness, and cut off the parts of me that didn’t fit into the “God” box.
 
I’ve had this backwards all along. I want so passionately to articulate the importance of this shift that I’m struggling to find the words. Your experience of the sacred is the starting point for the stories and myths and theologies, the symbols and metaphors, that attempt to contain the sacred. If your heart-felt experiences of “God” don’t fit the theology your head is striving to believe, it’s the theology that’s wrong, not your experiences.
 
Sisters, we will never fit into the myth of monotheism—one God for everyone, invented by Abraham thousands of years ago, the source of so much suffering in the world today. We will never find a home for ourselves in worship of a disembodied, unearthly, solitary Father God. We will never be lovable and whole in a theology constructed to shelter a male, celibate, lone ranger lawgiver and arbiter of holiness. Men have a hard enough time, but women? Women will never measure up. (I imagine that queer folk struggle even more.)  
 
If “God” is ethereal, heavenly, and orderly, what do I do with my embodied, earthy, messy experiences of Holiness? What do I do with sacred dreams, making love and birthing babies, deep grief and soaring joy?
 
We swim in monotheism like fish in water. We don’t even notice it anymore, it’s such an assumed fabric of our lives. I see now that even as I scrape off and root out the patriarchal Father “God” from my being, I’ve been subconsciously searching for another monotheistic “God” to take His place. I’ve been disbelieving in that “God,” not understanding that I have gotten the cart before the horse. I’ve been searching for a pre-existing myth into which I can fit.  
 
What I need to be doing is to make my experiences, beliefs, and values primary before finding, or creating, a myth that fits ME.
 
I cannot overstate the importance of this shift.
 
The three pillars of my mending ministry (aka “coaching”) are remembering who you are, reclaiming your authority, and recommitting to your priorities.
 
To reclaim my authority, I now see, means to honor my experiences of holiness. I am NOT limited to what others have already created. I must take seriously the values and beliefs that grow out of my experience – of embodiment as an Earthling, of friendship, of love and sex and marriage and motherhood and aging, of words and images, and more – and weave them into a theological garment that fits ME.
 
I can give up this exhausting search through the already-created for an existing temple I can tolerate. I can create a structure into which I fit as a flesh and blood woman on this beautiful earth. I can build a shelter for myself and maybe for you, too.
 
Any theology you now inhabit was made up by someone. Just because you were raised in it and four billion people believe it doesn’t make it true.
 
There really is nowhere to land but in your own holy heart.
 
All the goodness and wisdom you need is within you. When you go into your heart deeply enough, you’ll find that you’re connected to all the other hearts in the universe.
 
If you’ve been cutting off parts of yourself to fit into the patriarchal monotheistic myth, these steps could be the beginning of reclaiming your authority.
 
1. Make a list of your holy experiences. Remember that our English word “holy” shares a root with “healthy,” “healing,” and “whole.” When, where, how, and with whom do you feel or have you felt whole, healed, and holy? In what do you experience holiness?
 
My list of objects, moments, and memories is quite long. Here are a few, in no particular order: Pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing babies. Sitting on a rock with my feet in a river. Swimming in high mountain lakes. Standing in front of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” The companionship of cats, dogs, and horses. El Hospital del Alma in Castrojeriz, Spain, and my Camino vision of the deep heart. Hikes with Jed. Listening to wind in Ponderosa Pines. Mary Oliver’s poetry. Going to church with my grandparents. Water fresh from a spring. Granite and sandstone. Dippers. The night sky.
 
What’s on your list? Please take five minutes to start one.
 
2. Honor your experiences as holy. Ritualize the quotidian, everyday items and events. Reverence your holy moments. Remember your holy experiences deliberately, with intention. Pick a few items on your list, and find or make symbols of them for your altar.
 
4. When it feels right to you, begin to play with myths, spiritualities, theologies, symbols, and metaphors that contain your experiences of “God.” Let yourself roam in the wild unknown. There are no rules.
 
If you feel like you need a starting point, here are a few ideas. Perhaps Celtic spirituality, the pre-Roman Catholic version, works for you. Maybe Goddess spirituality is your jam. Maybe it’s Wicca. Maybe it’s even progressive Christianity. Or a little of this and a little of that to begin with. Since those are already invented, maybe your call is to invent something completely new, and invite us to join you. I don’t know. Only you know. If you do explore an existing theological structure, pay attention to how it feels in your body. Ask yourself if it feels true enough to contain your experiences of the holy.
 
As for me, I’m going to dwell in this wild openness for as long as it takes, which may be a lifetime. These roots go deep. It will take time, attention, and perseverance to disentangle myself from Father God’s possessive grasp.
 
No authority is higher than your own holy heart. Trust your good, strong, wise heart. Follow its yearnings, whether or not they make sense to your head.
 
Remember who you are. Reclaim your authority. Recommit to your priorities. This is the work. This is the call. This is the journey. This is the dream.
 
(Dara Molloy’s Reimagining the Divine: A Celtic Spirituality of Experience was a rich source of inspiration for this post.)

PS. If you enjoyed this heresy, you can subscribe to my weekly-ish newsletter for up-to-date heresy and coaching offerings. Thanks!

Image credit: Natalie Rhea Riggs on Unsplash

The quality of your peaceful presence matters.

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Sunset on Manzanita Beach

Dear friends,

I turned 64 a couple of weeks ago. Growing old has been on my mind a lot lately. It’s been damn stressful up in my brain. Here’s what’s helping me, offered to those of you who are also thinking about growing old and feeling stressed about it.

We were at the coast last week for our annual post-Easter rest. (My Episcopal priest husband naps. I walk.) As is often true of the Oregon coast in April, the weather was wet and windy. But every evening for a couple of hours, the rain would taper off and I’d drag Jed down to the beach to watch the sunset. On this particular evening, the sunset was subtle. A solid bank of clouds out over the ocean seemed set to block the sun’s rays as it sank into the sea. The cloudy sky turned a beautiful mauve and pink, mist gathered at the base of Mount Neahkahnie, and waves reflected the sky back to itself.

We passed a photographer with his tripod at the waves’ edge, long lens pointed to where the invisible sun might be. A family of five, their big black poodle bounding in the surf, walked up the beach toward Manzanita, occasionally glancing toward the western horizon. Jed and I were ready to go inside out of the wind ourselves, believing we’d seen all the show there was to see.

We were wrong. Suddenly the sun peeked out from a hole in the clouds and shone right at us. Immense. Orange. Stunningly beautiful—clouds above, below, and all around the one little hole. The sun had an entire limitless Pacific horizon to choose from, and she came down in the one place she could shine through. We were awestruck. Through binoculars we watched the curvature of the sun slowly sink behind the clouds like mountains. Words cannot describe.

I turned to see if the photographer was catching this, hopeful that he’d capture the shot of a lifetime. He was walking up the dunes, tripod over his shoulder, his back to the beauty blazing behind him. The family of five was likewise walking up the beach toward Manzanita, seemingly oblivious, black poodle still bounding in and out of the waves. We watched until the last burnished edge of sun sank below the cloud bank, and reminded each other to breath.

If we’d let the wind and the wet keep us inside, if we’d turned our backs too soon, if I hadn’t brought my binoculars … We would have missed it.

What does this moment have to do with growing old? Here’s my takeaway. If I expect my old age to be a long slide into mellowness and mist, if I turn my back too soon, I’ll miss many extraordinary moments. We see what we expect to see.

Show up. Get out on the beach, no matter what the weather.

Be present with each step and each breath. The future radiates out from the present like a wave.

The quality of your peaceful presence in this moment determines how your future will feel.

Your thoughts about aging—your thoughts about anything, really—will strongly impact your experience. You can choose different thoughts, if you want to and you do the work. (Learning to notice your thoughts and how to choose better ones is a core component of my coaching work.)

Expect the extraordinary.

Carry binoculars just in case.

Love,
Barb

PS. Some resources I’m finding helpful:
This episode of Glennon Doyle’s We Can Do Hard Things with anti-ageism activist Ashton Applewhite
This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, by Ashton Applewhite

PPS. Interested in talking more about aging and how to think more helpful thoughts about this inevitable change? I offer free, no-strings-attached Clarity Calls. 

PPPS. I share coaching availability and current events in my weekly email newsletter. Want to subscribe? Click here. 

Photo: Manzanita Beach, Oregon. 2022. 

In Praise of Emptiness

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Wilson Arch, Utah
Today is Holy Saturday in the western Christian tradition. Yesterday was Good Friday, the day of Crucifixion. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, the day of Resurrection. Nothing much happens on Holy Saturday. There’s a lot of waiting and more than a little hopelessness in the gospel stories.
 
This emptiness makes so much sense to me.
 
To pause between death and resurrection is appropriate. To honor our emptiness is necessary. This pausing to honor emptiness can be uncomfortable, especially in our productivity-worshipping culture. Silence and space can be scary. We have the urge to rush to fill the pause.
 
Sisters, stop and take a breath today. Grieve your endings. Fully inhabit your emptiness. Give yourself space and silence. Embrace this pause as a gift.
 
As we lose the roles and identities accumulated during the first half of our lives, we begin to uncover who we really are, and who we want to become, in the second half. For women especially, the identities and roles of our first four to six decades are often defined by who we nurture—friends, siblings, spouses and partners, children, other people’s children, parents, institutions. When these roles are stripped away, we can come home to ourselves.
 
Jesus of Nazareth preached trust in this process of losing and finding, over and over. “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” These words are in every gospel, often in several places. I conclude that he really meant them.
 
When we resist deaths, small and large, we stay stuck. When we cling to how life was, or how life should have been, or how we want life to be, we aren’t actually living at all. Because living happens right now, in this moment.
 
When we accept the endings and hold ourselves gently in the space between death and hoped-for new life, resurrection happens. It’s inevitable.
 
When we pause, when we wait, when we let what’s dead be dead, life will resurrect itself. Simply give it time.
 
This holy pause pertains in other traditions, too. Christianity does not have a monopoly on death, resurrection, and the praise of emptiness. Christianity simply echoes and amplifies the cycle of death and rebirth encoded in our earthling DNA.
 
Here’s the Tao Te Ching:
We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the centre hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.*
 
Remember who you are. Return to your body and your goodness.
Reclaim your authority. Take your time. Honor your holy pauses. Honor the innate wisdom of change.
Recommit to your priorities. Boundless compassion thrives within excellent boundaries.
 
As much as you can, praise the emptiness of this moment. Honor this emptiness, this fallow field, as it is the ground of new life. Simply wait, and watch for green shoots to break through the bare earth.

New life always breaks through.

New life always breaks through, when you are ready. 
 
PS. To subscribe to my newsletter and receive my latest updates and posts, use this link. Thank you!
 
Photo Credit: Wilson Arch, Utah, November 2016, Jed Holdorph
*From Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching.

Complaining? Maybe try creating instead.

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Six hand-painted letters spelling "create"

When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation, change the situation, or accept it. All else is madness. ~Eckhart Tolle

This annoying piece of wisdom from Eckhart Tolle reminds me of the opening lines of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

I’ve seen so many references these last two weeks to 2021 (and 2020) as “dumpster fires” and “shit storms.” Yet these are the years of our lives. We will never get them back. We can never have them be different than they have been. All we can do is live as well as we can, moment by precious moment.

Yes, these years have been painful. We feel grief for what we’ve lost. We feel anger toward those who refuse to do what they can to keep our communities safe. We feel afraid of the next variant, the next school closure, the next eruption of rage in Costco.

What we don’t have to feel is the malaise and ennui of suffering and stuckness. Suffering and stuckness result from thinking things should be different, by God, from how they actually are. {Shakes fist at sky.}

So many changes in our lives come unbidden and unwanted. People get sick. People die. People leave. People refuse to change and we have to leave. We change and we have to leave. And there’s not a damn thing we can do about those unbidden changes but accept them and move on.

Acceptance can take time. Years sometimes. Even decades.

Complaining is an outward manifestation of internal suffering. Unlike pain, suffering isn’t inevitable. It’s optional. It’s a choice. That’s why Eckhart Tolle’s wisdom is so annoying to me. Complaining, although it might feel comfortable and familiar in the moment, does absolutely no good and only delays the healing ushered in by acceptance.

So why do we do it? I don’t know about you, but I complain because sometimes I want to be a victim, at least in the short term. When I’m being a victim, I don’t have to take responsibility for adulting—for running situations through the filter—for asking myself if this thing that’s cropped up requires serenity to accept or courage to change. I can just point fingers at others and not look at myself. I can make other people or the world wrong and myself right. That’s so much easier. Self-righteous complaining feels so comfortable.  

But being a long term victim gets old, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?

Life as Earthlings is change. Change follows a predictable pattern, and we do best when we allow it to have its way with us. Change, accepted and absorbed, is holy. Resisting change only causes suffering.

If this resonates, you could choose to notice complaining, your own and other people’s, in 2022. You don’t have to stop, or ask others to stop. Just notice with kindness. Maybe be willing to ask yourself what you’re gaining from complaining. Or think you’re gaining. Because I promise you that whatever you think you’re getting from complaining, you’re not actually getting it. All you’re getting is the false peace of a short-term pressure release, not a reality-based long-term solution ushering in healing and growth.

It wasn’t 2021’s fault that we’re feeling angry, afraid, and sad. It wasn’t 2020’s fault. It won’t be 2022’s fault. It’s just reality. The sooner we face this new reality, accept responsibility for our responses, and grieve our losses, the sooner we’ll be able to access our creativity and live our precious lives well.

Complaining makes you a victim. Creating is the opposite of being a victim. Instead of complaining, maybe choose to create instead.

You create your life with the choices you make.

Live well, one choice at a time. Moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, and year by year.

Happy 2022!


PS. I have four openings in my Coaching Intensive “Spring Semester” starting in February. Reply to this newsletter if you’re interested in the possibility of diving deeply together for twelve weeks, and I’ll send you next steps.

PPS. I’m breaking all the writing advice and working on two books: the continuation of Martha’s story begun in Lost and Found, and a workbook based on my Coaching Intensive. Stay tuned!

PPPS. This newsletter will be monthly starting with this issue. I’ll write more frequently when I have news to share.

PPPPS. Artist and teacher Connie Solera’s new year-long program, Monopalette, is now open. It’s free and you can join anytime. Every month is devoted to exploring one color. (January’s color is Prussian Blue.) Connie’s Paint Wisdom Studio is delicious nourishment for my artist’s soul, and it might be for yours, too.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Loosen your unworthiness habit.

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Girl in field of daisies: You are holy. You are perfect. You are beloved. You are safe.

“I hope she always looks at herself like that … “ This is my friend’s wish for her four-year-old daughter. Her photo shows her daughter looking in the mirror, admiring her new French braid, and she’s simply ecstatic with herself.

We all used to look in the mirror like that. When was the last time you looked at yourself in the mirror and were completely satisfied, even ecstatic, with the woman looking back?

What happened?

What happened is culture, family, church, school, patriarchy. We’ve been told so many lies about women’s worth – our bodies, our voices, our places. We absorb them from birth, if not before. They’re in the air we breathe.

I spent three days last week in a quarterly retreat with 65 other mostly women entrepreneurs. We were asked to reflect on our biggest obstacle. Hands down the biggest obstacle was that we were “playing small.”

Why? Because we’re afraid that if we go big, get visible, and say exactly what we mean, we won’t be safe. Here’s what I wrote: “I believe that the real me is unlovable. So I have to send out fake me to fool everyone with my perfect façade. Staying small and fuzzy keeps me safe, and I have to feel safe at all times.”

I know that none of this is true. Yet my default pattern when I’m about to say something that I think someone might not like is to freak out and silence myself in advance. I default to “I have to prove that I’m lovable. And being lovable means no one will ever get mad at me and everything will always go smoothly.” 

Ownership of ourselves comes after awareness of our patterns. I’m noticing this pattern, finally, and dismantling the thoughts that make me suffer. Because they’re lies.

You heal this oh-so-painful pattern by gradually, one-by-one, relieving yourself of the weight of those lies. Your belief in your belovedness is down there, underneath all the garbage. Beloved shiny you, the you who looks in the mirror ecstatically, will rise up, expand, and gradually take her rightful place as you lift off the garbage piece by piece.

How to lift off the garbage? Here are a few suggestions, in order of time commitment required.

High Five Habit: Basically all you do here is look yourself in the mirror and give yourself a high-five. For more, check out Kara’s Unf*ck Your Brain episode with Mel Robbins.

RAIN: Dr. Tara Brach’s four-step process for becoming aware of what’s going on with us and giving ourselves kind regard. 

Awareness Wheel: A simple tool for self-awareness. 

Thought Work: Dismantle those lies through gentle, self-compassionate inquiry. 

And finally, find a photo of yourself as a child, frame it nicely if you want, and put it where you’ll see it all the time. Ask yourself if that kid is unworthy. Does she need to prove her belovedness? Would you let anyone else tell her she’s not okay just as she is?

Our habits of unworthiness are based on false beliefs.

There is no lasting safety in playing small.

There is no true joy in smooshing ourselves into little appropriate boxes.

Making our belovedness dependent on how others treat us only leaves us bereft of our own kindness and compassionate self-regard.   
 
We’re still the beautiful beings we were when we were babies, toddlers, and four-year-olds, before we started to believe the hurtful lies. Beloved, your belovedness is a given. Your belovedness hasn’t gone anywhere. Your belovedness is within you, waiting for you to remember.

Who do you think you are? How do you treat yourself? These are ultimately theological questions, deeply related to our conceptions of Being and our place in the cosmos.

Want to go deeper? Contact me for a free no-strings-attached conversation.

PS. Happy holidays and happy New Year! I’ll see you in January, beloveds. 

Photo Credit: Melissa Askew on Unsplash