Category Archives: Four Healing Shifts

Is crappy theology causing you to suffer?

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Open gate leading to sun-filled meadow

“But what about God??”

Beloveds, I’m hearing this question a lot these days. I hear it from friends, parishioners, and clients.

I hear it most loudly from within myself.

I’ve stopped even remotely trying to fit the round peg of all of me into the square hole of who patriarchal religious tradition says I should be. Since my abstention from church, my relationship with God is fuller. More whole. Healthier. Holier.

I’m not fighting back so much. I’m softer and stronger. I’m more open to the God energy’s yearning to flow into me, through me, and out into the world.

 I’ve even begun using the name “God” again. Although “God” means something/someone very different that it used to mean, for me.

God has many names. There are probably as many names for God as there are humans. We all experience God energy uniquely, because we’re unique.

Other (usually male) people’s theology has supplied us names and labels, and described our experience as good or bad, in or out. Some of us fit nicely into the square holes delineated by the theology we received from our families and culture. Some of us maybe did once but we just don’t anymore. Some of us never did, and we stopped trying long ago.

Becoming an adult means taking responsibility for your own theology. Because your theology underlies everything.

Your theology determines your relationship to your body. Your theology determines how much you trust or don’t trust your desires. Your theology determines every choice you make.

I’m using the word “theology” deliberately. I’m not talking about your spirituality. I’m not talking about your religion. I’m talking about your beliefs about God, period. Your theology is lived out in your spirituality and your religion. Your theology comes first.

Every unhappiness is a result of crappy theology.

Perhaps you believe lies you learned about God. Lies that cause you to suffer.

Lie #1: Jesus died for your sins.

On the contrary, beloved, Jesus doesn’t give a rat’s rooty-poo about sin, and neither does God. God’s only care is for your love for yourself, for others, and for the Earth. When you focus on sin, you focus on what’s wrong with you, on what you don’t deserve, and on how you can prove your worth. Which you never can, by the way. The premise is rotten to the core.

Lie #2: God despises the world and “things of the flesh.”

On the contrary, beloved, God IS creation. God IS your flesh. We are made of God, and God is made of us. We and God are interwoven. You are holy. Your flesh is holy. Your desires are holy. When you believe God doesn’t love your body, you don’t trust your desires and, because you live in a body, you’re never good enough. This self-loathing is quadrupled at least for women, because we live in bodies that change all the dang time.

Lie #3: God has a plan for your life, and your job is to figure it out and follow it. You have to strive mightily for your purpose and meaning.

On the contrary, beloved, Creator God is always at work. This means that who you are, as a member of God’s body, is always changing. Your job is to be the fullest version of yourself you can be in this moment. And then this moment. And now this one, too. Forever and ever until you die, and maybe after. Your job is to ride the wheel of change with trust and joy, grieving what’s dead and fully becoming the new you being born.

I could go on, and I will. Stay tuned.

So notice where you’re suffering. Then look beneath your suffering for the flawed theology causing your suffering. I promise you that it’s there. (Want to look together? Here’s how.)

We need you to do your grown-up theological work, and we need you to share your conclusions with us. When we do this work together, we strengthen each other. We find community. We create a new world, a world closer to God’s dream for Creation. We envision a new future, and together we find the strength and grace to incarnate it.

PS. Our first Community Conversation happens on June 17th at 9:00 am Pacific. Subscribe to my weekly letter for the link.

PPS. I’ll be sending emails only to my weekly letter list beginning on July 1st. Email subscribers will get new content, coaching opportunities, and notifications of upcoming events delivered straight to their inbox. You can subscribe here, and thanks!

Photo by Nikola Knezevic on Unsplash

When your Yes becomes No

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Woman sitting on a rocky beach

Do you want to say No to people, situations, and commitments that used to be Yes? You’re not alone. This is a common theme with my clients, especially as we re-emerge from Covid.

These “used to be Yes” items run the gamut from the immense – a marriage, at least in its current form – to the seemingly small – dropping out of a small group or unsubscribing from an email list.     

Why is it so hard for women to honor their new No?

Here are two stuck spots my clients experience. A third, women and our discomfort with our power, is a subject for another newsletter!

1. You feel afraid of hurting someone’s feelings. Fear of hurting someone’s feelings is actually just avoiding conflict. Underneath the avoidance of conflict is the belief that your own desires and priorities aren’t as important as the perceived desires and priorities of the person whose feelings you’re afraid of hurting. And this belief you have, that your desires and priorities aren’t as important as other people’s desires and priorities, is bullshit perpetrated on you and other women by the patriarchy. (See last week’s newsletter for more about trusting your desires.)

2. You feel afraid of the emptiness and openness created when, not knowing what might emerge to take its place, you honor your No. This fear of unknowing, of emptiness and openness, is actually the belief that you can’t trust yourself, your desires and your priorities. And your lack of trust in yourself is actually a fundamental misunderstanding of God’s nature and your connection to It.

We’ve been trained to believe in a linear, patriarchal, masculine, capitalist model that we’re one and done. That the goal of life is to figure out what we’re supposed to do, go do it, and then maintain this state, kicking and screaming if necessary, until we die. That there’s one correct answer and our job is to figure it out. Get it right or die trying.

This false, toxic model underlies that question we ask kids: What do you want to be when you grow up?

This false, toxic model also underlies the questions we ask ourselves as adults: What’s my purpose? What’s my calling? Who did God create me to be?

Beloved, this is NOT how Creator works. The God who is constantly making all things new asks us very different questions: Who am I called to be right now? How can I respond most fully and joyfully to this moment?

The answers to those questions almost certainly aren’t what they were ten years ago, ten days ago, or even ten minutes ago.

Creation and the force continually creating it, aka God, is always birthing, dying, and being reborn. Always. As members of that matrix, inextricably entwined in this holy cycle, we are born, we die, and we are born again. Over and over and over.

No is as holy and as necessary as Yes, when your No is rooted in your soul. Listen to your No. Trust your knowing. Trust your desires. Trust God to be at work in you, continually creating you, continually making you new.

PS. I share news, dates for upcoming free Zoom conversations (our first one is June 17th!), and coaching opportunities through my weekly newsletter. You can subscribe here.

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Why don’t you trust your desires?

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I’m sharing a sister coach’s writing today. This is Karen “KJ Sassypants” Hawkwood, from 2018. KJ expresses beautifully and cogently the fourth healing shift I teach my clients: More Creator, Less Victim. I hope you enjoy KJ’s take on trusting our desires.

“I think we have created a crisis of agency. I could say a LOT about this (and probably will over time) because there are so many angles to it, but that’s what they add up to.

We. Do. Not. Trust. Our. Own. Desires. Much less our ability and right to ACT on those desires.

(If you were socialized as a female being, this is times eleventy-billion.)

Among one of these angles, I’ve become increasingly troubled by the spiritual approaches that essentially advocate for “total surrender” (to whatever/Whoever.)

The premise for this seems to be that anything we try to do for ourselves is “just ego” or “just selfishness,” etc., and therefore is to be 100% distrusted and dismissed.

Instead, we’re supposed to let “God(s)” or “the Universe” or “our guides” or [whatever] tell us what to do. How to live our lives. How to make our choices.

This bothers me because I’ve finally realized it’s the stance of a child. *We* can’t be trusted, *we* clearly don’t make good decisions, *we* are adrift and misguided, so someone/something else is going to have to take the wheel.

It’s also a reflection of the OBSESSION we have – especially in modern Westernized cultures – with NEVER MAKING MISTAKES. Never getting it wrong.

Whatever “mistake” or “wrong” actually means. But even when we don’t know what it means we fear it with sweaty, trembling, vomitous terror.

Believe me, I know what it feels like to make choices that have turned me pale green when I look back on them. I know what it feels like to choose from fear, from insecurity, from desperation, from the greed that layers like mold over all those things.

But to have that shatter our trust in ourselves, so that we have to shamefully hand over the reins of our lives to ANY other force that we believe somehow won’t do that?

I’m really not OK with that anymore.

Since surely someone will bring this up, I’m also obviously (I hope anyway) not advocating for the just-as-shitty mirror image – the patriarchal, white, capitalist, Western attitude that “I am the captain of my destiny and all before me is mine for the taking.”

I don’t think I have to say more about why that’s a problem.

But we’ve gone too far in the other direction. And that’s becoming just as much of a problem, in my eyes.

My teacher’s work has influenced me strongly on this, and he talks about moving through life as an “active participant” – and further, approaching life as a process of “call and response.”

I find this stance, this footing, to be FAR more alive, more generative, more effective, and just more *real* than this “leaf on a stream” thing.

I think most of us are scared absolutely shitless of what would happen if we actually OWNED what we WANT and set about bringing it forth, all the while paying careful and wise attention to the conversation with All That Is. We’re so terrified of our own strength, our own clarity, our own potency that it’s easier to just skip all that and believe we can’t trust ourselves.

Our job is to call, and then listen for the response, and *decide for ourselves* what we want to do in turn. But we need to CALL, not whisper, not whimper or beg or tentatively see if it might be OK if. And then we need to stay standing up straight to hear the answer, even if we don’t at all like what we hear, and then call again. And we need to not take that response as a Command From On High or Infallible Guidance From Somewhere That Knows Better Than Us.

And we need to understand the interlocking truths that: 1) this does NOT mean we will not faceplant, sometimes horrifically, and 2) those faceplants do not mean we cannot trust ourselves or give us an excuse to abdicate our own sovereignty.

What would it look like to move through Life as an EQUAL to it?”

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It’s scary to make changes others don’t like.

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Breaching whale

“The problem with living from your soul is that other people don’t like it.”

Last week I got a little more real about what living from soul rather than façade is looking like for me, boots on the ground. I told you that I’ve quit church, and how my brain is afraid that some of my Episcopal priest husband’s parishioners will be angry with me.

It’s scary to make changes that others don’t like.

So how do we do this hard thing? How do we resist the “change back attacks,” as Martha Beck calls them, that will inevitably follow when we make real change? Change that threatens the status quo. Change that rocks the family boat. Change that makes other people feel judged and defensive.***

Here are some suggestions, most inspired by Martha’s new book, The Way of Integrity.  

1. Remember that your body, being wordless, cannot lie. Imagine staying with the status quo, capitulating to the change back attack. Now imagine living your truth. Which feels better in your body?

2. If living from your soul, living your life based on your truth, feels better, ask yourself: “Why would I make choices that feel bad to me?” Then really listen to your brain’s responses. Question the truth of the thoughts causing you to suffer.

3. Know your values. When the going gets rough, when the grief hits, when loved ones and even strangers tell you to stop it already, know why you’re doing this hard thing. Write those values and put them where you’ll see them often. Make them part of your morning ritual. Do what you need to do to ground yourself in your values.

4. Create a mission statement to remind you of your intention and your values. Short is best. Strive for two or three words.

5. Make 1% shifts toward soul. Small shifts add up over time.

6. You can always choose to maintain the outward status quo. This is a perfectly valid choice. If you choose this course of action, you must always tell yourself the truth. You don’t have to make any outward changes at all, as long as you stop lying to yourself, and you intentionally choose incongruency between inner truth and outer life. Be warned, though. This is a costly choice to make. Incongruence will inevitably drain your energy and affect your wellbeing.  

7. Find your community. Despite your brain’s message that if you make changes others don’t like you’ll die alone on the savannah, your community exists. You find your community when you speak authentically.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes speaks to this phenomenon in Women Who Run With the Wolves when she quotes poet Charles Simic (pronouns changed): “She who cannot howl, will not find her pack.”

And from Sue Monk Kidd, in The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, her memoir exploring her spiritual journey from evangelical Christianity (façade) to the sacred feminine (soul):

“The reason I went ahead and wrote this book is difficult to express, so I will try to explain it this way. While I was writing it, a nature show came on television, a special about whales. I watched them on the screen as they flung themselves out of the sea, arced into the air, then fell back into the water. The behavior, the narrator said, is called breaching. He also said it may be the whales’ way of communicating when the seas get high and wild. He speculated it was a tracking system for rough weather, some kind of urgent and powerful ballet that allowed the whales to follow one another’s vibrations and not get lost. With each lunge, the whales marked their course, letting the others know where they were.

I thought to myself that women must have the whale’s instinct. When we set out on a woman’s journey, we are often swimming a high and unruly sea, and we seem to know that the important thing is to swim together—to send out our vibrations, our stories, so no one gets lost. I realized that writing my book was an act of breaching. I hoped my story might help you find or keep your bearings or encourage you to send out your own vibrations.”  

May we swim together, my sisters. May we show each other the way. May we be courage and inspiration and support for each other as we navigate this wild ocean of soul-based living and loving.

***Your actions, of course, don’t make others feel anything. It’s their thoughts about your actions that cause their feelings. You are not in charge of other people’s feelings. Just so we’re clear.

PS. Have you subscribed to my weekly newsletter? That’s where I’m sharing more about what I’m up to with coaching, writing, and workshops. It’s also where I’m inviting you to tell me what you’d like to hear more about. Come on over!

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Blessed are the nice, for they shall be liked.

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Girl sitting in a field of flowers with the sun shining on her

The problem with living from your soul is that other people don’t like it.

Last week I wrote to you about the first healing shift I teach my clients: more soul, less façade. I gave you lots of high-falutin’ reasons why soul-based living is better than going through the façade-based motions of living.

But it’s hard at first, isn’t it? Making this shift can be hard because we’re afraid of our loved ones’ reactions. And even strangers’ reactions, to be honest. And we’re all about honesty around here.

If you’re worried about what other people will think or how other people will react when you start living from your soul and telling the truth, you’re not alone. You’re just human, with a human brain.

Culture, a web of constructed social systems, depends on its members caring what other people think. We’re taught to be nice from the cradle. Especially women living in a patriarchy.

Not only are we trained into scoping outward for approval, we’re also hard-wired internally for belonging. Our brains have evolved to fear disapproval and disconnection, because to be cast out of the group back in hunter-gatherer days was almost certainly to die. Our ancestors who cared deeply about belonging to the group lived to reproduce, while those who flouted the group norms were left to die lonely, hungry deaths on the savannah.

Hence our brains that go batshit crazy when they think we’re going to be disapproved of. Disapproval = death, at least to that part of our brains. And that part of our brain screams like a banshee.

Here’s how that shift and its accompanying fear are playing out in my own life right now. I know some of you will relate.

I’ve quit church. This goes deeper than COVID-related church attendance restrictions. I’ve begun checking the “none” box on surveys that ask about religious affiliation, because the “Christian” box no longer fits.

Leaving church has been easier during the pandemic, but the jig is about to be up. Come this fall, when it’s safe to do so, those who want to will be able to attend church in person again. I will not be among them. If history is any guide, this will be “a thing.”

I don’t know why it’s so important to members of my husband’s parish that I attend church. All I know is that when I’ve taken sabbaticals in the past, folks get worked up. I think sometimes this is just affection and concern for my welfare. But when someone I don’t even know asks Jed’s parish administrator, “Is Barb sick? I haven’t seen her lately,” something else is going on. They ask Jed where I am and if I’m okay. Parishioners see me out and about and say how much they’ve missed me. It’s a thing. Maybe it’s more of a thing in my brain than in real life. The result is the same.

My fear of others’ reaction has kept me silently complicit and out of my integrity for years now. My truth: I will no longer sit silently in the pew while God is referred to as “He,” texts are read that perpetuate violence against women, and our holy Earth is denigrated.

My husband does his heroic best to mitigate these messages with his preaching and his presence. He does as much as he can, within the constraints of his ordination. It’s no longer enough for me. Patriarchal, misogynist, dualistic language and doctrines are built into the structure of the institutional church. The institution seems unwilling to look seriously at the damage it’s done and continues to do.

I’m over it. When I imagine sitting inside a church on Sunday morning, my body feels icky – tense, hunched over, closed down. And when I imagine mountain church or river church, I feel strong, free, and peaceful. I feel happy.

Because my happiness matters to me, I choose myself and my priorities over being nice and propping up this harmful system with my presence. By the way, this is the same choice Jesus made – to speak his truth and live his integrity. His choice led him to the cross. Mine only leads to braving my own discomfort and judgment of others.

So, my friends. This shift from façade to soul with regard to church is scary for me. Jed and I have had some uncomfortable conversations. He supports my decision while also feeling the loss of my presence on Sunday mornings. More uncomfortable conversations are probably heading my way as we emerge from our Covid cocoons. And that’s okay. I can handle them, because I’m confident in my decision. My body is telling me the truth, and I believe her.

These are the trials and the rewards of integrity, of living more from my soul and less from my façade. I feel more scared, while also feeling more powerful, whole, and free. That’s how this goes.

When you make this shift and people don’t like it, that just means you’re doing it right.

PS. Want to talk more about the four healing shifts and coaching together? I offer a free, no-strings-attached clarity call. Contact me here to schedule. I’d love to connect!

PPS. My newsletter is where I share the latest updates, like new coaching offerings, classes, workshops, and easy ways to work together. I send it weekly, and I promise never to spam you or share your address. Your info is safe with me.

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More soul. Less façade.

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Girl blowing out candles on a birthday cake

If you want to heal, you must live more from your soul and less from your façade. This is the first of four healing shifts I teach to my coaching clients.

I came face to face with this reality again on our recent Grand Canyon pilgrimage. I saw again, more deeply than before, how my insatiable search for safety after my dad died was driven by my social self. My façade. The part of me that desperately wanted to feel secure, and thought that following the rules and keeping everyone around me happy was the way to do that.

Our façade has many names. Martha Beck calls this part of us, constructed in response to social expectations that begin virtually at birth, our “social self.” Franciscan and prolific author Richard Rohr calls it our “false self.” Jungian James Hollis calls it our “psyche.” Buddhist teacher and psychologist Tara Brach calls it our “spacesuit self.” It’s the part of us that speaks in “should” and “have to.” The part that strives to be nice at all costs.

Our facades will never know peace. Only our souls know peace.

We all have facades. Our facades are necessary. Our social selves keep society’s gears running smoothly. Our social selves help us navigate four-way stops and dentist appointments. Our façade, our social self, the part that looks outside ourselves for direction and approval, has its place.

Maintaining our façade, our social self, requires energy. Façades, because they’re constructed and flimsy like false store fronts in old Western movies, take work to keep up. This is why many of my clients run out of steam in their middle decades. They’ve been working so hard to be who everyone outside themselves expects them to be, that they hit a wall.

The first half of life is often about running around accumulating identities – credentials, careers, achievements. The second half of life is often when we shed this surface stuff, because maintaining it takes energy we just don’t want to expend anymore.

This feeling of running out of steam, of hitting a wall, is commonly known as a “midlife crisis.” It’s when women wake up, look around at the life they’ve created with their choices, and decide to recommit to themselves and their priorities.

What’s the alternative to living from your façade?

Living from your soul. Your soul is sturdy, rooted, and peaceful. Your soul is who you came into this life as. The same teachers listed above also have many names for the soul: “True self.” “Essential self.” “Authentic self.” Your soul says “I want to” and “I yearn for.” Your soul craves real, kind, and good, not nice. 

Parker Palmer calls our soul the “taproot,” the part of us that connects us to what James Hollis calls the Divine Energy. Since my Camino vision of God as a deep Wombish Heart, I imagine my soul as an umbilical cord connecting me to that Divine Energy, my source and nourishment.

Your metaphor for your soul will be personal to you. You may have many metaphors for your soul. I hope you do, because something this foundational is too important to contain with only one label.

How do you know if you’re living from your façade or living from your soul?

They feel different in your body.

When we’re situated in and identified with our social selves, we won’t feel peaceful. When our social selves are driving the bus, we feel graspy. Anxious. Unrooted and ungrounded. And fearful.

Remember a time in your life when you experienced deep peace. What sensations did you feel in your body? That’s your soul’s signature. Hold onto that knowing. 

So what? Why does this matter?

Learning to discern whether you’re living from soul or façade is foundational to healing. When you choose to redirect your precious energy and attention away from maintaining your façade, when you focus instead on relearning the contours of your soul and regaining trust in yourself, you will, inevitably, recommit to your life and your priorities.

When you recommit to your life and your priorities, you bring your authentic, whole, messy self with all her strength, knowledge, and compassion to our shared world.

We don’t need you to be nice. We need you to be who you are, fully and honestly. We need you to bring your gifts to this wild party!

(For a light-hearted cinematic take on this shift, check out “Legally Blonde,” now streaming on Netflix.)

Want to explore this shift more deeply? Contact me to schedule a free, no-strings-attached conversation about coaching together. I’d love to connect! 

For my latest news about coaching, workshops, and pop-up opportunities, subscribe to my newsletter here. While this blog is great, my newsletter is where I go a little deeper into what I’m up to in my coaching practice, and how we can hang out together.

(Photo by Jorge Ibanez on Unsplash)