For now. Not forever.

Feb 4, 2017 | Hope & Encouragement, My sort-of Sermons, Women's Voice & Power

I have felt more like a passive observer, than riled-up revolutionary since Donald Trump became president. Yes, I blogged the day of the election and the day after that. I have shared others’ videos and posts on Facebook. I participated in the women’s march. And I have engaged in deep and difficult conversations with clients, family, and friends. It’s hardly as though my head has been buried in the sand.

But somehow, it feels like it. No, that’s not quite it. It feels like that’s what you will think, that you will judge my reserved presence and restrained voice as willful, entitled, and privileged withdrawal, that I will not be seen and understood for who I am: a strong woman with passionate opinions, a good heart, and a powerful voice who chooses to not act and not
speak. For now. Not forever.

I am deeply distressed by Trump’s election, his rhetoric, his actions. But I am also deeply distressed by the social-media induced demand that I rise up and speak out; that if I do not, implicit and explicit shame is amply applied.

Believe me, I am all for rising up and speaking out! Rising up and speaking out have enabled the most significant aspects of my own change and transformation.

Rising up and speaking out are what I long for and invite in the lives of my readers, my clients, my friends, and my
daughters in every aspect of life – relationally, emotionally, professionally, creatively, physically, spiritually.

Rising up and speaking out are what women, in principal and by birthright deserve to do without fear of reprisal or consequence.

Rising up and speaking out are manifestations of the feminine at its
strongest and most fierce.

But so are standing still and being silent. In strike. In solace. In sadness. In solidarity. In the wake of all this election has threatened – the potential loss of freedoms, rights, and dignities that so many have fought so long to secure and uphold – may no collateral loss occur because we lose sight of that which cannot be taken from us, that which cannot be legislated, disavowed, or signed away by executive order: our strength and fierceness for one another – in all our complexity, difference, diversity, expression and sometimes even lack thereof.

I am not a passive observer. Whether I rise up like you, or don’t, speak out like you, or don’t, I am actively, tirelessly, and endlessly standing steadily and (for now) silently by your side – in advocacy, in loyalty, in hope, in love.

Forever. For you.

Goodbye, Twitter

Jan 9, 2017 | Hope & Encouragement, My sort-of Sermons, Women's Voice & Power

I cancelled and closed my Twitter account last week. 

I’m almost hesitant to mention it; it was so undramatic But maybe it deserves an epitaph or memorial of some kind… 

Maybe not. 

Years and years ago, Twitter was the place to be and I, like all just-beginning bloggers/entrepreneurs, knew I had to be there too. Yes, it was a marketing tool that served; a place to meet and greet, post and promote, respond and affirm. But far more, unwittingly and unknowingly, it was the platform through which I met some of my now dearest colleagues and friends. Relationships were sparked and started with 140-character tweets. Their sustenance beckoned and invited far more: hours-long conversations on Skype, later Google Hangouts, and thankfully, face-to-face in dear-deep-ongoing gift. 

I’m grateful: I got far more than intended or imagined from Twitter and now, beautiful relationships in hand-and-heart, I can leave it behind. 

No strategic business decision. No pros and cons. No second thoughts. No thought at all, other than, “I’m done.” With little fanfare and only a couple of simple steps (along with a frantic and almost instantaneous are you sure? email from Twitter itself), I clicked, “Yes, I mean it.” 

I’m wondering how this small and simple decision – and its implementation – speaks to more; how many opportunities exist in a day, week, month, and certainly year-and-life to say, “I’m done” and “Yes, I am sure;” how many things/realities/practices/pathologies/beliefs I maintain because they served at one time, but I’ve not looked at closely enough to determine if that is still the case. 

And I’m wondering what it means to (seemingly) risk not being seen or heard – whether that’s even true, whether it really matters, whether I care. 

So I ask myself: Is my strongly-felt desire to say “I’m done,” and “Yes, I’m sure,” to pull back – via leaving Twitter and a myriad of other micro and macro decisions – an attempt to escape my own demons, my fear and insecurity? Does being smaller (or at least quieter) somehow protect me from being misunderstood, disagreed with, rejected, not mattering at all? Is there something else going on here that I’m not looking at closely enough? 

I may change my mind, but for now my answer to all these questions is “no.”

I am not pulling back; I am standing still and strong. 

I am not attempting to escape my demons or avert fear and insecurity; I am naming them, looking them straight in the eye, and not backing down. 

I am not being smaller or quieter; I am choosing when and what I want to say – even (and especially) if it’s less. If I am misunderstood, disagreed with, rejected, or don’t matter, well, there’s little I can do about that and far more risk in thinking I can. 

And yes, there is something else going on here that, in truth, I’m looking at very closely and carefully. 

Believe me, leaving Twitter has nothing to do with any of this and it has compelled me to ask good questions and consider what matters more/most, to pay attention to what’s really happening in my head, heart, and life. 

Did you know that Twitter’s tagline is “it’s what’s happening”? No…It isn’t. 

What’s happening is the normal and ordinary and extraordinary and amazing and heartbreaking and challenging and courageous stories we live every day. What’s happening is the choices we make. What’s happening is the emotions we feel and trust and express (which include fear and insecurity, grief and sadness, hope and joy, desire and anticipation, contempt and disappointment, all of them). What’s happening is the conversations we have. What’s happening is the questions we ask. What’s happening is the work we do. What’s happening is the things we create. What’s happening is the homes we tend. What’s happening is the pets we care for (and who care for us). What’s happening is the people we love. What’s happening is the real world, exactly-as-it-is, in which we live – which might include the virtual one, but denitely doesn’t revolve around such. 

I have no witty or pithy ending to this post – which, ironically, feels appropriate in the context of “I’m done” and “Yes, I’m sure.”  And I only need 13 characters to say what I almost always do: May it be so.

Yes, yesterday. Now what?

Nov 10, 2016 | Hope & Encouragement, Sacred Stories, Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom

Yesterday, November 9, 2016, I did all the things I always do:

I made coffee. I journaled. I gave my daughter a hug before she left for school. I made my bed. I took a shower. I blow-dried my hair. I put on makeup. I got dressed. I spritzed perfume. I donned earrings, necklace, bracelets, ring. I cooked oatmeal and added berries. I perused and posted on Facebook. I answered a few emails. I prepared for and talked with my clients.

You’d think it was just another day.

Which it was, of course.

Which it was not – in any way, shape, or form.

In the midst of doing all the things I always do, my heart was strong-but-heavy. I could not, nor can I yet today, escape the permeating awareness of the days-ago election or tomorrow’s unknown.

But as I did all the things I always do, as I sought to incorporate reality into my psyche, as my day went on and I listened to my daughters, talked with friends, answered more emails, fixed dinner, and prepared for a night of sleep, I found myself thinking of other women.

Centuries of them – who survived atrocities, hatred, violence, genocide, slavery, silencing, shame, and yes, misogyny. Who made the bed and hugged their children and got dressed and cooked breakfast. Who lived and lived and lived.

The more I thought about them, the more I thought about the particular women within the stories I tell. Somehow, despite all the silencing and shame they’ve known, the atrocities of their time, the layers of theology and dogma (and misogyny) under which they’ve been buried, they have survived. And that gives me hope. They give me hope.

Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again. ~ Anne Frank

Yes. Hope is what we need. And hope is what women offer us. Centuries of them. As far back as the stories I tell, even further, and every age since. They rally on our behalf. They rise up and remind us that we are to do the same, that we will do the same.They come alongside us, even still, even today, especially today, in solidarity and strength. They catch our tears, soothe our tired brows, mend our broken hearts, and whisper – call – sing us back into strength.

Can you hear them? Listen closer. They are chanting, drumming, thundering the words they most want us to remember, most want us to believe, most want us to embody:

“Live and live and live!”

There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze. ~ Etty Hillesum

This is what we will do: live and live and live.

So, my friends, let us have faith in each other. Let us not grow weary. Let us not lose heart, for there are more seasons to come, and there is more work to do. ~ Hillary Clinton (from yesterday’s concession speech)

These are the things we always do – day-in, day-out: we hope, we persevere, we have faith in each other, we do not lose heart, we work, we love, and we live and we live and we live.

About Fall, Writing, and Letting Go

Nov 4, 2016 | Hope & Encouragement, Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom, Writing

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.
~ Albert Schweitzer

 

There has always been something beautiful and miraculous about one solitary leaf as it lingers then slowly, finally dances toward the ground. Glimpsed by few, maybe by none, but no less gorgeous, no less significant, no less real or relevant.
~ Ronna Detrick

Once upon a time and a hundred years ago a woman typed away on a laptop as she sat in a gray chair in the living room of her condo in the city of Tacoma in the state of Washington in the United States of America in the Western hemisphere of the world as she knew it. She typed what you are reading now. And she wondered if anything she could possibly say would have relevance in the future.

Then she began to wonder if anything she had already said, already written, already created had any relevance. “Probably not,” she realized. So she pondered whether any of her labor or struggle or questioning of her work and voice in the world had been or was was worth it.

“For if, after all, 100 years from now, no one recalls or even cares about what I did and said back then, does it matter?”

She realized, even as she asked it, that it was an existential question, one that made her want to pour another glass of wine and think less and watch back-to-back dramas on Netflix. But it was only 10:30 in the morning. Wine and mindless entertainment weren’t timely choices right now. So instead, she sat with the question, mulled it over in her mind, and stared out the window. She saw the sun streaming through the lingering leaves: all browns and yellows now – the green faded and gone. They clung to the branches as long as
they could before fluttering to the ground. She knew they would eventually disappear – raked up into piles and scooped into big black plastic bags and taken to some distant destination for disposal and decay. It all felt related somehow, timely and true.

But the longer she looked at those leaves and thought of their pre-determined demise, she realized that after Winter, Spring would come again and new leaves would grow, that Summer would arrive with green-in-glory, that Fall would return; the cycle repeating itself over and over. And all of this without her effort, without her intention, without a bit of her labor or
concern.

She wondered if maybe, just maybe, the same might be true about her writing, her words, her life.

Maybe all she needed to do was be the leaf,
to allow the sustenance of the roots to be unfurled through her. No effort but that which naturally came forth. No intention but being right here, right now. No labor or concern, but that which turned her face toward the sun, or drank in morning’s dew, or huddled in chill at first frost, or sought shelter in the storm.

Nothing required except to finally loosen her grip and gracefully, willingly, let go.

“Yes,” she thought, “just let go.”

She wondered if in 100 years there would still be leaves and trees and seasons, if there still would be women writing, never mind if they were reading anything she had written or said.

And she realized that she could not, would not let go of this – what mattered most of all:

women’s words still bursting into bloom and thundering forth in greens and reds and oranges, becoming the very substance that fertilizes those that are yet to come.

So she turned back to her laptop and typed some more…

There has always been something beautiful and miraculous about one solitary leaf as it lingers then slowly, finally dances toward the ground. Glimpsed by few, maybe by none, but no less gorgeous, no less significant, no less real or relevant.
~ Ronna Detrick

 

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.
~ Albert Schweitzer

In line at Starbucks…

Oct 24, 2016 | Mothers and Daughters, Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom

Although women’s words have been censored or eliminated from much of our heritage, in the midst of the pain of dehumanization women have nevertheless always been there, in fidelity and struggle, in loving and caring, in outlawed movements, in prophecy and vision. Tracking and retrieving fragments of this lost wisdom and history, all in some way touchstones of what may yet be possible, enable them to be set free as resources for transforming thought and action.
~ Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is

This is probably NOT the stuff that keeps you up at night. It does me, though. Not every night, of course, but still, I do ponder the subject, do pull books off my shelf to bolster my thesis (and remind myself to stay the course), to recognize how tightly woven it is into my writing and thought.

I am quick to realize that this is not the stuff of most dinner parties, not what I see in the news, and definitely not what I hear being bantered back-and-forth while in line at Starbucks.

What if it were? What if this WAS the conversation we had – women together, women with men, even men together?

What if we were consumed with the painful history of womens’ dehumanization? What if we were determined to “track and retrieve fragments of lost wisdom and history?” What if we believed that this was crucial to “transforming thought and action” – which all of us know must happen? What if, indeed.

But we are not talking about it, not devoting our every waking moment to its promulgation, and definitely not losing sleep over it.

Understandably.

Our lives are busy. They are full. They overflow with struggle and frustration, celebration and joy. They are often overwhelmed with schedules and to-do’s and responsibilities. They are rich with friends and lovers and children. And they are subsumed by so much else, so many other messages that either elate or exhaust our souls.

So how and why would we take the time to talk of old stories, to find the threads of our own history as women, to somehow weave them back into our day-to-day lives?

I wish I knew.

Here’s what I do know, though:

If we do not, if we ostensibly forget from whence and from whom we came, we are destined to repeat the same patterns. The plight of women does not improve. The conversation does not change. The world does not transform. And I, for one, think all of these things need to happen.

To shine a spotlight on the censorship and dehumanization of women is the very thing that helps us – now, in this moment, in our day-to-day lives – understand why we think the way we do, why we feel the way we do, why we make the decisions we do (even when they are not the ones we want to make), why we often feel slightly crazy, why we struggle with ways to articulate our position or stance, why we are disconnected from our bodies, why we witness people in (hoped-for) power deny the harm they inflict and attempt to silence the brave women who name such anyway.

It’s hard: the work of remembering. We want to move on, move forward, make headway, not have to look back.

I get it.

I’m not all that crazy about having to remember my own story, in having to look back and honestly acknowledge the places in which I’ve known harm and perpetuated it against my very self (and others, to be sure). And yet, it is only when I do so, that I experience any kind of transformation and growth; it is only when I do so, that I am able to hold enough perspective and wisdom to make different choices today – not only for myself, though that is paramount, but also for my daughters, my family, my friends, my colleagues, my community.

If this is true for me, *just* one woman, how much more – all of us together?

Imagine this multiplied times the infinity of women’s stories – past, present, and future!

That image, that possibility, that future? That’s the one I want and the one we deserve.

I still wish I’d written these two sentences, but love that Elizabeth Johnson did. Hear them one more time; more, believe them.

Although women’s words have been censored or eliminated from much of [our] heritage, in the midst of the pain of dehumanization women have nevertheless always been there, in fidelity and struggle, in loving and caring, in outlawed movements, in prophecy and vision. Tracking and retrieving fragments of this lost wisdom and history, all in some way touchstones of what may yet be possible, enable them to be set free as resources for transforming thought and action.

May it be so.

So, I’ve written a book…

Oct 19, 2016 | Sacred Stories, Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom, Writing

The subtitle is “A Braided Essay on Women and Silence and Shame.” And it’s published, printed, physical, able to be held in my (and your) hands. All for a VERY particular reason. Well, far more than one, actually.

I wrote this in the context of my writing group. Just another piece to be offered in the safety and vulnerability of that sacred circle of four. And in truth, I didn’t think all that much about it. It was crafted. It was edited. It was strong, yes. But something happened when I read it out loud, when I told a story I’d nearly forgotten about, and then experienced it seen, heard, and honored. Something happened, yes; and something changed. With MUCH encouragement, it was clear that more had to be done.

So I (mostly) overcame my every fear, every internal caveat and objection, every reason to not make it available, every conceivable excuse, and now here.it.is.

I hope you will buy it. NOT for any money it might make for me (which will be a VERY small percentage, believe me), but for the following five reasons:

  1. Women need their voices heard and stories told. ANY form that encourages such, no matter how unconventional, needs to be encouraged, supported, and then replicated – again and again.
  2. The story I am telling is mine, to be sure, AND you will find your own story in the midst. It is a story that all of us have known in one way or another – that is too often unspoken, but in-the-water; that needs to be told, acknowledged, and yes, seen, heard, and honored.
  3. Once you’ve read this for yourself, it is my deepest hope that you will buy more copies – for your sisters, your daughters, your friends; that it will provide women the courage to no longer remain in silence or shame, but to speak and be seen.
  4. Something powerful happens when we allow ourselves to actually and finally birth that which has been gestating within for months (if not years); to move that which has stayed sheltered and ostensibly “safe” into the wider and visible world. And it is the celebration of such that welcomes and blesses. I’m inviting you to be part of that with and for me.
  5. It is only in naming what is true – no matter how hard – that we can hope for change. And so, that is what I have done.

I still feel afraid about putting it out into the world. My heart is racing, my hands are a bit sweaty, and I can compile a list a mile long of all the reasons I shouldn’t – which is exactly why I must. But here’s the thing: no matter my trepidation, my inner-critic (or even/especially the external ones), something has already been profoundly healed in my writing of this story and even more, in the publishing of it. I can’t begin to know the outcome of such in its entirety, but on some level it doesn’t matter. I’ve honored the story, the creative process, and my very self. And your purchase, far more, your reading and sharing of this work, confirms all of this AND reminds me (and all of us) just how powerful a woman’s story truly is; just how important it is that it be told.

Thank you for witnessing this with and for me; for participating; for seeing, hearing, and honoring – me.

Click here to buy Throwing Stones

You can read more about Throwing Stones by clicking on the image of the book above. There you’ll see more of my words and the words of those who have already read and heard it. Of course, once you have read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts, as well.