Author: gwynn

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Connect. Expand. Retreat. Repeat.

I have been busy in my work, the work of my own being and becoming. I have been reading and taking in and listening and absorbing the wise voices of other women and men, soaking them up like a sponge, feeding on them and knowing the truth as it resonates with me.

This feeding comes and goes for me. There are times when I open myself to all the outside voices and then times when I shut them out completely so I can allow them to settle and integrate and I can come back into my own being and hear again my own voice.

This is what I want for the women I work with too. For them to absorb what feels good and right and then to step away, allow it to settle, to integrate, and to listen to their own embodied wisdom. I have mentioned in several of my circles that my entire goal of working with the women I do is for them to not work with me anymore, because they don’t need me, because the tools I have offered them are finally a part of their own being, because they can listen to and trust and honor their own inner voice.

I’ve been told this isn’t a very good marketing strategy. That I have to keep one step ahead and keep the people who work with me wanting more and more and more. I’ve been told I could never be successful in business by encouraging my clients to seek and listen to other voices, other perspectives, other ways of healing.

To which I come around to saying, sometime immediately, sometimes after I stumble around a bit: fuck that. I don’t want women wanting more of me – I want each of you to want more of your Self, your voice, your wisdom. I’m not in this work to “keep ahead” or “keep you wanting”, I’m in this work to guide you to YOU, YOUR voice, YOUR body, YOUR Self, YOUR wisdom.

A woman who has been participating in my circles for a few years now wrote me yesterday saying she needs space, to listen to her body and her wisdom, and to not participate in Awakening. I was so excited to read her words. Yes, I am saddened she won’t be in circle with us, and she will be missed, AND… and my work of guiding her to listen to her own needs and to HONOR them has settled into her. I am ecstatic. I have no idea if she will be a part of my circles in the future (I suspect she will), and this step into honoring her own embodied wisdom feels so big and beautiful and so filled with so many YESES to me.

THAT is why I do this work. Not to keep you wanting me. To guide you to not wanting me, or really anyone else, to tell you how to be; to connect to, to listen to, to honor your own embodied knowing.

Yes, it does make marketing a bit tricky. Perhaps that is point. Perhaps we are all tired of being “marketed” to, of being “targeted,” of being just another number in someone’s “funnel.” I know I am.

Still, this work is how I pay the bills (or honestly, don’t pay the bills yet). This work is what helps support my family, and so how do I spread the word of what I do, with integrity, with honesty, leaving my own fear and anxiety in the backseat and trust that as in months past we will continue to make ends meet somehow and that in time I will connect with more and more women who are ready for this journey into their own Self?

I have no idea. I’m still figuring it out. If you have the answers, please, please let me know. 🙂

One piece of it is, or maybe it’s the whole of it, is connection. When I started my business back in 2012, that was my guiding value and word for my work. Connection. And now, three and half years later I am circling back to it. I am reaching out to other women and inviting them to give their voice to my circles. I am collaborating on projects with other women that make my heart croon and howl and sing. I am focusing back on connecting, expanding my connections, deepening my connections, strengthening my connections – to other women and to my own Self.

Part of this is listening to the voices of others. I am in a place to do this now, knowing their voices won’t drown out my own. Knowing what I absorb will resonate with who I am and that I will innately reject anything that doesn’t. This is likely change and I will retreat again for a while and then venture back out. This is the ebb and flow of this work, both personally and professionally.

Connection. Expansion. Retreat. Allowing all that swirls within to settle. Giving us space to rest. Giving us space to grow. Honoring our own voice and wisdom while honoring the voice and wisdom of others. To respect the voices of other as theirs and to only take in the parts of their voices that harmonize with our own. Or even the ones that cause dissonance and us to vibrate in discord, to expand our own perspective and to bring us closer again to our own Self and embodied wisdom.

Did you enjoy this? It’s from a love letter I sent out in February 2016.  If you’d like to receive future love letters from me, you can subscribe right over here.

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Consent and complicity

Consent. This topic has been coming up a lot in my life over the last several months. As my daughter grows into womanhood and my son continues on his journey in toddlerhood, I’ve been re-evaluating and considering all the ways I hold and wield power as their parent, as their mentor, as their protector and as their teacher.

A few months ago, social media was on fire with our reactions to the Brock Turner case and his incredibly lenient sentencing. Rage flowed through data and power lines in a way I haven’t witnessed before. Women stepping forward and sharing their own stories. Men and women coming together to help educate the world about rape culture, white supremacy, patriarchy, and oppression.

It’s been pretty amazing to witness and to be part of.

And…

I was somewhat quiet in voicing my own opinion with my own words. Because there is more to this story than one man’s “20 minutes of action” or his father’s obvious cluelessness about the impact of these actions on another human being.  I haven’t written much directly because I don’t want to stifle or negate the very real validity of our rage about this case.

I want each of us to express our rage.

Our rage is valid.

And.

Each of us are responsible, in subtle and not so subtle ways, for this case.

I’m not talking about victim blaming or slut shaming.

I’m talking about the ways each of us, every single day, buys into the rules of our patriarchal culture. The very real small and big ways we each trample over another’s consent. How we each silence others and tell them how they are broken and need fixing.

I wrote to you about how I trampled all over my son’s consent, his autonomy and the very unintentional and yet powerful way I taught him that those in power don’t need to ask permission. Today I want to share a story about my daughter and how I disregarded her consent. I don’t share these stories as a badge of honor or as a confession to my sins. I share these stories because it is important that we each look at the ways we unintentionally disregard the needs and voice of others. I share because many of you are parents, or aunts or uncles, and each of us can have an impact when interacting with children and raising a generation who could have a very different internalized understanding of autonomy and consent than the one we were each raised with. I share because our interactions with adults are often not so different from how we interact with children and teens, and we each (myself included), need to slow down and evaluate our own ways of being in this world and how we each can do and be different; how each of us can do our own part in tearing this shit down.

Anyhow, my story. As some background, my daughter is now nine and she is growing into a young woman before my eyes. She’s always had long legs and little hips, but now those legs are longer and more womanly (for a lack of a better term) and her hips are subtly rounder. She’s growing into womanhood before my eyes and it is both breath-taking and heart-breaking. I want to capture these in-between days of hers, these days where she is no longer a child and yet not a full fledged woman. I want her to have images of herself when she grows up, of this time, for her to look back and reflect on. And frankly, I want to reflect on these images of her too, of my own lost childhood and my struggles as a mother.

So, in short, I take a lot of pictures of her.

About a year ago, she started protesting these pictures.

Actually, that is not true, she has always from time to time protested. And in the last year the protests have become more frequent and consistent.

These protests frustrate me. Because I want pictures, damn it. We play the game of me begging and eventually her very grudgingly giving in to the picture taking. The same game adults played with me as a child. The same game many adults play with children as they try to coax them into having their images taken.

This morning she was sitting on our sofa, playing Minecraft on her tablet and the light was just so and she was sitting in just such a way that it was just an image I wanted to remember forever. So I grabbed my phone and started clicking away. She looked up and noticed what I was doing and told me to stop. I didn’t. She told me, louder and more firmly to stop. And then we started the little game of me begging and her saying no.

Then some things clicked into place in my wee brain. And I stopped cold.

First, I didn’t ask if I could take her picture. I just took it. (Once again teaching that those in power do not need to ask.)

Second, she said to stop and I ignored her and proceeded to “ask” if I could take her picture. (Teaching her that her voice, her stop, her no, is not important and can be questioned.)

Third, after repeated noes and stops, I continued to “ask” and pester her into saying yes. (Again teaching her that her noes and stops are irrelevant and that my wants are more important; teaching her that her boundaries don’t matter and reminding her that I am  in control and will trample on them any time I want.)

I was frozen and chilled to the bone for a moment. What I was doing was akin to a drunk frat boy harassing her at a party in ten years. I realized I was no different than Brock Turner in many ways. It finally, fully clicked in my thick, thick, skull that it is not just Them who perpetrates and perpetuates rape culture, it is all of us.

I saw that this wasn’t just a little “game” we were playing, but my own compliance in training her what it is to live in this world and how her voice and her boundaries don’t matter.  I was grooming her. As surely as any predator grooms their own prey. But I wasn’t grooming her for me, I was grooming her for Them.

I stopped.  Today, I stopped.

Today something clicked. Today I saw another thread of this intricate, grotesque and rage producing web we are all tangled up in. Today I recognized a piece of my own part in the web and so, now I am starting to undo this thread.

I can now start to do different. To unravel this piece even more. To unearth another piece of my own training and all the rage and grief that goes with it. To get to the next piece, so I can see it, allow my rage and grief, unravel some more and so on.

I want to be clear :: Yes, I am frustrated at my own part in rape culture. And I am grateful that I saw this piece. And I am not shaming myself with a long list how I should have known better and how I should be doing better and what a horrible parent I am and what a horrible human being I am or how everything that is wrong with the world is all my fault.

Because falling into that downward spiral of shame does no one any good. And it makes us less likely to notice and admit our faults and failings in the future.

I noticed, became aware. I allowed myself to be in the wrong, without shame and beating myself into a bloody pulp. I apologized. I move forward and continue to work to do different in the future.

That’s all any of us can do. We each contribute to this culture we live in. We were each trained in these ways of complicity. And we can each, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, become aware of how we contribute, make amends where necessary and possible, allow our own grief and rage at the depths of our training, and do different in future.

I invite you join me in looking at the different ways you may contribute to our oppressive culture, the different ways you may unintentionally silence another or disregard their boundaries or consent. I invite you to grieve and rage at all the ways your own consent and boundaries have been disregarded, in the past and in the present.  This is deep and messy work. And the more of us to do it, the more we will be able to change the world we all live in.

xoxo

P.S. It truly is important to not shame yourself, or allow others to shame you, for falling into the traps of the training we all grew up with it. It is equally important that once you see a place you have fumbled, to recognize it, repair relationships where you can, and work to do different in the future. We are responsible for our actions, and we are responsible for making repairs when we learn our actions were harmful. Sending you big love as we all do our part in deconstructing a culture that ties us all down. xoxo

(This is a revision of a love letter I sent out in June 2016.  If you enjoyed it and would like to read more, you can subscribe to my weekly love letters right over here. )

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Gathering around the fire

I feel a hum… a buzz… a vibration. Literally, I feel it in my body. It’s not the usual vibration I feel when my anxiety is going into overdrive or that skin standing up vibration when something bad is about to happen. It’s different. Hopeful.  Greater. It is definitely  within me and also it is outside of me.  I am part of it and it is so much bigger than me.

A few months ago  I offered a wish up to the Universe. It was to find more of my people, to expand my personal circles out and to connect with more women who are shaking shit up and wanting to change the world.

This was mostly related to work for me, finding other solo-business owners, people who did similar work to me, people I could commiserate with and support and find support from; people to collaborate and create and bounce ideas with. Then, literally the next day I received an email from Kelly Diels about the Mastermind she was putting together. And then, a few months later she created her free group, How to Sell to Women Without Selling Them Out and let me just say all kinds of magic is being brewed and bubbled and born in there. (Not the least of which being The Church of Saint Felicia, Patron Saint of No More Fucks to Give).

And so through Kelly I have found many women who I am following and getting to know (And for the record, I found Kelly through Isabel who I found through Alisha who I found through my bff Chessa who I found because I hosted a preschool playgroup at my house and she showed up to a kazillion years ago). And then through these new-to-me women I learn of others and so on, the ripple effect. (Be careful what wishes you offer up to the Universe, eh?)

Beyond work I’ve been reconnecting with some dear friends from my past and we are finding our ways together and creating our own magic and there is an energy there that I wouldn’t have even dreamed up twenty (or more, ahem) years ago when we first met.

Connections. Here to there. Her to her to him to her. Following the breadcrumbs.

During the month of June in the Exploring Our Shadows Circle we were digging into our stories of Too Much. On our last day with these stories I offered them this as our discussion prompt for the day:

Let’s all gather around our fire. Holding hands or arms interlocked or wrapped around each others shoulders. We each hold in one hand our long list of Too Much Stories. As we are each called, we throw that list into the fire. We feel the strength and love of each other pouring into our Self and we send out strength and love to our sisters and brother. We feel the healing warmth of the fire and know a transformation is happening and we allow it and us to be. (If you like, share three words describing how this exercise felt for you). xoxo

Fire. Gathering around it. Adding to it. Finding transformation from it.

I’ve been talking about burning it all down for a while now. Perhaps most of my adult life. The images and feelings of fire have always felt right to me. The smell of fire – campfires, grilling fires, fireplace fires, small flames of tea candles- brings me home, in a way I may never fully understand or consciously know.

Images of Phoenixes have been filling my psyche for months and month along with circles of women around campfires. The image of Buffy and Sineya dancing around the fire in the sand is forever burned into my brain and being and has been calling to me louder and louder since the beginning of the year.

The idea that fire is cleansing. That it can destroy DNA – the very make up of our being. That it can wash away the sins of the world.

Fire can destroy so we can rebuild from the rubble and bones and ashes.

This is not to say I want to see our cities literally burning to the ground. I am talking about the symbol of fire. And contained fires (like campfires). And the fires within.

I’m talking about how each of us has our own spark. And alone we can light up a small area, burn a single sheet of paper, or singe the corner of a curtain. But then when we, each with our own sparks, gather together – we create a blaze and the world will hear it roar.

This is the something greater than me I feel vibrating in my own skin and out in the world. It is the gathering together, the finding our people, the learning from each other and stumbling along our own ways, together, holding each other up while giving each of us room to do it our on way, in our own time and space.

And.

We will only find our people, our kindred flames, if we allow our own spark to shine.

We will only form a choir of roars if each one of us opens our own throats and let our own voices be heard.

We will only know what it is to be loved and accepted for who we are if we show who we are to the world.

I believe that each of us individually makes a difference in the world. Our work in this world has an impact and a ripple effect.

And.

Not a one of us can heal the whole world on our own. Not a one of us individually can tear down generations worth of systemic racism and misogyny. Not a one of us can tear all of it down and build all of it back up.

We need each other. To be held up. To hold up. To breathe air into our fires and help them burn brighter and stronger and larger.

I’m finding more and more people to do this with. Whose work I support with all my heart. Whose being I embrace. Who light me up and add to my fire. We are coming together. We are gathering. We are uniting.

As we are meant to be.

Our culture has trained us to turn against each other. To judge. To mock. To trample each other in our own efforts to get to The Top. That is not what we were born to do.

We were born to support each other. To help raise each others children. To hold each other in our times of pain and grief. To celebrate with each other our successes and accomplishments. To protect each other from predators. To feed and nourish each other with food and love and laughter and tears.

It is time. To set flame to this training. To put an end to competing with each other. To embrace our sisters and love them as we were meant to be loved.

Together we will rise from the ashes. Together we will walk through the flames. Together we will create the world we are meant to live in: one of true equality, love, and acceptance.

I invite you this week to look within. To open yourself to seeing the ways you have criticized other women, torn them down, silenced their voice, dampened their spark. We have each been there and done that. By looking at these parts of ourselves we can become more fully aware, we can learn to forgive ourselves, and we can begin to do different in the world.

This is how we find our people. This is how we grow our fire. This is how we change our world.

Let’s do this. xoxo

(This is a revision of a love letter I sent out in July 2016.  Did you enjoy it? Would you like to read more? Then I invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter right here.)

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Grief, trauma and anger

Each week in the Survivors of Suicide group that I co-facilitate, we have new members. More people whose partners have completed suicide, leaving behind confusion, anger, pain, and of course, grief.

Grief. It is such an uncomfortable emotion. I witness people trying to rush through their grief, trying to stuff it down, trying to push it aside. I am asked over and over when the grief will end.

The truth is, it doesn’t. When someone we love, someone who matters to us, dies or a significant relationship ends, we grieve for the rest of our lives. It isn’t always as raw or overwhelming as it is in the beginning, those early months, that first year. And yet, there can still be moments of overwhelming grief, even years later.

Anger is part of our grief process. Not every time, but more times than not we become furious with the person who died “on us” or who left us. There is no logic to this anger, no reason. It just is. It’s an important part of our grieving. It gives us agency. It protects us from the overwhelm of sadness and pain. It motivates us to do something.

Grief, of course, isn’t the only time we tap into our anger. Our anger rushes forward to both protect and motivate us in a million different ways every day. We know our anger is protecting us from deeper pain when we are focusing that anger directly onto another person, for what they did or didn’t do or say. The anger is whispering to us “I know this hurts too much right now, so let me take care of you.”

Anger gives us motivation to act. It wants us to act. To do. Anger is not a being emotion. It has agency and does not want us sitting in it, stagnant. It wants to flow.

Anger is uncomfortable. It represents the dissonance in us. Our very fibers vibrate when we are angry (ever been so mad you literally shook?). It wants resolution. It demands to be heard.  To be witnessed. For us to take action.

The discomfort of anger, or grief, or sadness or any pain, is something we aren’t so good at allowing. Our culture tells us over and over how we must be happy and comfortable at any cost.

So we stuff. We push aside. We tie down. We ignore. We pursue happiness, ever seeking outside and trying to pretend that the turmoil we feel within does not exist.

This stuffing down can work for awhile. Hell, it can work for a lifetime, quite frankly, at some levels, to some degree. Even so, it causes its own dis-ease and discomfort. We wear a mask and so no one sees us, not even our Self, and we are lonely and distrusting of others. Distrusting because we know we are wearing a mask, because we know we aren’t being honest with others or our Self, so how could anyone else be honest and true?

A few months ago, as I lead a Parenting While Grieving group, I told the two fathers there—one whose wife had died of cancer within the last year, the other whose daughter had died in a bizarre accident a little over a year ago—that their very cores and beings were altered by the deaths of their loved ones. I reminded them that being in this space, this “new normal” is uncomfortable. I also most said, And if I had a magic wand, I would take this discomfort away. I stopped myself, and told them what I almost said and then said, The truth is, if I had a magic wand, I would wave it so that everyone could sit in their discomfort and know they are going to be okay.

This isn’t because I’m a sadist.  I don’t get pleasure in causing others pain.

It is because I firmly believe that the majority of our world’s problems are because we absolutely cannot sit in our discomfort. Because we try to stuff down or medicate or blame our discomfort away. Because we are desperate to fix it. Because we cannot stand the dissonance it is trying to tell us about.

But that dissonance, that discomfort? THAT is what brings about change. THAT is what motivates us to look within. That is what gives us the energy to do different.

In grief we are forced to be different, because generally our grief is because of something that was in many ways out of our control. In anger, we are motivated to do and be different.

When someone says something uncomfortable to us, or even says something uncomfortable in our general vicinity, it is an opportunity for us to become curious as to why it is making us uncomfortable. That discomfort is an invitation to explore our Self, our thoughts, our values. It is a chance to dig into who we are, who we actually are compared to who we want to be, and consciously and intentionally decide if we want to do or be different.

This is not to say that people don’t often project their crap onto us. Many do. AND it is still an opportunity to look within and consciously and intentionally decide if what a person said is theirs or ours. AND especially if there is discomfort on our part, or defensiveness, or anger, it is a chance to really deeply look within and examine what that may be about.

I invite you this week, this month, this year, the rest of your life, to settle into discomfort. To allow it to be. To become curious about it, to try to understand it.

I invite you to allow your grief and anger. To let them motivate you to both look within and to be outwardly different from how you have been before.

I invite you to examine your own defensiveness and wonder where it is coming from, what deeper story about your worth is it tied to, and how you can shift from a place of defense to a place of self-exploration and deeper knowing and empathy.

Will you accept my invitation? Together I know we can do this. xoxo

(Today’s post is a revision to a love letter I sent out in July.  Did you enjoy it? Want to read more? Then I invite you to hop on over and subscribe to my weekly love letters right over here.)

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A blessing for becoming unleashed

May we

learn to sit in discomfort

embrace our power

roar out our pain, our anguish, our rage

accept that we are imperfect and flawed

forgive ourselves and others

feel in our bones and blood that we are enough

unload the shame that pushes us down

unleash our inner wild woman and all her wisdom

hear and honor our own voice and knowing

Amen.

Did you enjoy this? Then I invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter right here. xoxo