Women's Empowerment thru Surrender.

What an odd thing to say isn't it? - That we could be empowered thru surrendering - surrender to our limitations. I have been spending a lot of time with women and talking about the nature of being a woman with friends of mine as I think about motherhood, being a therapist and being in a corporate job. It is interesting how, as women, we can feel obligated to be limitless in energy, we can stifle our own needs in professional environments, with our partners and with our children. Somewhere along the way, we choose to believe we need to be all things to all people.

Sitting eating some greasy spoon Mexican food with a girlfriend and her 20 month-old daughter yesterday, we talked about how, in all of our "doing" and "negating" our own needs, women easily slip into the victim role. We kid ourselves that controlling everything about our children, our jobs, our homes that we somehow are empowered superwomen. But we aren't. We are tired, feel taken advantage of, or are just plain unhappy. We also talked about how parenting seems to really evoke this push to "do" and "be" it all more than other roles.

Ironically, the way out of this victimized role is to surrender to our limitations. We can't do it all or be it all and as we let things fall, it seems, thing around us get picked by other people and voila, we find the support and we get to be ordinary and happy rather than tired superwomen. As we munched away on our tortilla chips, what we both agreed on is how oddly empowering it feels to just surrender to our own limitations...isn't that a funny thing to say?

The jig is up and what a relief it is. It is also a relief to those in relationship to us. Trying to anticipate every need and please every person feels deadening to relationships. How does this impact children if we are trying to meet all their needs before they even know they have them? How will our kids know what hunger feels like if we are feeding them before they ever have the chance to feel their own bodies and hunger? I have been really inspired by friends and neighbors who give a lot of space to their children and partners to grow and explore without infringing on their personal autonomy. They are the ones that are ok if their house gets a little messy or if they aren't doing it right "to onlookers" because they have surrendered to their own limits and they all seem like really happy people. And to those that are run ragged bc they feel they must do and be all I say, "I can empathize" and it is exhausting to watch. "I am choosing to surrender" because surrendering my need to have that illusory control seems like not only an act of personal empowerment but an act of I LOVE ME.

Uncomfortable around gods; at ease around friends.

At this moment in time something I believe as a therapist and something my own therapist reminds me of is "wounding happens in relationship" and so therefore "healing happens in relationship". I am feeling particularly grateful for my relationships...healing, loving, authentic and sometimes gritty relationships with people who meet me from their own humanity. With grace we each make contact from our truth: strengths and limitations- and how wonderful and healing that kind of authenticity is.

So in gratitude to all the healers in my life; my husband, my friends, the bean, the people I work with in all my jobs, my teachers, my own therapist...here are some quotes from Hugh Prather's Notes to Myself: A cheap $4 book that I got in a box of garage sale books and have now given copies away to many a dear friend. It is a book of small 1 paragraph life lessons, reminders and truisms that Hugh wrote down on his journey. Having the book is like having another healing relationship to add to your stock pile. Check it out if you like...here are some excerpts. Certainly not my favorites...just my favorites tonight.

"When Bruce said he had trouble getting along with his mother, I liked him better. I like a man with faults, especially when he knows it. To err is human-I'm uncomfortable around gods."

"No one is wrong. At most someone is uninformed. If i think an individual is wrong, either I am unaware of something, or the person is. So unless I want to play a superiority game I had best find out what he or she is looking at."

"If I would spend half the time preparing my mind that I do preparing my body, perhaps I would have the ease that my effecting appearance is supposed to produce for me."

"When I was 'religious', at times I got very confusing results when I tried to rely continuously on my intuition to guide me. This suggests to me now that I should use my intuition when it feels appropriate, use meditation when it feels appropriate, use reasoning when it seems natural, and so forth. It is absurdly contradictory to believe I must always rely on my intuition because I have reasoned out that this is best."

"True humor is fun-it does not put down, kid, or mock. It makes people feel wonderful, not separate, different, cut off. True humor has beneath it the understanding that we are all in this together."

With gratitude to you.