Living my life like a child who has only known love

A few weeks ago, I went on a Vision Quest, something I had been thinking about for years, but never found the time, the space or the moment that felt right.  My childhood experiences made me feel leery of ceremony or ritual; it made me feel unsafe, uncertain.  As the Director of Women's Mountain Passages, a nonprofit that worked with women to reconnect with their strengths, I had started to slowly come to terms with ritual as a healing place, at least for other women.  I respected what they gained out of it.  While I still don't embrace it, now it seemed like the time for me to use nature as a way to check in with my life and it's direction.

My job often leaves me feeling disjointed, confused and unconnected.  As the CHE Director , I have this amazing opportunity to work with community folks to make change son core issues, injustices created long ago and perpetuated today through our crazy structures and enforced by history and complacency.  And I love that. But I work in the structure and struggle with Audrey Lourde's words, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." So I found myself feeling trapped in the the mismatch between the Center's mission  and the city's limited ability to be responsive to community needs.  I found myself operating off old stories, old premises, out of fear and not faith.  Afraid of every action that I did or did not do and the ramifications that it might have for me, the Center, the city, the community.  Caught between attempting to follow an incredibly confusing, continually unfolding maze that left community and staff members frustrated and tentative and being called out as aggressive, challenging, rebellious or confrontational when I questioned processes, sought changes that would make our work responsive to the lived experience of the communities with which we seek to work.

After two days of processing, discussions, thinking and trying to shift old tracks in my head, I came up with my intention for my 24-hour solo... to release fear and live my life like a child who has only known love.  It seemed big, too big.  Way too big.  But during my solo, I focused on Mateo and what he'd been teaching, his inspiration to approach each day with curiosity.  I wrote,

When I hear Mateo wake in the morning, I wait outside his door and listen to him jabber or move about legs kicking in the air for a few reasons - so that he will know time alone, be content in that and he can begin the process of self independent of me.  And when I walk in, his eyes brown, grow big beneath his lashes, a grin spreading across his face, legs kicking, arms a wind mill swirling against the crib sheets, swish diaper moving in his pants, a giggle.  His movements tell me, "ah mama you are here.  I'm so glad to see you this morning." And he looks forward to another day where his job is just to explore, grow love and be loved.

Just before I went to sleep, I wrote, "With the darkness, I will lose time until there is dawn."  And in the morning this,

It is morning, has been for a while.  My pack sits on the the road headed back to camp.  I can see the sky gray-blue, not fully formed by the day and while I cannot see it, I know that the sun awaits. I'm sitting on a rock, white rimmed with pale green lichen just outside of my campsite in the middle of the creek listening as life washes over the rocks and away.

I release fear in the form that I have known it, an all consuming energy draining need to control and let the children know that I can protect them and that pain derived from evil will not come back again.

I release control and replace it with openness and curiosity. I will teach the kids this gift, this freedom.

I release shame - it is not mine to own.  All of the children are good.  your nature is clean and pure of heart.  I release shame.

I release guilt.  Your truth is the TRUTH.  it is not yours to own. Actions forced do not of your nature, but instead of the nature of the bad people.  I replace it with light.

I release anger at myself for myself and all the littles.  I replace it with laughter and light. 

With each statement, I snapped off pieces of limbs that had died on their trees and threw them into the water, some just in front of my rock and others past the blocks I saw ahead.  And for two weeks, I have been engaging, curious, open and hopeful - pulling away from blame, pulling away from defensiveness and listening, really listening until today - more shut down words from work, "I'm not sure what is happening hear, but Lisa you are confrontational and __ is fragile."

To which I respond, "That's your label."
"See now you're being aggressive to me." 

And to the littles, I say, "Asking questions is okay. Move on in your world of curiosity!!! Don't become what her definition of yourself."