Sweet Surrender
Guardian of the GOO
December 2023 Newsletter—
I’ve been thinking about writing to you for weeks…
But every time I sat down at my desk I found my hands sitting on my keyboard, completely still.
My eyes would follow the path of least resistance right out the window; gazing upon the Grandmother Tree whose tip-top reaches over my office as to cradle me each day. Looking at her, I’d find immediate relief. Finally, soft eyes. No sense of urgency or hustle. Nothing to penetrate, attain, or achieve. No one to impress.
One day I even saw a squirrel sleeping, belly pressed against a branch with all his limbs dangling towards the ground. Instead of writing, I watched him sleep while all the other squirrels were scrambling to gather the fall harvest. Both of us, dreaming our day away when we were supposed to be working.
Through October and November, I watched the leaves on that tree go from lush green to sun-lit yellow, to wintery, barren branches. Following her lead, I honored my own endings; only mine were past due. (Trees don’t seem to resist natural endings like I do).
Through resistance and tears, I shed business plans, team members, offerings, & outdated ancestral ways of relating, working, and being. I marked these endings with ritual, truth-telling, fire ceremony, and grief. None of it “made sense.”
If I’m being honest with you, I was disappointed when these intentional endings didn’t offer me a “what’s next.” I don’t yet know how to get to the “what’s next” with eyes this soft.
As I’m writing you now, Fallingwater by Maggie Rogers has started to play. I can’t help but get teary at the timing, as Fallingwater was the song that serenaded me the summer before my divorce. I saw Maggie live 5 times that year. She was my muse in creative living after I watched what can only be described as her spirit-filled possession at her channeled performance on SNL, which I’d watch on repeat. It allowed me the courage to trust the downstream flow of my own emergent truth.
In reflection, that season is my most recent and potent reference-point for surrender and letting go of old selves. Thinking about it now I am reminded of the strength it takes to soften into a truth you wish to deny. I am reminded of the shame I had to alchemize, how I desperately tried to control the outcome before I had even lived it, and how alone I felt inside it all. I am reminded of how I broke my own heart that year and everyone else’s too. I am also reminded how much more resourced and well I am now than I was back then.
I recall sitting in an Artist’s Way Circle in January 2019, reading my morning pages to a small group of seekers. I said, “I’m lying about something, I just don’t know what it is…”
I was trying so hard to figure it out. Despite seeking the truth, my journal was lacquered in self-deception. My truth was buried under so many layers of programming even my mentors couldn’t adequately mirror who I was back to me.
“I’m not attracted to her,” I said in my journal. “She just has a gravity that takes you higher and deeper at the same time.” I didn’t read that part out loud in the Circle. By May I had fallen for her, the facilitator. Soon after, I filed for divorce.
(Note to reader: when you’re writing poetry about someone and saying you’re not attracted to them, maybe you’re lying to yourself).
As brave as it seems to blow up your life by discovering what you want, this process shattered every identity I had shaped my life around. Sure, there was surrender, but also it was a simultaneous full-bodied, ecstatic “YES” to surrender, coupled with a terrified, shame-filled, embarrassed “no” all at the same time. Surrender often meets us in that way; we are standing at the edge of a new life, and the inner conflict is excruciating. Parts of us simultaneously moving in opposite directions.
If I could have surrendered sooner or told the truth sooner, I would have. If I could have done it better, cleaner, slower, faster, or with less harm, I would have. I resisted the truth until the final hour. I couldn’t let go until I could. And I devastated us all because the person I was deceiving wasn’t my ex-husband, or my now ex-lover.. it was me I was lying to. (It’s usually me I’m lying to).
I’m brilliant that way.
I’ve always had so much to say, but I’ve rarely said what I really need to.
I’ve always had so much to offer, but so rarely have I offered what I really wanted to.
I’ve always generated so much value, but so rarely have I felt valuable.
I’ve always been sparkly and bright, but I never did I ever let anyone actually see me; not the real me.
Reflecting back on that season 4 winters ago I am struck by the difference a few years can make. I am taken at how much more adult I feel now, and how much more well I am. It’s not that it’s been easy to surrender to this gooey-liminal space I’m in, because it’s never a cozy place to be. Only this time, there is so much less internal conflict; so much more trust in the process of Becoming. This time I’m not rushing into a new life, or a new identity. I’m not trying to write the story before it happens– I’m simply opening to more from a life I already love.
So, here I am, finally centered, committed to telling the truth, fully surrendered to this process… and suddenly I have nothing to say. I feel more clear than ever, and suddenly my path has gotten really hazy.
Paradoxically, clarity has never been easier to access. My authentic self is emerging from a 32 year fog. And as she crystalizes, every part of my life that was built from the imprint of trauma has gotten hazier and hazier.
Thank goodness, I am no longer able to move in ways that harm me.
If I have learned anything about the process of surrender and transformation, it’s that the best is yet to come. That everything that’s composted becomes fertile soil for the next harvest.
So for now, I’m in the bardo. The uncomfy, messy, middle where there are no answers, only softening and surrender and softening again. The “what’s next” will emerge in its own right timing. In my own right timing.
I will not rush this.
I’m gonna let myself stay here as long as it takes.
In gratitude & goo(dness),
Madison
