I’m back.
You may not have missed me, but I’ve been in retreat from social media networks for a few months now. I’ve been in retreat from quite a lot actually - lying low - trying to figure out what on earth was going on and what I needed to do. I understood that I was impacted by these pandemic times, but I'd been beating myself up for my lack of resilience. What did I have to complain about when so many people were so much worse off?
But at my Circle of Trust retreat this past weekend – Navigating Life’s Changes with courage & integrity – it all came home to me.
You may not have missed me, but I’ve been in retreat from social media networks for a few months now. I’ve been in retreat from quite a lot actually - lying low - trying to figure out what on earth was going on and what I needed to do. I understood that I was impacted by these pandemic times, but I'd been beating myself up for my lack of resilience. What did I have to complain about when so many people were so much worse off?
But at my Circle of Trust retreat this past weekend – Navigating Life’s Changes with courage & integrity – it all came home to me.
I realized I was lost in the liminal space created by the Covid pandemic – that disorienting space of transition between letting go of ‘what once was’ and ‘what is yet to come’.
I asked participants this question:
“Are there things you need to let go of to open more fully to what is to come?”
And I realized that I was holding on to and weighed down by a deep sense of resentment against the pandemic for how it has disrupted everything I know and love. I also recognised the abundance of choices I'm fortunate to have, and that the only thing holding me back was my resentment. Today it feels like a weight has rolled off my shoulders and I’m ready to embrace life again and have a go at the New Normal.
When change happens in our lives, it always requires a period of transition when we must live with the change, experience it, adjust to it, until it becomes absorbed into our lives as the New Normal. Change always requires a letting go of what we once knew as Normal, and that’s what I have done.
Phew!
With deep gratitude to my mentor and friend, Judy Brown, for her poem ‘Trough’, which we used at the retreat to explore the theme of liminal space.
I asked participants this question:
“Are there things you need to let go of to open more fully to what is to come?”
And I realized that I was holding on to and weighed down by a deep sense of resentment against the pandemic for how it has disrupted everything I know and love. I also recognised the abundance of choices I'm fortunate to have, and that the only thing holding me back was my resentment. Today it feels like a weight has rolled off my shoulders and I’m ready to embrace life again and have a go at the New Normal.
When change happens in our lives, it always requires a period of transition when we must live with the change, experience it, adjust to it, until it becomes absorbed into our lives as the New Normal. Change always requires a letting go of what we once knew as Normal, and that’s what I have done.
Phew!
With deep gratitude to my mentor and friend, Judy Brown, for her poem ‘Trough’, which we used at the retreat to explore the theme of liminal space.
| Trough |
| There is a trough in waves, A low spot Where horizon disappears And only sky And water Are our company. And there we lose our way Unless We rest, knowing the wave will bring us To its crest again. There we may drown If we let fear Hold us within its grip and shake us Side to side, And leave us flailing, torn, disoriented. But if we rest there In the trough, Are silent, Being with The low part of the wave, Keeping Our energy and Noticing the shape of things, The flow, Then time alone Will bring us to another Place Where we can see Horizon, see the land again, Regain our sense Of where We are, And where we need to swim. Judy Sorum Brown From The Sea Accepts All Rivers & Other Poems. © Miles River Press, 2000. |
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