Telling Our Stories – Page 7 – unabashedly female

Life.Â It’s the ultimate mashup.

Today can be just another ho-hum day for me, while behind my neighbor’s door they might be going through the most horrendous day of their life.

To mash-it-up more, today can be a complete mashup even just for me: it can be a somewhat normal day and a day of significance, too. It can seem to be a celebration, while at the same time a day of retrospection and tears.

It’s the nature of life to have all sorts of disparate things moving through alongside each other. Much of the time we try to make some sense of it all; other times, we pretty much give up on that idea.

Today is April 17th, 2012

I was struck by the mashup metaphor this morning when I remembered it is the birthday of Danielle LaPorte’s new book, The FireStarter Sessions. What a day for celebration. If you’ve followed Danielle for any length of time, you’ve witnessed her emergence as a woman of style, substance, heart and wicked business savvy.

I think I felt so compelled to celebrate this day for Danielle, because I’ve witnessed, sometimes through emails, most often through social media, what a journey this has been for her. She’s been on an extraordinary trajectory. I’ve taken notice. It’s deeply moved me to witness someone really make their dream a reality.

I first met Danielle at Sweat Your Prayers – what I do on Sunday mornings – my Church of Choice. I recognized her from twitter and her in-person Fire Starter sessions – where she landed in multiple cities, meeting with women who were looking to be ignited. After the dance, I approached her and said hello. She was immediately warm and friendly and we chatted for just a moment.

Since that sweaty Sunday, we’ve interacted a bit. I had a one-on-one FSS with her and joined her in Santa Fe for a Gail Larsen transformational speaking intensive, where seven of us ended up in a delectable hot tub while sharing stories of bits and pieces of our lives.

I know Danielle to be a generous woman. She inspires me. I learn from her and I know she has learned from me. How do I know that? ‘Cause she learns from everything she encounters and because she told me. She is generous that way.

Today is April 17th, 2012

Today is also the anniversary of my late-husband Gary’s death. It’s been 17 years – a long time. In the beginning, not too long after he died, I didn’t think I could get through my life without him. I really wondered. People told me I would get over it. I knew I never would. I wondered if that meant I would always be sad and depressed, with one foot in the other world.

I think of Gary often. We had a love that many long for. One thing I knew after he died was that I had been loved. I knew that beyond any doubt. That is a great gift. It’s as if there is no searching out there for that experience from another man. If I find it, bonus. What it did invite me to know was that I am that love inside me.

I have come to see

we don’t get over the things that happen in our lives, nor should we want to. Each and every thing that is offered to us ripens and seasons us.

This weekend I heard someone say, “Life doesn’t happen to us, it happens for us.” That offers us a big shift in perspective if we are willing to open to it.

I know when I was in deep grief, I didn’t have access to the ability to be with it all. The grief was too much. And, I know that when I’ve been in complete celebration, that has flooded my day.

Can we be with it all? Can we push none of it away, but rather receive it all into us? Can we celebrate with those who are celebrating and offer love to those who might be in pain?

Today is April 17th, 2012

What is this day for you? Is it a day of joy, a day of sadness or anger or despair? Is it just another day to tick-off the calendar? What kind of day is it for your neighbor? Your lover? That person you’re struggling to have compassion for?

There are benefits to remembering that life is the ultimate mashup. When we do we know what is here will pass. Sooner or later, it will pass. When we do we know life is rich in the many ways it presents itself. When we do we also can remember that all around the world people are going through an amazing array of kinds of days.

Life flows. It is impermanent. Yet, we are also here in bodies. Awake. Alive. Very much experiencing everything that is happening to us.

I can be thrilled for Danielle, deep in reflection on my late husband and the gifts he brought to my life, getting work done and packing to travel tomorrow. It is all happening right now in this spicy sweet soup of life.

What is this day for you?

I’d love to know. Please share by leaving a comment. What’s this day for you?

In my last post, Weaving a New World, I speak of telling a new story.

The story we’ve been living is not our own. It is one of conditioned behavior and beliefs. It is one of power over. It does not serve life – it attempts to dominate it.

This old story keeps us hiding our light, playing down our instinctive nature,Â not trusting our intuition. It keeps us ashamed of our sensuality and sexuality.Â It constantly reminds us that we can’t trust femaleness, either in ourselves or in other women.

This old story keeps us believing so many untruths. It keeps us in chains, so that our wildness remains tamed rather than free to express, create and love.

A new story

There is a fullness in all of life. It’s a power, a life force, a presence that simply can’t be put into words. There is no word, for words are removed from this fullness. Words are one-dimensional and this fullness is infinite.

This fullness is the new story.

This new story is a story of truth. When we tell our story, the truth of our experience, we are telling the story of life as it really moves and flows and loves.

The other day,

my friend and I were having an intimate conversation, both sharing things about ourselves and our lives that we’d not yet told each other. It was really lovely.

Then, my friend shared a deeper story, a story that was filled with an intimacy and vulnerability rarely shared in our world. The story had been kept close to her heart. It was tender. It was compelling.

As she began to speak, her body began to sway ever so slightly, her hands began to express what her words could not convey, her eyes closed as she felt into her story.

Words attempt to describe what we long to express, yet they cannot ever capture the experience itself. In watching her body tell the story, and in feeling her story in my body, I began to know the depths of what she was wanting to convey.

As she sat in silence once she was done, I spoke to her of the power of what she had shared, the powerful effect it had on me. I spoke to her of her brilliance and how compelling she was in her rawness and complete nakedness. I shared with her that her radiance was visible and palpable because of her vulnerability.

I watched as she heard what I was saying to her about the beauty of her soul. As she took in my words, her tears began to flow, as if something began to release in her.

The effect on me was profound. It felt as if the effect was profound on her, too.

I witnessed the struggle we go through to allow ourselves to acknowledge our sacredness, our beauty and worth. It was humbling to see how powerful our resistance is to acknowledging our own basic goodness. And, it was deeply moving to see, once again, how incredibly important it is for each of us to give the gift of witnessing and reflecting another woman’s beauty and worth.

How we long to relax into our own beauty.

How we long to settle into our sacredness.

How we long to trust what we know somewhere in the depths of our soul…that our sacredness is both exquisite and ordinary just as we are.

Despite what the old story tells us, vulnerability is powerful.

Despite what the old story says, telling another woman what you see in her, the beauty of the truth within her, doesn’t take anything from you, but rather is a powerful gift to both of you.

Despite what the old story says, when we tell our stories from our bodies, allowing the soul to speak in ways other than words, we begin to remember the deeper aspects and places of womanhood.

I’ve been lucky.

Not only did this friend offer herself as a mirror to me, I’ve had other friends willing to be this mirror, too. Women I know and love are willing to share with me what they see in me, and it’s had a profound effect on me, helping me grow into a woman with increased self-confidence and radiance.

While I’ve also had men who’ve loved me share with me, too, when women share something else comes alive. Things hidden that have been hidden are revealed. Things pushed into the dark have come into the light. A knowing of the feminine has come awake again in my cellular memory. And the light of the new feminine consciousness has grown just a little bit brighter.

When we trust ourselves, we can be mirrors to each other’s beauty. We can help each other remember what we believe we’ve forgotten.

This beauty also includes those things we don’t normally call beautiful. When someone reveals themselves, even in their anger and fear, sadness and grief, that is beauty, for we only really know true beauty when something or someone is real.

I know for me, each time I am invited into the holiness of a moment such as this, something previously hidden in me is revealed, for in these moments we are open to the grace that is always here.

Photo byÂ Alessandro Pinna.Â CC license -Â Â Some rights reserved