Entering the sacred through yourself: Saturday, Jan. 24, 2015

The Women Healing Women program is claiming its new name,  so reserve your spot and mark your calendar for our Women Awakening Women retreat on Saturday, Jan. 24.

It’s an all-day event this year.  Since new beginnings come after something has ended, you’ll explore how you’ll shape your coming year, seeded by this question:

What is ending now for me, and what is coming into being?

As I’ve been preparing for the retreat, some questions have been weaving in and out of my reflections:

 What is it about that habit that stopped serving you so long ago — and yet still has you hooked?

 What wants to awaken in you now about this hurt, this sorrow?

 What is it telling you that you are ready to hear?

 What wants to be healed?

 If there was a way to unwind this habit of thinking, feeling and acting, wouldn’t you want to know about it?

For more than 21 years, women have given themselves many powerful experiences in the Women Healing Women group program. As we step into the new year with a refreshed name and purpose, we’ll sustain the most valuable parts of this history.

A tradition I’ll be continuing is our annual retreat. This year’s Women Awakening Women retreat is an intimate, rich experience for saying goodbye to what was — and greeting what is emerging for you next.

One of the most extraordinary experiences of the group’s rich heritage began innocently enough. It’s an example of the power of women  to transform their pain and sorrow into aliveness, contentment, peace, purpose.

A group member shared an experience, and she began to cry. Another reached out with a box of tissues.

Innocently enough.

You might think, “No big deal.”  Anyone would do that, reach for a box of tissues when someone cries.

After all, for most women, helping is so second nature that it occurs without questioning.

In this case, though, something more wanted to be revealed about this habit of helping. And these women’s commitment to each other and their willingness to dive beneath the surface of their automatic reactions led to amazing rewards.  I won’t say who was there, because you know who you are!

The group considered questions like these:

 How does your reaching to help someone else effect you?

 How does it impact the one you want to help?

 When you ask for help, what are you seeking?  Comfort?  Rescue? Understanding? Avoidance?

 When you offer to help someone, how do you know if you are truly helping?

 Are you willing to pause and check out your motivation first (as Ram Das and Paul Gorman encourage in the book, How Can I Help?).

 When someone seems to need help, does it mean that you know what to offer?

 What might be the rewards of containing your desire to help?

That night in group, from that innocent gesture of reaching for a box of tissues, the members of the group  transformed.  The question of what motivated the helper, the experience of the person who was crying and what she wanted in the moment, the feelings of everyone in the room about the crying, about the helping, all arose from the hidden realms to the surface.

What they didn’t know became known.  What they assumed to be true was revealed as something else they hadn’t considered.

Discomfort with someone’s crying. Powerlessness to ease the sorrow. Pressure to fix the situation or the person. Uncertainty about whether to reach out. Anxiety about perceptions of others if one doesn’t try to help. Seeking approval by volunteering to help. Recognition that sometimes our actions can hinder more than help. Wanting to be held, or to not have to respond when someone tries to help. Multiple layers.

Don’t you deserve to have a taste of this kind of experience?  CLICK HERE to attend the retreat.

Out of that circle came an awakening that has been carried forward to this day.

Your place in the circle matters. When you offer to help and when you don’t.

Your place in the circle matters.  Who you are, just the way you are, is valuable.

You matter. You don’t need to do anything to be worthy.

As 2014 comes to its close, the Women Awakening Women retreat is a time and place to attend to what matters in your life, what matters for you — and in you.

This year, as the group enters a new phase with a new name, you can ask yourself:

What wants to awaken in me next?  REGISTER HERE for this awakening retreat before Jan. 5 and get a 25% discount off the regular cost.