Last call!
to join the Center before the price increase
At the beginning of August, I wrote a piece to let subscriber mamas of trans-identified kiddos know that the price of the SMP community will go up significantly at the beginning of September. There are a few reasons for this, and you can read about some of them in that piece:
We’ve welcomed more new members this month than we have in some time, probably since the community launched in fall of 2022! The discussion just gets richer— challenging, even difficult at times—but always growth-oriented. And as ever, the wisdom and the support the moms share with each other continues to deepen and to transform experiences.
It’s difficult to measure the value of a growth-oriented community. Most of you have heard me call this circumstance “destabilizing.” I know it tests our sanity, and so many moms are doing their damnedest to just keep it together and keep functioning.
I had a dream the other night that seemed like it wanted me to remember how it feels to be victimized. I was cornered in a dark bathroom, and a large man was looming over me. I was using my arms to guard my head because he was going to beat me. This was going to happen and it was going to hurt and there was nothing I could do to prevent it.
I woke before the beating began. What I initially thought was, “oh I remember! That’s how it feels” when Life showers pain upon us and we can’t stop the circumstance from happening. I’m sure there was more my unconscious wants me to understand from this dream, and I’m still working on gleaning the messages. I also think it’s incredibly important for me to never forget just how helpless and cornered mamas feel when this arrives at our door.
What I want to remind you is that you didn’t do something to deserve this. It’s not karma, not punishment. It just is what it is. It was so interesting to learn through my Attachment Matters conversations with Rose that according to Dr. Neufeld, it’s a sign of immaturity to expect that Life will be fair. The painful truth is the opposite; and I’ve come to believe the lesson most of us need to learn is how to let tragedy break us open and force us to our knees.
What if Life is actually a quest? And being a mother is one of the main trials we’re meant to endure because what it will demand of us is exactly what we need to discover, in the words of Lisa Marchiano, “the treasure that lies within”? The butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, the coal forged into a diamond, the phoenix rising from the ashes, pick the alchemy metaphor you like best, it’s all the same message. It is through excruciating pain that we are transformed and attain the “riches” or wisdom that this Lifetime will grant us–if we’re opened to the process.
And what happens if we don’t open to it? I think this might be the real tragedy—when we let our grief consume us, dry us out, and we’re left dragging our bodies that have been drained of enthusiasm and vigor through the rest of our days.
One of our community members recently shared a link to Stephen Colbert interviewing Nick Cave about his new book, Faith, Hope, and Carnage and brand new “joyful and life-affirming” album, Wild God. They broach the subject of grief of which Cave is intimately acquainted having lost two of his sons. Here’s a rough transcript of his comments and Colbert’s response:
“I think that there’s a decision we need to make…there is a desire to turn inward and sort of wrap ourselves around the absence of the person that we’ve lost as if there’s some sort of nobility in (doing this) and I think this is a very dangerous mistake…we must be able to turn ourselves the other way and look at the world and understand that we are part of the world and that the world is essentially full of people who have lost things. And it is deeply understanding the sort of vulnerable, precarious nature of each of us; we need to understand that that is what we are. And I’ve found that by looking at the world in this way that I’ve found the world not as a cruel place but as an extraordinarily, systemically beautiful place to live in…there is joy and there is happiness that you could never believe was possible on the other side of grief. It’s the terrible truth about grief that ultimately you learn that you can feel joy in a way that you never thought you could.”
Colbert responds with the lines of a Leonard Cohen song that are meant to illustrate that “it is the drowning that frees us.” They go on to acknowledge that it is only through great pain that we earn this freedom. Cave says something like, “It is the devastation that we will all go through at some point that turns us from a half-formed human into one that is fully-formed.”
I love that Cave acknowledges that to talk this way to someone in the throes of grief is to enrage them. Indeed. I’ve enraged my share of readers I’m sure. If anger is coming alive in you as you read this, know that it’s normal and you’re not alone.
However, if that decision to let go of your grasping to what you’ve lost sits in front of you now, and you think you might be ready to open up to the exquisiteness of Life, I hope you listen to it. And I hope you find the environment, the people, and the tools that will serve you to this end.
This is what we work on at the SMP Center. The tools are meant to help you rise from the ashes, to emerge from the cocoon with stunning wings that can offer you a perspective previously unavailable to you. The mamas in there remind each other that this is what we come together around, helping each other gently to…
Just let go. Let go of how you thought your life should be, and embrace the life that is trying to work its way into your consciousness. -Caroline Myss
This week I’m celebrating the completion of 55 years of this precious Life by unplugging and heading out on a meandering camping trip to some beautiful places, with kayaks and foraging supplies, and of course, my amazing husband.
I share this to let you know that as of Wednesday, I won’t be able to process applications until my return early next week. I will honor the pre-September price for any submitted applications that hit my inbox by August 31 and are eventually approved. Here’s that application: bit.ly/SMPCenter
(If you get your responses in quickly, I may still be able to get you onboarded before I go. I have full faith in this incredible community of wise moms to welcome you in and offer you an experience that quickly feels new and different and better.)
Only you know whether the grief has completed it’s work on you. And you don’t have to wait until it’s finished to join us in the SMP, you just need to decide that you will be one for whom it transforms your experience into something brilliant and new and exquisitely beautiful.
Hoping you relax and truly enjoy time in nature with your husband!
Have a great trip!!