Who Are You Now? When Everything Changes..

I get a lot of emails from women.. some I know, many I don’t. And now more than ever, as I think all of us are aware, people are going through big changes. Unexpected changes, huge losses, major changes in circumstance. The kinds of things described as “something I never expected to happen to me”. And then it does. And there is no way to predict exactly who these events happen to.

When 2012 began a little over a year ago, it appeared to me, that many of us were being faced with the exact thing we were most afraid of. Those things were suddenly in our face. People were dealing with major losses and tragedies and lives were changing on a dime.. things were one way in the morning.. and could be completely different by nightfall. Time was moving that fast. Caroline Myss has talked about the changing nature of time a lot the last few years and in my studies with her, it’s sharpened my own awareness. And how it’s not personal, it’s cosmic. Things are changing.

Mostly what I wanted to write about today was in response to an email I got this morning about somebody who was experiencing a major change in circumstance. My sense of these events, having gone through enough of them myself, and having consulted and counseled many women through these transitions is that yes, making the changes and adjustments is hard. Of course it is. Part of us goes into shock. There are stages.

But what seems to be the bigger challenge is finding a way out of the shame, the self-judgment, the looking over one’s shoulder to see if we could have sidestepped some  part of the unraveling along the way. There is often a sense of humiliation. Of being exposed.. at not being able to sustain a social or public version of ourselves that we have worked so damn hard to craft.. and ultimately unable to keep up. What will everyone think? Who are we without the ..(fill in the blank)?

We don’t really know. We are lost. Because at some point we got caught in the illusion that we were that car.. that house, that marriage, that job, those trappings (such a good word, really..) for all that we created to represent ourselves in the world.

A dear friend of mine called 2012 the “year of the humbling”.. and would say “the humbling is upon me/us”…I loved that, because it was so true that I had to smile and because naming anything brings it down to size and allows us to find a way to both manage and learn from what’s happening. It keeps us conscious and able to find both the lessons and the compassion needed to keep it from crushing us.

Sometimes these losses, or changes of circumstance, although we can’t always see it at exactly the moment it’s happening, are the things that grow us into our next improved form. We’ve shed a layer of false-self.. of pride, of ego that keeps us from truly knowing who we are and what we’re here to do. We come into a place where fear has less of a grip on us because we’ve moved through a passage that we were previously so afraid of, that we become more powerful.. more free.. having made passage.

Having faced and survived some of these things, we really are more free. Lighter, able to become more wholly ourselves without the baggage of trying to sustain what was never meant to be the main event. Never meant to be how we defined ourselves or our true work here in the world. Something which may have in fact gotten in the way. It’s hard to know this when we’re in the thick of it, caught in the keeping up. Easier when something separates us and lets the vision clear. So is it Divine Order? I don’t know.

I was listening to a newer CD of my beloved Caroline Myss on the way home from a dinner last night. I was alone in the car, my husband at home waiting for me, having left my Mom during an intimate and loving, yet painful dinner, talking about my brother Sam who died last summer. I was both stirred and soothed as always by Caroline’s words.. this time on the CD “Divine Rebels”. She was offering the words to a prayer for us to use.. the words were something like “God.. bring me deep so I can know the reason that I was put here on the earth”. She was suggesting this as a prayer to begin meditation or reflection. I may not have gotten the words exactly right but it brought tears to my eyes. The sentiment of knowing what was real, what was true.. to ask and be shown what was the essence of my Divine Identity (one of my favorite terms from another teacher whom I dearly loved).

And so if you, like many, like me.. are going through changes that have shaken your world and you feel as if sometimes you are alone… Or that you feel humbled, or even humiliated.. If you feel lost and afraid and can’t imagine what’s next..first of all you are not alone. This is a time of huge change, enormous shake-ups and losses and our loved ones seemingly leaving the planet at alarming rates. And as trite as this feels to write it, we are in it together. And our hearts are big and want to connect.. from a place of true seeing and knowing of each other. No need to hide.. let yourself be seen, and loved and known, wherever you are and whatever is changing. We are being asked to become something else now, called to rise to something different.

My love to you…

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