Blame the moon!
This full moon has definitely been illuminating in many ways, shining a light into the shadows and, as always, bringing up fears and the opportunity to surrender to them. It has brought up a limiting belief too that has been awaiting release.
I could feel it building all week, and with bad weather predicted and a Sark retreat to run I just had a feeling that the moon was going to make me face my fears around cancelling. I made extra time to meditate this week so that I could really feel into it and look at my fears and what underlaid them. I realised that there is only one way to manage a situation like this and it is to surrender to it, a little like when my waters broke six weeks early on the October full moon while leading a retreat on Herm and Eben arrived a few days later by Caesarean section.
Me and retreats, we have a history, they provide a golden opportunity not only to me but to my fellow retreat goers too, to look at our fears and our patterns and potentially let them go. I don’t know that I’ve ever run a retreat that has been utterly painless or gone totally smoothly, they all bring with them a potential drama or issue, whether that be the weather, the boat, the hotel, the food and/or the student, there is always something that encourages me to surrender. This one was no different and I was remarkably calm when Sark Shipping finally told me they were cancelling (this after they had told virtually everyone else!) because I knew it was inevitable and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it but surrender!
A limiting belief around motherhood also came up too, and I have a feeling that this may have been in the field as I know I am not alone. I could feel this creeping in during the week too, but I wasn’t able to give voice to it or understand what was happening until the clarity came today with the moon. I stared to feel old feelings around lack of worth and this in relation to my role in the world. I began to doubt the work I do and my choice to let go of titles and patterns of over work and over achieving in my quest to live my dream of being a more present mother to my children.
I ignored this dream for many years through fear that it would never become a reality and I threw my creative energy into my work and making money, in the finance sector initially and then in the holistic realm as I wanted to share my passion for yoga and healing with others. I gave everything I had and fell into a pattern of over work and exhaustion, which had always been my way, as if proving my worth through working and earning money.
Then the children finally came along and not without a bit of effort and yet still, with the first one, I continued to throw myself into my work because this is what I had been conditioned to do, by my education and by society if I hoped to be seen as a successful woman. Yet this made me ill. I was trying to be all things to all people and my eldest child was growing up without me being truly present, always in the office or running off to teach yoga.
When the second one came along, and this after a failed IVF round which made me appreciate the fragility of life a little more, I decided I wanted to step up as a mother, but even then the patterns had been set and I got dragged back into the office and working and trying to be all things until my body made me aware that this couldn’t continue, but I didn’t know how to change things.
Then life intervened and my eldest suffered with separation anxiety at school which presented me with little choice but to step up and be a much more present mother. It took a bit of getting used to because I hadn’t realised how much of my identity and worth was tied up in my role as a company secretary where I could command a fairly decent salary and have people take me (relatively) seriously.
It’s ironic in many respects because as a career girl I used to judge those mothers who chose to stay at home, and those who worked but whose priority was their children. I had been sold the idea that to be a successful woman in this day and age, I needed to take my work seriously and put the needs of the business before both my children’s needs and my needs but I slowly started to wake up to this and the illusion I had been sold.
I started to notice how no one questioned the way in which we women are expected to be all things, how women were actively encouraged to put their children into childcare so that they could carry on working, women forced to stop breastfeeding, not because they wanted to, but because it impractical to continue once they returned from maternity leave and this sometimes after a mere 3 months.
Understandably many women have no choice, they have mortgages and bills to pay and they need to work. This was one of the reasons that I felt the pressure to return to work 3 months after having my eldest, but actually we could have coped. The reason I returned was because I didn’t know that I had a choice, it was what we women did, we had children and then (on the whole) we returned to work.
I needed to earn money for the sake of earning money, I needed a career for the sake of having a career. I did all this because everyone else was doing it and it was expected of me. I did it because I expected to keep doing it. What was the point in all my education and professional training if I just gave up and stayed at home with my children? It just wasn’t even something I seriously considered; I was sold the notion that I would go mad, become brain dead, if I just stayed at home with my children.
It’s sad really, that we women have been conditioned to believe that we don’t have a choice. Some may well not have a choice and I am sorry about that; sorry that we live in a society where so little value is placed on the role of the mother in raising her young children herself if she chooses. I appreciate that not everyone wants to be with their children, and that is their right and choice too, it’s hard work and I was grateful for the distraction of work on many occasions!
Usually I don’t question the choice I have since made, to give up title and accumulation of wealth in exchange for more time spent with my children, but clearly there is something unresolved within me about it for it to have come up on the moon. I knew it was around feelings of self-worth but it wasn’t until today that I realised that this was in relation to my role as mum.
We finally watched Social Dilemma last night and this helped me to see some of the light. I saw so clearly the dark side of capitalism and how much suffering it creates in its pursuit of the accumulation of wealth above all else. This is partly the reason the earth is in such a mess and humanity too, that we sell out on that which is important in our pursuit of happiness=wealth=success.
We know on a very basic level that this is not true, that wealth does not create happiness, yet we spend our lives trying to accumulate it anyhow and always at a cost. We equate money to success. It is very difficult to value motherhood, how can we measure it? And it’s this that makes it so tricky, when we have grown up in a society which is always trying to evaluate everything and put it in its place, even my six year old is evaluated on the speed at which he can answer sums to 10; its ingrained from a very young age.
Today I see this pattern so clearly and the extent to which society has lost its way. But I also know how difficult it is to make the change, to go against the flow of things because something inside you tells you that it is not the way for you, to follow like a sheep, but this brings up fear because the way you are choosing is not known, it is not certain, it has no definite outcome, it is of the heart and soul and of trusting in that and having faith.
Keeping our faith high, and trusting in that little voice inside is not easy. This moon has made that very clear. But there really is no other way, not really, not if we are trying to live with integrity. It was this that struck me the most watching Social Dilemma, the way in which those humane IT guys live with integrity, and this gives me hope for the future of humanity. It also made me realise how easy it is to buy into the illusion and how we have to be really mindful about this.
It is easy to convince ourselves that our actions are OK because everyone else is doing them. I know I’ve been kidding myself about that and air travel for a while now, justifying it somehow and yet knowing that it is not a sustainable way to travel, and in conflict with my other efforts to live more sustainably and with respect for the planet. There are many ways that we kid ourselves and buy into the illusion that its all OK.
Social media is a prime example of this. I have been going on about it for months now and you can just imagine my joy that others are now taking note as a result of Social Dilemma. No doubt many will watch it and know they need to do something, but will continue to bury their heads in the sand because they will continue to buy into the illusion that this is the way that the world works now, this is the way to stay connected, the way to run a business, and the way to be someone.
But hopefully if enough of us find a different way, let go of the need for titles and the notion of ‘being someone’ and the idea of the happiness=wealth=success paradigm then things might change more positively. As for the over work and over achieve pattern, I can see this still so clearly rooted in the fear of not being good enough, of not being enough, of not being useful to society and of not living a life of purpose. Yet what could be more fulfilling or give my life more purpose or be of more value for society than me nurturing, watching, listening to and meeting the needs of my children? Let alone me meeting my own needs, that I have recognised too.
This one of meeting our genuine needs requires a paradigm shift, meeting the needs of our children and ourselves, of genuine connection and simple living. It’s back to basics, coming full circle, knowing where our food comes from and having time to prepare it into a nutritious meal for our family, of re-prioritising and realising what is important, of valuing motherhood, of taking responsibility for our physical, mental and emotional health and looking after ourselves and our planet and saying no to anything that compromises any of this, including our own fears.