"But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ." – The Little Prince
Surrender doesn’t have to be an exasperated throwing up of your hands in despair, saying “I’ve give up.”
Surrender can be throwing your hands up in the air with a big “Yay!” I don’t have to figure everything out. I don’t have to do this alone!”
Because really, you can trust a Higher Power. Your mind just doesn’t know that. (Endless hours spent on decision-making, anyone?)*
Surrender is allowing yourself to be fully Loved, despite any stories your mind has come up with to stay otherwise.
Surrender is trusting that you are Love, and that Love is guiding you. That Love knows the way.
Surrender is letting Love more through you, fully.
Really, it’s an act of enlightenment. It’s an act of celebration.
****
*Okay, so why do you overthink and are relatively certain that you can’t trust an inner voice or Higher Power to guide you? Great question!
For many of us, Love, or a decision we made, was invalidated or in some way made bad, like it negatively affected our parents. This is a big wound Gabor Mate talks about…when a child becomes an emotional caretaker for a parent (https://youtu.be/tool-R8VJ2Y?si=IbY20B8dPBzasdYG). Anyway, what happens then is that we create a story, usually about ourselves, about how we were wrong and in some way defected, so then all of these voices (based on a multitude of various experiences) try to come in to help us make the best decision…and that’s how we end up feeling crazy. Parts work is a great way to start to unravel from all these voices, but also…meditating, belly breathing, or any activity that quiets the mind can help us “hear” (for me, its more of a felt sense then translated by the mind) our Inner Guide**.
** I know, I keep switching out Love, Higher Self, Inner Guide…go with what resonates for you.
Extra: It’s actually been really helpful for me to keep track of when I make a decision based on my mind vs one made from my heart, or intuition. I’ve often been amazed by some of the outcomes, which makes me want to trust it more…and it gives those “fear parts” some reassurance.
On cloudy days, we know the sun is always right behind the clouds. It hasn’t disappeared, we just can’t see it. The same thing goes for when our minds are clouded by negative thoughts. Our own inner light, as well as the light of Source, is always right there.
And so, our thoughts are like clouds. It is only the stories we tell ourselves, and allowing them to build up, that block us from seeing the sun. When we see a thought earlier on (you might catch the emotion first, then the thought), we can notice it without attaching too it, and allow it to pass, so the sun is still felt.
This, my love, takes practice. Sometimes, when you’re feeling cloudy, you might just simply have to remember you’re not thinking clearly, and take some deep breaths.
Your breath acts like the wind…breathe fully into the emotion (just the emotion, dropping the story), and let it begin to move with the exhale. Repeat.
If there’s no movement, the thought or belief might be stuck. That’s okay. Again, this takes practice. Wait until another time, when you’re feeling some light, to get curious about the belief and its orgin.
Remember, the sun is always shining.
Absolutely no pressure! But if you find my writing valuable and have an extra few bucks, you’re welcome to “buy Pacer a treat”: buymeacoffee.com/raynypaver
You must be willing to let go of any stories you’ve read about Her. Drop any preconceived notions about who she was and supposed to be, and allow Her to show you exactly who She is.
Anything else, and She won’t feel “safe” enough to reveal Herself to you. She will never abandon you, but She will only go where She knows she is accepted, where She is free.
****
*”Safe”, I agree, is an interesting word choice, but it’s the best word that came to me. She, the Divine Feminine, the Divine Mother, the Goddess, doesn’t really have a “fuck you” attitude, but She is- in how She shows up for me- fierce and graceful. So it’s not so much that she needs protection, but She’s not going to move in places where there is resistance to Her. Or, personally, if my mind is lending to the fear stories in my mind, I can’t hear Her.
**A little celebration: I, or a version of me I am transforming, is extremely indecisive. Last night, I got flustered and frustrated when I couldn’t choose what route I wanted to ski. But I tapped into a state of “knowing” (really, just telling myself “I am someone who knows and doing a quick 3 second I’m just going to decide (thank you Gabby Bernstein) exercises this morning, and I made the decision that my mind less approved of because it was the easier route, but I heard HER, just over that fear. And somehow, amazingly, I got to the trail just before the city workers did, who were plowing the road for the next mile because it was melting fast and they wanted to give the ski mobiles a little more time, allowing them to part at the next trailhead. But the awesome city work let me park my car in the road (I drove up a bit to drop my gear off and Pacer’s Supergirl Sled before planning on hiking back up), closed the gate behind me, and we had Cottonwood Road ALL TO OURSELVES! I really couldn’t have planned that better. So thank you, Divine Feminine /my intuition.
I’ve got at least 30+ years of them suppressed and repressed inside of me.
Not because of parents who didn’t care, just parents who weren’t there. Or maybe there, but didn’t know how to comfort an alien (re: very sensitive) child.
So now, it’s a fight. But I resist the urge to text an ex.
I simply breathe into the anxiety in my chest. “It’s just a feeling”, I tell myself.
Yet I can’t deny the glow of my phone and I give it one quick scroll.
Really, I’m hoping one of them, or anyone, messaged me first.
Really, I just want the attention.
I know it’s a drug, but my mind calls it love.
It’s a quick fix.
A yearning I’m trying to nix.
“They” say if I sit with this feeling, this anxiousness, this yearning- this fear- long enough, that eventually what I seek I shall find within me.
How much longer?
I am filled with faith and doubt. Hope laced with despair.
Self-love hasn’t been a thing since…
ever?
But I’ve been practicing. With a little parts work and some psycho ed, I’ve started to quiet the voices in my head.
I know “enoughness” is only a game the ego plays.
I understand the stages of development and early childhood programming, how unsupported emotions turn into stories that turn into nightmares. It’s all in the subconscious.
In theory, I understand it all.
But this yearning…
I continue to breathe. Being with myself, the good parent, the nurturing mom, as best I can. I allow my inner child to be as she needs. I don’t encourage her stories. I just offer her my presence instead.
And for tonight, that will have to be, enough.
I rest.
******
Most of us mistake attention for love, as attention to a child is being seen by a parent. And if a child is at least seen, they’re safe. Safe-ish. Which is why even negative attention is good, as it at least proves our existence. What most of us really wanted as a child is our parents or caregivers’ presence. Presence, in a way, is god-like. Presence, in pure form, is love. A child who cries and can turn to a parent in their vulnerable state and simply be held, regulated by the gentle rise and fall of their parent’s chest, feels safe, feels loved, and can process their emotion and move on without an emotion being trapped by a story the mind created to make sense of a situation. In psychotherapy, we usually call a child who received this regularly “securely attached.” The rest of us didn’t develop that way, not because we weren’t loved, but because our parents or caregivers were simply passing down what they learned, and most likely, were doing better than their parents did, or could do.
If you have this wound, there’s a good chance you continually find yourself in relationships with emotionally unavailable partners, or simply feel confused, hurt, and unseen when a relationship ends. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s an opportunity to go within and be your own healer. We, YOU, can heal all of this by “re-parenting” yourself with the unconditional love (some of your parts will refute this at first) you always deserved. One of the best steps I have found is simply to turn towards (as much as feels safe) an emotion as a witness (rather than attaching to it) and simply take deep breaths into the heart and belly. This isn’t a “one and done” thing. It’s a continual practice, allowing our inner child to trust us by repeatedly showing up for his/her/their needs and being the loving presence they have always deserved.
Sometimes, when it’s hard for me to have faith, when I don’t believe in God/Love/The Universe or that any Divine Being could ever really have my back, and I feel like I’m all alone in this world to figure everything out, I like to remember…
The sun is located at the exact distance away from the earth to allow for life, for me to breathe and the trees grow. Each day, the moon gently directs the ocean tides, pulling them in, pulling them out. In the spring, the rains will come, preparing the dirt for my favorite mountain wildflowers to bloom by summer. Each fall, the trees turn gold before letting go and the wildflowers will die and winter will come again. That every season, there is a the perfect cycle of rest, growth, thriving, and dying- and always an opportunity for rebirth. Each day, each year, brings perfect harmony between dark and light, allowing for that cycle to happen. And tonight, as the sun sinks down in the horizon, without me lifting a finger, the stars will come out to shine and say “hello”, reminding me that I am not alone. That somehow, through the destruction of a star mixing with the energy of light, with magic, and forged through the sacredness of my mother’s womb, I am here. I am here on this miraculous planet with mountains and rivers and canyons and deserts and birds and elephants and dogs and cows and sunsets and sunrises and people and animals to love and who love me too. And then I think, “Wow. I really am loved” and I don’t feel like I’m alone anymore.
(I of course remember too, that I have the best Pacer ever, a pure being who loves me unconditionally, and somehow, miraculously, we found each other in this big, crazy world-truly, states away-and on a path to me that didn’t really make sense, until it did.)
(Written from the perspective of the Divine Mother archetype)
I love you. I appreciate you. I am grateful that you’re here. I love all of my sons, my sons turned turned husbands, turned fathers.
But I never wanted, never needed, you to fight for me. I love you too much to ask you to pick up a gun. I only wanted you to choose me. I only wanted you to vote for me.
I forgive you.
May you be released of your pain and any guilt or shame you may carry. I know you did not want to kill your brother, your sister, your father, or me, your mother. Anger and self-hate clouded your vision, and I know you could not see. Release your burden. I hold you in no blame. You are my son (my child) and for you, I only have love.
Your anger, it is sacred- but it must be processed. The pain beneath it, witnessed. Only then you can align yourself with love and take divinely- led action.
An ask for you…
Please forgive your earthly mother. I know she hurt you and denied you of her, a mother’s love. She was doing her best to survive in a world built by men, a world that said you must be turn and must not feel. Perceiving she had lost her power, she tried to reclaim what was remained by playing your father’s game. She gave you the little love she could when she was lost herself, deprived of the same love in which you craved.
Please forgive your father. He had to be distant in the absence of himself, for when we forget the feminine, we all suffer. Or, if he too, was angry, please forgive him… he too was acting out in his own grief, the loss of what he most desired: a mother’s love.
My child, you have been taught you were unworthy, the result of fear trying to erase me. But I am always here. I am always ready to hold you in my arms, ready to bring you back home to what has always been yours. Give me your sins, your fear, your wrong-doings, and your pain. I will take them from you and transmute them. I will return you to what is yours, but was never truly lost, only pushed away and forgotten. A mother’s love. Fierce and unconditional.
I love you, always.
Your Divine Mother
*****
We are living in a world where the Divine Feminine has been erased out of history books, including spiritual texts, texts that saw women in positions of power and leadership. Mary, mother of Jesus, is recognized in the bible for little more than her “purity” and birthing Jesus, excluding the fact that she herself was most likely a high priestess. Sexual creatures or not (minus the “not”), it is women that will always birth the light. Then we have Mary Magdalene, most likely Jesus’s most “beloved” disciple, possibly partner/wife, and high priestess, but whose role was greatly reduced in the hand-picked passages of the bible (in 1969, the Catholic Church admitted that it had “been mistaken” for calling Mary Magdalene a sex worker- although this version was still portrayed in the 90s while when I attended Catholic school.) Still, we must consider why the church repeatedly found it so important diminish, or make bad, the act of sex. These are just two of the well known examples in the “land of many.” But the point is… when we rob the world of the Divine Feminine, there will be no peace, we will not be whole. In Her removal of our story, many of us have not experienced divine, unconditional love, resulting in a split from ourSelves, Spirit and ego*. This separation is the source excruciating pain. In attempt to diminish this pain, the ego paradoxically turned on itself, further cementing its identity. And so, our first step into bringing Her back is realizing, no matter what (non) gender you are, She is within all of us, and we can all embody the Divine Mother archetype anytime we so choose… we just have to be willing to choose it.
(It would also be worth writing about the Divine Father, which I will defer here for length. What I can say is that the Divine Father being revealed will be a natural cause of the Divine Mother being remembered and accepted. These two divinities co-exist in union, and when one is hidden, the other is also turned into a shadow, hence why the shadow or “toxic” side of the masculine is now at the forefront of our world at large.)
*****
If you are a military veteran (whom I recognize as various genders), I 100% understand why you would feel defensive around this post. Without elongating my story, I imagine I would be too, being in your position. However, it is always worthy to question why we feel defensive when there is no real threat posed…I’m a 5’4″ psychotherapist who does not, and will not, own a gun. My mission is to preach (real) Love, which, along with the voices of others, will hopefully one day result in war no longer being a consideration as a way to handle conflict. My goal is to remind you that your are infinitely, profoundly, Loved.
Well before Salem, women have been feared for their power. They have been called liars, labeled hysterical, and been accused of dark magic.
History repeats.
Isn’t it time we ask ourselves why we are afraid of women who stand in their power?
Why we conjure stories to diminish her gifts?
To come to any truth, we must go beyond collective believes and into the depths of the human psyche…
****
At its core, a woman’s power is her fierce love. Her ability to see through hate, deceit, illusion, and most of all, fear.
This is a love most of us have forgotten or been denied because of the separateness we’ve been sold. So instead of being faithful to Love we’ve been slaves to fear, power hungry or powerless, distant from the real power within. This is the Mother Wound, a wound so gaping yet unconscious in most of us that we do just about anything in attempt to fill it, unknowingly giving more of our power away to external forces that can never truly fill our perceived loss. Because of our pain, we turn on Her. Yet we are all Her. And so we deny ourselves what is within us, the Love that will fill us whole.
Remember, the feminine power is Her fierce love. There is nothing she cannot love. We can only resist it.
Why do we fear Her power? Because Her power can, and will, change the world.
I am a protector of innocence. A warrior of Love. A guardian of beauty. A defender of Truth.
You’ll never see me touch a gun, but I will slay with my heart. My ability to see you through your fear, the only sword I need. My armor, the denial of hate.
I stand for what man tried to take from me, came close but failed. I was simply poisoned, and entered a deep slumber, awakened by my own sweet kiss.
I refuse to go to war, but I’ll throw my body over a child, protecting what is real from your lies. Kill me first, and as my body fades, you’ll remember too: Only love exists.
I am a protector of the innocent.
****I wrote this poem shortly after an experience I had where I did not defend myself, my own innocence and love. I played into the “bro culture” pretending I was being the “fancy” one for requiring vegan food. This, at least, is a step above my high school self trying to fit in. Now, these weren’t bad guys whatsoever…I simply, unconsciously, stepped into a role that I needed to see and ask myself “Where do I not protect my own heart?”
This also got me thinking about what I find sexiest in a man. Brute force, acting cool, big muscles, and guns…definitely do not. But I am highly attracted to men who are willing to use their intellect to protect their heart and the hearts of others, to see and feel their own innocence and be guardians of it, the divine masculine standing alongside the divine feminine (energies that are inside all of us).
I woke up from a dream, or perhaps nightmare is the more accurate word, slightly after 12 am on May 4th.
I was in a war zone. The building we were in was no longer a building, the grey bricks only a few feet high. Sparks, debris, and shrapnel flew freely in.
My mother tried to protect me. She laid her body over mine, a small and slender child. I knew we weren’t safe. That her body, hugging mine, would simply get hit first. It was likely that we would both die. Now or later, I wasn’t sure. At the same time, I felt her love inside the shelter of her body over mine. I felt her desperation, trying to protect her daughter, me. I could tell she knew it was probably hopeless too, but she held onto that sliver of hope. And somehow in that, in her love, I felt safe.
Soldiers walked in over the bricks and through the smoke. And, while I know this is simply how my brain put this together and most likely not how it actually works, they shot at cannons to make them fire off into the distance. They didn’t look at us. Their faces remained ambivalent and frozen. I couldn’t tell if they were trying to protect us, kill us, or just didn’t care. I didn’t know whose side they were on. But that’s kind of how protecter parts work…
*While I’ll use Internal Family Systems language, archetype, identities, etc. can often be interchanged.
It’s kind of hard to see what they’re protecting. Another protector, another defense mechanism, the cynic protecting the anger, the ego, or the exile, the inner child within? I think some, at least the soldiers in my head, just forget. They forget what side they’re on and they just do the job they’ve been programmed to do.
In therapy, we say there are no bad parts. They’ve all learned how to do their job to protect an innocent part when there was no caregiver to protect them or help them feel and experience their emotions, to help the child feel loved even though they were sad, angry, or simply in pain. Even the addictions, even the suicidal thoughts… they’re just trying to protect us from more pain, trying to. make us feel better when we don’t know any other way. Every shadow side has a light side. The inner critic, a cheerleader. The judge, a compassionate leader. On the spiritual side, some teachers and texts simply teach to notice but not attach to the (unhealthy) ego and all its voices of fear. We might not be able to stop the thoughts, but we don’t have to give them our energy (power). When we practice this long enough, the voices of shame, guilt, unworthiness, and hate get quieter, giving us a chance to notice the subtle but ever-present voice of Love.
And so, to further our dream interpretation, I’ll provide a framework. I was taught dream interpretation as a graduate student at Naropa University by Katie Asmus, one of the leaders in the field of wilderness therapy and owner of the Somatic Nature Therapy Institute. She taught me and my cohort that in dreams, a part of us is represented in each person, animal, or even object that stands out. In this view, dreams are symbolic, offering us views into parts of ourselves that are often subconscious in everyday life. I also believe that in dreams, especially nightmares, our psyches are actually helping us play out and process fears so we don’t have to in waking hours. I will add that, even though it’s often hard for me to see, I’ve heard from multiple people that I am often guarded and protective. I rarely see how my fears play out (the voice of it can sound very rational) until after everything (ie, a relationship) has been destroyed.
During the dream, I felt most of my presence in the little girl. My innocence, my unbridled love and joy for the world and other people, was being threatened. And yet…
Stepping into the role of mother, I feel (moving into first person here) a deep, fierce love for the child curled under me. Yet I am also human, so I try to regulate my nervous system, hoping my child doesn’t feel my fear. I know she is a sensitive child, so even if she feels my fear, let her know that she is loved… A sacrificial love, willing to do anything to keep the innocent child alive. But even if we both die, she must know that she is loved. And that will be all that matters.
The soldiers I have, in part, already examined. Yet stepping into their shoes, I feel lifeless. I’m just doing what I’m told, having forgotten what I’m fighting for. I gently sense the presence of the mother and little girl, but I try not to see them. It might make me crack. So I fire bombs. Bombs at other men, who are most likely just like me. I am hopeless. I don’t care if I get hit anymore or die in this war. I’m tired. I just want the war to end.
The cannons and bombs, perhaps, represent my anger. The anger that I actually rarely feel, besides the shame and self-loathing I feel for myself. Maybe I should let it out a little more. Maybe I should defend the little girl. She doesn’t deserve to live in a gray world full of shadows. Blowing things up might not be the answer, but fighting for Love? I’m not sure exactly what that means. How do you fight for Love with Love? Without killing and without dying? But maybe, maybe there is a way…
Ah, I won’t let the darkness of the mind kill the light within.I will protect her from the voices of fear and attack thoughts in her head.This is the Mother’s role.
The almost non-existent building… God, I hope this is my mind. My ego. The structure I’ve created around myself is crumbling. It’s never really protected me anyway. It’s never kept the fear or sadness out. It’s really only made me hate myself and be scared of the world I walk in, the world I’ve made. The walls were always a false sense of protection anyway.
Now that I look back…
The mother and daughter…the fierce loving protector and the innocent child. They are covered in dust and ash. Yet they are otherwise left untouched. But maybe it doesn’t matter, because that little girl knew she was loved. And love is the ultimate protection. She rises.
A Dog and Her Girl 