Go ladies with "little ones"!

Reread my last blog post and thought, "maybe I came off sounding a little harsh on the ladies with little ones". Perhaps it was all my own projection. 

When I had "little ones", and I did, about a million years ago, I was desperately running around trying to make it all work. Perhaps young women today have more zen about juggling and are relaxing into their mother roles. But I didn't sleep or stop running. I was fraught with getting it right. Women of the sixties and seventies had fought hard for the right to work at a profession AND have children. We wanted more to live for…. like an income and a retirement pension, a sense of autonomy and meaning. But at times it was unraveling.

I didn't live happily ever after. I got divorced. My children were only two and a half and four when we separated. I'd given up a budding business for the "security" of a paying job. I drove an hour to work, dropping my kids before sunrise at Kindercare where they ate a lot of Mac and cheese provided in the meal plan. It's what I could afford.

In the end, I got laid off. Thank God. No, seriously! Thank God!  Because that's when the "Spirit" made it on screen. I had volunteered to accompany a girlfriend to church (a place I never went) because her soon-to-be ex would be there and she didn't want to go alone. I don't remember her being religious.  I think it was just spite. 

Anyway, I went. After two weeks she converted to Sunday Bloody Mary brunches but I kept going.

My ex had the boys on Sunday's so church-going was a mercifully quiet experience.  No running. No juggling! Just the opportunity to be with my not-so-peaceful mind. The possibility of “ grace”. 

I adored the Maine-bred recovering alcoholic minister, Bill.  On Wednesdays I'd come in from what-ever my next job was for some "spiritual reflection" with him. Oh good!  Free therapy! As he smoked his pipe, I told him about my anxiety fraught life. We prayed.   

Then one day I knew it was time to give up the padded suits and get with God. I applied and was accepted to a seminary.  And I went with my kids in the wagon. Not to Vermont but to Boston. And that's another story. Go ladies with "little ones"!

Fiona Horning

Sistering!

If you want to be having your socks knocked off about the crazy/hilarious/ poignancy of being a woman then you ought to be listening to Glennon Doyle Melton. She's talking to anyone who will listen and hugging you too!  A recovering alcoholic and bulimic she's found her voice in the world of recovery and spirituality through her acid, self deprecating humor and simultaneous compassion.

Sacred Threads hosted Melton on July 1, 2015.  Two hundred and fifty plus women packed into St Julia Parish Hall in Weston, Massachusetts to meet this diminutive spiritual leader. "We should have rented the Garden", said Marie Labollita, co-founder of Sacred Threads.  "The tickets sold out in two hours".

This is generally the case when Melton comes to town. Founder of the online community at Momastery.com and author of Carry on Warrior; The Power of Embracing Your Messy Beautiful Life, Melton is reaching out and impacting the lives of women juggling young children and the spiritual questions that confront them. 

Melton's sobriety is based on her ability to tell the truth. "I miss booze like people miss people who beat them up and leave them for dead", she says. Her story is not easy to hear and nor is her ongoing battle for sobriety. Over a decade ago, hung over and holding a positive pregnancy test, she heard God calling her back to life. She married the father of her first child Chase and had two more kids. Now what?  She decided she needed a place like a monastery where she could find community and some peace; " an intentional community with better rules".  

Forming Momastery.com she says her rules are:

 "write like shame was something I never heard of;

treat everyone with respect;

and maintain an online posture of arms completely wide open".  

She refers to her "bathroom floor moments" and the clarity she has gained about God: that in God's acceptance of her " there's nothing that could make God love her more or less".  This is a powerful message to women struggling with their identity. Smart women who have or had high expectations of themselves.  Women, who, after producing two or three "little ones" may be wondering what the heck their lives are about as they change diapers, obsess over whether they'll ever get back into their size 8 slacks and crave a conversation with a sympathetic woman. 

Asked by Sacred Threads moderator, Maria DiLorenzo, " What do you want women to know about each other"? Melton replied, "We are lonely because all the surface stuff in our lives looks different.  But twelve layers deep we're all the same."  Describing the carpentry practice of supporting load bearing walls with other walls, she asks gleefully, "guess what it's called?  Sistering!!"

"We all need each other".

Fiona Lovell Horning

Sharing ourselves

I never ceased to be amazed and saddened by all that lies behind the smiles, smart looks and other facades so many women project. Beneath the surface there is so much pain, suffering, grief, guilt and negative emotions and experiences which weigh us down. All of this is compounded by the extraordinary effort it takes to hide these feelings and assume an air of composure, as if we 'have it all together!'

Why do we tend to act in this way? Are we afraid of the truth, or of other people's reactions ...or does it go beyond that to our deep fear of ourselves?

These were some of my many ponderings after listening to Glennon, in the company of wonderful women, on July 1. Their thirst for the truths she shared was palpable:

·         the reassurance that we are deeply loved by God, just as we are;

·         the desire to create a more just world and to allow every voice to be heard;

·         our ability to be compassionate to others, and, of course,

·         our need to be vulnerable and to share.

If Sacred Threads can offer you any strands to strengthen your lives as you journey through life, that would be our privilege. We don't have all the answers, but we are willing to walk together with those who seek greater wholeness.

Perhaps Marianne Williamson says it best :

"The only way to gain power in a world that. is moving too fast is to learn to slow down.

            And the only way to spread one 's influence wide is to learn how to go deep.

The world we want for ourselves and our children will not emerge from electronic speed

            but rather from a spiritual stillness that takes root in our souls.

Then, and only then, will we create a world that reflects the heart instead of shattering it."

 

RM