An Introduction from Robyn.
At twenty-three (in 1963) I found myself teetering at the edge of an emotional precipice. The merciless scourging of a vitriolic, hate-filled inner-critic relentlessly ripped gaping holes in the fabric of anything I did or thought. The more I kept trying to do things that would prove myself worthy to her, the more furiously she found fault with me. The pain, struggle and exhaustion from dealing with this “Hatchet Lady’s” poisonous litanies had become too much to bear. Ending my own life seemed the only way to silence her at last. I stood at the threshold of choosing that relief.
A very dear man friend intuited my plan. Mort intervened in a deeply caring way and helped support me to make the decision to try therapy. Knowing that I was already prepared to “check out” gave me the courage to take the huge risk of perhaps discovering that therapy (seemingly my only option besides suicide) might not be of any help. Taking that risk began the long, deep, intense and often circuitous healing journey that has been my life for the past 42 years.
Some 20 years into the journey, despite many healing transformations, I found myself once again profoundly devastated. Once again at the precipice seriously contemplating leaving this life. At this edge, I found my own way to doing some–mostly non-verbal–work with a gifted creative arts therapist. In a fantasy process we did together called awake dreaming to music, I met the exuberant, vibrant little one inside me. The sweet and lovable being I’d been before all the miseries of my childhood had taken their toll on my spirit. I immediately fell totally in love with this precious, juicy, irresistible creature! As she touched my heart, a ferocious warrior of a Mommy sprang up inside of me. This Mommy-Inside emerged instantaneously as her unconditionally loving guardian. A guardian fiercely protective of her tender, vulnerable and dear self. It was the most profound turning time in my entire life, both till and since then.
In that moment I began the part of my journey that has been transforming me at the cellular level. In these past twenty some odd years since that watershed meeting, I’ve dedicated my life to re-mothering that little self. And, as well, to re-mothering all the different aged similarly damagingly mothered selves that came after her in time. This re-mothering has been both the center and the purpose of my entire existence since that moment.
In this amazing process, I’ve been both supported and sustained by an ever-deepening connection with the Sacred Feminine. The Sacred Feminine speaks in and to me/us though my/our connection with Nature, with the wildness of the natural world. It has awakened, through that connection, a sense of the powerful, immanent presence of the Great Mother (Spirit). And, it has awakened, too, the felt presence of a tribe of zany, eldering foremother spirits that I’ve come to know as the Grandmothers.
The Great Mother and the Grandmothers have been my cheerleaders and my parenting coaches. Consistently they bring me to know and understand and live in ways that provide the conditions necessary to nourish and grow healthy, vibrant selves. They have taught me how to embrace and transmute the “Hatchet Lady’s” energy, how to de-fang and de-claw her so that she no longer trashes me or my life. Over these years they have gifted me with songs, chants, poems drawings and some 58 “Loving Reminders of the Great Mother’s Voice.” (The Rememberings and Celebrations Card Deck.) Receiving these gifts, incorporating their truths and sharing them with others, I have come to live a very different life than that which I was raised to live.
In my life now it’s always okay for me to be exactly how and where I may be in any moment. Because I’m always doing the best I can in that moment, even when I’m not my most shining, “together” self. It’s always okay to love myself, to be kind and tender and gentle with myself no matter what anyone else thinks or says about me. No matter how still-stumbling and far from “perfect” I may be. It’s always okay to feel however I’m feeling and to make safe space to feel all my feelings. It’s always important to listen to the message in my angry, mean-spirited feelings–they tell me something important about what not-good-for-me is going on. It’s always okay to trust my belly-body feelings–they tell me the truth of what’s so for me. It’s always okay for me to feel my fears (and to comfort my fearful self) even when “there’s nothing to be afraid of.” It’s always okay to go only as fast as the slowest part of me feels safe to go. Resting is always and deeply sacred, as urgent, productive, honorable and necessary as any other regular part of living.
In Go Only as Fast as Your Slowest Part Feels Safe to Go, I wrote of tales from my earlier life. Each of many of those tales provided the backdrop for one of the messages in the 58 Loving Reminders of the Great Mother’s Voice (The Rememberings and Celebrations Cards). Other of the tales provided narratives of some part of the journey as I traveled it in those earlier years.
The tales in these Archives are monthly journal stories from my ordinary life since those earlier years.. They provide a window on the ways what I’ve been learning actually plays out as I navigate the challenges of a day-to-day life in this different paradigm. In the world in which loving-kindness to ourselves is the most basic principle, in what I understand to be the world-according-to-the-Sacred-Feminine.
My hope is that some of the tales will speak deeply to you, will remind you of similar or parallel moments in your own life. That, as you walk along with me through my everyday world, you’ll vicarious explore this different, more loving, more gentle, more humane way of being with your own self in the midst of our so very crazy world.
May you be really gentle with your tender self.
Originally published November 2000
