I Surrender

I just got off the phone with ten incredible, amazing people. I’ve been blessed that way, lately. Last week I got to coach and teach at the Martha Beck Master Coach Intensive in Huntington Beach, CA. I spent four days in the presence of brilliant coaches taking their final steps in the six-month long Master Coach program. This week I watched my own Mind-Body Coaches finish up their training with me. I am surrounded by these truly magnificent people who are serving the world each in their own unique way.

It’s been a couple weeks of endings. I find sadness welling up in my throat, because though I know we’ll interact and meet again in different ways, these platforms of connection are now coming to an end. Though I’d love to sit around and be a part of amazing growth and transformation with groups of brilliant coaches all the time, I also recognize that it wouldn’t really be great for them. They’d never get to go out and embark on their own journey, or lead their own groups. So with each experience, an end must come to create a new beginning.

It’s been a year of beginnings and endings already, for me. In January, it was the beginning of pregnancy and motherhood. In March it was the end of the pregnancy, much sooner than I had expected. Then it was the beginning of opening up to the messages in that experience and the changes I needed to make within myself before moving forward again. Shortly after that, there were a few endings within my coaching business, followed abruptly by new beginnings I could not have foreseen. (Such as being hired to be the Life Coach Training Coordinator for Martha Beck Inc.)

I feel a bit as though I have beginning/ending whiplash. Change has come so fast this year, in so many ways. I’ve had to really perfect the art of surrendering, which is no easy feat, I must say. So, in this moment, I am sad that this year’s group of mind-body coach trainees is leaving the nest. But I surrender to the experience and am letting go.

I first learned the art of surrendering when I was in physical agony. I was tortured by interstitial cystitis for years, and then wound up with vulvodynia as well. I hated my body, wanted all the pain to just leave, and fought like mad against the experience. Until I simply couldn’t fight anymore. I often say that the universe had to wonk me over the head before I would surrender and allow myself to have the experience I was already having – in that case, pain. That’s the funny thing about surrendering; it’s about laying down the weapons in the battle against what is.

I remember literally lying down on the couch and saying, “Okay, I give up.” But I wasn’t giving up on everything. I was just giving up the fight. I knew I had to stop trying so hard and just let the experience teach me what it was teaching me.

If this sounds hard, it’s because it kind of is. Yet, it’s also easy, in a strange way. It’s so much easier to surrender than to fight. It’s easier to say, “Okay, I am willing to have this experience that I am having right now” than to clench every muscle in combative argument against it.

If you’re dealing with anything stressful or hard in your life right now, don’t forget that surrendering is an option. You can set down your boxing gloves and say, “Okay, I allow this to happen right now.” It doesn’t mean you’ll suffer forever. In fact, your suffering will end much sooner. As soon as I stopped fighting the pelvic pain syndromes, the way out arrived in the form of mind-body healing.

On the day that I miscarried, I knew something was wrong. All day, I fought that knowledge. I avoided the knowing. I tried so hard to not have the experience that I knew was coming. Finally, as the evening wore on, I remembered the surrender option. I told my husband we had to talk about the possibility that I was going to miscarry. So we did. And we knew, in that moment, that we could handle it, no matter how painful it would be. As soon as we aired that, I was able to say, in my heart, “I surrender. I allow myself to have this experience.” Ten minutes later, the miscarriage happened. I let go. I let the universe take over, and I trusted.

Sure enough, we did survive. We could handle the grief, the pain, and the loss. That’s the thing; that which we fight, even though it is painful, is always something we can handle. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s painful. But it’s ever so much more painful to fight than to surrender.

Though I often write my blog posts with a particular client question in mind, today’s post is written for me. I am the client today. Because now that my body, mind, and spirit are healed from this experience, I arrive at a new doorway. A new beginning. A place to start anew. But to embark on this motherhood journey again, there’s something I have to do. I have to surrender. I have to say, “Okay, I am willing to have this experience, whatever it may be, and I trust that what is right will happen.” Coming on the heels of the miscarriage, a new pregnancy sounds a little scary. Maybe difficult. Maybe not such a good idea. Yet, when I really look inside, it’s not the experiences that could happen that scare me. It’s the pain of not trusting, not surrendering, and not letting go that is terrifying.

It’s time to surrender to my own inner wisdom, to the wisdom of mother nature and the universe, and to life itself. I can’t know anything with my human mind about what will come, but I can trust my soul to guide me somewhere good. Yes, there were endings this year, but they made way for beginnings. There is innate wisdom in this process that I could never have seen in advance, but for which I am now grateful. So, if you, like me, are standing on the edge, peeking through a new doorway, or are just plain tired of fighting, here’s your invitation to surrender. I surrender to the experience of pregnancy again, whatever it brings. Would you like to join me in this surrendering experience? What are you surrendering to? I would welcome the company.