VULNERABILITY and FIERCE WISDOM
a call to conscious entanglement in community
Life has called me out of my office, away from my computer these past days. I’m spending lots of time gardening in soil and in souls. Beautiful work. Messy work. Hard work that I love and also grow weary in.
Today I note my dirt-encrusted fingernails while my heart listens to how to call to you from this place of creative destruction and renewal. It feels like Death and Life swing wildly up and down on a daily teeter-totter. A lot of people talk to me about how their bodies and spirits are seeking resilience in this struggle. My garden is watered daily in tears of grief and joy.
I’m once again pondering The Way It Is by William Stafford:
The Way It Is There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread. ~ William Stafford (The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems)
I live in an awareness that I am beginning all over again, each day gathering together the threads, not of just my life, but of community. How about you – where does this tsunami of uncertainty find you?
What threads have I been weaving forever?
What threads are ‘gathering me?’
We are each learning to become an ElderSoul – capable of becoming aware, learning to see and to know what we have NOT seen. A call to unpack the unconscious patterns of my/our lives, that powerful holding place of Shadow – all the power yet to be released from what we have not yet seen.
This is the process of individuation in a connected world … both/and/together. Masculine threads –‘the will of life’ expressed through meaningful directed actions, achievement, movement. Feminine threads – subconscious capacity to receive, absorb, and remember any experience and call it up into the present timelessness/ (dreams/images/instincts/emotions) And so much more!
Life is constantly a process of soul-discovery through embodiment. Trusting that seeds of discovery grow underground in that persistent sense of resistance, overwhelm and doubt that is always there. Learning to keep digging, turning over the clods of confusion and relaxing in an ever-weaving Song of Joy.
It feels like there is a fresh power of conscious awakening in this entanglement of our lives. To honor relationship is essential, to consciously embody connection seems to part of what is being asked of me, of all of us in this season. Therefore, we must stay with the “trouble” as Bill Plotkin says. Welcome it!
It feels clearer than ever that there is a price to individuation, to the journey of soul initiation, to find home again with All that is. Not just at an individual level but also communal. We are being swept up collectively in a complicated entanglement with death force and life force.
It is as if I/we have been struggling to make sense of this individual journey AND stay connected my/our entire lives.
Where is the medicine we need? What is the remedy for our present day human angst?
I believe the core answer we urgently need is to learn in conscious earth-based community.
When we move in close collaboration with others, in authentic intimacy, we become “connected”. What we do affects the other. To ignore the dissonance/discomfort is to ignore the loving connection that always hurts when there is change. Love is very risky. I have often been subconsciously unaware of this and often protected myself from the many vulnerabilities of being human. My embodiment practice these days is to experience myself as an empty cup. To trust the human gift in showing up as authentically as possible as a vulnerable human body and a deeply-wild, rooted soul.
Part of my work on earth is to be a gatherer. A soul gardener. To set up spaces of connection, of conscious entanglement in community. To find the beauty hidden in our vulnerable lives.
Curious?
That’s why I’m calling you today to come. To join. To stir up your resolve and fortitude and seek together the fierce wisdom of our unique souls in community.
Applications are now being accepted for our annual fall retreat.
Becoming Fierce Wisdom – an Inter-Generational SoulFire retreat for Women
Oct 30 - Nov 02, 2025 at Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center with Laurie Adams and myself
Called by the sacred mystery within, we will gather to embrace fierce wisdom and listen in the thresholds that guide our embodied soul journeys. This gathering invites women of all ages who are ready to receive support, bear witness, and kindle courage as we create a communal space for transformation and connection.
Yes – fall feels a long way away, but a retreat starts the minute you sign up. Do you feel the fearful burn of longing for something more?