“Different though the sexes are, they inter-mix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above.” ~ Virginia Woolf

Our women’s group met for the first time tonight – an auspicious beginning that promises growth, understanding, support, exploration…

Women of all ages expressed a yearning for community, for a safe space in which to push boundaries, to discover and recover all that it means to be woman.

Inevitably the question arose, “What does it mean to be female?”

The obvious answers came up – softness, compassion, nurturing, loving, strength.

But these qualities aren’t the sole domain of women… can the definition of femaleness be as simple as the ability to bear children?  Does that then take away from the femininity of women who cannot or choose not to become mothers?  It certainly doesn’t feel like the right answer…

In the end, I had to say that I didn’t know what it means to be female – or at least that I have no words for it.

I am clear that I am Woman; even as a little kid, I never wanted to be a boy… I don’t even particularly enjoy the idea of being reincarnated as a guy – kinda gives me the heebie-jeebies – that’s how strongly I identify with being female.

And yet, I find the concept of my own gender intangible…

Imagine how confusing it must be if you are very clear in your own head that you are one sex, while not only the world, but your own physical body tell you you are another…

Frankly, if I woke up tomorrow with a penis, I would be a VERY unhappy woman…

But I’d still be a woman, ‘cause I’d still be me and I’m female…

(Easy to tie yourself up in knots trying to think your way through this.)

If the simple expression of gender and sexual identity is so intangible, I have to wonder how we ever got the idea that it was so black and white… did we need so badly for things to fit in nice neat packages that we ignored our own experience?

Or were we never brave enough to question it?

And what would it mean if we did?

“Perhaps both men and women in America may hunger, in our material, outward, active, masculine culture, for the supposedly feminine qualities of heart, mind and spirit–qualities which are actually neither masculine nor feminine, but simply human qualities that have been neglected. It is growth along these lines that will make us whole, and will enable the individual to become world to himself.” ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh (Gift from the Sea)

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” ~ Thomas Merton

“The fewer clear facts you have in support of an opinion, the stronger your emotional attachment to that opinion.” ~ Anonymous

Up until now, I’ve avoided talking about dating– actually, I’m not really going to talk about it now; it’s just that there may be no better way to illustrate the impact our internal pictures have on our outer world experience…

So bear with me here!

Once upon a time, I spent some time with a guy who kinda blew the doors off the limited possibilities I held for myself about relationship.

He was a bohemian of the business world; for him, numbers were like clay – something to build great works of art from.  A seeker, he climbed mountains, jet-setted all over the globe, read constantly.  He was charismatic, charming, humble, and he had an accent to die for.

Our first date was epic… coffee in the afternoon turned into dinner and drinks and closing the restaurant – we talked nonstop for hours.  At some point, he told me that, after all the years he’d spent rootless, he was finally ready to settle down with a strong, smart woman and have a family.

I was gone – I felt like Cinderella meeting the prince.  I imagined the stories we would tell our children.  I glowed.

But then there was the business that took him out of town and around the world.  Periodically, I got texts and emails from amazing places, telling me he was thinking of me, missing me.  And I went on with my life, all the while holding safe space for him to come home to, doing my part to help him feel rooted in something that had more meaning than the endless wining and dining of investors that were part of his job.

Romantically, I saw myself as one of those old New England sailor’s wives, walking the widow’s walk and holding the family together until the Captain returned safely home.

Now, you, reading this from the outside, know exactly where this is going.  Is there really any doubt?  It’s so very obvious, isn’t it?

But I was attached to the picture of him that I’d formed on that first date.  I took all the perfect things he’d said to me, and I held them before me like a talisman.  Like a woman with a map through the desert, I ignored all the other signs and kept walking towards my Mecca.

So when the whole house of cards fell – which you know it did – I felt angry, hurt, ashamed, confused…

What did it mean if a man like him could reject me? How could he do this to me?

But it wasn’t “him” doing it to me- not the man that I’d fallen for, because that man didn’t exist.  “He” was a mirage, a picture in my head that I attached to this particular name, in this particular body… but it had nothing to do with the man he actually was… a man I wouldn’t have wanted…

All the pain I experienced throughout the whole “relationship” was a product of the disconnect between my internal picture and his behavior…

I couldn’t reconcile his actions with the man I thought him to be, and because I didn’t want to lose my Prince Charming, I chose (yup, chose) to believe that there was something wrong with me instead…

Pictures are POWERFUL, and if we don’t spend time working out which ones we’re holding, we are powerless against them and we suffer needlessly.

No more suffering!

“Realizing that our actions, feelings and behavior are the result of our own images and beliefs gives us the level that psychology has always needed for changing personality.” ~ Maxwell Maltz

“It takes a whole village to raise a child.” ~ African Proverb

The first time I heard this quote, I thought, “Of course!  A child needs all kinds of teachers and mentors to become their best self.”

What I didn’t understand is that parents, for their own sanity, need the help of the village in order to be the best parents they can be.  Now I’m god mom to two very special short people, and I know that I am part of the fabric that helps hold both their mom and dad together.

A few years ago, I had Kurt as my healer, Sara as my life coach, a therapist, an acting coach, and a voice teacher.  A friend looked at me and said, “My God – you have an entire committee working on you!”

It was true… I was looking to make big changes as efficiently as possible, and I gathered a team to help me make it happen.

We all need assistance in order to be our best selves… people to support us, to challenge us, to call us on our stuff, to laugh and cry with, to think out loud with, to simply be with…

When you think about your day-to-day existence, the joys and the trials, who’s on your committee?

Who helps you be you?

Are there areas of your life where you don’t have a go-to person?  Are there people you’re close to who can fill the void – or do you need to cultivate some new relationships?  Or find a professional who can satisfy the need?

(uhhh… preferably LEGAL professionals, if you know what I mean….giggle ;))

And then there’s the flip side – whose committee are you on?  What role do you fill?  Does it work for you?

We all need community – it makes the world a better place; it makes our lives richer and more meaningful… it makes us better people.

“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born; we live a little while; we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.” ~ Charlotte, from Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White

“Leave your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I’m betwixt and between today…. I have about 72 different things I want to write about, and nothing is gelling.

It’s a little like standing in the center of a snow globe and watching the random thoughts fall all around me in a blizzard, each individual flake a piece of something larger that I have yet to grasp.

Or lying with my face mashed into an amazing tapestry – I can see the threads, but I don’t know if what’s in front of me is a beginning or an ending, or if I’ve picked up in the middle… I just don’t have enough distance to see the weft and the weave, or how things connect and diverge.

Apparently, I’m gestating.

“The creative mind,” says Carl Jung, “plays with the object it loves.”

And I am – my brain is turning over my deepening understanding of healing, the process of manifesting, Perfection of Effort, choice, purpose, connection, love, relationships, and a myriad of other “stuff,” as well as a zillion questions about our individual experiences of the sacred, boundaries vs. limitations, empathy, our need for others to conform to our way of thinking and feeling, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, quantum physics (which sometimes I feel like I need in order to figure out the Republican and Democratic parties,) and all the usual “what is the meaning of life” sorts of ponderings…

It’s a nice, juicy, full-of-possibility place to be…

Except there is, at the end of the day, a commitment I’ve made to putting something concrete out into the world…

And I got nothin’…

A very, VERY pregnant nothin’… a nothin’ on the way to becoming a whole lot of somethin’…

Which, I have to admit, started to make me feel a little bit panicky and pressured… the need to come up with PRODUCT…

But I also know that when I try to force my creative juices, I end up being unhappy with the result… Kinda like trying to bake a cake faster by doubling the temperature of the oven – what you get is something flat and crispy… ugh.

So I’m just sitting in the betwixt and between…

And I gotta say, when I actually let go and just let myself BE in the muddle, my brain started meandering around about the process of processing…

It’s one of those things the “THEY” always tell you – start from where you’re at, let go of the trying, surrender the end result, stop worrying about the audience – and once you do that…

FLOW happens!

“You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

“We’ve got to take back the ideal of justice; we’ve got to take back this principle of human dignity. We’ve got to take it back from vengeance, from hatred, we’ve got to say: look, we’re all in this together. We are human beings.” ~ David Kaczynski

This morning I received an email from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) asking me to sign a petition urging the US Government to speak out against human rights violations in Uganda:

“[L]ast March, three American right-wing extremists, posing as “experts” on homosexuality, led a conference in Uganda where they claimed that gay men prey upon teenagers, that there is a gay agenda to destroy families, and that gay people can and should be changed to straight.

Then, in October, Uganda’s legislature introduced a bill making homosexual acts punishable by death and failure to report them punishable by jail time.

These Americans have put LGBT Ugandans – and those who care about them – in grave peril. We have a responsibility, as Americans, to protect them.”

This afternoon, The Courage Campaign sent me an update on the current Prop 8 fight going on in California.  Challengers of the same-sex marriage ban are fighting to have the lawsuit televised:

Opponents of marriage equality filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday, begging to hide the trial from the American public. And a few hours ago, the Supreme Court delayed their decision until Wednesday.

Prop 8 supporters and anti-equality organizations like the National Organization for Marriage have spent tens of millions of dollars on 30-second ads scaring the American people into thinking that same-sex marriage will destroy our country. And now, when federal judges want to open the courtrooms to America, Prop 8 supporters want to unplug the TV.

I read these things – that in the year 2010, somewhere on this planet, loving someone may soon be legally punishable by death, that millions of dollars have been spent in order to deny Americans their right to love as they choose – and I wonder:

What is wrong with us?

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

How would these “defenders of heterosexuality” feel if forced to be gay?  How would they feel if they were told they would be killed for holding hands with their loved one?  How would they feel if they knew their friends and family could spend life in prison for not turning them in?

I understand that people have their faith; what I don’t understand is why they need to impose them on other people.

What I don’t understand is how a political party whose platform is lessening the role of government in people’s lives is lobbying for more legislation on our bodies and what happens in our bedrooms.

What I don’t understand is how a country founded on freedom of religion and the idea that it is self evident that “all men are created equal” can deny any of its citizens any rights based on public opinion.

Some things are too important to put to a majority vote.

With all the pain, suffering, and hatred in the world, can we really afford to outlaw love in any form???

“Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.”
I Corinthians 13:4-8