“I found myself sitting next to a Mayan grandmother from Peru at a women’s conference.
After a few minutes of conversation she asked, ‘Who are you?’
I began to tell her that I founded a nonprofit, and about my work with women.
‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘Who are you?’
I looked past her at the round tables where women
from different spiritual traditions were joining each other for breakfast.
This is what I said. The words came not from my mind.
‘I am a woman who suffered earlier in life, and in the darkness found a light.’
She said, ‘You cannot be shy, you cannot be quiet. You must stand up with this knowledge.’
At that moment, my heart, as one of many women’s hearts, said Yes.”
Anne Scott: Dream Weather – Women Restoring the Sacred to Life
This story really spoke to something in me. Who am I really? What is my unique role in this precious and precarious planet-time? How do I get to my “Yes”?
I keep hearing myself saying to people: “There’s something trying to get my attention; something is calling to me but I can’t hear it above the noise of, what Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls, our stormy world. So I created Being Change.
Being Change is a sanctuary where we can go to step out of that stormy world enough so we can hear what is calling to us. What needs to heal? Who is out there doing work that could truly turn our world around, who can inspire us, mentor us, feed us, co-create with us? And what is the gift that is uniquely ours to give to bring back balance: in ourselves, our communities, and the Earth?
Here can we stop to breathe, ground, gather our strength and our courage, create a field of peace and respite and solidarity with others. Here can we give ourselves permission to unhook enough from the heavy, dark energies suffocating our world and envision the future that up-lifts and sustains all beings.
You’re sitting next to a Mayan grandmother. She asks “who are you? You cannot be shy, you cannot be quiet.”
What words “come not from your mind?”
Art by Phebe Allen Gustafson
It is my hope that the Being Change Process, the Sanctuary, the resources and our circle of women, with the supportive men, will empower our journey of initiation, our discovering who we are, and our embodying our “YES.”