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Our lives transform when we dare to consider and explore an alternative to what we have always known. When we accept, on an intuitive level, the paradoxical nature of life. That the answer is always yes. And then, just to make it fun, there's also: "it depends".

Because all meaning is context dependent.

Change the context (the framework of mind), change the meaning of the experience. Today I want to explore with you the context of self-silencing.

In recent conversations with clients, I have been exploring the tradition of women accepting long-suffering and martyrdom as a way of life (it’s a girl thing). The most powerful way women sustain this state in place is by self-silencing.

How do you speak when you don’t trust that your voice can make a difference? When the intergenerational energy has been 'hold your tongue,' everyone learns that not-speaking is safer than revealing. Revealing, after all, renders you an outsider, and outsiders are punished for betraying the code of silence.

I don’t believe we have to live that way. We do not have to accept this as ‘normal.’ We have the power to transcend this intergenerational pattern of martyrdom. This matters, so we do not repeat it with our children.

We simply need to know how.

ENTER: THE CONVERSATION WE AVOID​

How many times do you wait to be certain before you reveal what you know to be true?
How many times do you hear the truth clearly inside you, only to speak an untruth (half-truth?) when the moment comes?
Why do so many of us hold our tongue when we know it will lead to resentment?

Because we are taught to be terrified to reveal. Our culturally conditioned stories get in the way: a good mother fill-in-the-blank, she can't handle fill-in-the-blank, I can't do that because fill-in-the-blank, I shouldn't because fill-in-the-blank. We are afraid of offending another, losing a relationship, being misunderstood, being judged, or being perceived as ‘different’. And perhaps most terrifying of all: what if, once you reveal what you know, you can no longer pretend not to know?

It’s exhausting, calibrating for every possible outcome before decloaking the truth of your experience and facing whatever reality that truth sets in motion. At least then you'll know: you are creating a reality rooted in the truth of your experience.

THE PROCESS: OWNING IT ALL​

Our loved ones are waiting for us to go first. They are waiting for permission to be fully themselves in our presence. Engaging in the tough conversations is ourselves first then our loved ones is an act of RIG (respect, integrity and generosity of spirit).

In trusting ourselves enough to be willing to be open and receptive to what they have to say, we become the catalyst for the change we are seeking to create. In differentiating what's mine and what isn't, we give everyone permission to be honest.

Yet so many people avoid the tough and intimate conversations with their loved ones because they are looking to the other person to fix it. They are looking to the other person for a solution, a strategy, or some desired outcome that will make the discomfort of revealing easier to bear. They want the other person to understand, agree, validate their experience, or give them permission to be right.

But something powerful happens when you engage the other with curiosity about what you don't know that you don't know.

Our desired transformation becomes possible when we ourselves permission to free our truth without a predetermined outcome. From that open and receptive internal state of being, we give the other permission to go there also, wherever 'there' happens to be. Permission to break the intergenerational silence. Permission to trust the moment. To be vulnerable so that intimacy is present. Permission to claim the awkwardness of the moment, judgement free.

This demands intimacy with Self, first.

Imagine a world where we trusted ourselves and our loved ones to engage each other with RIG! Imagine how powerful those conversations would be. Imagine the depth and intimacy of the conversations to free us from the confines of cultural conditioning. Imagine the internal freedom you’d feel just being yourself and telling the truth of your experience while your loved one does the same. No one would walk on eggshells -- there wold be no reason to.

This is why you need a framework to establish safety in your body.

You need a process to trust yourself and the truth and your loved one and the process of revealing. You need a way to trust being curious more than being certain. You need to develop capacity to be gentle with yourself. When you're gentle with yourself and you're genuinely curious, it dissipates all other states. In that, your life and relationships transform.

Not a bad way to live ...

Be yourself and tell the truth of your experience.

It’s that simple AND that challenging.

That's what we'll explore in Reclaiming Wholeness: Owning the Conversations We Avoid. An in-person experience this October in La Pêche, Quebec for women who no longer want to resist their lives, but are ready to embrace their birthright to live an honest life.

Explore Reclaiming Wholeness →

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