One Woman's Experience
by Nancy Murray Mears
I made a promise to a friend to write about the Men's and Women's Gathering. As I sit here
struggling to find words that will convey the experience, I am regretting that promise.
How do I express the range of emotions, from pain to joy, despair to passion,
vulnerability to power, struggle to surrender, that I experienced that weekend? I signed
up for the workshop because I wanted to do a piece of work with my husband. I had shut
down to him and was unable to communicate with him vulnerably in a way where I felt heard.
I was frustrated, angry, confused and despairing. Although not a "couples"
workshop, I imagined it would be an opportunity for us to try and reconnect and strengthen
our marriage. Each time I step into a Temenos circle, I come voluntarily with a desire
(although not always a willingness) to strip away the outer layers of myself. There is a
longing inside to find my way back home to myself, to the place I fall in love with every
time I remember who lives there. In the last several weeks before the conference, I had
fallen far from that place, and any sense of longing was a dim memory buried under layers
of a hard, brittle shell. As the four and a half days unfolded, I had the experience of
having my anger give way to incredible grief, of listening to and witnessing men
expressing the essence of themselves; their doubts and fears, their needs and desires,
their loyalty and their confusion, leading me to a sense of humility and awe. I heard my
husband express his feelings about what it was to him to be a man, and realized I had no
idea the complexities of who he is. I knew nothing of who men are, and had to stand in the
face of that and learn how to begin again to find what mattered most to me inside of
myself and in my relationships with those I love.I
sat with women, and again, my perceptions were shattered. Women who had intimidated me in
their warrior archetypes showed their vulnerability, and women who I might have dismissed
as having nothing to offer (myself included) showed their power and their strength and
their beauty. I shared myself, with men and with women, my fears and hopes, my longings
and my struggle to know myself, and I let myself be seen. And I witnessed others as they
allowed themselves to be seen, and I felt moved and honored to sit with such people.
People willing to share themselves and trust the sanctity of a circle. I knew that this
was home, this place of willingness and trust, compassion, love, and truth, and that I
hold this place inside of me. In the end, feeling battered and weary, scraped raw from the
inside out, having been seen in all the truth of who I am, I began to feel myself again,
to touch the place inside me that knows compassion and love, to be willing to remember
with tenderness the place inside me that cares and that longs for a return to my own soul.
From this place, I could begin to heal, and feel the brittle shell enclosing my
understanding begin to melt away.
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