The Discovery

For the Nth time this year you are reminded that you have put off going to the doctor when something in your body doesn’t feel right. You have the insurance, and you know you work hard for it, but you cannot take advantage of it because you have used up so many of your allocated days on your kids and family, and you know taking any unpaid time off will cause a real problem a the office. Worse than this, you recall how over the holidays your little one had a cough that lasted 3 weeks and between the holiday preparations at home, and the end of the year deadlines at work, you just never got around to bringing her to the pediatrician.

Why do we do this to ourselves? It is insane to think that we devote 40+ hours a week to someplace we leak fuel to commute to, complete with a benefits package that somehow we never really benefit from.
What is left? Five hundred dollars a week? Eight hundred dollars a week after taxes? To do what with? When you realize you have one hour with your kids in the morning if any at all, and two hours in the evening to squeeze all of your meaningful relationships in and still do the maintenance required to return to work the next day, do you understand how you are living to work? If we really sat down and calculated the cost of the second conventional source of income, both financially and emotionally, we’d be kicking ourselves to realize how insane this commitment is.

We fill our lives with busy work, and 10 years go by before we look up and can say, where did the time go? When did my kids grow up? Where was that romantic getaway my partner and I were supposed to take? What do I have to show for all the effort I put in? We must dream bigger than this! We must refuse the idea that we have to live to work! We will not all be entrepreneurs, but we can create residual and passive sources of income. One huge hurdle we need to overcome is our relationship with money. We were taught that we need to be at a desk 9-5 in order to generate money, and if we don’t, we must be losers. Even the moms that stay at home feel the guilt. It is such a powerful social spell that we are under!

I want to invite you to think with me about a different scenario. Suppose you could earn the same amount of money but you did not have to show up at a desk for 8 hours a day? Who would you be? What could you do with the extra time? What would you do with your family? Whom would you socialize with? What risks would you be willing to take? Beneath it all, you know, if it was possible to give birth, to parent a child, to cater to your boss and still run the family show, you are capable of magnificent things! We live in a climate now, socially and politically where you don’t have to look far to see how people have grown out of their shells and helped one another out. You need to on some level begin to engage that. We all know we live in a global village.

The problem is, we have not yet discovered our power as women. We play our roles blindfolded. We do not talk to one another about real change, our real passions and how we have sacrificed them, and we allow others, men as well as other women, to take away our power. This is a global problem. Women all over the world do not just ignore each other’s suffering, but we actually contribute to it. We envy each other’s successes, we undermine each other, and we have this basic belief that there isn’t enough happiness to go around for all of us. Every once in a while one of us will reach critical mass, and the road changes in life. The rules all change.

It is at these times we need to recognize the amazing opportunity that Life is giving us. If we step into our own power at this time, we can give birth to something completely new. Nature has a natural cleansing cycle. It is called Death. When we experience loss or death of commitments, relationships or jobs in our lives, this is Life’s way of paving the path for something new to grow. We’re faced with two choices then. Do we embrace the story of Death and Suffering? Do we wear it like a cloak and show it off to everyone around us? Do we cling to the past and become bitter and cynical as a result? Or do we experience cleansing, and renewal? Every week I will present new ways to create renewal in the midst of difficulty and even suffering. I welcome your ideas and stories as we embark on such an important journey.


Namaste,
Adriana