the dream that became a retreat
A Year Ago I Dreamed this Retreat.
And if you know anything about Dreams as Midlife Medicine, I thought this dream was just for me.
I know that as a Recovering Daughter of Patriarchy,
after a lifetime of only knowing how to give,
my work is learning to Receive.
(I am learning in one of my new Burn Out Books that my whole life I was groomed to be a Human Doer + Human Giver who served Human Beings (that is how I earned my worth).
But I myself never got to be a fully realized Human Being, with feelings and emotions and needs.
It was all too easy to dehumanize myself in patriarchy.
I became a machine without boundaries or needs.
But I’m in the rehumanizing now.
Which leads me back to this retreat.
Back to the desire to get OFF the screen and off zoom
and into the woods, the sea, the Great Mother’s womb.
In one of my Favorite Midlife Transformation Talks, Marion Woodman talks about the Importance + Potency of Midlife Dreams.
That talk just happens to be named Chrysalis,
which is what I have named this Retreat.
I thought, after a lifetime of leaking,
of just pouring out my power & wisdom for everyone outside of me,
I thought this Midlife medicinal dream was for only my eyes & only my ears.
And it was. For a year.
For a year & counting— I am still unpacking the gifts of this dream.
It was so symbolic and rich and felt like I had a front row seat in a dark movie theater just for me.
Anyway, I thought I was done with retreats. There was only time to hit the streets.
That was back when I was still in what my Rites of Passage Mentor Kamya calls the “patriarchal binary” of Good or Bad and Right or Wrong.
Now I am back in that mystic field Rumi talks about,
(“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
The world is too full to talk about.”)
And if I ever did another “Retreat” it wouldn’t be like I used to run them, for years.
Because when you hit your Midlife Crossroads,
you no longer know- who you want to be or where you want to go.
You just know what you don’t want to do
and who you don’t want to be anymore.
(Like I said to my father on the phone the other day, “All I know is I can’t do things how I did or be who I was before anymore.”
And Knowing What You Don’t Want is actually great wisdom waiting to be alchemized.
Knowing the kind of life you don’t want informs the life that you do.
(And knowing the kind of world we don’t want
(one that kills women, children and the earth)
informs the world we do want
(one that puts women, children and the earth first).
Before 2023 I was under some western illusion that we had time. It’s true.
A good part of my life was lived like a Maiden in Waiting for Someone to Save Me.
(“Your problem is that you think you have time.” The Buddha)
My First Act retreats were week long events that were part teaching & ceremony, part vacation.
I was also still in my First Act. I still wore my First Act Mask.
I was still inside my Good Woman Cage. I still hadn’t embodied my GRAGE, my Grief and my Rage.
The last 3 years were the darkest parts of my Midlife Crisis
& we are in the darkest & darkening parts of the Polycrisis
(ecocide & genocide & fascism & femicide)
& I no longer act like we have time.
I don’t mean to say I act urgently
but I do act consciously and ceremonially.
It was only recently when I realized this potent dream wasn’t just for me.
It was also for women in my Midlife Community.
Because if it was healing me, it would heal others like me.
And I knew that in JUNE I was headed back to this sacred land I saw in this dream, on this private rustic compound, & this retreat dream kept asking me
WHEN WILL YOU REAL-IZE ME? When will you birth me from a dream into reality?
When will you make real for women & femmes
That to enter the Second Act of Life,
The first half has to integrate
The first half has to “die?”
AND this death has to be done with love and depth.
A First Act Funeral needs deep honor and gratitude for the woman who walked you through the first half of life.
Who did her best, in every trial and every test,
and now it is time for her to rest.
Love and Tears, for the woman who walked you here.
"The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.” Joseph Cambell
Here is Another Truth:
You were never meant to move through your Rites of Passage in a vacuum.
You were meant to Move through the Midlife Rite of Passage in Community.
You were meant to have Midwives at Midlife,
assisting you in honoring who you were and laying her gently in the earth
So you can begin again.
This is the Missing Piece: Before you can begin again,
the First Act must ceremonially end.
And SO:
I created a Three Day TEMENOS from the dream I was given a year ago.
TEMENOS:
It is an honor to have you in this Temenos: a delineated sacred space, symbolizing a container for sanctuary, ritual healing + transformation. Also known as “A Sacred Circle Where One Can Reveal Oneself Without Fear.” To create a Temenos, we must create boundaries and rules with which to engage. An online version of mine is here. Boundaries make the Temenos a safe place to unravel and also play.
THE DREAM THAT BECAME THE RETREAT:
I’ll give you a little preview: I was shown the scenery: the greenery of my grandmother’s land on Martha’s Vineyard.
I could feel the breeze in the grandmother trees that surround the sacred property.
I could hear the rumbles of the waves crashing on the beach.
Then I could see me: on the earth, in the dirt, as tired and beat up and defeated and DONE as I looked by the end of my First Act.
And I was laid out for my First Act Funeral, not alone in my bedroom, but in Communal Ceremony, out in Mother Nature, the Great Mother’s womb.
She : the First Act Me: was laid out in white and there were flowers in her hair and she was ashen, gray.
The lifeless way I felt for so long in the limbo between lives.
In my life’s intermission. In my crucifixion. In my struggle toward individual liberation.
Women were gathering around her, tending to her.
And there was a woman I didn’t recognize who was sitting beside her and she was not in white, she was in roses and saffrons and she was not gray, she looked radiant healthy satisfied and alive.
She was oiled and adorned and reborn. She was humming like the Mother Lover through the entire ceremony, singing and saying sweet loving words and prayers to the First Act Me.
And of course, She caught my eye. I would get to know her in the dream: She, it turned out, was the Second Act Me. And this glimpse was one of the biggest mystic gifts I received in the Crisis of Identity, in the Midlife Passage that Marion Woodman has called “The Dark Night Sea Journey.” Those dark passages in your life when there is no moon in the sky, no ground beneath your feet, no inner or outer guide. You’ve left the old shore, you’ve left any sense of sure.
Because what I give is also what I need, (You gotta give what you wanna receive),
After it was my turn to burn on the altar it was all the other women’s turn,
we all got to be held that day to honor who we were before, and to lovingly release her. We took turns in the burn. Then we witnessed each other in our returns.
Are you Ready for your Midlife Ceremony? I’d love you to join me.
This is a very sacred weekend with only eight places left.
It is first come and first serve.