NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This aliveness is what’s most important to me, and what I most wish — from the very core of my being — for us all.
I don’t know about you, but I regress to toddlerhood when my life falls apart. Those times when the cherished whatever that defines me and gives my life meaning — healthy body, interesting work, kids at home, relationship with someone I love — falls away, usually wrested from my fist tightly wrapped around said cherished whatever.
Noooooooooooo, I say to life/God: no, you can’t have this, it’s MINE. Nooooooooooo, this CAN’T be my life. My life, my good life, my best life, HAS to have (fill in the blank: health, wealth, primary partnership, your own cherished whatever).
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh lordy. This primal NO sucks the juice right out of me. It obliterates both the “wild” and the “precious” from my wild and precious life.
Enter the Big Yes: the no-holds-barred Yes to your own life, with or without your cherished whatevers.
Your Big Yes doesn’t depend on your health, your bank account, or your age.
Some of the most gloriously alive women I’ve ever met were at the Harmony Hill 3-day Cancer Retreats I used to facilitate, designed to help folks find emotional, mental and spiritual healing in the face of cancer. These women were up against some of the biggest challenges any of us could ever face — life-threatening illness, physical pain, mortality, financial ruin — and yet by the end of the retreat were radiant with the Big Yes. Their Big Yes unconditionally embraced their challenges as well as their joy.
This Big Yes looks different in everyone.
This vital aliveness is about being and expressing your own holy quirkiness.
It’s as if each of us inhabit a unique frequency in the Divine Bandwidth. We spend our lives honing in to that frequency, like fine-tuning the dial into a radio station. You know when you’ve found your frequency: The static softens. A presence, like the hum of a great song, reverberates your body and soul. You know from your toenails up that, as Julian of Norwich (mystic and cat-lover) said, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."
And THIS, sisters — this radiant trueness — is the ultimate gift of challenging life transitions.
It’s my experience, having worked with thousands of women in transition over the past 25 years, that what women experience on the far side of their transition is a deeper and livelier attunement to their one wild and precious life, the Big Fat Yes to that effulgent aliveness.
The Fine Print: Your Big Yes Isn't Free
You know, I've spend decades searching for a way around this. No go. Anyone I’ve ever met who lives their Big Yes experienced a significant amount of discomfort to get there.
This isn’t masochism. It’s just the truth.
More on the “why’s of this in a future newsletter, but here’s the thumbnail version:
It takes a lot of courage to let go of what holds us back from this radiant aliveness.
I don’t know about you, but heck, there are at least 10,000 other things I’d rather do than face into all the ways I diminish my own aliveness, and allow others, including our culture, to suck the life right out of my soul as well.
It seems to take a bigass two-by-four — serious illness, divorce, empty nesting, death of my mom — to dislodge me from my own lushly upholstered ruts.
Seems it’s that way, too, with the most alive folks I’ve met. We’re just plain hardwired to go through all the disquiet of periodic upheaval to get the prize at the bottom of the crackerjack box, this vital aliveness.
Not-so-fine-print: Your vital aliveness isn't narcissistic belly-gazing foolishness.
Your vital aliveness helps others around you in ways that we can't measure. Each time you breathe a prayer of Big Yes to life, to your one wild and precious life, mystery happens: the world heals a bit too.
Howard Thurman, a black American minister and colleague of Gandhi’s, wrote: "Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
The world needs your Big Yes. Your community and loved ones need your Big Yes. And, dare I say, you need your Big Yes.
It’s worth it, worth every affliction and discomfort. The playground on the other side of big change is awesome.
See you there.
Delighted to be back!
Posted by: Melissa Gayle West | 05/02/2011 at 04:53 PM
Yes, welcome back Melissa. Big Yes.
Posted by: Desi | 04/25/2011 at 08:17 PM
A Big Yes to the return of your newsletter, Melissa! I've missed you. The world has missed you ;-)
Posted by: Jan | 04/25/2011 at 04:14 PM
Ronnie: I love the idea of using common daily events - the stoplights, the phone ringing, walking through the front door - as reminders to breathe, wake up, and offer a Yes to our lives. Thank you!
Posted by: Melissa Gayle West | 04/24/2011 at 01:40 PM
Big Yes to your Big Yes! I never thought about saying Yes to my life. It changes so much to do that, instead of all the "no but" I tell myself all the time. I'm using stoplight time when I'm driving to practice saying Yes to my life: breathe in, then breathe out "Yes." Almost makes me look forward to red lights.
Posted by: Ronnie | 04/22/2011 at 11:51 AM