It seems really obvious in the last few years, that the more I try to hold onto something, the more slippery it becomes. And the more I chase what I believe I need, the more elusive that becomes.

So What’s a Girl to Do, but Surrender?

Easier said than done though, right? I mean, we’re taught our whole lives not to surrender; especially as women, super especially as “nice girls”.  We don’t surrender to our hair, our figures, our eyebrows, the amount of white on our teeth, blush on our cheeks, our… fuck, our everything! But the more I tried to hold on to what was supposed to be important, the more I realized that I really didn’t give a shit what people thought, I really didn’t give a shit what I was supposed to do anymore.  What I really cared about was being comfortable in my own skin, loving who I wanted to love, doing what I wanted to do.  No really.  WHAT I WANTED TO DO.

Granted, I have certain factors in my life that make that more doable than a lot of other women.  My children are grown, I don’t have a mortgage, I don’t even have a normal job… So yes, I do understand that I have certain advantages that not everyone enjoys, but I really believe that we all need to start from where we are.

So, there I was.

• ending a marriage of over two decades
• reaching the end of a 13 year homeschooling journey
• the owner of a barely surviving business
• two failed businesses behind me (property management that burst with the bubble and semi precious jewelry design which was one of the first casualties of the lack of disposable income)

Yet… I felt excited

Excited by the possibility of starting from scratch, or recreating myself and my life into the image that I wanted.  Damn the torpedoes, I was going to do, me.

Of course the Universe with its infinite sense of humor, as soon as I declared that I was no longer willing to settle, started a barrage of tests.  People I trusted, betrayed me.  People whom I thought were forever friends, family even, became trials in my life.  In retrospect, I can bless them and understand the part that I played and the lessons that they brought, but at the time, I was devastated.

This went on for a period of a few years and don’t get me wrong there was plenty of good in my life as well, but I just couldn’t get everything together.  It felt like my declaration of living life on my own terms offended other people.  Maybe that’s not exactly what it was, but it sure felt like it.

My ego had this idea of how people thought of me. I mean, I live life with love, I do my best to be fair, I not only believe in human rights, and equality, I act on it.  Honest,  loyal, trustworthy.

But others were making me out to be anything but those things and it scared me.  Terrified me, actually.  What would people think??? I tied myself in knots over it.

And then.

I Surrendered

One day I just realized, at a cellular level, that there was nothing I could do about it.  I could only live my life and trust that the right people would come into it and the wrong people would fade away.  In a word, I needed to ‘surrender’.  I needed to surrender to the fact that what people thought of me was none of my business, that I didn’t know what the outcome of the situations would be, that I couldn’t control anything.  And once I did that, things became much easier.

Don’t get me wrong, I still struggle with surrender. I’m no where near a master of it – and sometimes I completely forget that it’s what I need to do. But I’m getting better at it. Much better. And when I do surrender the situation, it’s always better.

I have found that setting my intentions, doing the work that I feel needs to be done, contacting the people that I think I can help and that can help me, following up on my creative ideas and doing the work is important, super important – but when I surrender the outcome, when I let go and let the Universe surprise me, I’m a much happier girl.

What about you?  Do you surrender easily?  Struggle with it?  Need some help?

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