What follows is the transcription of the first part of this week’s Gathering Gold episode called “There is Another Way.” To listen to the full episode, click here, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. As always, I value your comments and refections.
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I’m here on my own again this week as Victoria takes a much-needed rest. I miss her, but we’ll be back together for our next episode.
Being on my own these few weeks brought to light one of the reasons why I love doing this podcast with Victoria: it’s the first and only time in my 25 years of working in this field that I’ve collaborated with someone. I was considering collaborating several years ago on a project and one of my mentors advised me against it. She said, “You need to fly solo.” But she was wrong, and I often think about how quickly she spoke her declaration, and how, looking back, to me it speaks to a patriarchal mindset around independence and manning a ship alone. Like there’s only room for one captain, one president, one leader.
Creating alongside Victoria has shown me what I intuitively knew: the collaborative approach is the feminine way. It’s the circle instead of the straight line. It’s a dialogue instead of a monologue. I’ve done a lot of monologues and I think there’s a place for them, but it’s not where my heart is anymore. I don’t want to steer the ship alone. I deeply value the insight and feedback that Victoria brings and the synergy that happens between us when we sit in sacred, ritual space together. When I imagine possibly offering an in-person retreat one day, I see her beside me, in circle, in collaboration.
But, alas, here I am on my own, one more time. And what I want to talk about is exactly this topic of another way: another way to lead, another way to offer information, another way to be in community, another way to live. I’m hearing this need and longing everywhere: in my groups, with my clients, with my friends.
We are all waking up.
The old ways don’t work anymore, and I’m not sure they ever have, except for an elite few.
The grind doesn’t work.
The separation from our children doesn’t work.
The way we think about and approach money doesn’t work.
I’m going to share a poem called Another Way which emerged from another beautiful exchange that I’m part of, an exchange where I meet monthly with a very wise woman and we each hold intentional space for the other. She’s a woman who is steeped in forging another way of approaching money and work and true wealth and abundance, and she inspires me deeply. I witness her monthly stepping out of the patriarchal patterns and paradigms that have been infused into all of us and bravely finding language that speaks to this other way – the feminine way, the way that, if we can embrace it, will lead to true wealth for everyone. She doesn’t have all the language yet and she struggles at times, like all of us, with the old messages that nip at the heels of her mind. But she keeps forging. She keeps dancing. She keeps wrestling between the old and this other way that must be born. That is being born through her, and through so many others.
Last time we met I wrote this poem the next morning. I will read it now.
Another Way
Wise woman on the cliffs speaks:
There is another way.
It has been hidden from you
behind veils and mists
that cause you to believe that
there is only this way:
the way of fear and scarcity
and not-enough.
The way of working even when you’re not working
because the voice nips at your mind and
tells you it’s dangerous to rest, to be,
to stare into a sky both full and empty and
listen to the whispers of yes and no.
And to trust is most dangerous of all.
The old way says:
Do not stop.
To stop is to drown,
and worry is part of what keeps you afloat.
But there are women who know that
there’s another way.
They’ve seen it and tasted it,
Standing above a wild ocean,
Wind dancing fiercely with robes and scarves.
Unruly, she says.
Elemental.
Free.
Tell us more, I say.
We need to know what you’ve seen.
We need to see what you’ve known.
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I’m curious where this poem lands in you. And I’d love to hear what thoughts you have about another way to live. For we are all the wise women and men and humans, and when we listen closely enough, we can hear the pulse of another away, the whispers of song and chant and drums and rattles that call to us, that beg us to remember and reclaim a way of living that honors all life. What secrets have been revealed to you that are ready to be shared about what this might look like? I would love to know.
