Learning to Surrender
Wednesday, August 8, 2012 at 12:12PM 
Here's my confession: I don't really know exactly where we're going with Matrilumina. I'm not entirely sure what it is going to "be." As someone with nearly 17 years experience creating specific visions and seeing them through - building a brand, organizing gallery shows, writing books - this is not the most comfortable place for me. I like specifics, I like details. I like making lists and setting goals and knowing where I'm headed. I also know that, despite my love of the nitty gritty, I'm actually not really in charge. Whatever my dream or idea - that is what I need to let lead. I may have a "big picture" vision, but how I get there is not up to me. The path to whatever I'm wanting to create is going to reveal itself to me as I go, and I need to be willing to follow it.
I don't think it is just a coincidence that Matrilumina has come into being during a time of huge transition in my personal life. My husband retired - a bit unexpectedly - this past March, and a few weeks ago we moved from Santa Monica to Santa Barbara. Just as I felt our lives got flipped upside down when he returned to work after a 3-year hiatus in the fall of 2004 - when we moved from Santa Barbara to Santa Monica - I now feel like nearly every detail of the life we led down south has been left behind at our old address. My husband and I are now having to figure out so many new routines - his time day-to-day, our time together, time with our family (who now aren't right down the street), my work time, travel time, need for time alone. Everything is wide open, nothing much is known. We are feeling our way through this new life day by day, trying to see what works and what doesn't, with everything from walking our dog to washing our dishes. It has been messy, at times tense, but also joyful and life-affirming.
Between the move and my husband's retirement and Matrilumina and the fact that, at the moment, I have no real work-related deadlines in front of me (related note: I thrive on deadlines!), it looks as though my word of the year is surrender - to uncertainty, to the unknown, to possibility, to all that is right now. Where is Matrilumina headed? Well, we now have another retreat on the books for March 2013, but beyond that...I don't know! In all my years as an independent artist and writer, I'm not sure I have ever embarked upon a professional journey with so many unknowns, much less with two partners. I am usually such a stickler about these things - about wanting more specific direction and needing more certainty regarding potential partnerships. But this time, for some wondrous reason, it seems the thing I know most of all about Matrilumina is that I'm just along for the ride. My most important work in this is to trust, to let go, and let this take me where it will - into the sky or over the waterfall, where - no matter the ultimate outcome - the journey will be worthwhile, each moment a sacred gift.
Our next retreat will be at Esalen in Big Sur, March 3-8, 2013. Details will be posted in the next couple of weeks right here.
Blessings from Santa Barbara...Christine
Reader Comments (2)
So beautifully written! I especially love, "My most important work in this is to trust, to let go, and let this take me where it will - into the sky or over the waterfall, where - no matter the ultimate outcome - the journey will be worthwhile, each moment a sacred gift."
Right on! I've gone through similar transitions (for me, it was moving from the US to NZ then back to US). I've had to let go of the stress and worry and surrender to new experiences. It's a way of being that I am "allowing" into my life because I don't think it has been my nature to surrender until the last few years. I used to fight change every step of the way, lol. So exhausting. I find that it is much easier, so much simpler, to surrender in the way you describe.
Thank you for sharing your new journey with us :)
I just came across this via your own newsletter and I am so excited and calm by what you are doing! I hope to attend the March 2013 one, and find myself drawn to it and I feel it is quite possible for me to attend since I live only a few hours down the coast. I've been re-reading Woman Who Runs With the Wolves, and finding myself all over again. Women have been a constant source of inspiration in my life and now I have two daughters in which to pass that too. Thanks for creating this special place....a place to seek refuge and peace, wonder and discovery!