Project Empower: Living into Our Full Potential

Four weekly sessions starting July 20 on Tuesday morning or evening

Changing the world one woman at a time by changing the energy
within, between, and around

Workshops and personal coaching offer a new way of living life with skills that work in all settings and situations.

A holistic program for women at Labyrinth House, 2071 Westfall Road in Brighton
$35 per session, one time fee of $25 for materials

Call Joy Bergfalk today for more information at 256-3384

Journey to the Center: Integrating the Scattered Pieces of our Lives
A Women’s Retreat at Labyrinth House

Saturday, August 9, 2008, 9:00 to 9:00 PM
Directed by Joy Bergfalk

$85 registration fee
Bring healthy food to share
Beverages provided

Call today at 256-3384 to register by phone, with credit card or check

We will be using two contemporary labyrinths — a Peace labyrinth, created by Beatrice Bateson and a Reconciliation Labyrinth by Clare Wilson, which will we be creating together

Peeking Behind the Mask: Finding the Authentic Self
An introduction to the Enneagram for Personal Self-Understanding & Transformation
and Understanding & Compassion for Others

Saturday, August 23 from 9:00 to 4:00
at St. Bernard’s Seminary in Pittsford
20 French Road (just off Monroe Avenue)

$85 registration fee (includes book, materials & refreshments)
Lunch included - Catered by Tasteology Restaurant
Registration deadline: August 18 (with a $25 non-refundable deposit)
Register with full payment by August 11 to receive a $10 discount!

Call 256-3384 to register with credit card or check.

Or click on “Shop” above and register online through PayPal.

We finally spent a day cleaning the gutters filled with millions of helicopter seeds and maple seedlings, packed in so tightly that I finished with hands and arms scraped raw. Ouch. Why so many? Why such excess? Why such waste? I had already pulled thousands from our gardens-all these seeds and seedlings with no future!

Wild daisies are another. Thinking them cute and quaint, I introduced them into my yard years ago. I’ve given up battling their ubiquitous presence. Shameful in profusion-they’re everywhere.

And then there’s grant writing. Foundations want to see the outcomes to assure their money is being used effectively. Outcomes usually come in numbers: We know this program has been effective if ____ many people have successfully ______________. Profligate waste is frowned upon.

To my best calculation, we have worked with 67 women at Liberty Manor in the last year. What difference have we made? How many are now clean and sober, moving in a positive direction in their lives? What impact on the outcomes did our program have?

I can’t answer those questions. We haven’t done the outcome studies. But is the value of our program measured on this concept of success? Since all of these women have a history of trauma, since few of them have any love for themselves or any hope for the future, do numbers really tell the story of effectiveness?  What if someone has felt love for the first time in her life? Or for the first time can see her own beauty? What about the first glimpse of hope, however fleeting that might be?

I did an informal survey a few months back in which 11 women participated anonymously. There was a total of 87 stints of addiction treatment and 66 incarcerations. One woman was in her 21^st treatment, another had been incarcerated 20 times. Those numbers say a lot.

The inner competencies that we teach such as self-calming, hope, purpose, trust, confidence, either never developed for these women or were stamped out through years of abuse and addiction. Many seeds are scattered, some sprout-a lot never make it. Some may lie dormant and we will never know the outcome.

I’d like to share Tami’s story with you. I can’t predict the next chapter or the “final” outcome of her story, but she has proudly given me permission to share it with you.

She wrote her name in the tiniest letters imaginable. TAMI.  I had barely recognized her when I saw a woman bearing resemblance to the Tami who had not returned from a doctor’s appointment one day. I had watched her disintegrating, bemoaning the loss of her very best friend, Crack. I wished I had talked to her, but that may not have made a difference.

For awhile she had looked so vibrant and was so appreciative of our work. She even wanted to volunteer with fundraising-our garage sale that was coming up.

I had searched up and down Lyell Avenue for her. I heard she was in jail but I couldn’t find her name amongst the incarcerated.  The common wisdom was that by 30 you either stopped or you died. I’ve known a few women who walked the streets to support their addiction that were older. I hoped that she would be one of the ones that made it.

“Tami?” I queried. “Yes,” she said, smiling. I held her for a long moment, my eyes filled with tears. “You’re safe. You’re alive!” “Yes,” she said. “I’m glad,” I said. “Me, too,” she replied.

In the session I talked about the grant proposal we were writing for working women with addiction in conjunction with drug court, teaching the inner competencies necessary for sustained sobriety, clean time, education and/or employment. She immediately raised her hand, wanting in.

Later she said, “I want to be a part of that program!” I had to say we wouldn’t have the money until January and wouldn’t even know if we were getting it until September.

The next week we talked more. She shared her anger at a staff member who felt disrespectful to her. “If I’m going to be treated that way, I may as well be on the street using.” I assured her that she deserved respect and not the “street treatment,” but also reminded her that it was her addiction talking. “You’re right,” she said, and then we talked about her anger towards herself and all the disastrous choices she had made-when, in her opinion, she had no excuse, especially in comparison to others.

Then she suddenly interrupted me. “Just before I got arrested, I was going through all my things and the stuff from Liberty Manor. Guess what was the only thing I saved-I bet you’ll know what it was.” I couldn’t guess. “The journal you gave us to write our feelings in and the sayings we got to glue in them. I threw everything else away. Someone took my colored pencils, though, and I was really mad about that.”

Nine months later and she had held on to her journal-maybe holding on to a kernel of hope.

I hope we get the grant. And I remember that God is a profligate lover.

“Love” has almost become a four letter word. One side sneers at the sentimentality of it all, the other maintains that love is a form of permissiveness. Even conservative Christians are falling out of love with the word love, believing that it is applied far too widely.

Dante, writer of the Divine Comedy, certainly did not know of Einstein and quantum physics, but he still recognized love as an energy, a dynamic “substance” that moves the world. In the Bible, Paul quotes Greek philosophers: “In [God] we live and move and have our being, another recognition of the dynamic that sustains and flows through all that exists.”

Behind our windows that don’t open, in our air-conditioned offices, in front of our computer screens, the world feels very materialist and solid. In my great fortune, my laptop overlooks our gardens and labyrinth, bursting with spring greens and yellows, birds flitting about, and occasional wildlife (deer, ducks, wild turkey!, and woodchucks-far more frequently than occasional) “walking” the labyrinth. I just happened to glance up and see the rose-breasted grosbeak which spends one day a year in our yard on the journey north. With the sunlight pulling the plants taller and taller by the hour, it is not hard to sense that love is truly the energy that maintains all the rhythms of life.

All of the great religions recognize love as the greatest power on earth and the depths of spirituality, from which religions arise, are grounded in the sense of love. So easily, however, we dismiss love as not strong enough to overcome hate, to invigorate a love detoured by trauma and submerged in violence, addiction, and poverty. And the business world often echoes Tina Turner’s sentiment, “What’s love got to do with it, do with it?”

But love is what Life Listening Resources and Project Empower is all about. Someone said it sounds like a lot of b—s—. But we experience the changes in lives and relationships, whether it be in the work setting, school, marriage and family, or in the lives of those recovering from trauma, addiction, violence (given and received) and poverty.

I know a lot about love but more and more I am recognizing that much of the love I have given has been of an anxious nature. That doesn’t work nearly as well-and sometimes not at all. I am learning that love is a kind of “giving up”-letting go of the need for my desired outcome, and the willingness to hold someone in compassion without resentment even when they choose differently than I would have chosen for them. As I let go of my anxious love-otherwise known as co-dependency-my professional and personal relationships are changing.

So, I invite you to see the world through the eyes of love and ask for the gift and grace to see the love emanating out from the world around you.

Changing the world, one [woman] at a time, by changing the energy within, between, and around.

How do we deal with the daily frustrations of our lives, on the job or at home or out in the community? What do we do when we feel anxious, angry, or afraid? We can feel the blood pressure climbing or the stomach churning or the shoulders and neck tense up. We know we’ll probably say or do something we’ll regret if we don’t turn it around. But how do we do that?

At Life Listening Resources, we are learning to engage in daily practices that empower us to change the energy of our lives. Instead of giving in to anxiety and frustration or to anger and fear, we are learning together how to create positive energy that creates safe places for us all to live and work. We call them LifeListening Practices because they help us listen to life so we know how to change our world in small, but important, ways. As you engage in all ten practices consistently from day to day, your life will change, your “world” will feel safer, and you will be empowered.

Centering: Live from the center of our authentic selves, staying balanced and empowered.

Self-awareness: Know who we are in ourselves and in relationship.

Empathy: Listen with compassion and generosity, cultivating awareness of what it might be like to be the other person.

Assertiveness: Engage others with confidence and respect.

Emotional maturity: Speak and act appropriately in all situations, being aware of our feelings and choosing helpful responses.

Connecting: Develop an ability to see the interdependence of all things and to live with an attitude of cooperation, seeking mutual benefit in what we do.

Story-telling: Learn to listen and tell our stories so we develop a shared narrative that enables us to transform our world.

Reframing: Speak out of our own values and perspectives, offering alternative ways of seeing the world.

Creative imagination: Expand our ability to see the world from different perspectives, creating new perspectives to old problems.

Nonviolent engagement: Choose the way of love rather than fear, responding to threats with creative confidence in the future.

These practices challenge us to become who we were meant to be, to learn how to live authentically. Many people live as they think other people want them to live-as their parents or spouses or friends or co-workers tell them they “ought” to live, or just reacting to what people do or say without thinking or without knowing their own feelings or desires. We are afraid to tell other people what we are feeling or what we want, if we do know it, because of what we think they will do. We are anxious and frustrated and often angry at ourselves and the world. These lifelistening practices can change your life and empower you to change your world.

My grandson is the most charming, sweet, sensitive, perceptive and bright young man that you would ever want to meet. People often comment on how well-behaved he is. But he has a shadow side which illustrates the axiom, Pain or (trauma) not transformed is transferred*. His mother, adopted at age 7, came to us already compromised by trauma and made decisions from that place which continued the legacy of trauma for herself and her son.  And now, at six, he is violent, sometimes threatening to kill himself and others, and headed for day treatment.

Just a few days ago at an intensive treatment program for women recovering from addiction, a resident asked, “Miss Joy, What if we want to be toxic?”

What indeed?  She quickly dismissed the question as silly, but I, just as quickly, maintained that the question had significant, even crucial, implications.

Our program teaches tools for centering, for living from a different place, from our authentic selves, rather than living from the false self accumulated through the wounds, disappointments, betrayals and lies of life. Living from that centered place, produces a kind of contentment, a being at oneness with all of creation, and consequently, our decisions are strong, good and firm, rather than compulsive, aggressive, reactive, or passive. But as one of our participants says, “It only works if you use it.”

Our bag of tools may be overflowing with breathing techniques and methods for being in touch with our authentic selves, but the tools are useless if not pulled out and used in critical moments. And, if we are honest, many times when hooked, triggered, or just feeling plain toxic, the last thing we want is something healthy.  “I feel like being bad.” “I don’t care!” Hmm, let’s see, should I have a stick of celery or a Snickers bar?

This question may be even more important than the skills to overcome toxicity, because it goes to the root of the matter: our desire. When we get to the desire level, we often find a mangled mess of writhing snakes. Let’s face it. Sometimes we just want to be miserable and share the misery with those around us. We want to use, to pick up. We want the pity party. We want to stay up reading all night to avoid the real challenges life offers us. We want to hold on to resentment, to punish others and ourselves-and/or escape into oblivion.

Jesus found a man lying by a pool of water who had been crippled for 38 years. He didn’t pull out an empathy routine but pointedly asked, “Do you want to be healed?”

Now, what kind of question is that? Do I want to be healed? Why do you think I am here-in this treatment program, the therapy session, this empowerment group, or reading the latest self-help book? And that’s how the man answered Jesus. “Well, I have no one to help me into the water when it’s stirred.” He avoided the question.

I remember asking my children if their homework was finished. “Well, I did part of my math in study hall and-.” I’d interrupt, “This is a yes/no question. Is or is not your homework finished?” When I pushed the question, the answer invariably was a “No.”

Jesus cut to the quick: “Get up, pick up your bed, and walk.” And the man was healed.

Do you want to be clean? Do you want to be sober? Do you want to be healed of trauma? Do you want to stop inflicting trauma on others? Do you want to leave a self-defeating life behind you? Do you want to be well? Do you want to be a strong, empowered woman?

Many clients often say, “I’m gonna try to . . . .” As soon as I hear try, I know that success will not be forthcoming. There’s no commitment behind it, there is no resounding “Yes!” to the question of Do you want to be healed? I’ve been told that to try is to fail.

I see it in myself, how I decide to move forward with confidence and then that old Shrinking Violet Syndrome sneaks up behind me, and I allow the doubts to creep back in.

What if I want to be toxic? There are many answers, but the very first is to make the decision, when not feeling toxic, that I no longer want to be toxic. What if I want to be toxic? First we must answer: Do I want to be healed, and then shout, “Yes!!!” as loud and as often as we need to, “Yes! Yes! Yes! I want to be healed!” And then, when the toxic tempter comes around, we are not required to entertain the tiniest little whisper, but holler as if our lives depend upon it-which they do–”No! No! No! I do not want to be toxic! I have already decided that I am not going to be toxic. I want to be clean, sober, healed, (or whatever it is!!) The decision has been made and this is not (doubled bolded and double underlined!) open for discussion! Scram! And don’t come back. Period.”

And then we breathe.

Or walk a labyrinth.

Call our sponsor.

Meditate or pray.

Journal.

Whatever practice we have discovered that helps us center and hold to the decision that we have already made.

*STAR program (Seminars in Trauma Awareness & Recovery), Eastern Mennonite University.

Copyright, January 2008, Joy A. Bergfalk. Please use w/ permission.