Several weeks ago, I was looking over all the poems I’ve written this year, searching for a theme.
I discovered that each poem I’ve written offers an alternative identity, a different definition of what it means to be human.
For example, the poem, “The One Deep Inside Your Chest,” from last September, said to you:
Can you feel the one deep inside your chest, who has existed forever?
Who has made a thousand journeys?
Who feels like a comet in the dark?
The inner filament?
I know, no one ever told you.
I know: it wasn’t the name
you learned to write at school,
but that one is you.
That one is the real you.
What if you are not just Susan, or Ali, or Mark? You are in the one deep inside your chest, who has existed forever. The one who feels like a comet in the dark.
How does remembering that identity open you up? How does it alter the way you see the challenges you are facing? How does it change your feeling about your place in the world?
Changing our conception of self dramatically changes our life experience.
This summer, I’m leading a weekend retreat on this topic. We’ll explore four alternative ways of seeing ourselves, each based in one of my poems. You’ll learn how to use each “other name” for yourself as a tool that brings peace, comfort and greater resourcefulness into your life.
Think sun, beautiful California coast, community, and a weekend of workshop style exploration of four “other names” for you.
The conventional way we see ourselves sounds like this: “I am Tara. I’m a writer, a coach, a teacher. I live in San Francisco. I have this life story.”
Think about your own life experience. When you think of yourself primarily in this way, what happens next? You feel good about some parts of your story, bad about others. You feel like you don’t measure up in particular ways. A subtle sense of striving, of failure, of constriction shows up. Being in the world starts to feel scary or like an uphill battle.
That’s because that identity – the one that has to do with our given names and our life stories and our LinkedIn pages, is only a very partial picture of who we are. When we identify with it as the full picture of who we are, we’ve already veered of course, and our hearts and spirits feel it. Who we really are is much more vast, fluid, and miraculous.
Over a glorious summer weekend, we’ll step into other layers of our identity and see what they can offer us.
We’ll use poetry throughout the weekend, so if you have been enjoying my poetry and want to go deeper in incorporating its messages into your life, this is for you. Of course, you don’t have to be a poetry expert of any sort to enjoy the retreat.
The retreat is not open for registration yet, but if you would like to learn more and get access to the early bird discount, sign up HERE.
I’m so excited about this. Hope to see you this summer!
Hugs,
Tara
