I wrote this piece for a research assignment for my PhD program. We were invited to free-write about our spring break. I wanted to share it with you.

Poet David Whyte writes “start close in...with...the step you don't want to take.” This was my spring break. I had plans to be outside tilling the soil for the summer garden, cleaning out my studio and taking a spontaneous road trip. But I got sick. Sickness is holy ground for me. It is an invitation to stillness, and though that sounds very inviting, for a person who has defined herself by what she does it can be very difficult. But this time around, horizontal in my bed, I took it as a chance to get to know myself better. Maybe this could be an opportunity for rebirth. It is spring after all and the healing of this wound of not knowing my worth has been a long time coming.
   
That week I had just finished my paper on servant leadership for Rick’s class. That paper opened me up for healing. The focus of the paper was on my intentions for leadership and exploring how those intentions can be rooted in arrogance or humility. I told stories of childhood, of leadership qualities I possessed at a young age, and how often my intentions were to seek attention and to control. As I matured in my self-development and awakened to my spiritual roots, I began to lead in ways that embodied a deeper sense of humility. In being brought to my knees at a young age, my heart opened to a presence larger than me. And that is where my actions have been rooted ever since. It is from filling up on the inside that my actions became a product of overflow. The Love that I have received, and continue to receive, naturally spills out. It is not anymore about being empty and filling from the outside. The spiritual practice of giving is first rooted in the subtle, yet profound act of receiving. But old inner demons can die hard.
  
The second night of spring break I had a dream. I regularly attend a dream group where four women sit around a coffee table, drink peach herbal tea and share our dreams. One of the women is a Jungian dream analyst and she provides guidance on what our dreams might be trying to teach us. The dream I had on the second night of spring break involved me running away from dark, shadowy men. They were chasing me and to escape the chase, I headed to an upstairs apartment. When I got there I was told that in order to escape their chase, I had to eat all of the Easter lilies in the apartment. So, I began chewing; cleaning off the petals, the leaves and the stems. I woke about so impacted by the dream I contacted Christie, my dream teacher. She told me that Easter, as many of us know, is the ritual honoring rebirth, new life, resurrection. There are plenty of wisdom stories that honor this phenomena of regeneration. In the dream, I was invited to eat and fully take in new life. This regenerative quality of the soul Jung would call the feminine. We see this in a green shoot poking up through the earth and this is in us. I am apparently read to eat it.
   
I couldn’t help but think of the little girl I had written about in my leadership paper. In what ways is she looking to be reborn? As my work continues to grow in ways I couldn’t possibly have imagined, I feel my call to this vocation deepen and root even more. In order to be a leader in the area of body and soul, I cannot go back to my old ways of childhood leadership. If my intention is set on getting attention and approval (which most of my life it was) then my leadership will be superficial, coming from a place of insecurity rather than the regenerative, abundant Source of life. After eating the Easter lilies of my dreams, I realized that this little girl in me who has sought approval her whole life was ready for something new. And in order to do that, I was going to need to swallow new life whole. It was the only way to escape the shadowy, darkness of my past that was chasing me; just like in my dream.
   
On Friday night I attended a Jivamukti yoga class.  It was a beautiful session. Jessica, the teacher, opens each class in stillness and with a lesson of some kind. In this class, it was the lesson of letting go; loving something or someone and letting it go. What a perfect place for me to be, ready to let go of the old and welcome the new.  During the dedication, I devoted my practice to the Love that has renewed me over and over again. I dedicated my practice to the wounded part of me that tries too hard, that seeks attention and leads from that wounded place. I want to root my leadership in humility and gratitude and the only way for me to do this is to surrender to the very Love that created me. In the middle of the session there was a backbend series where Jessica asked the students to dedicate their backbends, in this case an asana called “the wheel”, to a person we needed to love and let go of. A little five year old girl came to mind, the one I wrote about in Rick’s paper. The one who organized summer camps as a kindergartner for the neighborhood and never wanted to be the follower. That little girl was me. I dedicated every backbend to the little girl in me who never felt enough. Every time I pressed up into that wheel, with my back rounded and heart reaching towards the sky, I did it for her. I thanked that little one for all that she did to help me get through growing up in a family where I was confronted with my powerlessness daily. Being a controlling, self-seeking person was what I had to do to live through that time. But that way of living was no longer necessary and it was time to let that little girl go; not by shoving her out of the picture, but by dedicating my physical efforts to her with love. As I rose three times, shaking and sweating and feeling like I couldn’t do it, I wept. Tears slid down my face in the middle of the class and I knew that I was in the midst of transformation. When we are really ready to turn over our limitations to the great Alchemist, we will be renewed.
   
It was Friday night, the second to last night of spring break. Sweaty and fulfilled, I returned home and sat down in my rocking chair with a cup of tea. It was then that my throat began to hurt. Every time I swallowed, pain seared in the soft tissue of my throat. I drank another cup of tea, now with honey from the bees, thinking this might ease the pain. I spent the entire night tossing and turning. It was awful. And it was awe-ful. When I woke up, my glands were so swollen that it was difficult to talk. I could eat only popsicles and noodle soup. It took me back to how I felt when I had mononucleosis when I was sixteen years old. I was out of school for three months.  When I was diagnosed with cancer at 24, my doctors told me that there is a connection between  Hodgkin’s Disease and those who have had a severe case of mono. When I get sick, it can’t just be a cold or sore throat, almost always memories of being gravely ill return. Like I said, sickness is my holy ground. It confronts me with the ultimate powerlessness, death. And I have a choice, I can either turn to the Love within me or hold on tight. I can grip the steering wheel of life, or surrender to the Love that I was born from and will die to. As I laid in bed, swirling in memories and feeling a bit lost, I remember the emotional and spiritual awakenings of my week. I just knew that this sore throat was connected to all of that healing. Marion Woodman, Canadian Jungian analyst writes about how emotional and spiritual work will always manifest in our bodies. All “parts” are connected. But in this case how? I found myself sitting up in the middle of the night and taking notes. These were some of them: servant leadership and the inner demons I have had to face to receive a greater Love; a dream about eating Easter lilies or integrating new life fully; dedicating my physical and spiritual practice to letting of the wounded girl within me; then a sore throat, my entire throat almost closing off. What did this all mean?
   
My bed is situated by a large window. I don’t often lay in bed during the day (maybe I should more!) It is usually when I am sick that I lie in bed during the day. As I look out this window, I can see a large tree. When I laid in bed after my daughter was born, the tree was just sprouting its new buds of spring. When I laid in my bed after a breast biopsy, the tree was naked in the winter cold. And when I looked out at it this spring break, it was just on the cusp of breaking through to newness. I spend time with this tree when I feel lost. And often when I am sick I feel lost, scared, vulnerable, and humbled. The tree helps me to trust the seasons and cycles of my body. It reminds me to stay rooted and not get to lost in my thoughts. And when I watch the leaves blowing off the branches I am reminded to let go of what no longer serves me. When I see its fullness in the summer months, I am called to my fullest potential.
   
On spring break 2011, I reclaimed my voice in a new way. I found a this voice by shedding the wounded one. I no longer needed the voice that is controlling or insecure, just like a tree no longer needs its dead leaves for winter. It must shed them to allow the new bud to push through. By pushing into the earth I raised my heart to the sky and I felt like that little brown leaf. The little girl who did not know the regenerative Love within her was ready to die. And it is in her dying that my new voice was born. She could not be pushed out. She could not be judged out. The only thing she needed from me was love and acceptance. And just like the life that keeps regenerating in a tree, its does the same in us if we let it. And the minute I was ready to surrender my woundedness to Love, that Love took it in and birthed forth a new voice.
   
Birth involves pain. My sore throat that Saturday morning I now know was the new voice being born. I can hear it in my teaching, when I speak to my husband and children, and most of all I can hear it in myself. The message it now speaks is: you are enough. And just like the Life bursting forth in a springtime tree, its bursting forth in me now.