I have a story around the Fulfilled Inside, Strong Together Retreat coming up in November that captures the magic of life and how unexpectedly blessings come when you allow them in. The trick is that we most often don’t know what it looks like to truly welcome what we haven’t been used to receiving.
Funnily enough, I met this woman at the very first retreat Rita gave …perhaps it was about five years ago. She was fxxking angry then and what with the “orange one” in power, she is still fxxking angry today. Of course that’s not all she is, and I’ve gotten to see the different shades of her passion and love.
She expressed the greatest resistance to the subject matter – love – and came to me several times before the Early Bird deadline with questions about payment details, anger about Arizona being the destination (with its political climate), and so on and so on.
“I have such a resistance to going,” she said, her statement actually laced with one fxxking after another. “I really don’t want to go, and I know that probably is a sign I should.”
“I’m not here to push you,” I said, “you have time. Go ahead and sit with it some more.”
Only two nights later, I was awakened by the vibration of my phone which had fallen onto my chest. It seemed a dream to read her text, “I’m going to go to the retreat with Rita. I’ll just pay in full to you.”
When we finally talked in person, she told me how miraculous the past several days had been, that after some 20 years since her divorce, she was now in a relationships that in hindsight, had been unfolding for the past month. This old acquaintance had come back into her life through Facebook, and after several long conversations and a deep feeling that this is what she had been opening herself up for, she had a “boyfriend!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG”
I had never heard her speak so vulnerably, excitedly about how open her heart was. “We truly love each other,” were her exact words. Let me tell you, I love this woman dearly, but “fxxk” and “asshole” were more a part of her vocabulary than the word “love” ever was.
We’ve talked more and since, and realized that just the process, the work she did in deciding whether to attend the retreat was part of opening her heart and stepping into a new beginning. Fancy that.
Fighting for Happiness 