~

REFLECTION FOR CIRCLE  6-21-98  Father’s Day

LICIA: 

I am going to introduce you to my father.  He was born in the Outer Banks village of Hatteras; it pokes about as far out into the ocean as North Carolina can reach.

His tales of his childhood took on a mythological quality which held all within hearing range spellbound.  There was no paved road into Hatteras then; a remote fishing village was the seemingly perfect place for a boy to grow up.  I imagine a freckled faced boy with Carolina blue eyes and big front teeth (like mine), golden salty sunlight in his hair as he ran the beaches, roamed the marshes gathering eels and frogs, rode his obstinate pony to the farthest reaches of the island at will.  The stories about getting lost in the sound at dark in a rowboat, the sharks closing in.  Being scared to walk the bog at night for fear of the dreaded “swampus”, a creature of untold menace and terror.  My father was a boy once.

He spoke of a simple life; the priority was survival against the hurricanes, the sea and the isolation.  He spoke of his mother as the rigid keeper of the household.  “Take those greasy shoes off!  No sand in my house!  Your feet are black as tar!”  He did not speak of his father that I can remember.

He was the local boy who left the flock.  He met my mother one fateful summer night at a village dance.  She was on vacation with her family; they were “city folk”, or “ferners” as grandmom called people who did not have the distinction of being sea worthy.  My parents dated long distance for two years, then eloped when he was 19 years of age, much to the horror of both families.  He dropped out of UNC Chapel Hill.  I was born 10 months later.

I don’t know exactly what caused him to be “emotionally under”; probably a myriad of things.  My personal experience of him was that there was a soft, vulnerable side that he covered, or surrounded with a rigid moral construct and stoicism.  I have vivid impressions of the set of his jaw when he angered, or his clenched fist held up in front of him to signify that I was not to say another word.  I think a part of me thought he would kill me, although I cannot remember him ever spanking me.  As a teenager warring with my mother, I took any opportunity to bond with him.  This typically took place after he had consumed several beers.  He would talk and I would sit and listen.  I can remember sitting out on the front porch one evening hearing the gruesome details of his sex life with my mother, whom he called “frigid”.   I did not know then that my yearning for father became subsumed in his need for a confidant and mistress.

I confronted my father 8 years ago about the sexual abuse.  I was so afraid that he would respond by saying that I was crazy or that I’d made it all up.  Instead, he did not respond at all.  He has not spoken to me for these 8 years.  I have been many places about this loss; I was so angry for a long time that I didn’t care that we had no relationship.  Other times I have wanted to cave in completely and say that I didn’t mean it, that it’s alright.  It is just in the last year or two that I have considered him as a person, a little boy who grew up into a man who happened to become my father.  I have started to notice the good things that I got from him.  I don’t know where this will lead.  But this feels like a more human place to be.

ANITA:

A father is a man who shares in the care of children

A man who is in relationship with a child or children

A father is a man who notices what a child thinks or feels

A man who consoles a child when she is in pain-whether it is from a scraped knee or a hurt feeling

A father is a teacher who by his very presence in the classroom affirms and holds the place of men in the shape of our childrens’ education

A father is a man who instead of watching tv after work plays basketball with the kids at the Y

A father is a man who takes the time to watch tv or play a video game with a child as a man willing to meet a child in his place of fun

A father is a man who volunteers to be a big brother, a mentor, a tutor

A man whose eyes say, “Yes, you can” or “I will help you” and derives great pleasure from watching a child learn

A father is a man who is able to watch a girl or boy evolve into a delicious sexual being and is able to abide with all the tumultuous feelings that this powerful life cycle evokes within him…without repression and especially without transgression

A father is a man who can give the child room to flaunt that sexuality as they are wont to do- and no matter how confusing it gets-can hold the child’s best interest in his heart

A father is a man who considers his son’s gay partner his son-in-law, or his daughter’s lesbian partner his daughter-in-law

A father is a man who walks the earth in keeping with the seventh generation principle, thinking in terms of the well being of the children of the future.

Now anybody of any gender can do most of the things I have described here.  But what distinguishes a father from all others is that he is a man…a real man.  We are coming out of an era when the definition of a “real man” is measured by(depending on what circles you run in) his economic prowess, his money making ability, his physical strength, his athletic ability, his physical beauty, and the merchants and the money lenders would have this be so since their lively hood depends on it.

LICIA
CLOSE:

I was touched with a woman’s yearning for the mother she described on mother’s day.  I think the mother she so desperately wants is a universal mother, one that we all may want, but probably didn’t have.   My yearning for the universal father takes on many shapes, many of which have been touched on by Anita.  I am still looking for the ideal father, I think.  But in the meantime I have and am incorporating his attributes into myself.  I father myself as much as I know how to do it.  I look to other men and women with these masculine/father characteristics to learn from them and be touched by them.

How can we father ourselves, assuming that we didn’t have the universal father?  How can we come to terms with the loss of those desired traits that one poor, hapless human being was “supposed to” provide?  How can we forgive ourselves for being angry about that loss?  How do we celebrate what we thankfully accept from our fathers?

~

 And here I am in 2012, 14 years later, asking the same questions but tempered with more answers.  My husband has grown into the father that my boys need, and that is deeply gratifying.  And yet, I still need fathering, and am still learning how to be fathered and how to father myself.  The masculine in me is still “growing up”, bumping into things, backing away, evolving by doing, learning by my mistakes and successes.  The masculine can be so very beautiful when it is genuinely yearning to be the best it can be.

My inner masculine is learning how to father me even as I learn to “father” my sons.   I took the risk and played basketball with them a few days ago; I haven’t touched a basket ball pretty much since high school P.E., but I have a certain latitude since they don’t expect much from me in the athletic realm.  Imagine my surprise (and theirs) when I shot more consistent baskets than they did, even 3 pointers.

I am rewriting history every time I step up and challenge the parenting I received, whether I’m parenting my children or myself.  I’m rewriting the code I inherited from my ancestors, giving those beyond me a different chance.  The evolution of our species is guaranteed, but evolving without healing means we pass down a broken blueprint, one that will be carried in the future generations.  Is that really what we want?

I’m learning what a “real man” is, as well as a “real woman”.  I’m learning that my definition of “real” includes taking responsibility for our future on this planet.  I feel that means bringing to light the ways our unconsciousness kills us inside.  It must start internally, and then spreads beyond us.  As each of us are born, humanity has another new chance.  What we decide to do with that chance is up to us.

Happy birthday, dad.

(c) Licia Berry 2012

A Real Man is a post from Licia Berry -

Part 1 http://liciaberry.com/2009/11/24/blue-eyed-indian/

Part 2 http://liciaberry.com/2012/01/11/blue-eyed-indian-part-2/

Hatteras is the end of the line, the southernmost village on Hatteras Island.  In the old days, you had to take a boat to get to the remote, scrubby shores.  Hatteras Island has had a bridge that connects it to the mainland since 1962, 3 years before I was born; when the bridge was being considered, some of the locals saw it as a boon for the local economy and welcomed the connection to the mainland, but others complained that it would bring “foreigners”(or “ferners”, as my grandmother said) to the island and change their way of life.  Both turned out to be true.

The Cape point juts out into the sea, splitting the waters.  To quote Wikipedia, “two major Atlantic currents collide just off Cape Hatteras, the southerly-flowing cold water Labrador Current and the northerly-flowing warm water Florida Current (Gulf Stream), creating turbulent waters and a large expanse of shallow sandbars extending up to 14 miles (23 km) offshore. These shoals are known as Diamond Shoals. Because mariners utilize ocean currents to speed their journey, many ships venture close to Cape Hatteras when traveling along the eastern seaboard, risking the perils of sailing close to the shoals amid turbulent water and the frequent storms occurring in the area. So many ships have been lost off Cape Hatteras that the area is known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic“.”

Some of my ancestry comes from these foundered ships; even more of my ancestry took advantage of the wreckage of these vessels.  My father told stories of folks that would actually light bonfires on the beach to lure the ships in, onto the sand bars.  The people of Hatteras were opportunists.  That’s what a harsh environment that threatens your survival makes you.

Opportunism can be taken many ways.  A wild animal happens upon another animal’s kill and gets to eat dinner, and we understand that this is the ultimate efficiency of nature.  Another viewpoint is that the opportunist is lazy, and doesn’t deserve anything but scorn unless they make their own way; perhaps this is why we dislike vultures.  Even another is that the opportunist is a slimy, good for nothing cur that needs to be corrected or managed, such as a wolf taking advantage of a farmer’s livestock, prompting hunting to the brink of extinction.  Of course, these descriptions are anthropomorphizing the animal in question, and don’t hold water in intelligent conversation.  But what about when people take what they want in an opportunistic manner?

Opportunism is sometimes what happens when one party perceives a weakness in another party.  The opportunist wants what they want, and will take it if they see an opening.  The kindness that the original inhabitants of my homeland showed to the visitors from the tall ships was perceived as a weakness, when in fact it was a sense of family.

The taking of the land from aboriginal people is an opportunism that speaks to a broken soul, a lack of understanding of what it means to belong to a tribe, to the land, to one another, to the universe.  In this case, the opportunism displayed needs correction.

I feel we must take back what belongs to us.  No, I’m not advocating that we make wars on the government to return the land to its original inhabitants.  War makes more war, and that’s not what will cure the sickness of separation that created this mess.  But I do advocate that we take back our bodies, minds and spirits from those who would prey on our fears.

I feel we have been raised in a culture of control.  It goes way, way back.  Fear is how to maintain power over others.  Unless we are inspired and encouraged to trust ourselves, we can become willing sheep, following the herd and doing what we’re told.  If we don’t stand in our own strength, we are willing targets for the opportunists in the world.

We are in a time of our development as a species that we can no longer see ourselves as separate.  There can be no more pointing fingers, no more waiting to be saved, no more ”us” and “them”.  We must each take responsibility for ourselves as the powerful creatures we are and own our sovereignty, our divinity, our direct connection to All Creation.

In my own journey to take back what is mine, I’ve had to decide whether I would listen to the voices that want to define me in ways that suit their needs, or listen to the yearning for my own acknowledgment of what I feel is true for me.  Whenever I doubt my voice, one question brings it all back into perspective: Who must I live with for the rest of my life?  Of course, the answer is me.

I’ve had multiple experiences that lead me to believe that indigenous values can save us from ourselves; it has become clear to me as I’ve made room for my aboriginal inner voice that it remembers the way to feel connection and knows how to walk in balance.  Feeling our connection to the land once more is a kind of belonging that we yearn for from our oldest bloodlines and in our DNA.  We are ALL aboriginal if you go back far enough; we ALL belong to the Earth.  We must go inside, and remember.  This recognition may be what we need to correct the opportunism that runs rampant in the world.

copyright Licia Berry 2012

Blue Eyed Indian, part 3 is a post from Licia Berry -

"She Returns", collage by Licia Berry 2012

I recently hosted 3 screenings for a documentary called “The Heart to Lead-Women as Allies for the Greater Good” here in Tallahassee. Over 30 women here in north Florida came to watch and share in discussion after the film…we were so inspired that we are creating a Women’s Leadership Circle to explore and encourage each of us to develop our own skills of leadership as we are each called to service.

But what IS leadership?

Some of the women said that they initially had negative responses to the word “leadership” because it implies “followers”.  The old paradigm of leadership is definitely one of “I’m the expert, follow me” and sometimes one in which power and trust are abused.  One in which we are encouraged to give our power way to something outside of ourselves.  As we exit the Piscean age of “power over” and enter the Aquarian era of “power with”, that old leadership style ain’t gonna cut it anymore.

But my calling to leadership has been an internal journey, one in which I have decided to lead myself.

Here is leadership as I define it (I add to this list continually):

• Owning my life, my spirit, my soul, my thoughts, my mind, body and emotions, and taking responsibility for them.
• Caring for myself wisely, discerning for myself what is right.
• Listening to and acting on my wise inner voice.
• Being rigorously honest with myself to stay true to my integrity.
• Being my own expert.
• Having opinions and giving myself permission to express them, even if others don’t want to hear.
• Allowing myself to make mistakes, and being responsible for making it right when I do.
• Being a deep listener and observer.
• Having the strength to be vulnerable and to be with others who are in pain.
• Having the courage to go into the dark to get answers in service to my people, my human family.
• Modeling the behavior I want to see in the world.
• Having the courage to do the right thing, the hard thing.
• Knowing that I am part of a larger whole that I am indeed a caretaker for.
• Getting it that I have a right to own the space I take up on this beautiful earth as being uniquely me.

But I have shied away from leadership.  It came from my discomfort in my own skin, my unwillingness to have an opinion in case others disagreed, my feeling of being unsafe being Licia, fear of my own power.  It takes some cajones, or in my case ovarias to step into that kind of self ownership.  But the universe apparently won’t let me hide out.

Others saw leadership in me long before I did.  As a kid, others would come to me to speak their troubles.  I was called wise beyond my years by counselors, teachers, and even my own mother (you know that tired tale).  As a young woman, I was given immense responsibilities without my asking and before I knew I could handle them.  As I moved into the professional world, I was asked to start organizations and lead others.  Even the film The Heart to Lead was given to me by a visionary woman and prophecy maker who, with a knowing twinkle in her eye, handed me the film and said, “You’ll plant some seeds in women when you show this.”  I had no idea that I would be asked to start a women’s circle to put us all through the alchemy of becoming leaders.  How is it that these people saw “leadership” written all over me when I couldn’t see in myself?

Maybe because being called to leadership is kind of like being asked to step into a big destiny that you can’t know the outcome of, and maybe we feel that well before we actualize it.  James Hillman spoke in The Soul’s Code of children who were scared, shy or exhibited learning disabilities before they grew into great leaders in their calling.  Winston Churchill stuttered before becoming the statesman.  Minalote, the world’s most accomplished bullfighter, clung to his mother’s skirts as a child.  Albert Einstein did poorly in school and was considered “delayed” before changing the world with his visionary theories.  Maybe I have had a sense of my destiny s a leader and cowered before it, while others sensed my destiny in the very molecules of my being and encouraged me toward it.  And learning to lead myself has been great training for my leadership in service to others who want to lead themselves.

I find others struggle with this calling to lead; my FaceBook friend and visionary MD Lissa Rankin shared on her blog about her own journey to stay the course in her calling.  To quote her:

“But I discovered that you can quit your job, but you can’t quit your calling. I resisted in every way possible. I denied the call. I rejected the call. I bargained with the Universe. I pleaded that someone else be chosen to do this work. I cried on my knees. I didn’t want to be a trailblazer. I wanted to live this quiet life in the country with my family, rather than put myself in the spotlight and become a missionary for the purpose. I wanted to retreat, and yet I was being called to be the Universe’s spokesperson.”

I can really relate to this, Lissa…I’ve had a similar journey, starting out in public education and morphing into an educator about living a human life in a divine way, utilizing sciences, healing, art, shamanism and spirit in some weird blend of sense that is uniquely Licia Berry. It has been a confusing, challenging ride, and I have wanted to bail many times and live the quiet life of a housewife and mother, tending to my garden, canning and making quilts!

I realized that this vision I hold of the “safe life” is one that would eventually kill me, as I’m not meant to settle into my rocking chair, not just yet. The intense hunger to know, and to share what I am learning, drives me to ever expanding boundaries, the edge of my own frontier.

Thanks for holding that edge with me.

Xo

Licia

Thoughts to ponder: How do YOU define leadership?  How are you a leader in your own life, and in service to your people?

Click here to learn more about my Women’s Circles!

Becoming the Leader of Myself is a post from Licia Berry -

I wrote and posted this on my Facebook wall yesterday:

“You know, I love a gutsy woman. A dangerous woman! A woman that, despite the possibility that she will be misunderstood, not liked or accepted, called “unladylike”, or possibly piss people off, speaks her own experience anyway. I’m not talking about rude folks with no boundaries…no, I don’t have any tolerance for that.  I’m talking about a woman that stands in her own power with grace, and tells it like it is. Full of courage and heart, even if her knees are knocking. Woman, you have my allegiance…Sign me UP.”

It’s gotten a lot of attention through shares, “likes” and comments.  Seems that I’ve said something that some folks really resonate with.  But I wrote it for myself!

Let me explain.  I’m in the process of writing my book about  my family’s 7-year journey to find home in our hearts and heal ancestral patterns of abuse and dysfunction so that our children and those beyond them can be freer to create lives in balance.  It is a very challenging book to write because I have to tell my own life story; as the voice that this tale comes through, it is important that I come clean and that the reader knows the lenses that I perceive the world through.

But, as I write in my chair, I feel the ghosts of those who want me to stay silent standing at my shoulders.  I will not give them voice here by sharing the things the mean things they say.  But I can tell you that the fear of breaking the code and sharing the shameful secrets in my family of origin is enough to give me pause.  Hell, it’s enough to make my whole body shake with tremors and the sensation of a giant angry hand closing around my throat.

It is an age-old problem for people who grow up in abusive families to overcome the pattern of hiding the truth, and to recognize and shine light on what is broken in the family.  But it takes an extraordinary act of courage to stand up and accept the ire that inevitably comes when we break rank and speak the family pain.  And I have to negotiate with my internalized “family secret keeper”, the little girl who wanted to be loved and accepted for who she was, but who had to learn to be someone else in order to survive into adulthood.

And so, as I’m writing, the horror of my experience is spelled out in detail, in black and white.  No longer in the dark recesses of my mind, or circling back through the laundry machine of psycho-therapy, but out in the world for all to see.  And when I have the kind souls who are holding me while I undertake this sacred task read what I’ve written, I hear their stunned response, and it makes it real.  Dear God.  I lived through this, and here I am sharing my victorious return to my spirit.  I am a warrior woman.

I have every right to speak my truth, to share my experience, to reveal what would have killed a weaker spirit, to roar my emergence from the dark arms of death in my biological family, and to encourage others to do the same.  I write this book on behalf of that little girl, and on behalf of all women who are shushed, who people wish would “just be quiet”, who choose to speak their truth rather than die a silent death.  The woman that I wrote about in that Facebook post is ME.

As I continue to gather up my courage and forge ahead to finish this book, I’m going to periodically look at that post in order to remind myself of the leader I’ve become in my own life.  I was inspired by those who’d found their power and their voice in earlier years, but now I am inspiring myself.

I AM That Woman is a post from Licia Berry -

Everybody knows that sometimes you’ve got to let go of things that don’t belong in your life any more.

I was asked for advice about HOW to let go on Facebook tonight…I love questions because they draw wisdom out of me that I didn’t always know I had (thanks, Pamela)!

I have A LOT of experience in letting go…from early as a kid to just this afternoon, I have practiced this art (and science) many times, over and over and over.  And I have identified some consistent stages that come with the Letting Go Process.  ‎

How to Let Go:

1.  Get clarity on why you are letting something/someone go.  Is it because it is a negative influence, such as a drain on your energy?  Toxic to you, even?  Or maybe not quite so dramatic, more like you’re just not that into it anymore?  Good to be clear. This is so you can remind yourself later when you get tempted to go back to who/whatever it is.

2.  State the intention to let go clearly to those that will be affected, as well as to the universe.  This gets YOU lined up and does the correct and respectful thing of not “disappearing” without communicating your intentions first.  Of course, in an abusive situation, this step may not be applicable.

3.  Walk away.  Really.  Truly.  Do not look back.  Letting go means you are DONE with it.  Make that committment within yourself that you made this decision for your own well being, and stick to it.

4.  Grieve.  Process.  Even lovely things that go away still are a LOSS.  We process loss in lots of different ways, but they all are underscored by grieving, which is a natural response to loss.  Allow yourself to feel the loss, express the feelings, do what you need to do to take care of yourself.

5.  It is rare, but sometimes the act of walking away from something with complete conviction will actually force the thing you left to improve and come around again in your life asking for a second chance.  If so, go back to step 1.  Has it really changed?  Feel it in your body.  Does it feel different?  Is there a possibility it could work out?  Are you willing to risk it of it doesn’t?

I find that these are steps I consistently go through when I let go in my life.  I find that the more intentionally I do them, the more it makes room for the next better thing to show up in your life!

Does it get any easier to let go?  Mmmm, maybe.  It still hurts, it is still a loss, but with repetition at least I know the stages, and seem to move through them a little faster.  I find that, with maturity, I am learning how to go through these steps with greater ease, and less hesitation.

And the reward?  FREEDOM from something that was dragging you down.  The relief (and the return of your life energy) is hard to ignore!

Good luck!

xo, Licia

The Art and Science of Letting Go is a post from Licia Berry -