Adventuring into The Cocoon

"When a great ship is in harbour and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for."

- Clarissa Pinkola Estés

It would be an act of extreme hyperbole to compare myself to a great ship, but lately I have been using, quite frequently, a “being at sea” metaphor to describe my life. And I don’t think I am the only one. In fact, I hear a great many people speaking about the feeling of being ‘unmoored’.

My being at sea metaphor is not quite analogous to being unmoored though, as that suggests to me that the casting off of the ropes is somehow unintentional, a mistake. Instead, I have cast myself adrift, if not deliberately, then by being somehow so in tune with my life that the only thing that was ever going to get me to accomplish departure from the known shore in search of a new horizon is happening. Whether I noticed that I had chosen it or not.

I do choose it now.

Work is drying up. For 38 years I have had what I can claim, without any hyperbole at all, to be a glorious career. I am one of the truly lucky ones who experienced a calling and had the chutzpah to say ‘yes’, even though I was completely green behind the ears, and had no idea what amount of growth (and growing pains) I was inviting in. (This impulse, experienced in the major transition I undertook in 1991 from employed to running my own business, is relevant to the present topic of this newsletter).

I don’t regret one moment of it. And that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some hair-raising facilitator war stories to share from times past. I have experienced terror, great crescendos of listening to ‘edge figures’ screaming at me from inside my skull “turn back! Turn back! It’s not too late” as I walked purposefully up the aisle between rows of up to 350 chairs to reach the podium, turn around, and engage in ontological coaching seminars on topics as far flung as excellence and accomplishment on the one hand through vitality and money all the way to sex and intimacy on the other!

I have faced audiences of unwilling participants, still drunk from vodka fuelled benders the night before, raising copies of The Daily Mail and (heavens forbid!) The Sun in my face to express their displeasure at “being sent” to participate in The Breakthrough Programme, my inaugural flagship seminar delivered to up to 13,000 cabin crew at a leading world airline. And I have kept going.

I have reinvented myself from TLC Consulting through to BraveHeart: Cultivating Courage, and I have worked alongside some of the finest co-facilitators a woman could ever hope to have had the privilege to partner with.

I have had more pleasure than many might believe is possible from ‘work’, having been blessed by the treasure of listening to hundreds of extraordinary ordinary people think about their lives, their heart-calling, their soul journey, their loves and losses, their hopes for the future, their sadness and their joy.

My work has been both boon and balm, it has been wide open ocean and safe harbour both.

And now, it is ending. That big, long adventurous 38 year chapter, is coming to an end.

My take on it is this: if work kept coming, I was going to keep saying yes.

But something else is wanting to emerge. A whole life transition, not simply a new chapter in the existing story. And somehow life figured it out. The only way I was ever going to sit in the silence of my not-knowing knowing, and allow it to happen, was if the work dried up.

January’s epiphany born from contemplating the stillness of the unbounded Karoo landscape could simply not accept being squeezed back into the rush and cacophony of daily life.

Hence the being at sea metaphor. André Gide’s famous quote has long been one of my favourites:

“One cannot (he said ‘man cannot’, but I’m not one of those) discover new oceans unless they have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

That is easier said than done (as is mostly the way with famous quotes!). When first faced with the disappearing shoreline, I fell headlong into fear (not my favourite feeling), followed swiftly by panic (hmm, not mad about that one either!), and then identity loss.

It came as an unexpected realisation to face the extent to which my identity is wrapped up in my work. On reflection, however, it’s actually not so surprising: it has been the source of so much of my happiness, fulfilment and sense of purpose. So much joy!

But I have been greatly supported by one of my all-time favourite models that I discovered, way back, when a member of faculty at The South African College of Applied Psychology. The astonishingly erudite Frederic Hudson penned this model, called The Cycle of Renewal:

For years now, at seminal and opportune moments I have shared this model with clients. I don’t rush to share it, because it is very precious, and need only really be offered when a person is ready to receive its wisdom. Nearly always those moments have been when what the client was being called to do was Cocoon, instead of mini-transitioning back through the middle to reimagine an existing chapter.

Reimagining the existing chapter of my amazing work life journey is something I have done over and over.

I am discovering, only now, that I have been guilty of being a trifle glib about Cocooning. I have shared the model by way of hoping to encourage a patent need for it in another, never quite knowing exactly what courage it takes to actually, truly, really, oh yes….LET GO.

(Back to easier said than done!).

Having said all that, though, I am quietly, optimistically anticipatory. No more retooling and refreshing. Into The Inner Self I go. Because it is time to do that work in order to recover, eventually, The Passionate Self. I have no doubt I will, and I will continue to write from inside the Cocoon.

And finally, from Helen Keller:

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”

From my brave heart to yours

With love

Trisha

PS: I often feel, and more especially about this newsletter, that because it cannot and ought not to be a book I am having to summarise more layers of complexity than can be rightfully expressed into a much shorter story. This one may seem dramatic and questionable. Fortunately, the same compass that guided me to let go of the security of employment for the adventure of running my own business, is still in good working order. I am confident that this life transition, which has been calling for some time, is going to bear very sweet fruit.