RELIEF RETREATS V2.0

This photo sums up my heart right now.

I’ve been largely silent for almost 2 months since Relief Retreats V 2.0 started on October 13, 2020.

And I’m rarely at a loss for words.

If anything 2020 has taught me, it is that there is worth in exploring new ways, even if they are unfamiliar and uncomfortable and unnatural.

So I opted to shut up and sit with all the “un” for a skinny minute.

As with everything done more than once, it’s hard not to compare. And that is equal parts fine and folly, because they are never, could never, will never be the same.

I had already intended this retreat to be different - shorter, leaner, supplemented by an online app and personalized coaching. Wondering if I could build something possibly more affordable, more pragmatic, but equally impactful.

Oh, and done safely in the middle of a pandemic.

And without my wing team extraordinaire of Julie Richard as PT and Tobi Fishel as psychologist. See one, do one, teach one, right?

Anyway, you know, low pressure stuff.

Understatement of the century: I do not take it lightly that people - these 6 in particular - had placed their trust in me, not just in money or time, but for safety in vulnerability, for hope in healing. There is no greater gift, no greater honor.

It was insanely intense.

It was inimitably incredible.

I now have 6 more people in this world I would walk headlong into any fire for, and not think twice about it. I LOVE them, in every sense of the word. And I LOVE that this is what being a doctor has become about for me: It is not a dispassionate service, it is a personal and spiritual communion.

The thing is, what I learned about the retreat and about myself is not clean, or finite.

I have been told by anyone who has done these sort of things that it is a MISTAKE for me to participate while facilitating. I need to “hold space” and impartially guide the group, and not answer the questions I ask or do the work myself right alongside them.

Tobi and Julie and I bucked that principle with the Big 12 in RR1, and I was dead set on keeping that tradition with round 2. Because all 15 of us were changed during that first retreat, and that was why I did it/do it. Period.

And without a shadow of a doubt, it was the special sauce, again.

Also indubitably, it was so ridiculously harder to do it without Tobi and Julie than I could have ever imagined.

I was bold; I was naive.

As one of the participants said, “I don’t swim well in the shallow end with others. I have to go deep.”

Same.

And deep we went. DEEP. The seven of us just held hands and jumped.

I found I had underestimated how much 2020 had eroded some of my capacity to float myself, much less be a flotation device for others.

I felt like I flailed. I still feel like I’m thrashing around a bit, to be honest. I wonder if I’ve done right by the people I’ve set out to help, to serve, to guide. I balk at the notion that they had to rescue ME.

And then I look at this picture. I look at my text message chain. Even and especially here now, in Key West, sussing it all out, I feel the energy of the place and the people at Gray Bear who supported all of us with their love and experience and wild wooded ways. I remember the work we did during those 6 days, and the work we are still doing now.

Independently. Forged together.

And then I think - as I SO often think - of our closing ceremony.

I had asked everyone to describe something beautiful about each of the others in the circle - and then to repeat aloud what they had heard said about them. We made a recording of that circle, which I will never share and always cherish to the depth of my bones. It was one of the most powerful experiences I’ve ever had. Not surprisingly, the hardest (and most worthwhile) part was speaking - or maybe believing - what others saw as your beauty.

I will never, ever, ever forget the last word of that circle. It was my turn to receive the praise, during the last go-round. If you’ve never had this experience, I can now tell you from excruciating experience that it is MUCH more difficult for most of us to vulnerably absorb love than to wall off and reject criticism.

So I was sat there trying to take my own advice and breathe through the discomfort, when the last participant in the circle looked at me right in the eyes and said

“The word that comes to mind is enough. You are enough. Do you know what I mean by that?”

And I absolutely lost it. Sobbing.

And that is all I can really feel or find to say about the retreat right now and about those six wonderful warriors who stand with me in it. About my life as I see it today, every day, in so many ways. As mantra. As prayer. As hope. As guidance. As an invocation.

I am enough.

They are enough.

We are enough.

It was enough.

Exactly, perfectly, magically enough.

Here we go, again.