To surrender, I have to release my grip on the steering wheel of life. For thirty days, I’m practicing letting go and trusting life. Want to join me? We can start now, during this full moon, and go until the next full moon in August. I call it “The Surrender Experiment” after Michael Singer’s book by the same name. 

The idea was born when I woke up angry one morning because nothing was going my way, despite my best efforts. My plan that day was to promote my memoir, Fierce Joy. “Oh great!” I thought. “I’m supposed to be the spokesperson for joy and all I feel is anger.” 

I want to find a different way. Can I surrender to life without trying to make everything go the way I want it to go? What if I used my strong will to engage with life rather than fight it? What if I trusted that life usually works out, sometimes even better than I imagined? 

The rules:

1. No news or social media for 30 days 
2. If life presents me with an opportunity, I must say yes
3. I can use my will to take action, but I can’t plan or push my agenda forward

Day 1 of the experiment: 

The heat of the day is getting to me. To surrender to it instead of fight what I cannot control, I make dinner in my underwear. I am slicing a tomato when Susanne, the woman who is housesitting next door, walks right into our kitchen. (I forgot the front door was open.)

“The recycling truck comes tomorrow. Can I put some of my recycling in your bin?” She asks, without noticing or caring that I am half-naked. I hold a tea towel in front of me and try to be neighborly, offering to help with the recycling and asking her how she likes living on our street. “I love living this close to the mountains!” She says. “In fact, I’m waking up at 3:30 am to watch the sun rise tomorrow. Want to come?”

Oh no. Rule #2 says I must say yes. 

“Yes?” I answer, with some hesitancy. Who wakes up voluntarily in the 3s?

I set two alarms, stumble in the dark to find my headlamp and meet her in the street the next morning. What happens next is strange. The road is blocked with police cars because of an accident. With the road closed, the mountain is closed, too. There goes our morning hike. But then we make a u-turn and there is another mountain looking at us. We decide to try to summit it instead before dawn. We end up on a steep, unfamiliar trail in the darkness. On the way up, we talk about how each of us is unsure of our next step in life. I hear myself say, “I just have to figure it out.” 

At the top, I am certain that we need to sit in a particular spot to get the best view, but there is no way to get there safely. We try three times in three different ways, with no luck. Life leads us instead to a scrappy patch of ground. We sit down just as the flaming red sun breaks the horizon line and washes us in a rinse of warm air. Birds, as if on cue, start singing. A chipmunk runs by, then stops, and kisses my hand. A goldfinch feeds her young in a nest nearby. It’s all very Disney, and spectacular. 

A few minutes earlier, I was frustrated because I couldn’t figure out how to reach the “best” place to sit. But the spot life chose for us was better than anything I could have imagined. And I didn’t have to do anything. It makes me laugh out loud with delight. I can relax! Yesterday, I didn’t know I was going to come on this hike, and now I am sitting in a stunningly beautiful place with a new friend. I didn’t plan this or see it coming. 

Maybe I don’t need to “figure out” my next step so much as I need to be open to it walking into my kitchen while I am in my underwear. If this is Day 1, what are the next 29 days going to be like?

Stay tuned for Part II of my “Surrender Experiment” in the August newsletter…

Love,

Susie  

I had been looking forward to my book launch day for years. I fantasized about it, actually. In one of my fantasies of life after publishing, I am sitting in a white leather chair across from an interviewer on TV when she asks, “How does it feel to be a published author?” Before responding, I lean back with all the relaxed confidence in the world. I take a sip of my mimosa and say, “It feels amazing. I finally feel complete. Worthy. Free.” And the interviewer smiles a proud smile and the live studio audience jumps to their feet, applauding wildly.

The reality is that I woke up the morning of my book launch and took our daughter to the orthodontist. Then the drywall guy arrived because the ceiling in our kitchen was falling in chunks onto our stove. I had coffee with a dear friend, and that was nice. But a nurse called and interrupted us to let me know that my mammogram results were in, and they needed me to come back in for a biopsy. I walked home in the rain and sat down at my computer, writing a little and paying bills, before going to get groceries and making dinner. (By the way, the biopsy revealed benign little calcium nothings.)

I assumed that the day my book launched, the world would feel different. Sunnier. More loving. All that hard work would feel worth it. But like Mother’s Day, anniversaries, and birthdays, a book launch is just a day. And because of all the expectations and build-up, I found it hard to access gratitude. I began to feel resentful, like maybe my husband should have bought me flowers. Then I felt guilty for wanting the attention, and for the environmental impact of the cut-flower industry. Then I remembered that the book exposed my husband, and our family in a way that he never asked for, and that if anyone should receive flowers, maybe it should be him.

I also thought something would change in me on the inside; not only would the world feel different, but I would feel different. At peace. Happy. And it would be the kind of happy that stuck around forever. But I woke up feeling exactly the same as I did the day before the book launch. What I am learning is that I am just me. I am not some fantasy version of me. And this is my life. It is not flashy. I accept that those visions of leather chairs, TV audiences, and mimosas are just fantasies. There is no magic wand that turns my third cup of drip coffee into a mimosa. But I am also learning that that’s OK. I don’t even like mimosas.

I feel the truth in what the writer Anne Lamott says about publishing, “Publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.”

What does it mean to have written this book? It means I understand myself and the world better. It means I made something with my own hands. It means I finished something I started. And it means that maybe others won’t need to go through several craniotomies to gain some of the wisdom I found.

The fantasies of accolades, TV interviews, and flowers are all great. But would I give everything for those? Would I give up my time with my children and friends? All my money? My walks in the mountains? No. Not likely.

Would I give up a lot in order to write? Yes. Absolutely.

In acceptance of the real is the true reward. In my real life, I get to write. I get to discover what I really think and feel by the simple act of putting pen to paper. I get to string words together on a page until they reveal a truth that is not just mine, but ours. I get to try to make sense of a world that often feels like it is in disarray, unfair, even chaotic. I get to face what I fear and work through it, one word at a time. I get to scribble and scratch and scribble again until my words create a summer landscape that anyone can step into, even when it’s winter. If you ask me, that is magic. And that is a fantasy worth living.

Love,

Susie

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