"I'm so excited - I'm pitching a tent!"

Several years ago I rolled up The Red Tent in Venice to focus on sorting out my new life with children.  Once I took off the HEAVY mantle of "teacher" and its even more daunting badge of "healer" - I found that I had a much more to sort out than just how to handle my new role as a mother.  For years I had been on the front lines of a cultural war against women and in the midst of the carnage I hadn't noticed that I, myself, was bleeding out.  By the time I left our particular theatre - in-patient eating disorder and chemical dependency recovery for women - I was in need of my own rehabilitation.

 
My time off allowed me to figure out how to help my children stay whole while coming to my own senses about how I might be of service in the world with them under wing.  I am excited to say that I've got the beginning of a plan even though it's nothing new.  (It never has been. )  Yep, it looks like I'm raising a red tent again.

This time around I'm changing a few things.  I'm redirecting my energy from recovery to prevention.  I'm focusing on writing and I'm making this tent a traveling one.  Most importantly I'm not offering to teach or heal anyone.  I'm simply offering an opportunity.  I'm raising a red tent because I am raising a girl child and she needs one.  (As does the whole world if you ask me.)  I believe, that now more than ever before, we need girls who will be the living answer to Judith Duerk's long standing question, "How would your life have been different....".   I'm planning on staking the main pole and bringing the old fabrics but I need other women to pull (and reclaim!) the "guy lines" with me.

Which gets me to the subject line of this post; "I'm so excited - I'm pitching a tent!"  Yes, the pun is intended.  With me, the pun is ALWAYS intended.

What I am decidedly NOT changing this time around is what I've learned to be one of my most valuable strengths - I'm punny.   And, as it turns out, that is pretty important.  It might actually be the most important thing about my work. I'm punny, and occasionally funny, while trudging alongside other women through our common depths.  As any woman who has worked in recovery will tell you "our common depths" is a place often paved with tough crap.  The feedback I received most when I was acting as a sherpa through such shadowlands was that my candor, my willingness to "step in it" and not just admit it but laugh whole-heartedly about it was...refreshing and hopeful to other women.  There is a profound power to lightening up that I think we need to access NOW more than ever.  I believe it is a renewable energy source that will fuel us to rise and keep rising.

So, I am ready to strong arm the "locker room talk" into submission by not giving it (nor those who so casually use it) my power.
I'm reclaiming it all.
For all our daughters.