I recently attended the Women and Power retreat on the campus of in Rhinebeck, New York. When Omega Women’s Leadership Center (OWLC) organizes this annual retreat it is a fabulous mix of power, inspiration and spiritual grounding. The theme this year was, “Find Your Own Strength,” and the simple guidelines for the weekend included to stay present, be mindful and create a calm space. I never have a problem with that when I’m at Omega. Especially at this retreat, where over 500 women gathered (with 2000 live-stream viewers) for purposeful connection and inspiration. One highlight of many, as always, is listening to Elizabeth Lesser, cofounder of Omega and author of one my favorite books: Broken Open. I love her voice and her humility and how real this woman is. She spoke about how women have been shaped by the wrong definition of power. She referenced one of her favorite writers, Gerta Lerner, and Gerta’s stance that we as women need to overcome deep-seeded resistance, get rid of the great men in our heads and substitute them with ourselves. This struck me as so true and made me think about how many thoughts in my mind are not my own. They are thoughts and beliefs that have been planted there by generations of men, of institutions and old habitual thought. It has taken women a long time to step up, claim their seat and their power. We know now that we are not the minority. We are 51 percent of the population. When we come together, it’s a powerful force. As Elizabeth said, we need to, “harness that power”—In huge ways, in deep ways and in important ways. I was personally moved by Elizabeth’s profound story of connection with her sister, who is struggling with a serious illness. One line in particular–“a lifetime of knowing and not knowing each other“ moved me. I realized how important it is to know the women in my life. Especially my sisters. It’s so easy as siblings to know each other on such a core level, but to not really see each other. There is so much history, baggage, misunderstandings, assumptions, competitiveness and selfishness that can become obstacles to closeness. Elizabeth’s talk helped me to shift my perspective and open myself up to be more vulnerable with the relationships that matter most. I’m inspired to make sure I have the courage to really connect. Her talk prompted me to extend an invitation to my sisters to take a walk together. We haven’t this in ages. When we are together, there are children or televisions or phones–we are not fully present. We walked on the beach near our childhood home and we had the courage to break open. We need more of these walks, but it’s a start. We need time to build a more powerful bond. We lost both our brothers and I realize that we have never really talked about how it impacted the foundation of our family. Now, we just found out that our dad has stage four lung cancer. We need to find the courage as sisters, and as women, to build the foundation to sustain our ability to care for our parents and each other. Elizabeth spoke about this courage. The “courage to talk, to be vulnerable and to pick up shared responsibility for a new future. Courage was also a huge theme with two other powerhouse speakers, Brene Brown and Joan Halifax Roshi. Likely neither one needs an introduction here, but just in case - Brene Brown became mainstream when her TED talk about vulnerability went wildly viral. She is an accomplished and respected research professor at the University of Houston and author of a few books. It was her bestseller, Daring Greatly that helped spread her message wide. Her main subject? Studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness and shame. Listening to Brene is richly entertaining and invigorating. The stuff that twangs out of her Texan mouth is memorable. I love how she tells us that we can’t choose comfort and courage at the same time. I seem to think sometimes that I will get to a point where I take big bold moves and do it all swan-like and rosy-cheeked. No. I am not always grace under pressure. She shared the mantra she uses for herself, “don’t shrink, don’t puff up, stand your sacred ground.” It was the talk by Joan Halifax Roshi that guided everyone to their “in breath.” It is so easy to run around panting and not really sit still enough to breath in. Big deep breaths. Roshi Joan is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, author and abbot of Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist monastery in Santa Fe. As the director of the Project on Being With Dying, much of her work is about mortality. My biggest takeaway was her invitation to “find your seat” and her concept of “dying before you die.” I work with that concept often. In order to appreciate life, imagine not having it. That will do it every time. Both of these talks inspire me to value the ordinary moments in life. They matter so much. Speaking about what matters most, one of the talks that made me sit on the edge of my seat was the quiet one given by Ai-jen Poo, the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. There are 2.5 million nannies, housekeepers and caregivers in the US and this alliance is the leading organization working to build power, respect and fair labor standards. She spoke about care as an American value and an important movement called Caring Across Generations. The video on their site brought me to tears. She said something that gave me pause: If we as a nation just take 5 percent of the defense budget we can revamp how we care for each other right here in our own homes. So it was a full weekend, but not too full where I didn’t take time to sit at different tables at meals and meet the mixture of interesting participants. Like the founder of Hooping Harmony - teaching about the strength of hoola hooping, and a great chat with the founder of Farmesthetics, skin care from the farm. I love the mix of breakout groups and participating in the awesome Girl Trek, a national nonprofit and health organization that inspires and supports women and girls to live their healthiest, most fulfilled lives – by walking. The founder, Vanessa Garrison, guided our way. We walked a few miles in conversation, and best of all, in silence with just the sounds of our stomping feet. Girl Trek has a goal of kicking the butt of diabetes for good through walking and educating women in the process. Okay, so can you tell I’m power crazed yet? Dare I say that there was a fire ceremony, music, writing workshops, yoga and meditation (of course). The talks by Carla Goldstein, co-founder of OWLC and Omega’s chief external affairs officer, are always so wise, always so witty. Wait, okay, I’ll stop after this - but speaking of witty - the famous comedian Kate Clinton made sure we didn’t take ourselves too seriously. My face still hurts…from laughing. You know I can go on, but I’ll leave it for now and feel excited about the many ways we women can feel the power, through courage, through vulnerability, and through coming together. We get to harness this power in a way to affect REAL change, with our communities, our families, our world, ourselves. It’s what we have been doing and what we will continue to do.
