Learn to surrender small so you can surrender big
The role of surrender in navigating the Portal
Welcome! This is the Sunday Soother, a weekly newsletter about compassionate personal growth and authentic living, written by me, Catherine Andrews, a life coach, teacher, and writer. Did somebody forward this to you? You can subscribe to the Sunday Soother here.
Happy Sunday, Soothers. Let's revisit one of the most important topics that will help you navigate the Portal: Surrender. And let's ground it into micro-examples of surrender, that will help you navigate the bigger surrenders you will need to undergo as you go through your Portal experience.
New here? I'm in the midst of a multi-essay series on Navigating the Portal, or the transition that seems to happen for many people from their late 30s to early 40s.
Here's where we are so far in the essay series:
Navigating The Portal by Looking to the Stars (using the North Node of astrology)
Today, we're going to talk about surrender, which we all KNOW we SHOULD do, but really struggle with actually doing. And I find we really struggle with it, or at least I did, because I had no concrete examples of what surrender actually LOOKED LIKE in a life. Surrender means... just rolling over and accepting whatever comes your way? Refusing to leave your couch?
Not at all.
So what is it then?
Well, I'm going to share three tiny, micro, so small as to be boring, examples of surrender that have happened in my day-to-day life, where I did actually surrender to the outcome, so you might be able to adapt some of the concepts to examples in your own life.
And they're so micro because I want you to play with very small examples of surrender, so that you can learn it is safe to surrender, to release control, to be with what is, so you can eventually surrender to larger things. Because if there's one thing the Portal will ask of you, it's utter surrender, and this time, to big life things. Jobs and relationships falling away. Body changes or health conditions. Home moves or losses. Entire identities shifting and rumbling.
The Portal challenges us to accept the transformation, surrender, and let what needs to crumble, crumble.
So. What did micro-surrender moments look like in my life?
Here's a very tiny and silly but useful example, I think. Back in December AJ and I went to NYC for a holiday trip. I have a lot of clients/students in NYC, so I put together a small meet-up. I knew somewhere between 4-6 people would be joining me. The adorable cafe we had agreed on (that had been suggested by a dear Soother, thank you Daryl!) was quite busy when I arrived. There was only one little table that I snagged as soon as I could. Reader, I fretted. I thought about how I needed to stay hypervigilant and start grabbing and hoarding free chairs around my little table, like a freaked-out squirrel who's worried there's not enough nuts to survive winter, as soon as they became available. I thought about asking people around me to move. I was tense and worried.
Then I realized, this was a moment to surrender to trust. I softened my body, my frantic gripping that was happening internally, my panicked hypervigilance. I said to myself, "We'll figure it out when everybody gets here, and it's all going to work out."
So I moved from frantic hypervigilance, thinking seating would work out only if I, and I alone, handled and controlled it, and instead softened, opened myself up, and said, "Shrug."
What happened? We were a little tight, but we figured it out. The table next to me cleared just as people started showing up. Another Soother grabbed a chair from another table. And we had a merry, delightful, connecting couple of hours, I think in part due to the fact that my energy wasn't all freaked out, and that I let myself understand, whatever happened was gonna be fine.
Here's a second micro-surrender example. My boyfriend AJ and I aren't exactly on the same page about time and punctuality. He's not really horrible at being late, but he'll squish things a bit close, whereas my family motto growing up was, "If you're not 15 minutes early, you're late." As you can imagine, these two energies clash quite a lot. He feels suffocated when I insist we leave half an hour early, I feel panicked when he walks out the door at a time I deem "not early enough." This happened again, during our trip up to NYC. We were driving to a train station in Baltimore, leaving our car, then catching the Amtrak up. I KNEW we were leaving later than I was comfortable with, and in fact when we got in the car I saw that we would have approximately, according to the GPS, 3 minutes to make it from the parking lot to the train, which wasn't feasible due to like, physics. But again, instead of panicking, freaking out on AJ, spending the whole car ride fretting and stressed, I softened. I opened. I said, "If we make it, we make it, if we don't, we'll still be fine and it will have been for good reason." I spent the car ride taking in the countryside we were driving through and we listened to music and a podcast. Miraculously, along the way the traffic lessened and we had a full 10 minutes before our train arrived. We hopped out of our car, hustled down to the tracks, and were totally fine.
Third and final micro-surrender story. This happens every time I launch a course, as I'm doing right now with the Intentional Home: My ego tells me I "should" be able to get a certain number of students in there. That I "have" to sign up a particular amount of people to hit a particular revenue goal. My mind makes up numeric goals based on proving myself, scarcity fears, and more conditioning. And if/when I *don't* hit those goals, I blame and shame myself, or think there's something incompetent about me, my marketing, my offerings. I used to do frantic rituals and manifestation practices around launches, saying, "Oh, I should get EIGHTY STUDENTS in this class, because this other coach did that, and also, that would give me enough money to feel [briefly] safe!" Spoiler alert: NEVER WORKED. So now, I soften. I open. I surrender. Whether 1 person signs up or 1,000, I say to myself, "This is exactly how it's supposed to be, and I am extraordinarily grateful for this, and so proud of myself."
Now, a note on surrender: Inevitably people will ask about horrible conditions in the world, and am I expecting people suffering under them to just "surrender" to those? No. There are genocides happening in Gaza and around the world, we must continue to take action, call reps, demand ceasefire, write letters, stay informed, and no, I don't think anybody suffering the horrors inflicted on them by war and oppressive systems can just "surrender" their way out of them. That'd be a hefty dose of spiritual bypassing.
But I'm talking more here about small examples (and big) in your personal life. Times when your ego says, "Something should be happening THIS way, and because it's not, I will fight it with every fiber of my being."
Because, y'all... The Portal is going to win. Trust me. I tried to fight the Portal a lot. I did not come out on top, and I realized I should have just gone along with its demands, but I didn't have the surrender skills at the time.
The Portal will come at you first, at things that need to be shed and surrendered to, first with a whisper.
Then a feather.
Then a yell.
Then a scream.
Then a sledgehammer.
And the closer and better you can get at surrendering and letting go of what the Portal is asking you to let go of, closer to the whisper/feather stage, the more flow and alignment your life begins to take on.
So my prompt for you this week is:
How can you micro-surrender?
How can you stop screaming, "This SHOULDN'T be like this, this SHOULDN'T be happening," and move to the energy of, "Welp, this is happening, and I am willing to try to be open to its unfolding."
How can you let go, soften, open, trust, and say, "I surrender?"
Try it out this week. Is there a particular situation in your life right now you want to experiment with the energy of surrender around? Let me know about it in the comments, and know that I am deeply rooting you on.
240: What your home is trying to tell you about your self-worth
Hey Soothers! Today, in continuing promotion of my Intentional Home course, which closes February 11th, I have a few fun Feng Shui stories that, at their heart, are about self-worth and what we think we deserve or are capable of. For many HSPs and empaths, I see blocks in self-worth and receiving, and also asking for help, or thinking we're even deserving of help. Tune in to hear three stories about situations in homes that showed somebody was really blocked in deservingness, and my tips for overcoming it.
Ready to go even deeper in Feng Shui and the messages your home has for you? My course, The Intentional Home, is open for enrollment until February 11th. This is my course that teaches you the tenets of home magic, energy work and Feng Shui, but simplified, made super practical, and accessible to anybody. After taking this course, you'll have a straightforward checklist and tools and tactics to create a nourishing, magical space that reflects what you want to create in your life!
Listen to all of my Sunday Soother podcast archives wherever you listen to your podcasts. I have over 200 episodes to binge!
Reads & Recs
Where I share articles, books, recipes, podcasts, beauty products and more that I'm enjoying! (A few links may be affiliate links off of which I'll make a small commission; I only endorse stuff I've tried and loved).
🎉 My brand-new course, the Intentional Home, on home magic, cottage witchcraft, and the tenets of Feng Shui, complete with live challenges, live weekly calls, a private community and accountability, is open until February 11th! If you want to energetically set up your home so it's helping you create the life you desire, this is a great place to start. Payment plans available.
📖 I'm absolutely devouring Perdita Finn's book, Take Back the Magic, about the power of connecting with our ancestors and the dead.
🌳 Speaking of books, also devoured North Woods [NYT review here], a story of a centuries-old home and the land its on and the history of all its inhabitants and spirits over an eon together. Since I live in a 300-year-old home, with land that was inhabited well before that, this really felt like a special book to connect with.
🎶 Kelly played this song during one time at our retreat and I was like, WHAT IS THIS? This song has the effect of calming me, soothing me, connecting me. It feels like maybe what it felt like to be in the womb??
‼️ On speaking when it matters. One of my beautiful 1:1 clients, Cristina, writes about the process of finding her voice as she articulates her purpose, and the blocks we're uncovering and shedding along the way: "I've recently started working with a life coach, the wonderful Catherine Andrews who I can't recommend highly enough. Today marked the second session, of a forthcoming months-long journey to realizing business-related goals. Admittedly, despite knowing that she is transitioning to energy work as a primary modality in her coaching toolkit, I didn't consider the implications of this on my participation in this coaching relationship. I thought we'd do practical support and accountability, cognitive restructuring-type stuff, and some other bits and bobs. Enter today's session, somewhere around the 50-minute mark, where I found myself shedding tears, remembering how muffled I felt when my parents would sling insults at each other across the apartment."
☀️ I recently re-discovered this gorgeous-feeling sunscreen.
😔 The shape of shame: "My five-year old asked me recently if he could get rid of a part of himself. We were sitting in the playroom. He started sleeping on a twin bed in there a few weeks earlier after sleeping with Nic and I since birth. His body shifted from side to side as he inquired with the kind of earnestness I have only experienced from children, Can I Mommy, can I make this angry part go away forever? I felt a weight drop in my chest coupled with guilt."
💫 Navigating life as an empath: "Why you feel other people's feelings, and what to do about it."
💖 This was (can't believe I'm about to say these words) a great LinkedIn post on quitting a CEO role to become a human again, that was shared by a member of the Sunday Soother community this week. "Back in September, I let the SpokenLayer board know that I was resigning as CEO, and joyfully returning to my roots as a creative consultant, artist, and Human Being With Less Stress."
💭 The blank book of dreams: "The thing is, I have fallen in love with nonsense, with the enigmas arising from Earth. I crave the thrilling freedom of changing my mind entirely. Of realizing I was wrong all along! More and more I find that listening to the apparently absurd seems to point me in the direction of magic. For those of us longing for a more poetic, earth-entwined life, to listen to our dreams is the very foundation for enacting our personal love story. Even a nightmare is woven from the tension between opposites, the very same force that all romance is kindled from."
❇️ My Quest to Downsize Without Throwing Anything Away: "A big old house full of belongings — could I find them a new life?"
🙌 Great interview (part 1 of 2, worth going back to the first one) on how and why to incorporate Internal Family Systems/parts work into Nicole Sach's journalspeak for chronic conditions and pain.
🕺 UTTERLY DELIGHTFUL! “Show Me Your Favorite Dance Move”
These compilation videos of Ed People asking folks from around the world to teach him how to do their favorite dance moves
🤣 New App Responds to Group Messages With 'hahahaaaa' Every 45 Texts hahahaha
That's it for this week, sending all my love for the week ahead.
xo
Catherine
