{"id":161,"date":"2011-06-02T17:45:27","date_gmt":"2011-06-02T21:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/insweetcompany\/?p=161"},"modified":"2011-06-02T17:45:27","modified_gmt":"2011-06-02T21:45:27","slug":"reinventing-ourselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/06\/reinventing-ourselves.html","title":{"rendered":"Reinventing Ourselves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>&#8220;If we want to change things for women &#8230; we\u2019\u2019ve got to recognize and acknowledge the bravery it\u2019s taken to live the lives we\u2019ve lived, to get up every day and take care of our children and our homes, to keep our churches and schools going, to plant trees in our parks \u2014 all these things. It makes me want to cry when I think about what women do!\u201d<\/em> &#8212; Olympia Dukakis, IN SWEET COMPANY: CONVERSATIONS WITH EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN ABOUT LIVING A SPIRITUAL LIFE<\/p>\n<p>Like many of us, I am, once again, reinventing myself. I am creating the new me, the next me, based on heart\u2019s desire as well as sheer necessity. Now that I think of it, maybe my heart\u2019s desire <em>is<\/em> my necessity.<\/p>\n<p>We most often reinvent ourselves to keep pace with what we are called to do. I have gone from being the Good Little Girl I was bred to be, to becoming a young woman in search of her own voice; to bride, wife, mother; to working mother juggling multiple roles, a marital realignment, a glass ceiling, and prolonged experiences of care-taking, including my own care-taking. Each new me seems to mirror the new us &#8212; women dedicated, tuckered, then rededicated to the evolving process of discovering how to navigate our lives with greater ease, with deeper grace.<\/p>\n<p>Some women ask \u201cWhat really floats<em> my<\/em> boat? Some seek ways to contribute to the world at large. Some entertain what psychoanalyst Erik Erikson called &#8220;generativity\u201d and focus on creating a legacy.\u00a0Many of us are looking for greater financial security. Our motivation falls somewhere between a desire to play our unique note in the symphony of life and a desire to \u201cgive back.\u201d Any way you cut it, as Saint Theresa of Avila said, \u201dThe demand of the splendid favors of awakening granted us is that they be embodied.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>My sense of the process includes the belief that the very act of embodiment &#8212; the conscious creation of our lives, the sheer joy of choosing and doing and being what\u2019s meaningful to us &#8212; contributes to the Greater Good in public and private ways. The better we are, the better everyone around us becomes. And, where we end up often turns out to be far less significant than who we become through the process.<\/p>\n<p>Your thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;If we want to change things for women &#8230; we\u2019\u2019ve got to recognize and acknowledge the bravery it\u2019s taken to live the lives we\u2019ve lived, to get up every day and take care of our children and our homes, to keep our churches and schools going, to plant trees in our parks \u2014 all these&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":231,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,3],"tags":[54,49],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-transformation","category-the-greater-good","category-womens-spirituality","tag-change","tag-olympia-dukakis"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Reinventing Ourselves - In Sweet Company<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/06\/reinventing-ourselves.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reinventing Ourselves - In Sweet Company\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;If we want to change things for women &#8230; we\u2019\u2019ve got to recognize and acknowledge the bravery it\u2019s taken to live the lives we\u2019ve lived, to get up every day and take care of our children and our homes, to keep our churches and schools going, to plant trees in our parks \u2014 all these&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/06\/reinventing-ourselves.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"In Sweet Company\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-06-02T21:45:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Margaret Wolff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Reinventing Ourselves - In Sweet Company","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/insweetcompany\/2011\/06\/reinventing-ourselves.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Reinventing Ourselves - In Sweet Company","og_description":"&#8220;If we want to change things for women &#8230; 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She speaks and writes about things women care about: how to make our lives and our work be about what we value most; how to navigate challenge and change; how to live with integrity and grace, to look at error in ourselves and others in a forgiving way and view life as an invitation to transform ourselves into instruments for the Greater Good. \"I laughed, I cried, I was silent, I cheered. Most of all, I loved.\" Spoken by a woman at In Sweet Company Retreat, these words express what women experience when Margaret engages them in dynamic, soul-searching conversations about their lives. Margaret holds degrees in art therapy, psychosynthesis, and leadership and human behavior. Her work takes her to universities, to conferences and retreat settings, to living rooms and board rooms -- wherever women gather. Her articles, essays, and stories are featured in numerous magazines; her women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spirituality retreats are held throughout the U.S. Margaret\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last book, In \"Sweet Company: Conversations With Extraordinary Women About Living a Spiritual Life\" (Jossey Bass), is a collection of intimate conversations she had with 14 famous women of various ages, faiths, and backgrounds about how their spirituality nourishes them and serves as a steady compass for their decision-making. Olympia Dukakis, Riane Eisler, Zainab Salbi, Margaret Wheatley, Sri Daya Mata, Lauren Artress, and other women artists, activists, religious leaders, and visionary thinkers shared their lives with her. 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