I woke up Sunday morning covered in ants.
I was camping out in Malibu because there was a big music festival outside my house in Venice which felt hectic AF.
I got that restless itch. I needed OUT. So I booked a spot on Hipcamp last minute and trundle up the coast at sunset.
The moon is coming up. The sun is going to bed. I’m alone under the stars. Where I feel most at home. This is easy to me.
But I wake up before the sun comes up. Covered in ants.
This is probably one of my deepest fears, which I’ve imagined many times, don’t ask me why. The idea of it gives me the heeebie jeebies. Waking up covered in creepy crawlies. There’s such an overwhelming sense of powerlessness in that. Who knows what past life shit that relates to.
Alone in nature. Deep fears realised. And I laugh. I actually laugh.
I came to the keyboard wanting to write about agency in all of this. But then I see my astro friend Ali’s post about this full moon eclipse, and one line hits hard…. ‘illuminating the polarity between surrender and agency’.
This full moon WHOPPA lunar eclipse that lands this evening at 9.16pm pst has been brewing up some stuff from the deeeeeeep.
My dreams have been off the charts, never have they felt so visceral. The navigation of certain interactions these last few weeks has felt like some kung fu jedi master shit.
And the polarity between surrender and agency encapsulates it all. Annie Lennox rings loud in my ears it’s a thin line between love and hate.
Ever since the lights of LIFE came on for me a few years ago, it seems like the lessons have been nothing but surrender. But right now my small corner of the universe feels like it’s pulling me from that deep void into a right sized relationship with agency.
So I laughed in the face of one of my deepest fears. Waking up covered in ants.
It is actually kinda funny, because God is funny, remember?
This thing that I’ve had disproportionate amounts of fear around, actually happens. I brush them off and talk to the ants not in an angry way, but in a ‘oh aren’t you funny’ kinda way, and I get out of the tent, and am then surrounded by mosquitoes and flies.
And instead of totally losing it, I just pack up my tent, text my friend Lauren 30 mins away in Ventura that I’m coming for coffee, and I just get on with it.
It just isn’t that big of a deal.
And it’s moments like these where I get to see the muscles of what all this capacity and somatic work has been building. I’m a badass who just handles shit.
I just handle shit.
And that’s agency.
But I think agency is born out of surrender. Not the other way around.
I believe we all have far more power to make stuff happen and direct circumstances than we realise, but what I’m coming to understand more and more is that this entire agency and surrender process lives right here in my own little noggin.
A good time for an etymology interlude.
‘agency’ : ancient root ag means “to drive,” “draw out,” or “move”. Root grew into the Latin verb agere, meaning “to set in motion,” “to do,” or “to perform”.
So action.
Faith and action. It all boils down to that after all.
Right now, there’s some pain where my right ovary sits.
For those of you who were here 3 years ago, you’ll remember that routine ovarian surgery I had, where they accidentally snipped an artery and I ended up haemorrhaging 80% of my blood over 16 hours and I didn’t turn septic and I’m alive and I met god and it was miracle upon miracle of uncomfortable and painful miracles.
It was the greatest initiation into full surrender I have ever known.
There was a point where I understood that I was verrrry close to death, the pain was excruciating, and in that all I chose full surrender to the divine.
*A side note: I don’t think any person or external idea can give us our relationship to God or faith or whatever. It’s something we choose. And it’s moments like this that give us that opportunity to choose. So as painful and scary as that moment was, it gave me my faith.
With as positive spin I can look at all these things, I’m still human. And with this current ovarian pain, I have a pretty healthy dose of fear. Understandably.
It makes sense, says my friend Tahra. You’re birthing a new relationship with the masculine. Right ovary. Seed of creation. Masculine side of the body.
And the duhhhh moment drops in. Of course. I am. Of course this all makes sense. In very simple dumbed down terms:
feminine : surrender : faith // masculine : agency : action
For so long, I had been operating in hustle and drive and ‘needing to prove’ and ‘earn my place in the world'. The old operating system that I thought was solely dependent on how much I could ‘do’…. That idea had to get literally haemorrhaged from me.
So 3 years ago it did. It brought me to living in surrender. To swimming in pools of deep feminine bliss. To learning how to receive this life beyond my wildest dreams.
And now. The ask is to find some balance.
As Tahra points out, all the lessons that are arriving for me right now are centered in my own relationship with the masculine.
The inner masculine in ME. Who takes action, gets shit done, holds structure, boundaries and awareness, is the physical form and containment for this life that I’m building. The version of me that says there’s a business to build and a Glastonbury to headline, and it’s not going to happen by sitting back and twiddling my thumbs.
I’m learning in real time how to do this.
How to move and build in the world in a way that is sustaining. That doesn’t burn me out or abandon the self. That is heart centered, but listens to the head with curiosity.
Because the original template was set by Dad. And it shows up in every single masculine relationship I have - in business, in romance, in creative partnerships. And it’s ultimately my relationship with God.
Me > Dad > ALL men > God.
But for so long, I didn’t know how to work with that. I didn’t know how to make my Dad not wrong about everything. The little girl in me that didn’t feel heard or seen that carried that template into every relationship since.
And right now, for the first time in 36 years, I’m experiencing a beautiful dynamic in our relationship. Where I’m asking for his advice, and can hear it without all the inner critic I once did.
When I first came in to the rooms of recovery 5 years ago, my sponsor pointed out so blatantly, ‘oh, you just don’t trust yourself’.
All these years of self-work, have been a journey in learning how to trust myself. And trust is built from consistency over time.
It’s taken me time to trust god.
It’s taken me time to trust other men.
It’s taken me time to see that my Dad’s love and support is unconditional.
It’s taken me time to trust my SELF.
In all of these interactions there have been repeated lessons of discernment and safety, and in myself…. oh, I do have agency after all. I have discernment. I get shit done. I can trust myself.
Last week there were a couple of days that felt like those ethereal moments in time. Business partnerships arriving that FEEL so good, time spent with friends that felt SO good, there was flirting with men, there was a return to the tennis courts, there were sunsets at the beach…
I had this glittering sense of ‘I can’t believe this is my life’.
Following those couple of days, there was then contraction. The 2 business partnerships suddenly had contracts that needed fine tuning, the deals that I thought were going to go through, suddenly weren’t, the realisation of where I had been extending beyond myself in romance into the ‘pick me’, ‘choose me’ vibes that are an old story…..
The clunk arrived again.
But in navigating that balance between agency and surrender, a new pathway is being paved in real time.
I know my stories intimately.
With men, especially in business, it’s this sense of ‘you don’t value me!’ “you don’t see me!”.... And my habitual response when contraction arrives is throwing my toys up in the air “how dare they” “I’m outta here!”... and making it all about “them”.
And this week I notice how I want to collapse. I want to collapse in on myself and see how everything is falling apart and nothing is going right and “I knew this was going to happen!”.... I want to play out the full surrender story. Collapse and surrender.
But what if I simply didn’t?
Agency.
I have collapsed SO many times in the face of everything ‘going wrong’. I have surrendered and been brought to my knees and haemorrhaged a life of ‘force’ out of me. I know that story so well. Collapse and surrender.
So what if I just simply stopped playing it out?
What if it was as simple as just brushing off the ants?
What if I didn’t catapult into disaster at every turn. At every feedback that life wasn’t going in the way I expected?
What if I just didn’t collapse?
The lightbulb goes off. I go move my body. Sweating and lifting weights never fails to deliver me out of my head. And I make a decision. Instead of only seeing all the evidence that my life is falling apart and disaster is imminent, I’m going to choose to see all the evidence for the ways I am still on track.
I choose agency over my thoughts.
I choose to think different ones.
And as soon as I make that decision, my shoulders drop, I breathe. I’m ok. We’re on track again.
I ask for what I need in the contracts. I pull back my energy in the romantic sense. I navigate with discernment the creative partnership that is not for me. I return to my body. To my own joy, my own pleasure. Remembering that I am ALWAYS taken care of.
And THAT is the relationship with the masculine I am birthing. The one where I am always taken care of. Because I know how to handle shit. God’s got me. Family’s got me. Friends have got me.
I know how to ask for help. I take action with discernment. And the men and the opportunities that show up, mirroring that all back to me, just keep getting better and better and better.
So rather than avoiding the doctor, in fear of what they might tell me about this ovarian pain, I went yesterday.
And my fears of the worst are assuaged. It’s just a lot of scar tissue that’s causing pain. The only solution in Western medicine is more surgery.
I don’t need to collapse. It’s more information. I have agency in all of this.
There’s always options. There’s always multiple solutions. There’s always a choice in how I choose to navigate everything.
We’re dancing between agency and surrender in all of this right now.
As it feels like I’m birthing a new reality.
Right here in my little noggin.
What a miracle we are.
—Holly Gottlieb (Founder, Whole Collective)
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