Forget Your Deadlines, We're On Sovereign Time

Time.

It is what it is, right? Relentless and uncaring. Immutable and inevitable.

We can lose ourselves in time travel fantasies. (Who else is an Outlander fan?)

We can agree that time flies when you’re having fun and that it crawls when you’re stuck with a task that you dislike. 

But really, we just have twenty four hours in a day and the calendar pages will constantly flip and we’ll all be another year older when May 2 comes around once again.

And yet… Is this all there is? Could there be an alternative? What if we didn’t need to buy into the relentless progression of time and those killer deadlines we live (and die) by?

Our Life-and-Death (Mis)Understanding of Time

Funny that we’ve all signed on to honor our deadlines - especially since none of us were soldiers in the American Civil War.

What was a deadline exactly?  “A line drawn within or around a prison that a prisoner passes at the risk of being shot.”

The folks at Merriam Webster are certain of the 19th century bloody origins of “deadline,” but they’re pretty vague about how, over the next one hundred years, we collectively agreed that this term was about time management rather than inmate management. The dictionary doesn't say much about why we went on to co-opt this dire word to describe all sorts of mundane tasks either.

But then it makes perfect sense that “deadline” emerges from the language of war. We’re constantly in a battle with time, right?

Let's End Our Punishing Relationship With Time

Presumably, the men in those prison camps who were hellbent on survival would do everything they could to distance themselves from that line in the turf, but here we are, planning our lives around deadlines every damn day.  

Honestly, what is up with that?

There really is another way.

I recently rediscovered a French philosopher I studied in grad school named Julia Kristeva. She coined the term “Women’s Time.” It's a powerful, viable alternative to the relentless linear nature of time that rules our culture has completely capture my attention. In Kristeva's essay, Women's Time is about syncing ourselves to the cycles of nature and the sweep of eternity. 

I agree. And, for me, I take Women's Time further into being about creativity, flexibility, and giving ourselves permission to grow and connect in a way that's nurturing, not punishing. I want time to be about the moments we spend living, not a countdown for dying.

Let’s think about what it means to move according to Sovereign Time

These ideas are magical. And they're tricky too. We still want to live and serve in the real world, we still want to make commitments that count and be there to support those who need us. And yet we want the freedom to breathe and dream and let things unfold naturally. 

I'm dancing with all this. I'm weaving the contradictions into my book-in-progress, The Sovereignty Knot, every time I sit down to write.

And - here's what's even more exciting right now: these ideas about Women's Time and Sovereign Time are already influencing the way that I work, coach, and teach.

Last month, I conceived and launched a brand new program based on my forthcoming book. I did it in record time because it just seemed right. (At the time.)

But then I realized that my rush to plan and promote and launch wasn’t necessarily divinely inspired. Instead, it was inspired by the stuff of deadlines and chronic overcommitment.

The good news? I didn’t need to cancel the whole thing and call it a huge, embarrassing mistake. Instead, I just needed to pause and breathe and give the project and the people who are excited to join it a little bit of space.

I’ve given us all the gift of time. I’ve pushed the start date for Your Sovereign Awakening back to May 13.

Why did I make the change? Because Women's Time. Because Sovereign Time. Because the "deadline" I set was too tight both for me and for the women who needed to work out childcare and move evening meetings to be there. Because we don't have to always live and die according the calendar. Because it's ok to be vulnerable and admit the initial timing wasn't right.

You Still Have Time to Join Your Sovereign Awakening

The program empowers you to free the princess, crown the queen, embrace the wise woman, and establish a totally new relationship with time. We'll meet on five Monday evenings from 7 - 9 PM beginning May 13. 

Can you shape your time and your schedule and be there with us?

Time, rest, work, and the shaping of a writing life

“Women can have it all, but not all at the same time.” Brilliant, successful people from Betty Friedan to Madeline Albright to Oprah to Anne-Marie Slaughter are credited with this line. I don’t think anyone is irritated about plagiarism because truth is truth and amplifying shared wisdom raises everyone up.

I need to come clean: right now, I’m not occupied with writing a seminal feminist text or running the State Department or establishing myself as the ultimate media mogul.

Nope, my reality isn’t nearly as high profile or quite so life and death. It’s just as real though. I’m dancing with the daily truth about the choices that must be made: “this, not that.”

The "thises" and the "yeses"

My “thises” include mothering sick children and tending to my own wintertime ailments. When I’m not tossing tissues in the trash, I’m taking on copywriting work and writing coaching commitments for healers who are changing the world, one client at a time.

I’m also immersed in the Practice of Being Seen community for therapists and its delightfully demanding sister project, the Practice of Being Seen podcast.

On the podcast, we talk a lot about the various roles we play as individuals, as professionals, and as change agents. Often, it’s about “you can do more than one thing, but let's think about how that will feel...”

That’s what we explored in the recent discussion we had about Resistance & The Princess-Rebel Role Model. You can be both princess and rebel because, let’s be honest, we often want to be saved just as much as we want to change the world. But what does that really look like in practice? (Listen in and decide whether it’s something you can really do at the same time.)

The "thats" and the "not todays"

But the act of podcasting - and doing all the behind the scenes work it takes to make it happen - creates a whole new bunch of “thises” and excludes a whole lot of “that.”

As you may have noticed, blogging about writing and the creative quest have been in the “not that, not today” pile for some time. That’s due to the concrete realities that contain our boundless universe and give our lives some kind of reliable shape. I assume you know these - very real the constraints of time and energy?

The shaping of the time. The container of rest.

All this has me thinking about time and energy more than ever. I’m thinking about  as discernment too. And I have a couple of resources for you to check out that speak right to what I know is a very common concern for so many of us - particularly those who try to  fit parenting and entrepreneuring and client supporting and creating and self care all into one day.

Jeffrey Davis of Tracking Wonder invited me to write about my tango with time. It felt good to offer up some of my finite number of hours to Stop trying to make time. Enter into relationship with time.

In the post, I talk about how “I enter into relationship with time so that I can see the relationships between my ideas and the work I want to manifest.” The patience and the resources it takes to enter into such a productive relationship rely on one essential thing: rest.

Karen Brody’s work with yoga nidra has long been a source of solace and support, and I’m thrilled to tell you that she has a nine-month immersion in yoga nidra coming up.

This  sleep-based meditation is radically necessary and powerful, but that isn’t the only reason I am so excited to share the program… Daring to Rest: Wild Woman Writer is specifically for women who know they have a story to tell. A playwright and author as well as a yoga nidra expert, Karen is the perfect woman to combine story, sleep, and personal revolution.

Ultimately, yes, it does come down to balance

It's as trendy to scoff at balance as it is to strive for it. When the contemporary tussle over a word becomes too much for me, I look to the ancients.

Balance | #365MagicWords by Writer & Storytelling Coach Marisa Goudy

This is the latest image in my #365MagicWords series. As I am thinking of shaping time and prioritizing rest, and I am also thinking of the Eqyptian Goddess Maat who was the keeper of universal balance. The daughter of the Sun and the wife of the moon, she had great wings and always wore an ostrich feather headdress. She was the embodiment of justice and the grounding of reality.

A fine spirit guide for these tumultuous, over scheduled times, yes?