Listening to the Questions of Your Life

We started the Journey groups yesterday.

We started with the first Journey Stone: Listening to the Questions of Your Life. I forget each time how powerful listening to questions really is. How powerful just listening is.

I based the first Journey Stone on a quote by the author of The She Stories, Jane Surges:

The whole of your life is calling you.
What are your questions?
When we identify our questions, the answers mysteriously follow.

As I am leading The Journey this time, I am actually doing it, both before the group and during it. In this process, I am finding that though I believe in questions, what I really want is answers. As a therapist, I find I am accepting of my patients' questions, but listening to my own questions is hard.

It takes courage. I am finding I am more comfortable with answers...and being in the illusive position of "having" answers.

What is the whole of my life? When the whole of my life calls me, it means that I have to be willing to be open to failure and success, comfort and anxiety, joy and sorrow, knowing and unknowing. The integrity of it all. Not in another place or in another situation, but now, in this very moment.

More tomorrow.

Tomorrow We Begin

Tomorrow we are beginning two Journey groups at a local high school,

As I was preparing for these groups, I met with several of the "Journey Girls," who have supported and participated in The Journey since its inception in 2003. Dozens of meetings have gone into this work. Several presentations have been offered. Over fiftey women have participated. I have led the workshop ten times--at least.

If I had to take a test over the content, I would get an A. (Sadly, always an important value to me.)

But as we prepared, it seemed like I couldn't remember what the program was about. I wrote it. I wrote about it. I presented it. I had meetings regarding it. But I felt like I didn't "get" it.

Then I realized what I was missing. I had never done it myself. I had no experience.

So, dear readers, of which I see only myself, I am doing it as we are beginning it.

And we begin tomorrow.

I will tell the tale.

Join Us

Welcome! The Journey Before Us is getting ready to launch!!

This month The Journey will begin in two local schools. Fifty women, so far, have participated in the development of this work. This year as The Journey is launched into the world, I will tell you the story of this work and how it is inextricably entwined within my own story.

Tomorrow the Journey Group will be getting together at Earth House in downtown Indianapolis to review the final presentation of the work and to prepare for its beginning in the "real world."

Hope you come with me on the Journey.

Beth Johnson