On The Need To Surrender

A few years ago, on a hot October day in Brazil, I cautiously lowered myself into my host family’s pool before starting work. I was spending some time in Brazil to focus on my business and reconnect with my creativity, after getting laid off from my job and taking a break from school. For most mornings, I started my day with working on a hobby outside but it was so hot that I decided to go into the pool despite not knowing how to swim very well.

As someone who can’t swim, I’ve never been able to float. Many people have tried and failed to teach me. Those lessons usually ended with me panicking and flailing my arms the minute I felt myself slightly dip under the water. So you can imagine my surprise when, on this random day in October, I actually managed to float for the first time. When I finally stopped fighting the water and actually trusted it to hold me, I felt weightless for the first time in my life. I felt safe. As I bobbed in the water and felt the sun warming my skin, I knew I had a reference point for what true surrender felt like in my body for the first time ever.

As I was preparing for September’s Collective Energy Reset where the theme that came through was “Surrender,” I was brought back to this reference point and reflected on how my relationship with surrender has changed over the years. For the energy work process, I decided to facilitate a visualization based on the worry water ritual because of how my relationship with water has deepened my capacity to surrender. Prior to this experience around floating and being in water, there were still many ways that being a recovering controlling perfectionist got the best of me. Since I was raised Catholic, my main understanding of surrendering was shaped by religion. The idea of giving all of your worries to God and trusting your problems would go away if you prayed enough was the backdrop of my childhood.

On the surface, the idea of surrendering to a higher power isn’t entirely problematic. However, on a deeper level, as is the case with most things shaped by supremacy culture, this idea can quickly become a way we’re conditioned to abandon ourselves and our power. As I got older, issues that could have been resolved with foresight, planning, and effort were met with the same refrain of “just surrender” and “it’ll all work out.” Meanwhile, I felt like my life was actively falling apart. My response to feeling so out of control was to over correct and become incredibly controlling of myself and anything else around me. I couldn’t surrender because surrender became synonymous with harm, neglect, and feeling deeply unsafe.

When my spiritual awakening started, I learned quickly that surrender wasn’t an option but a necessity. Despite years of doing everything “right” to be successful, things were more out of control than ever and I was hurting myself in the process of trying to maintain control. At the same I learned that surrender wasn’t about giving up my power, it was about discernment and atunement. Instead of giving all of my challenges to Spirit and being passive in my own life, I learned to be more discerning about what was mine to carry and what I needed to let go. I couldn’t fix anyone around me or heal my mental health issues overnight but I could make sure I slept and was kind to myself. Much in the same way that I cannot singlehandedly end authoritarianism but I can show up to my work as clearly and consistently as possible. We often hold two truths at once: we have immense power and there are forces bigger than us—and that’s okay.

Over the years, I’ve also realized that surrender can happen at different degrees. It’s not always dramatically weeping at an altar (although that can be very cathartic). Sometimes it’s as simple as an exhale, releasing the tension in your body. Sometimes it’s being fully present in a conversation and responding authentically instead of overthinking and micromanaging someone else’s perception of you. And sometimes it’s trusting the right words to flow onto a blank page without overly editing yourself (me rn lol). When you’ve spent a lifetime feeling unsafe and dysregulated, building more capacity within yourself to let go and trust the flow of life takes time.

So as we transition into fall and the trees begin to shed their leaves, I invite you to consider: What are you surrendering in this season? What are you creating room for? How can you cultivate more discernment in terms of what you give your energy to?

If you missed September’s Collective Energy Reset and want to join October’s on 10/8 you can register here. I’m also hosting the first iteration of a new workshop called “Rewriting Our Stories” on 10/12 which you can register for here.

Thanks for reading as always!

With gratitude,

Paula