#48: Allowing reality to be on your side.
Surrender, the hard way and the easy way.
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For most of my life, surrender was decidedly not my gear.
In fact, it was something to assiduously avoid. From my perspective, surrender was for weaklings… those who wanted to get run over. I preferred control, determination, action, effort. (Sounds like a Ford F-150 commercial.)
This looked like planning and doing. Pushing back against systems that might have judged me incompetent or incapable. (Case in point — I have been a female in the male-dominated defense contracting world for 30 years.) General badassery. This is what got me to what I wanted, not surrendering.
Decades ago in church youth group, we used to say “let go and let God.” Even though I was very devout and wanted to do this, I pushed back against it in my mind. Because I also wanted to control my own destiny and plow the path myself. Wasn’t God too busy for this small stuff? Wouldn’t I essentially be doing Him a favor by just handling it on my own?
I didn’t consider myself a control freak, I just associated control with the determination to get things done. They went hand in hand. Meanwhile, surrender was the antithesis. Surrender might work for other people but it was not for me.
My husband’s unexpected death taught me what I’d been scratching my head over for 48 years in one split second. I could not control, determine, effort, or action my way through grief. That would be like trying to do a chin-up when both your arms are broken.
But while that day forced me into surrender, it’s taken me years to find the words to explain why it feels so good.
“Aikido embodies the idea that when we stop resisting something, we stop giving it power.”
I stumbled upon this surrender revelation in a book seemingly about creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship — The Rise: Creativity, The Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery by Sarah Lewis.
Though I discovered Lewis on Brené Brown’s podcast three years ago, I only just got around to reading her book this summer.1 You can actually see it tucked in my tote bag for the Italy trip in post #38! (Fun Sue fact: I order more books than I can possibly read, keep about five of them in rotation at any time, and fret endlessly before a trip on which three are going to fit in my backpack and not break my back. I hate leaving my books at home. I miss them. Yes, I am aware they did invent something called a KINDLE. I just can’t bear to leave my paper copies behind. And my tri-colored sticky notes. And my rainbow of pens.)
When I finally cracked the spine of The Rise, I didn’t expect to learn about surrender. I expected to learn about creativity and innovation and entrepreneurship. Turns out they are intertwined. Lewis explains how the experience of falling and beginning again envelopes the creative process. The first step, eloquently stated by the Aikido example above, is to stop fighting life’s circumstances — “the serenity to accept the things I cannot change” and all that.2 But the second step is where things get really interesting:
“It is a bit like living out Hooke’s law — the force of an extended spring is equivalent to how far it’s stretched. To convert our own energy and operate at full force, often we must first surrender,” Lewis explains.
In other words, surrender is a source of potential, even power in the creative process — aka, all of life.
Power and energy are not dissipated through surrender. They are consolidated. Then — BOOM — rapid expansion can occur.
I’ve written before about how acceptance is just the beginning:
“Acceptance is not an abandonment of the good fight to live your very best life. It is actually opening yourself to it — especially when ‘your very best life’ no longer looks the way you had expected it to.”
In Brown’s podcast, Lewis similarly summarizes surrender as, “give over, don’t give up.”
When Mike died, I was faced with an unimaginable situation. So I had to do what I never imagined I would do. I put myself in the hands of all those who cared about me. I put myself on the paths of Great Falls. I gave myself to the pages of my books. I gave myself to the people at work. My world got both bigger and richer as I was forced to work outside of the boxes I had created for myself.
But I don’t want this to turn into another self-help blog championing the fluffy benefits of surrender without taking a hard look at what it actually takes.
Because it does require giving up on some dreams and expectations… and allowing something new to bloom in their vacated space. So here’s a list of the things I had to release and what I got instead:
I surrendered memories of day-to-day life with Mike. I got a deeper understanding and love for Mike.
I surrendered having a co-parent to carry the load. I got an incredibly tight relationship with my kids.
I surrendered my refusal to ask for help. I got more meaningful connections with family and friends, along with a better quality of life from all the help!
I surrendered the idea that life is fair. I got the idea that life is full of mystery.
I surrendered my purpose of being Mike’s wife and a family woman. I got new, multiple purposes: using my own experience to get people thinking differently about their own potential; changing the conversation around death; championing DEI at my workplace.
I surrendered a singular, deep love with one person. I got myriad, wide love with endless people.
I surrendered being just a regular human. I got a glimpse of the superhuman in me.
The last one sounds a little goofy but it feels so real. I can literally feel the space between my molecules growing bigger, like my being — my potential, my power, my impact — is expanding.
Surrender is the portal through which we access the next version of ourselves.
Without my sense of control shattering into its constituent atoms, my life would have stayed good… and small. Looking back at it from my 2.0 perspective, I would be sad for Sue 1.0. Because the fullness of life on this side — the awe and connection and purpose — is off the hook. It’s immense. It sparkles.
Aikido teaches its practitioners that surrender is a choice they can make — not just something we have to be shoved unceremoniously into.
This gives me hope. There’s a way to not just fall into surrender like a boneless chicken, flopping to the ground.
There’s a way to work with the twists and turns of life, rather than using up all our energy trying to predict, prevent, or “correct” them.
There’s a way to feel like life is more of a dance and less of a fight.
From this perspective, surrender is essentially just a pivot to ensure the wind of reality is always at our backs. And we can trade in our F-150 engines for sails, going faster and further than we ever could on our own willpower alone.
Following the wind,
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If you resonated with this post and want more, check out these:
#2: Why I wouldn’t trade away the grief. While I would give anything to have my late husband back, my life is more vibrant, more meaningful, more miraculous thanks to the lessons of grief and loss.
#17: Mystery is my religion. We can’t escape chaos. But we can reframe it.
#22: The resilience experiment. If you can learn from “failure” without self-judgment, you can be resilient.
#34: Acceptance is just the beginning. The powerful first step to rebuilding after losing so much.
#42: Made to heal. Practicing what I preach when faced with an empty nest.
You hit the nail on the head, Sue. It's not giving up or giving in, it's acceptance. You know me and music, so here's one for you. "Surrender" is one of my favorite U2 songs/one of my favorite songs full stop. And the irony that it's on an album entitled "War" makes it all the more special. xo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXDW8vaZmzw
Loved this piece. Thanks for writing it.