Four years ago one of my favorite clients asked me to attend her year-end goddess soiree. After making sure it didn’t involve nudity, animal sacrifice, or drugs I was sufficiently curious to check it out. Nervous yes. I mean what does a financial advisor wear to a goddess soirée? A toga and a pinstriped blazer? For the record I settled on a long skirt from Anthroplogie, a comfy sweater, and a pair of boots. Boring but safe.
So the goddess soirée ( or at least the one I attended) is held as close to winter solstice – which is the longest day of the year – as possible. If you can manage to land on winter solstice all the better but for those of us with jobs and families the Friday of the week of winter solstice is much more practical. Okay, so if you are feeling like me before I actually went to the party you are thinking “winter solstice” sounds very hippie-dippie, west-coast, new-age weirdo for me. And I hear ya. Translated winter solstice means the longest night of the year. And I don’t know about you but I hate those long winter nights where it is black by 4:30pm and the sun doesn’t make an appearance until 7am the next day. I just want to hibernate like a bear. I certainly don’t want to go to the gym, or to work, or be productive in the pitch black. Celebrating on winter solstice is a practical way of consciously acknowledging that it is all uphill from here. You’ve made it, sista! Nothing but shorter days from here until summer, my friend!
My biggest misconception of the goddess soirée was that I was going to drink a ton of wine and chit chat with some gals until the wee hours of the morn. This party (and since I am limited in my goddess experiences that might not hold true for all soirées) had a strict no alcohol, no speaking (until it was your turn to share – more on that later) rule in place until we were through with getting our goddess on. The thought bubble over my head when I showed up for the first time feeling plenty nervous, knowing no one but my client, looking completely out of place would have been, “holy crap! What do you mean, no wine?!?!?”
But you can’t be chatty and inebriated for the goddess soirée any more than you can be while writing your year-end business plan for work. Because what I found out by attending the goddess soirée is that it is a chance to spend a few hours focusing on what you want to release from the last year and what you want to focus and bring to your life in the New Year. At its core it is the equivalent of a personal business plan. Except you aren’t writing into satisfy some corporate mandate or management dictate. You aren’t focusing on revenue growth, or client acquisition, or cost saving measures for your department. Which let’s face it, are very narrowly focused on your financial success which is typically a very teeny piece of what drives us as humans. Most of us simply aren’t motivated by money. We think we are, but having worked with money for a long time I’ve realized that it’s all about what the money brings to our lives – time with our family, respect, freedom, peace of mind. Those are the real motivators.
The goddess soirée is a mommy-time-out from all the holiday craziness to look back at the year that slipped through our fingers, to consciously leave the baggage from that year behind, and be able to name and ask for the things we really want in our new year – time with family, work-life balance, more sex, less drama, more happiness. Because you have to write down – just like you do with a professional business plan – the things you want to release and the things you want to bring in. Then you do what I always feel like doing with my year end business plan, you get to burn them. There’s something very satisfying about watching the ashes of those wishes float away. It feels like you are taking action right then and there – not someday but right then and there.
One of my favorite parts of the evening is when we share (told you I’d get to the talking part) something that has been weighing on us. The rule is only one person can talk and feedback is highly discouraged. As a working mother I barely can barely do anything without being interrupted – peeing, eating, taking a phone call, etc. So to know that I can take my time and get something off my chest and then not have to worry about anyone telling me how to fix it is a luxury I don’t have in my everyday life. And you might think it is hard to get real in front of a bunch of women you don’t know that well – or at all – but it actually is liberating. Because admitting to feeling sad or scared or lonely is not an indictment of anyone else in the room. If you tell your partner you are sad it feels to them like they’ve failed you. If you tell your friends you are sad they want fix it by cheering you up. And sometimes you just want to sit with your sadness and experience it so you can get to the other side of it. You have to be the one who fixes it.
Now if you are still rolling your eyes the goddess soirée might not be for you. But I think a lot of us chicks could benefit from some year-end soul searching and life planning. And if you need to bend a little on the wine rule to make it more appealing to your friends I’m sure the goddesses will understand!
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