Stage 11   INSPIRING OTHERS      

Affirmation:  I will inspire others to claim their authentic selves and live a life that includes spirituality.

         In this final stage, you realize the depth and breadth of your transformation.  You have
         completed a momentous task in your life:  searching for, exploring and discovering your
         authentic Self.  Your decision to find a new way to be is slow and beautiful.  It is a spiritual
         ascent that continues to liberate you and help you become the person you truly are.

         Now that you have made such strides in liberating your inner world, it is time to acknowledge
         that the world around you still has a long way to travel on the road to equality.  How can you
         join your personal revolution to the universal revolution toward equality, justice, and human
        dignity?

        Fortunately, you can be a powerful messenger because you are now certain of your message.
        Now you can open up, speak the truth, and share without abandoning yourself.  Because of
        your inner strength, clarity, and transformation, you are less likely to waste your energy tilting
        at windmills.  You are ready to blend the best of yourself with the best of society.  This is the
        reward of your change.  Through reading this book, writing in your journal, and sharing with
        other women, the way you think, feel, and act is radically altered.  You feel a new sense of
        belonging, and mutual respect for other women.  You have put away the criticism, the
        blaming, and judgmental attitudes you absorbed through socialization.  And, just as
        important, you forgive your oppressors because forgiveness is an act of creation.  You
        remember that they, too, are victims of an oppressive system that attempts to divide
        humanity into two distinct and separate groups.  You are free now to invite and inspire
        your oppressors to reinvent their own lives so that our humanness becomes more important
        than our separateness.  You can now live freely.

        You have labored to liberate a crushed life from the splits that were created through
        socialization and, in this way, you have joined God in the highest act of creation.  God
        has always been a part of your life, through all the loving acts you shared with others.
        Your communion with others is now expanded to include a self-communion which has
        led you to the deepest spirituality.  Spirituality, by its very nature, is unifying, reconciling
        and dynamic.  Spirituality will help you to trust in the gains you've made within yourself
        and with others.  Through your spiritual life, you have found the best way to inspire others,
        because spirituality is the pathway of inspiration.  It is the bridge between you and all of
        humanity.  Spirituality has brought your life into a cohesive whole.  You have listened to
        your own voice and that voice has brought you back to your virginal-self.  Your spiritual
        power will impel you to continue your important work of transformation, supporting other
        men and women in their search for personal growth, bettering the community and joining
        with others in helping to balance the world.

        God has joined us to resolve what we thought was unresolvable.  This upsurge of life makes
        the "New Bride" visible, enjoyable, believable and lovable.

        Although there are specific journal questions to work on which serve to integrate and highlight
       all you have accomplished, in truth Stage Twelve never ends.  It seamlessly blends with the
       way you will live the rest of your life as a "New Bride," at one with other people and the God
       within you, but free to be the woman you are.

 

Presentation based on Codependency and the Socialization of Women, by Ann Mody Lewis, Ph.D., Copyright 1996