The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd Read Free Book Online

because we use psychological sleep as a way of avoiding pain. Our choice, as Florence Nightingale put it, is between pain and paralysis. A hard one. But it’s only when we are willing to see the truth about our lives as women, however painful that truth might be, that we enter the portal of the journey.
    That November, two months after the dream of giving birth to myself, I had a real collision with the truth. It would be my “driveway crash.”
    THE NEST OF YELLOW LEAVES
    The monastery visit I’d planned was supposed to be just another routine retreat.
    When I arrived dusk was falling. I strolled to the church along a sidewalk covered with so many fallen leaves that it was like walking on one long yellow carpet. I sat through vespers, listening to the monks chant the office, hopelessly trying to follow them in the prayer book but nevertheless swept into the strange beauty of the chant.
    Afterward I waited outside the church for a monk named Father Paschal, who was to be my spiritual director during the retreat. Standing ankle-deep in leaves, I watched the monks file out in their black, hooded robes, and I wondered which one Father Paschal might be. He would have no problem spotting me; I was the only female in the whole place.
    Suddenly I heard a little cough behind me and, turning, saw a smiling man with shaven dark hair and round glasses. “I’m Father Paschal,” he said.
    At that moment I opened my mouth and uttered what is undoubtedly the most embarrassing Freudian slip of my life. I said, “Hello, I’m Father Sue.”
    He got a funny look on his face. Heat flared in my cheeks.
    â€œAre you feeling nervous about being here?” he asked, attributing my word slip to anxiousness.
    I hated to tell him that no, actually I was an old hand at monasteries. “I must be,” I said.
    We chatted a while longer, though I don’t recall a thing we said after that. My face stayed warm a good half hour.
    Back in my room, I thought about my strange slip of the tongue. It hadn’t come from nervousness like Father Paschal suggested, so why did I say that? Maybe it was an indication of just how at home I felt in monastic places, that I had become “one of them.” Sure, that’s got to be it, I thought.
    But some other part of me suspected the real truth, one too bitter to let in. That part in my unconscious, knowing and wise, was telling me exactly who I was identified with. It was telling me that my values, my spirituality, my way of being a woman in the world were masculine through and through. I was immersed in the world of the father.
    Father Sue. I wanted to cry.
    The next morning I rose and went for a walk, taking pen and journal. I walked toward a small stand of trees at the edge of the monastery, where I picked my way through young pines, half-bare maples, and bramble until I came to a small, hidden clearing.
    It was wall-to-wall yellow leaves and dappled light. Impulsively I took armfuls of leaves and plumped them into a big pileto sit on. When I finished, the mound resembled the kind of nest Big Bird of Sesame Street would require. Almost laughing, I wrote in my journal, “I’m here in the woods sitting on a big nest of leaves.”
    I laid down my pen. You know what, I thought, maybe I made this big nest because I’m here to hatch my new life, to give birth to something. I remembered the dream of giving birth to myself, to the female life that wanted to come into being, and immediately, surprisingly, my eyes filled with tears.
    I sat still. I wrote, “So then, what’s standing in the way of this new life being born?” And it came to me all at once. For one thing, you’re going to have to forgive yourself for not being born male. You’re going to have to learn to love your real female life.
    I sat there open-mouthed. What? That was ridiculous. Of course I loved being a woman. I reveled in my femaleness.
    But the inner voice was not