the pain of being forgotten… the power of being remembered

Update 5/30:
Thanks for the interest everyone.  Here are pictures from the retreat.
If you’d like to get updates regarding our future events, please get in touch with us at info@livingubuntu.org or (949) 891-2005. 

Update 5/5:
Read Barbara’s thoughts about why we picked this theme for the retreat.

“At 4-years-old, each row of books towered over me and had a musty smell.  I had been in this library many times, yet there is one day I will never forget.  I was there with my mother, and when I turned around, she was gone.  I looked for her and couldn’t find her.  In my childhood panic, I was immediately convinced that she had just forgotten about me and left.  

Even though I eventually found her, it didn’t take away from the fact that I now knew what feeling forgotten felt like and it terrified me to my core.”

– Barbara

Hi everyone,

It would be easy to dismiss this as something only young children feel, but that just isn’t true.  When someone forgets us, it is a disconnect. We feel invisible, or not significant enough to have been remembered. We feel separate.  We feel cut off.  We become the outcast no longer held in someone else’s heart and mind. This isolated, alienated state, even if only felt briefly, can be devastatingly painful at any age.

It is a basic human need to be known by others.

Each of us wants to share with others what it feels like to be “me”.  The need to be known and remembered, to be held in mind and heart, stays with us throughout our life.  Young or old, it is excruciatingly painful when that doesn’t happen, when instead, we are forgotten.

This May at the Living Ubuntu Spring Retreat, we will be looking into the world of connections, interconnections and disconnections.  We will explore the ways we hold each other within and necessarily participate in each other’s inner lives (for good or for ill).

Some of the topics we will cover at this retreat include the role and importance of:

• The transformative power of remembering others, holding others in heart and mind, and bearing witness.  The necessity of embodiment, vulnerability, and emotional presence in order to genuinely “remember” others.
• Increasing our capacity to stay with our self, and self-protect, while being empathic and holding others within. Bringing healing into areas of pain, shame, and heartache, using self-expression and connection to help heal emotional wounds created when we have been forgotten.
• Getting in touch with and owning the danger within us:  when our inner perpetrator seeks to “blank others out” (i.e. psychic eliminationism).
• How does this play out with global issues?  Darfur, Congo, Haiti…  What good does it do to hold another, half-way across the world in our heart and mind?  Does it actually help?

All details are below.  To create a safe, secure space, we are limiting attendance to 10 people.  Please let us know soon if you would like to join us.

Warmly,

Barbara & Anshul
Living Ubuntu
http://livingubuntu.org

the pain of being forgotten
. . . the power of being remembered

When:
Friday, May 25 – Sunday, May 27
(Memorial Day weekend)

Where:
In the remote mountains of Idyllwild, CA.  Here are the cabin details.

Cost:
$175 per person. This includes food and lodging for the weekend.
If there is any financial hardship, please get in touch with us. We will do our best to accommodate your situation.

Presenter:

Barbara English is a licensed Marriage Family Therapist with over 20 years of experience in the field. As a Certified Bioenergetic Therapist, she works from a mind-body perspective, and utilizes relational somatic methods as part of the process toward healing and a sense of well-being. Much of her training has focused on Early Development, Infant Mental Health, and healing after abuse or trauma. She is the co-founder and Executive Director of Living Ubuntu.

Like at our past retreats, we will:

• Arrive at the cabin by mid-day on Friday and leave for home on Sunday afternoon. We will arrange a carpool to drive up together (leaving Friday morning).
• Lunch and dinner will be provided, as well as supplies for breakfast (on your own).  Meals will be vegetarian, and organic as much as possible.
• The daily schedule will include multiple sessions of body work (e.g. Bioenergetic grounding exercises, and TRE).
• Most bedrooms will be shared (i.e. with roommate).
• To create a safe, secure space, we are limiting attendance to no more than 10 people.

To register, please contact us at info@livingubuntu.org or call (949) 891-2005.

Space is limited and 50% deposit is due by April 27th, payable to Living Ubuntu, 1151 Dove Street #210, Newport Beach CA 92660.

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