Debaptizing Myself From Giving Away My Power

On the first morning of the Women of Earth Lab in March 2024 in São Paulo, Brazil, Anne-Chloé spoke with blazing clarity about the ways that Patriarchy keeps us from growing up. “Only little girls can exist in Patriarchy,” she said. “Little girls who play nice and make other people comfortable are allowed to exist in Modern Culture—not Adult women.”

The truth of her words landed in me like lightning, and I felt immense waves of grief roll over me. I felt the pain and sadness of all the ways I had made myself small and adaptive, of how hard I had tried to please others instead of getting clear on what mattered to me. 

At my first Possibility Lab in California in May 2023, I had received the feedback that I was giving my power away to the spaceholders—seeing them as authority figures and waiting for them to decide how things would go. 

To my Good Girl Box, this feedback made no sense. They were the spaceholders, so of course they were going to be “in charge.” Of course I was going to look to them for direction and ask how they wanted the room to be arranged. This was the reasoning my Box used to try and keep things the same. It didn’t want me to look more closely at the feedback or notice how else this pattern was showing up in my life. 

That evening, I was asked to hold space for the next day’s morning practice. I obsessively ran over the fifteen-word script in my mind and practiced ringing the bells in order to avoid a double hit.

As I took my place in front of the altar the next morning, I felt my hands begin to sweat. When I opened my mouth to speak, my voice was so choked with fear that I hardly recognized it. As I sat during those thirty-five minutes, I realized that the fear was about how the spaceholders would appraise my performance. I had made them into my teachers, who would tell me if I had done a good job. I was still in school—trying to do it right, to impress, to be the best student. I was giving my power away to another system, another authority figure.

Where this adaptiveness came from was no mystery. As a child, I learned early on that I would be rewarded and showered with love, praise, and affection if I did things that the adults around me considered valuable or worthwhile—getting good grades, playing sports, being accommodating and polite. I sourced my value outside myself, relying on external approval to prove that I mattered and was worthy of love. All I cared about was pleasing those around me, instead of asking myself what I wanted to create in the world.

This adaptiveness showed up in my life in many ways, doing varying degrees of damage. In school, it translated into letting my college advisor choose my major (minor damage). In my partnership, it translated into not holding my boundaries, allowing my partner to decide the terms of our relating, and slowly chipping away at my Dignity, thereby destroying any possibility of intimacy (major damage).

By the time Anne-Chloé spoke at the lab, this feedback had been working in me for months. It was time. I had clarity on the ways in which this adaptivity was running my life, and on the benefit my Underworld was reaping—of not taking responsibility and relying on others to take care of me.

On the third day of the lab, with thirty-three other women, I chose to leave Patriarchy behind. One by one, each woman crossed the line and spoke about what it was she was giving up: hating her body, not letting other women love her, needing to know how it goes.

All my life, I had been waiting for other people to tell me whether what I was doing was right or wrong. At the Women of Earth Lab, I made a new decision: I decide what matters. I decide what I want to create. I source value from inside myself, not from the opinions or approval of others.

And one by one, each woman dove (or jumped, or flew, or belly-flopped) into the lake and debaptized herself from Patriarchy.