Doorways of Support and Inspiration:
Healing Mind, Body and Spirit

Succulent Creativity Can Heal Your Life, Part II:
A Two-Part  Interview with SARK by Alissa Lukara

SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) is the author and artist of eleven books, including the best-selling, Succulent Wild Woman. There are over two million SARK books in print. She is also an acclaimed speaker and teacher. Dr. Maya Angelou writes about her,” We in this world, and this weary old world itself, have a great gaping need for SARK. Let's call for more and more SARK to fill every child's book bag and each attaché case." Her latest book, Prosperity Pie: How to Relax about Money and Everything Else, explores how we can be and feel prosperous no matter how much we have or don't have, or what our outside circumstances or challenges may be. As in all her inspiring and imaginative books, SARK shares her own process of exploring who she is and how she responds during life’s challenges and its kaleidoscope of pleasures.

 

Alissa Lukara recently interviewed SARK about the power of creativity to heal one’s life. In Part II of the interview, they discuss acceptance and surrender, struggle versus joy, honoring transitions, self care during adversity and knowing that we are enough just as we are. You can read Part I of this interview here.

 

Acceptance and Surrender

 

Alissa: In your books, you talk about the importance of “accepting what is” in terms of healing and transforming adversity. That’s certainly a lesson that spirals around in my life.

 

SARK: It certainly spirals around in mine, too. I just told a friend yesterday that SARK stands for: Surrender, Acceptance, cReativity and Kindness.

I’m involved in a fierce practicing of self acceptance and continual surrendering.

 

We’re consistently presented with opportunities to fight, defend, and evade in our lives. What would happen if we would surrender to what actually is? What happens when we do is there can be a movement of another kind. Surrendering to what is provides a direct line to the soul and to the spirit.

 

Conversely, the ego is completely involved in the opposite of surrender. It’s strategizing, futurizing, angling for a better view. It’s recasting circumstances in a more favorable light and turning the channel so we don’t have to see the disturbing story. I can speak cogently about this because I’m often engaged in this. If we accept what is, if we can learn to sit with what is for just two seconds, it can change our lives. It doesn’t have to involve a whole day of meditation.

 

ALISSA: No, and it doesn’t have to mean resigning ourselves to what is either.

 

SARK: That’s the thing. People misinterpret surrender as resignation or giving up. Giving up is not surrender. There’s a definite difference.

 

Then, there’s the marvelous resistance to surrender of what is. I have certain situations in my life where no matter what I do, they don’t change. When I’m able to stop all the struggle and just accept, a tremendous peace comes over to me. But, once again, most of us are accustomed to struggle. So, this absence of struggle can become a pain of its own.

 

In the same way, getting what we want is much scarier than not getting it. The direct evidence of that is how long we spend struggling and then presenting evidence of our struggles. A lot of us repeat the same stories and themes over and over again. But these highs and lows and dramas are provinces of the ego. There’s a marvelous neutrality in accepting what is.

 

Struggle versus Joy

 

ALISSA: Would you talk more about the whole idea that getting what we want can be scarier than not getting it?

 

SARK: If we take the idea that one can become quite accustomed to struggle, that can become the climate and landscape in which we live. So when something good happens, it’s alarming. It’s an invading organism. Look at dysfunctional families. They’ll try to annihilate any new person who tries to enter, especially a healthy one. In general, if that person’s more functional, the dysfunctional people will unconsciously band together to get rid of that functional person, because the healthy person threatens the system.

 

In addition, there’s a way in which containing all the joy becomes scary. We don’t know what to do with so much goodness and love. We get so high that we can’t contain it.

 

Let me tell you something else. When you get what you want, your circumstances change. You might not have the same friends. Or you might have friends that get jealous, turn against you or judge you. That’s very frightening, because you feel you might end up alone—and even die alone.

 

ALISSA: On the ego level, experiencing this feels as much like a life and death struggle as facing a real life and death situation. On some level, it is in fact the death of an old way of life.

 

SARK: Also, you can often get sympathy and attention about something bad in your life when you need it. But if you call someone and say, “I just need to talk because I’m so happy and joyful and so many good things have happened to me. Can I tell them to you all now?” The person might say, “I only have about 10 minutes.”

 

This goes for more than just mindless joy, too, because you can experience great joy in facing challenges. The point is: If you make a departure from habitual ways of struggle, you will encounter great fear not only in yourself, but in others.

 

ALISSA: I think that generally applies to both extremes. People you know become fearful when you get too joyful. But when the struggle you’re facing departs from the middle of the road, daily struggle and you go into life-threatening or life altering struggle, like chronic illness, many people can’t handle that either. They can only handle the middle ground of struggle or joy.  

 

SARK: I found that was true when people in your life die, too. When my father died, certain friends disappeared. What was beautiful is that completely unlikely people came forward. This really made me trust in the universal system.

 

ALISSA: Which brings up another important point—the issue of trust and faith. Here, it’s trust and faith that if something old drops away, something new will—in its own time—take place of what’s been lost.

 

SARK: And that’s in fact why those old people dropped away.

 

ALISSA: Because you need to create space for something nourishing. Hopefully. At the very least, something or someone new.  

 

That reminds me of another topic I was hoping to address. There’s that point where you’ve gone through a challenge, but you haven’t yet moved into the new phase of your life.

 

Honoring Transitions

 

SARK: I immediately want to invoke Robyn Posin [creator of the website, forthelittleonesinside.com]. She has a wonderful quote about that state of being in between: She writes:

 

In The ‘Feeling Stuck’
Times: When It’s No
Longer Possible To Be
As You Were And Not
Yet Possible To Be As
You Will Be…
Berating And Badgering
Yourself Only Make The
Painful ‘Between’ Time
More Trying.

Remember To Ease Up,
Be Patient And Tender
With Yourself; Rest
And Trust That,
Deep Within,
The New  Growth Is
Germinating!
The Next Step Always
Unfolds When You’re
Fully Ready For It!

 

It’s an incredible place. You don’t have the comfort of the way you were. And you don’t have the fruit of what you will be. There’s also a good book that talks about this called Transitions by William Bridges.

 

ALISSA: Can you offer any insights about actually integrating the lessons you’ve learned from the challenge into your new life?

 

SARK: I often want to hurry up and integrate it. I say to myself, I went through that. Why don’t I feel much better today? That happened two days ago. Why am I still so upset? Integration happens in spirals and layers—just like healing does. It doesn’t necessarily match the evolution. It might come out in different ways. You don’t always have direct, visible evidence of it. I believe that great trust is required.

 

ALISSA: And permission to be just where you are. When I had my healing from CFIDS, coming from a place of illness to being healthy required a definite transition period. I couldn’t just immediately return to “life as usual.”

 

SARK: Didn’t you in some ways have an identity involved with the illness?

 

ALISSA: I did. Because I’d dealt with it for so long. I needed to trust the new place and find out, Who am I now as I go out into the world from this new place?

 

SARK: And who were you taking yourself to be?

 

ALISSA: It required a huge shift in perception. I’ve had people who’ve been dealing with chronic illness for years tell me they’re literally afraid to get well. They’re frightened it will mean they have to go out right away and start working full time and functioning full speed ahead. I told them, “Even if you get completely healthy, you need to plan on taking some time first. Think of it as coming out of a prison of sorts and entering a whole new way of life. You need time simply to be in this new space before you begin to move ahead in it.

 

SARK: It’s an integration issue. Sometimes, where our mind is ready to go, our body isn’t. The two are really different.

 

For instance, sometimes I give messages to my body through the filter of the inner critic. “You’re home now and healthy. So why aren’t you back at the gym? Now you’re not using this time effectively either.” It’s like I’m giving myself a harsh assignment. My body usually revolts by getting sick right when I’m getting ready to go back to the gym. My body is saying to me, “Don’t you love me now? Don’t you love how I am now? ” All I can think of is improving my muscles or the appearance of a part of me or making myself more limber. What about reveling in simply rolling around?

 

Mary Oliver, a wonderful poet, wrote:

 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves. (“Wild Geese” from Dreamwork, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986)

 

That could be a guiding light for our own lives.

 

The Importance of Self Care

 

ALISSA: Absolutely. That’s such a beautiful poem.

 

Would you give an example of something people can do to take care of themselves while they’re dealing with adversity?

 

SARK: Of course. The first and most obvious is more breathing. A more conscious application of breath. It’s often one of the first things that’s forgotten.

 

Then, there’s “crisis management adversity” and “every day adversity.” The same things probably apply to both. I remember the book, The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. It helped me so much when I was working with the incest issue. I clung to chapters in there. The ideas they offer apply to self care during many different kinds of challenges.

 

One of their suggestions is about gathering support systems. They recommend writing down all the phone numbers of everyone you can call at any time with any feeling. If you know that you can call someone and say, “Can you just listen to me? I’m filled with rage and I don’t know what to do. I just need to talk out loud and have someone hear me.” Doing that is so valuable.

 

Also, write yourself a prescription for what’s helpful to you specifically. For me, a lot of healing comes in resting. I organize my life so I can rest a lot.

 

Ask yourself, What does my particular body and mind need? It’s as simple as making a list—ahead of time. These reminders are critical. Because when you’re in the adversity, you can’t think of these things. Self care can very quickly fall away. Adversity wipes out our minds of consciously caring for ourselves. We can’t even remember what we need and like.

 

For instance, I make up little menus because, when I’m in the middle of adversity, I can’t remember what I like to eat. When I was more prone to binge eating, I would just eat whatever was there. I couldn’t remember that I really like broccoli and tofu that is sautéed. I made up little cards and created an emergency recipe box for those times.

 

ALISSA: That’s a great example. And so true. I have lots of tools to help me deal with anxiety. But when I wake up in the middle of the night feeling anxious, I forget them all.

 

SARK: It’s as if they don’t exist. Another example is specifically for people with trauma or post traumatic stress issues. When they’re challenged and experiencing transition or great healing in their lives, any other type of transition can provoke anxiety, too. Leaving the house. Coming back to the house. Going over to someone else’s house. Even getting ready for bed. They need to plan for these transitions in a way that assists them. This can include making a list reminding them of the basic things they can do to help them deal with anxiety. For instance, lying down. Connecting with the breath. Doing simple stretches. Engaging in prayers or chanting before reaching for the phone to make an important call..

 

We Are Good Enough

 

ALISSA: Is there anything you’d like to say in conclusion?

 

SARK: Yes, that we’re so good already without one single bit of improvement.

Accepting that fact can be difficult, so much so that people often don’t believe it. And the inner critics won’t let them believe it. I want to be a voice that says it’s true.

 

ALISSA: I love how you phrased it at your Learning Annex workshop on creating juicy dreams.  

 

SARK: “You are enough. You have enough. You do enough.” And none of us believe one word of it. That’s another quote that can inform a whole life.

 

PART I of Alissa Lukara’s interview with SARK, deals with the power of creativity to heal one’s life, the importance of both progress and regression, healing in spirals and more. You can read Part I of this interview here.

 

SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy) is the author and artist of eleven books, including the bestseller, Succulent Wild Woman. There are over two million SARK books in print. Her latest is Prosperity Pie. SARK is an acclaimed speaker and teacher, and was featured in the PBS series, "Women of Wisdom and Power," as well as a documentary film titled, "The World According to SARK." She is a periodic guest on National Public Radio, and her own "Inspiration Line" has been inspiring people for ten years at 415-546-3742. Her company, Camp SARK produces products to inspire creative living. Camp SARK has also distributed "Creative Tool Kits" to teachers across the country. SARK was born in Minneapolis and her first (and favorite) job was as Wake-Up Fairy in kindergarten. She studied at the Minneapolis Art Institute, University of Tampa and the University of Minnesota before graduating from the School of Communication Arts in radio/TV production. SARK is a recovering procrastinator/perfectionist who practices what she teaches, and lives in a Magic Cottage in San Francisco, California with her "Fur Husband" cat, Jupiter. For more information, go to the Camp SARK website.

Alissa Lukara is the author of the memoir Riding Grace: A Triumph of the Soul (Silver Light Publications, February 2007) and president and founder of this nonprofit website, Lifechallenges.org, which provides individuals in 97 countries worldwide with the self help tools they need to cope with and transcend adversity. Riding Grace chronicles Alissa's 12 year quest through the dark night of adult chronic fatigue syndrome and childhood sexual abuse to accept the unacceptable and find wholeness and healing. She offers inspiring workshops and presentations to groups, drawing on her personal healing experiences and the larger perspective she gained from them and empowering people to use challenges to transform their lives. Lukara’s work has appeared in numerous publications including Conscious Women, Conscious Lives, the secret of salt: an indigenous journal, and Ashland Magazine.  She can been seen hosting the Southern Oregon community television program, “Transcending Life Challenges.”  A Reiki Master, Lukara is currently studying to be a family constellation practitioner which is based on the work of psychotherapist Bert Hellinger. She now makes her home in Southern Oregon with her family. You can write to Alissa at info@lifechallenges.org  For information: www.ridinggrace.com.