Four weeks ago, I read from On Our Knees out loud for the first time. 

Not from a stage. Not to a crowd who bought a ticket to be there. I read it to my Knee Squad — the volunteer team of women who are helping me bring this book into the world. A hundred faces scattered across the country, gathered on a call for no reason but love.

If you have not met them yet: the Knee Squad is the group of women who raised their hands to champion this book into the world. 

There is nothing in it for them. No fee. No title. No spotlight. They show up week after week for one reason — they love this work, and they love me. Pure desire. Pure appreciation. Women choosing to hold something up simply because they believe in it.

And so I got a few sentences in, and I started to cry.

And I did not stop. I wept through the entire reading.

The passage I read them was the story of me ending the SWA Mastery program. A thousand women in the audience. The community I had created and nurtured for over 20 years. Not because it had failed — it was actually more successful than ever — but because it was time.  

My family needed me, I needed me. There are times in life when we have to say goodbye to people, places and things that gave us life. I know you know those moments.

What happens when the very thing that has saved you can no longer save you?  

My voice kept breaking. The tears kept coming. Not one of those women could reach through the glass to put a hand on me — and not one of them looked away. They held me with the softest, most loving oh-I-get-it eyes I have ever been seen with. Some of them cried right along with me. They did not rush me. They did not fix me. They let me weep my way through every single page.

I have spent my whole life being the one who holds the grief in the room. I stand at the front of it. I am the one you come to when the floor has come up to meet you. That is a great love and a great honor — and it is also, if I am telling you the truth, a very sophisticated place to hide.

As long as I am the one holding you, nobody has to hold me.

As long as I am carrying someone else’s grief, I never have to sit down inside my own.

But they would not let me hide there. They did not want a teacher. They had no use for Mama Gena that afternoon. They met me — Regena — eye to eye, face to face through the glass, as a woman.

They sistered me. And for once I did not try to sister or mother them back. I let them love me.

Because the truth is, you cannot always pour out. You cannot always be the strong one, the capable one, the one who has the answer for everyone else. You cannot do it alone. I cannot do it alone. Being witnessed is not the weakness. It is the medicine.

To the women who were on that call with me four weeks ago: thank you. You could not put your arms around me. You were squares of light on a screen, far from me and from each other, and still you came all the way down into a grief that was not even yours — with your wet eyes and your I-get-it faces and your own tears falling while mine did.

You fixed none of it. You did not once ask me to be finished with it. You just stayed, until I remembered I was not alone in it.

I did not fix it. I did not teach it. I just spoke the truth of it, from my knees, and let myself be held.

Love + pleasure,

 

 

P.S. On Our Knees begins where Mastery ended. And on August 25, I’ll find myself back where this story began: on a stage, under the lights, surrounded by women — only this time, I’m letting myself be seen. Join me for the full-circle moment. Pre-order On Our Knees and receive complimentary access to The Transmission, my livestream launch party →