Drucie French-Cumbie
GRADUATE PROFILE
“Before Lifespring, I thought I was an ordinary person. Now I know that we are all extraordinary people. The distinction lies in the context in which I live. I create that context."
Drucie did the Lifespring Basic Training in 1982,a month after her husband did it. “In many ways,our lives were quite successful: We come from strong, supportive families; we both hold graduate degrees; we had made significant progress financially and professionally.
“When we married in 1978, I left my job as a producer/director of medical videotapes and channeled all my energies toward ‘our life together.'My husband had just started a new business that was thriving but demanding. I did everything I could to support him in his work-I entertained; I renovated a townhouse in Georgetown; I got a job as a consultant when we needed extra income; I handled family matters. I made all my choices based on my obligations-my duties as a wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, and so on.
“The trap I was in was that,at the end of every day,I found myself insufficient. No matter how hard I worked, I had never done all that I should have. I was not happy and was beginning to entertain the nasty suspicion that it was my husband's fault. That was my frame of mind when I heard about Lifespring.
“I had done some experiential learning in graduate school, so the concept was not new to me. And neither were the basic concepts covered in the training.I'd been exposed to them before. But the effectiveness of the Basic was incredible.
‘My circumstances haven't ‘changed.'I'm a wife and mother. I just finished building a new house. My husband's business is still expanding-it takes most of his time and a lot of mine. Yet, everything is different. I make my choices based upon my purpose in life. I'm living an extraordinary life in perfectly ordinary circumstances
“Before the training,I had been defining my life by traditional, social roles. The only possibilities open to me were those which were already established. I measured my value by how perfectly I lived up to those standards. My insistence on perfection destroyed the possibility of joy. Joy was the very thing that I was yearning for. I felt that all my dreams were disappearing into a grim swirl of duty and obligations.
“One of the biggest breakthroughs I had in the trainings was about urgency, the sense that now is all I have and it is important that I take action now. I had been living my life more passively than I live it now. I noticed in the trainings that I am not so much afraid of dying as I am afraid of not having done my life's work. I began to discover my purpose in living. It wasn't hard to identify. I simply looked to the obvious. I want to make a positive difference in this world by teaching people to live more lightly-more enlivened, less burdened,more gracefully.The Lifespring trainings are not religious, but as I continue on this path, I am experiencing a reawakening of my spirituality. I have a sense of divine grace that guides me. That is what I mean by living gracefully. I'm learning to listen.
"I don't worry anymore about what I should be doing. Opportunities show up on my plate. Where before I would stew over whether or not I should take on a project and how I would do it, now I know immediately whether or not a particular opportunity is part of my life's work and I commit to it without the debate. I don't just limit myself to those things I already know how to do anymore. There is not much room for breakthrough in limiting myself that way. Am I ever afraid? Sure, always. But if a goal is in alignment with my purpose, it is worth the risk.·
"I've learned to simply jump in when offered an opportunity to stretch my limits. Since doing the training,I've announced that I would raise money for the March of Dimes, Special Olympics, Peace Child,Youth at Risk, a project directed toward resolving the conflict in Belfast, the Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, and several others. I was on the board of trustees for the Lifespring Foundation for two years. Every time I take on one of these commitments, I don't have the vaguest idea where the money is going to come from. Every time I make this kind of declaration, a little voice reminds me that I might fail. Sometimes the outcome surpasses my expectations. Sometimes my results are what I consider mediocre. Each time I have learned something and contributed something to the world.
“When I choose,commit, declare, the possibilities for action flood in.People show up to assist me. Resources become available.Fear is replaced by creativity,discovery, challenge.Through the training I have had a great sense of freedom because I approach life differently.
"I've come a long way since the Basic. I no longer see my life as a grim downward spiral of obligation. I'm still changing diapers, cleaning up after the dog, giving cocktail parties. I still have days when I feel overwhelmed by cars,houses,family,pets, clothes, dirt-days when I experience life as burdensome. I still lose my temper with my daughter and my husband. All the responsibilities that defined me and, I thought, confined me, are still real. I just look at those things differently.They are not burdens for me anymore, they are resources.They are gifts, like a trust fund, that can be squandered or enriched. I know that when I experience life as burdensome, what is off is me. From that point of view I have the power to re-choose. It is like that button that I've seen people wear: PBPGINFWMY-‘Please be patient. God is not finished with me yet.'-and neither am I."
In all of her work, Drucie has been unfolding her potential as a woman.“Having a woman trainer in one of the trainings, I began to re-examine what it is for a woman to be powerful in this world. The power of her femininity impressed me. I looked at my beliefs about women and how women are a very important, healing part of the balance in life. Yet,I noticed that if fulfilling that meant conflict,I would usually back off. I'd look for ways to make a difference in people's lives that didn't end in confrontation. There was a big shift for me there in being willing to face conflict on the way to fulfilling a bigger purpose.I know that if I'm in a loving relationship, it works to act out of that commitment and not passively wait for the relationship to evolve. Sometimes that involves conflict.
“Since moving to Washington, I found myself becoming more and more the kind of person who lived behind the gates in the wealthy neighborhoods. I didn't know any old people, and I didn't know any kids. I only knew people who went to college and were just like us. I had evolved in the archetypal yuppie mold. I chose it, but I was unconscious that I was choosing it. I had been kind of a funky teenager, but somewhere along the line between sororities and private schools and degrees, I left a whole big part of me behind. It was great for me to be dealing with people in the trainings that I didn't usually have any contact with. That was also part of the reason I did the trainings because I was looking for a way out of the limitations of my life-style. I really liked being outrageous and being a part of the whole world, not just an ever-refining, narrowing segment of society. Being in the trainings allowed me to assist and be assisted by different people.I was served up these wonderful opportunities for knowing people and doing things that I would never have done. Jumping into those opportunities was a big part of my commitment to broadening myself.
“Another whole story is how Lifespring affected how we are as parents-the joy we take in it. To begin with, how it was for me when I was delivering the baby was dramatically different because of having done the training. I was in control in the sense that I felt accountable for what was going on, but also totally trusting of what people were telling me to do and how to do it. I know that my husband and I would have never worked as such a great team if we hadn't done the trainings. It was wonderful. It was miraculous for us and if I hadn't gotten anything else out of the training, the difference it made in how I handled the birth of my daughter was fantastic.
“Lifespring was and continues to be an opening for us as a couple. When our marriage gets stormy,tumultuous,and difficult, the trainings have provided us a context to work it out. When there is something as important as having a child that we want to do together, we're now able to get our egos out of the way, which is something we never had done before.
“I don't really think I would have had my child and this house and a sense of my life's work if I hadn't done the training. I may still have discovered my purpose, but I don't think I'd be as committed or as effective at pursuing that purpose. The trainings are causal, they set something off in my life. My life has been greatly enhanced by what I discovered in the training room."