My Story of Liberation: Who am I really?

Gini Graham, Lent 2026

Gini has been practicing Centering Prayer since 1978. She became a presenter of the Centering Prayer method and started Contemplative Outreach of Oregon in about 1988. As CO quickly spread throughout the state and groups formed, each area became its own chapter. Gini has remained as a coordinator or on the leadership team of Contemplative Outreach of Portland ever since. She continues to be committed to opening doors for every program Contemplative Outreach Ltd offers and enjoys, watching who the spirit brings in to lead it or to attend. She calls out Susan Komis from CO St Louis and Paul Fiorini from CONW for her formation and continuation in Contemplative Outreach Service.

Liberation came for me by crashing into the dark night of the soul. I stayed there for nine sleepless months. It was a journey of discovering “Who am I.” I knew I was very attached to the multiple groups of people, places and things that I thought made my life work, but did I actually use that to define who I was? Was I a human doing, not a human being? I wondered how much of me could I lose and still be “me.” Would I still enjoy myself without seeing my life through the lenses I had learned to use as a child? I was full of “woulds, coulds, and shoulds.” I thought that they would keep me happy and fulfilled. I believed that “bad things don’t happen to good people.”

I finally could no longer control that narrative. I surrendered myself to rigorous honesty and the true depths of my feelings. I found that my attachment to relationships, groups, roles and activities were built on the myths I had believed would make me whole. “Who will I be if I let go of my current identity?” “Will I be enough for me?” “Will God be enough for me? Am I just going nuts?” The anxiety and insomnia were affecting my health.

Besides the usual therapies, I continued my forty-year practice of sitting in the silence of centering prayer twice a day for thirty minutes. I was graced with a spiritual director who kept God present in my process. I never felt God’s absence. The Welcoming Prayer was an adjunct to my Centering Prayer practice. It became my daily “homing device.” It was like a mantra that kept me focused. It addressed my emotional upsets through the lens of the “false self,” the part of us that has “overidentified” with the need for affection, esteem, power, control or security, and the desire to change the situation. In this prayer one welcomes whatever is happening and lets it keep on happening. That means everything, whether it is understood or not. The point isn’t to identify the problem or solve it. The process is just to stay present and to stay in the game and trust that God is in it somewhere, somehow and that, indeed, “all will be well.”

I also learned “Tapping,” a self-healing form of acupuncture that helped me identify and let go of any attachments that were too hard to see and let go.

Fundamentally, I surrendered to trusting the process of my long dark night journey. I heeded the guidance of my spiritual director. I was open and vulnerable and acknowledged God’s presence somewhere each day. I honored the feeling of being loved by God, even though I couldn’t understand how it could be. One after another I let go of all my “would, coulds, and shoulds.” I had been like a ball covered with suction cups, each one an attachment to some one or some part of my life that I held as essential to me being me. I could no longer hold them all together. As they were broken off one by one, I sobbed. I was so afraid, and I screamed “no, no”. I finally felt that I was “done,” that there was nothing left to surrender. I had survived what I came to realize was a spiritual transformation. I had returned to my true center—I was a child of God, loved for being little ol’ naked me. My true self had become more available to me. It became my comfortable self.

Forty years of centering prayer had taught me the letting go process for upsets in daily life and set me up for this much deeper surrender. It had taught me to let go of outcomes, to welcome everything—but I had not signed up for the transformation of myself! That route was for the “holy” people. I was content with the spiritual growth I had already achieved. Yet, I “could and should” have known that seeking my relationship with God so intentionally for so long, “would” have allowed God to steer me back to my true Center, where God dwells and the Spirit guides.

My Dad never talked much, yet he taught me that “God will provide,” and God did.