Words for the Woman With a Story to Share

During a coaching session last week, a client of mine shared one of her biggest fears with me.

Maybe you can relate.
 
It’s a fear that I’ve heard many women I’ve worked with express. 
A fear that I’ve grappled with ad nauseam. 
And a fear that still visits me each time I sit down to write. 
In fact this fear is riding shotgun right now as I type these words. 
 
It’s the fear of sharing her voice. In her work, and in her life. 
Without apology or negotiation.
 
I’ve heard this challenge from women so often, and have felt it so acutely myself, that it seems important to address. 
For the sake of all of us who have a story to share, or a possibility we're yearning to create— 
but choose to stay quiet, or hide out, or sterilize our point of view into something more pleasing and agreeable for the sake of others.
 
Here’s my plea to you:
 
We need your strong voices. Your stories are valuable. 
Especially voices and stories that share the truth. 
We need as many as we can get
The truth of your experience... the truth of your perspective...
Tell us like it is. 
It’s what keeps us connected, how wisdom is passed down, how we all feel a little less alone. 
Speaking our truth without apology is how we set ourselves free…
From the constant concern of how others will see us.
From the expectations of who we “should” be. 
 
One hard truth. No one will ever give you the permission to take up space or be vocal. 
That permission is only self-granted.
Not to gender generalize, but this is especially true for women. 
It’s sucky, I know, but it’s the material that we’re working with. 
Which means that it’s up to us to learn how to share our voices in way that is decisive and meaningful. 
It’s our work. No one can hand us the permission slip. 
In fact..

Either we tell our stories or someone else will shape them for us.
There are plenty of people who are happy to tell us who they think we “should” be. It’s often well intentioned. In the guise of friendly advice. It also shapes us in their image. Which is not necessarily the truth of who we are. Something precious is lost in our silence. 

1:: NAME THE ARCHITECTS OF YOUR GLASS CIELINGS

Somewhere in our lives we’ve learned to fear what might happen if we let our voices be heard. 
The concern of negative impact or outcome.
 
If we sift through the contents of our experiences we can probably name the moments when our personal glass ceilings were constructed. 
 
Perhaps it was well meaning friends and family who encouraged you to “never change”. 
Maybe it was the mocking or teasing you faced when you let yourself be vulnerable. 
Or the mythology that women should be pretty and quiet that seeped into your family tree. 
 
One of my thickest glass ceilings was built in the 4th grade, when my well-intentioned mom forbade me from performing at the school talent show. 
 
I was planning a one-woman lip sync to En Vogue’s “Free Your Mind”, complete with a neon-green leotard and floppy brimmed hat, circa 1992. (Lord, I wish I had photo of this.)
I thought I was hot shit. I couldn’t wait to do my show. 
She told me I would embarrass myself. And put the kibosh on my performance.
 
In retrospect, I can understand where my mom was coming from. 
I was a chubby kid in a neon leotard, and it is a song with undertones that I was too young to understand. 
Her intention was to save me from the ridicule of my peers.
 
But It’s the first time I became painfully aware that making myself visible would also make me look foolish. 
 
We all have moments like this, as we learned how the world works, and how to safely navigate it. 
It’s our jobs to recognize where our beliefs stem from. Understand who helped us build them and why. Then give them a bless and release. 
 
Sometimes our glass ceilings crack in the moment we witness their construction. 
Oftentimes, it takes repeated work.  Like a mantra we carry with us, to chip at our ceiling each time that we hit it. 
Breaking through means truly releasing the story with full-on blessing and understanding. 
Because when we release our old hangups, fears, and mythologies, it’s actually us who is released. 
 
(Thank you mom, for protecting me. I set that story free.)

2:: INTERROGATE YOUR ANXIETY

If you’re skittish at the thought of sharing your voice, it might be time to take it to trial.
Invite your anxiety up to the witness stand and ask it to make a testimony. 
Chances are the evidence it will present sounds a little something like this:
 
“What if I share what I have to say and no one listens to me?
Or worse. They think I’m a fraud?
What if I’m criticized for what I believe in? 
Or people think I’m arrogant or a know it all? 
What if I fall flat on my face (and prove my worst fears right)?"
 
Cross examine your anxiety with a little Socratic Questioning: 

Is it True?

How do I know it’s true? 

Could it be another way?  

2 :: INVITE YOUR FEAR TO RIDE SHOTGUN 

Sometimes the most skillful thing we can do is make space for our fear to come along for the ride. 
 
Fear is a shape-shifter, especially when it comes to speaking up for ourselves.
 
In one moment, it may seem that we have our anxiety licked— after we’ve stood up for ourselves in a new way, or shared our story in a way that is brave and honest. 
And then…
Our anxiety puts on a different hat and shiny new shoes and manifests as a fresh doubt or hesitation when we’re reaching for our gumption. 
Slippery little sucker. 
 
Rather than trying to fight, crush, battle, or do something equally aggressive to our anxieties, take a moment to recognize that Fear’s main job is to look out for us. To keep us safe. To make sure we don’t hurt ourselves. 
 
Anxiety is actually our advocate, in a twisted, often misinformed way. 
 
When we recognize that our fear of sharing our voices is simply a personal defense, we can turn and look at it head on. 
Perhaps even thank it for it’s information. 
And then make space for it to ride shotgun in the front seat with us. As we go ahead act bravely anyway

Out on a Limb Radio Interview :: Embracing Uncertainty

A 15 minute rapid-fire convo on human nature, our need for control and security, and how to navigate uncertainty-- in work, in relationships, and in life. 

6 Lessons from the Global Coaching Classroom

This week launched the beginning of a fresh round of coaching circles at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

A few times a year, I host group coaching calls for current students of my alma mater that have collected from across the globe. I'm joined by students from Dubai, Ireland, Texas, Japan, and many of the locations in between.

I lovingly think of these groups as my Global Coaching Classroom. I'm assigned eight groups. Twelve hours of coaching a week. 40+ women (and two lucky fellas), a cross section of personalities and backgrounds, with a sweet knitting-circle sort of vibe. 

We talk business and marketing. We get deep into coaching technique. We roll up our sleeves together and chart the course for the lives they want to create, while deconstructing what having their dreams would do for them.

It's all about extrinsic goals that give us an intrinsic feeling, and employing strategies to make that happen.

I've been coaching these groups for close to 6 years now, but it never fails to feel like the first day of school. The nerves. The expectation. The desire to leave them with golden nuggets and help them reveal their own perfect wisdom.

What inevitably happens in this "first week of school", though, is that I'm brought around to my own golden nuggets— tiny truths and solid reminders of why I love doing this work, how we're all better, more clear, and devoted to our dreams after having spent 7 weeks together. 

The students become the teachers. The teacher is a perpetual student. In a container of reciprocal learning, the lines are more blurred than we think. 

Here are 4 lessons that I was reminded of last week: Straight from the coaching classroom.

1 :: We all have a story to share. Give people a chance to tell theirs, and we're given an opportunity find the nooks and crannies where we all connect.

Although these groups of creative change-makers span cultures, ages, and locations on the global map, our differences became less blaring than our commonalities once we all began sharing our stories. What brought them to the table? What are their intentions? What are they looking to create and contribute? Who else might benefit from their vision?

Many have come from a path of challenge and healing. Many have a vision of leaving the world a little better than they found it. And all of us are perusing our personal definition of freedom. We’re different, complex, and all strikingly human. 

Lesson: When we give others a chance to tell their stories, we're given a gateway to our similarities in return.

2 :: One of the best forms of education is direct experience.

There's the information we read in books, and then there's the knowledge we've lived into our bones. 

This is any experience we've had close up, immersed ourselves in, kneaded it with our own two hands in such a way that it's left an impression in our skin and our psyches. Intimacy does that--intimacy with people, experiences, practices--closeness makes an impression.

Much can be said about academics and book smarts, but there’s another form of learning, brought to us by The School of Life, that can’t be underestimated. What have you lived through? What did that experience teach you? 

Are there rituals, skills, or circumstances that you’ve gained personal insight into, simply by spending time doing them?

Whether it’s playing the piano, juicing, soothsaying, or motherhood, the learning that comes from practicing repeatedly is what develops our “expertise”. 

Studying up on a topic is great, but DOING IT is how we alchemize information into understanding, and develop a well crafted perspective we can share. 

Lesson: Step away from the manual. Step into the experience of it. Keep an open heart/mind and you’ll learn along the way. 

3 :: Community connection is a healing modality.

As the doyenne of empathy, Brené Brown would say, shame breeds in isolation. It thrives on secrecy. And once it’s spoken, it dissipates. It’s easy to think that we’re the only ones who feel confused, overwhelmed and “not quite ___ enough” when we hide these feelings under the veneer of having our shit together. We’ve all done this on occasion. I know I'm not alone here. None of us wants to be perceived as a hot mess, a failure, a fraud. 

However, these feelings need oxygen to heal, and that comes in the form of connection. 

Sharing ourselves in totality with supportive, likeminded people reminds us that we’re not alone, and that others feel the same. It’s also a keen reminder that our emotions don’t have to break us, they can come along with us for the ride. And if that ride includes the support of others, it’s bound to be faster, smoother, and a whole lot more enjoyable. 

Lesson: Allowing ourselves to be seen, and encouraging each other to shine is a fast track to collective blossoming. 

4 :: Feeling grounded, authentic, and at home in our skin is a metric of success.

Recognition. Accolades. A seat at the Lady Boss table. Our name in flashing lights. We all have an idea of when we'll know we've "made it", and a personal inkling of what success looks like. But what does our version of success feel like; even if those external metrics never come to fruition?

Most of the time we're chasing an external idea of success because of the way we believe it will make us feel. 

Contentment, freedom, security, confidence, and the limitless permission slip of self expression come from being more at home with ourselves. The next time we take out the measuring stick and ask ourselves what our version of success is, we might also ask what we believe this success will make us feel. It's here that we'll find what we truly want.  Often, it's a feeling we can cultivate by becoming more at home with ourselves-- with or without the added bling. 

Lesson: The ability to be at home in any situation, because you're at home in your skin is a dazzling, intangible, measureless way of knowing you've "made it". 

The Power of our Personal Narratives :: SONIMA article

click for original publication 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 4/24/15 ON SONIMA.COM

 

In Ancient Greece the three Moirai were goddesses who handled the thread of our lives.

The first of these “Fates,” as they’re sometimes called, was a goddess named Clotho, the spinner. She would arch over her spindle and weave human life, spinning a thread from its moments. Her sister Lachesis, the allotter, took stock of our threads with her measuring rod, deciding when our story was woven to completion. The third sister, Atropos, would then decide the final act of life, and snip our thread with her shears, bringing the story to completion. Her name means “inevitable” or “unturning”; the cessation of spinning, the story we can’t escape.

This myth is a story about stories; an answer to questions that were hard to define and even harder to prove. Why are we here? Who is calling the shots? It’s a story about the weaving of our stories, both personally and collectively—a means of understanding who we are as people.

Humans have told stories to make sense of the world since the beginning of time. The earliest stories are in the Lascaux Caves of Southern France. Primal narrative of the art of survival, the ritual of the hunt, painted on the walls in 13,000 B.C. Aesop crafted his fables of ethics and virtues, tales of what it means to be human in 500 B.C.; tales that we still tell to this day.

Our ancestors took sounds and created speech, symbols and created language. Alongside opposable thumbs and a sophisticated prefrontal cortex, stories are the trademark of being human. We’re distinctly wired for narrative, both that we collect and that we create.

If you’ve ever sat down to meditate, it’s easy to see the narratives that we spin, on and off the cushion. We have an unobstructed view of our thoughts: One moment we’re in the future, planning our dinner, our presentation, how to allay the outcomes we fear, and create the ones we desire. The next moment we’re in the past; analyzing a conversation we had on Tuesday, what we could have said differently, the tone of our partner’s response. We sift through our stories to collect meaning and information, weaving our threads from the contents we find, building our perspective on ourselves and the world around us.

The novelist Virginia Woolf once described our sense of self “like a butterfly’s wing…clamped together with bolts of iron.” And indeed, our mind flitters like a tiny time traveler, riding the length of our stories.

Cognitive science and psychology agree, with the study of narrative identity pointing to the flexibility of self. It’s the measured assertion that we don’t just tell stories, we are our stories; bound together by our beliefs and experiences. This makes our stories, and the qualities of our stories important to who we are. The question then becomes, what are the stories we’re telling ourselves if they’re the script of who we become?

The ancient Greeks gave our life’s story to the Fates, but may have misunderstood the place of the narrator. The power of any story is that it’s infused with a point of view, and told through the narrator’s interpretation. In other words, we own our stories; no one else can tell them for us.

There’s an old Chinese fable of a farmer and his neighbors. One day the farmer’s only horse escaped from its corral and ran away. The neighbors came when they heard the news and stood around shaking their heads. “Oh what bad luck!” they lamented, but the farmer simply shrugged. “Perhaps.”

About a week later, the horse returned, bringing a whole herd of wild horses with him. As the farmer and his son corralled their new stock of horses, the neighbors stood by and rejoiced. “Oh what good luck!” they declared, and the farmer replied, “Perhaps.” The story continues like this with an unfolding of good luck and bad, but to the farmer, a matter of perspective.

We can’t predict the cards that we’re dealt, but we have agency over how we interpret them. A tragedy, a blessing, a story of redemption, forgiveness, revenge: Regardless, we are the narrator.

Some of our narratives are so entrenched that the story begins to tell us. That’s when story becomes dangerous; when we’ve lost ownership of our interpretation. We begin to view things as “just the way it is”, which breeds cynicism, passivity, and doubt.

Imagine being a woman in 1848, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and 100 colleagues gathered in upstate New York to reevaluate a popular story line. The question was “What does it mean to be a woman?” and they didn’t believe in the assumed answer. It was a story that was so deeply embedded that we as a society mistook the status quo for truth. There’s a popular adage in public relations; “If you don’t like the conversation, change it”. I’ve never worked in PR, but I’ve always loved this saying. It’s a permission slip of personal agency, and reminds us that our story is in each of our hands.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton decided it was time for a new narrative, an updated story that would answer the question of who we are, and 19 years later Wyoming was the first state to grant women the right to vote, with the rest of the nation following suit, tipping the scales of women’s equality.

Our cultural heroes and those who have changed our collective conversation possess diligence and faith, but most of all, imagination; they saw a story that needed to be told and told it.

On a personal level, all change begins by recognizing that we are the narrators of our stories. If we believe that we don’t deserve it, or that others are generous, or that the grapes are sour anyways, then we’ll act in ways that confirm our suspicions. The psychological term for this is confirmation bias; but we can call it the power of personal narrative. We’re always seeking out information that colludes with our story, and behaving in ways that confirm it.

Stories run deep, often the length of our lives, and are not always easy to change. Sometimes shifting our narrative requires splicing, healing, or the force of Atropos’ proverbial shears. However as long as we recognize that we own our narrative, the stories we collect and the stories we create are under jurisdiction of our point of view; they can be rewound, reinterpreted, reviewed, and reimagined.

Moment by moment we choose the ones that we tell.

Notes on Hope: Rebecca Solnit

To hope is to gamble. It is to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet, it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk. 

I say all of this to you because hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the couch and clutch, feeling lucky. I say this because hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures, and the grinding down of the poor and marginal. 

Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action, action is impossible without hope. 

At the beginning of his massive 1930s treatise on hope, the German philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote, "The work of this emotion requires people who throw themselves actively into what is becoming, to which they themselves belong."

To hope is to give yourself the future, and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable. Anything could happen, and whether or not we act on it has everything to do with it. 

-Rebecca Solnit; Hope in the Dark 

The Pitfalls of Pursuing Your Purpose :: SONIMA article

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 3/18/15 ON SONIMA.COM 

---

The trajectory of my 20s reads like a dilettante’s handbook, or a drunk pirate’s treasure map; winding, dabbling, non-linear. Like most children of the 80s, I was raised in the height of the self-esteem movement, with its encouraging maxim that I could do anything I wanted to do, and be anything I wanted to be. Thankfully I’ve also had the privilege of parents who supported this view. When I proudly announced in 4th grade that I would be the first woman president, no one batted an eye. When I decided to move to Manhattan after high school, I was given a hug, two cans of mace, and a membership to Bally’s Sport’s Club; just in case I wound up homeless and needed a place to shower.

I had faith in my own resourcefulness and in the benevolence of mankind. I didn’t have a plan, per se, but I was on a mission to find my purpose. Oh, sweet purpose. The final frontier.

The importance of purpose is not a new concept, but one that seems to be on our minds quite a bit these days. According to the 2015 Deloitte Millennial Survey, 60% of the millennial generation listed a “sense of purpose” within the organization when asked why they chose their current employers. Purpose-driven books topped the New York Times bestsellers list in 2014, with titles like Your Life Calling by Jane Pauley, and The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change by Adam Braun. And ranking third in the Top 10 most watched TED Talks of all time, Simon Sinek asks us what “our purpose, our cause, our belief” is; urging 21 million viewers worldwide to connect with our “WHY.” I’m responsible for at least 30 of those views, I’ve shared this gem so often.

On one hand, I find this turn toward purpose incredibly heartening. In a culture that traditionally values metrics of success, it suggests that we’re asking ourselves how to live by our own standards, collectively elevating meaning over measurement. When I was a Girl Scout our motto was: “Always leave things better than you found them,” which is an idea reflected in the popularity of purpose. We’re consciously contemplating what we’re built for, and how best to contribute to the world.

On the other hand, I can’t seem to shake the feeling that all of this “find your purpose” business is somehow missing the mark. There’s something lacking from the conversation; and it’s the small but mighty distinction between having a purpose and living a purposeful life.

It may seem like a matter of syntax, but syntax is important. The way that we talk about things reveals our relationship to them, and ultimately, how we approach them. In the case of purpose, it’s the difference between seeking the keys to redemption and revealing what’s already there.

During my decade as a dilettante, I would lay awake, fixed on the water stain above my bed wishing for some sort of map. I had tried my hand at acting and spent a year in film school. I wrote sketch comedy on the side, worked in food advocacy, studied design in undergrad, and worked enough crappy waitressing jobs to redefine my notion of humility. I had a passion for travel and yoga, but could that truly be my purpose? I’d always had a knack for organizing, but was this my soul’s North Star?

When given too much gravitas, finding “our purpose” can be frustrating, and at worst, a trap of paralysis. If we truly have a calling, a single purpose in this world, what if we never find it? Are we destined to go through the motions, a half-lived vessel of unrealized potential?

Related: How Making Time for Reflection Can Help Unlock Your Potential

Defining our purpose as a destination or a single pointed direction bears resemblance to searching for “The One”. Even if we do find our forever person, or the mission statement we can live by that fills our days with meaning, there might always the lingering question of whether we’ve made the right decision, if we’re missing out. Even if we feel a sense of certainty, it’s easy to attach the expectation that it will always remain the same; which pits our hopes against the laws of ever-changing nature.

Purpose was just another way of chasing that magical “someday” that precluded my self-acceptance.

If you had asked me about my purpose when I was 7, I would have given you a cock-eyed stare, most likely because I was busy discovering the world through first-time experiences. Everything had purpose; from crickets to kickball to Paula Abdul.

It all clicked into place during one of those crappy waitressing shifts. This wasn’t, by any stretch, my forever career. I smelled like fried calamari and had ketchup in my hair. However I decided to try an experiment. What if I tried treating all of this like it mattered? What might happen if rather than approaching this like a sidebar to my life’s purpose, I brought purpose into my approach? What if I am purposeful instead of waiting for one to redeem me? The answer is that I stopped looking for my purpose—the one I claimed ownership to—and allowed purpose to flavor my moments.

I can’t help but think that rather than having a purpose, we simply have purpose. It’s something akin to dignity or meaning, an inheritance of being alive. We can direct our purposefulness through clearly chosen intentions, but ultimately, it’s a quality we possess, not a statement, a job title, or a place that we find.

My friend Marisa once told me a story of an MTA employee who worked in a Brooklyn subway booth. Each morning she would emerge from the train, and he would lock eyes with her, and greet her warmly. They became familiar through their daily exchange; a wave, a smile, a connection. She talks about how this always made her mornings, they joy he brought to his booth, his generosity of spirit. After some weeks she noticed that she wasn’t alone. This tollbooth employee had a relationship with every regular commuter, exiting the train and waving. Some mornings there would be dozens of people who would wave, and stop to say hello on their way to the subway stairs.

This man’s purpose wasn’t raised on a banner for the rest of the world to see, but rather he connected to the world through the act of purposeful living.

If you’ve decided that this is the year to find your purpose, the good news is you can relax. It’s already there and best lived through you. The way to find purpose is to apply it generously; to the crappy jobs, and the sleepless nights, and the hours stuck in traffic. If our lives are purposeful, then nothing gets excluded.

Our moments, after all, only have the meaning we give them.

The Beauty of Being Right Sized: An Antidote for Perfectionism

My mom is the kind of mom who receives messages from the Universe. 

This sounds a little "woo woo", I know. 

However, she speaks about it as Eastern philosophers speak of contemplation practices, or Judeo-Christians speak of prayer, holding a question or thought in mind until she receives a response, or spark of insight. 

Often this happens spontaneously, when her mind is relaxed with other activities, and sometimes the messages are for me. 

One evening during a very dark winter she called me up with just such a message. It was on the heels of botching something that was extremely important to me. I had planned it all month, certain I would receive accolades, praise, and tiny yellow tea roses thrown at my feet for being a quiet genius, revealed. 

Instead, I had a panic attack. Full out. Breathless, body quakes, phlegmy tears rolling down my chin while a circle of my peers watched me unfold.

Aka: The worst.

In a fit of humiliation, I had self-quarantined in my bedroom for the remainder of the weekend, hoping my bedsheets would swallow me whole, cocoon and transform me, eventually releasing me reborn on the beaches of Bali in June. 

This didn't happen.

Instead, my mom called. 

"The Universe has a message for you... It's 'Humility.'" 

OH. REALLY.

I received this "offering" the same way as I would if the Universe had a message for me: "You've let yourself go since high school", or, if the Universe had a message for me: "Your face is too round for that new haircut."

It seemed like a celestial-padded jab from my mother. 

NOT what I wanted to hear. 

But as we know, our needs and our wants are distinctly different devices.

So I did what any wallowing word-nerd would do, which is find the definition of "Humility" on Wiki, looking for even more reasons to be injured by this insult.

Humility. (n) Close to the Earth, grounded, right sized. 

It took a bit of contemplating (and a bit more wallowing), but eventually, I got it.

My expectations of myself and my performance had been so inflated, so dependent on grandiose standards, and my desire to be praised, that I collapsed when it didn't play out as desired.

Perfectionism in drag. Disproportionate thinking. The gap between expectation and a reality sandwich can be brutal. 

One of the finest antidotes is staying right sized. 

----------

3 Practices for Staying Right Sized 

1::Drop Expectations, Embrace Intentions.

Desire is the root of all action, but the intention we approach our desires with can be the linchpin difference between staying stuck, beating ourselves up afterwards, or shaking off slights and moving forward with personal permission. 

Is our reason for acting dependent on the outcome? Is it because we expect to change someone, be received a certain way, or to get something in return? 

Motivation that's dependent on outcomes that we can't control is the best recipe for staying in a perfectionist "freeze", or falling apart in the after wash. 

Rather, ask yourself "How do I want to participate in this? With compassion? Honesty? Dedication? Humor?" We can control how we 'show up', and honoring our intentions vs expectations keeps us right sized, and confident in our abilities; regardless of how the situation plays out. 

2:: When in doubt, Generosity trumps all. 

Humility doesn't mean thinking less of yourself, it means thinking of yourself less.

The concern that I hear most often from clients is some variation of: "What if I look silly?" or "What if they think I'm a fraud/chump/total loser" or "What if I make the wrong decision?" 

I've felt every one of these anxieties nestled in the pit of my stomach at some point, and the one thing that they all have in common, is that the anxiety lens is intently focused on ME. 

As my teacher, Venerable Robina Courtin so divinely put it: "We're so wrapped up in what other people think of us. It's a fucking nightmare."

I really like ordained nuns that drop F* bombs. I also think she's spot on. 

Peeling our attention off of ourselves and how we'll be perceived, while pinning it to what we want to contribute, offer, and create for the sake of others is the most effective way that I've found to navigate the tides of inflated/deflated thinking. 

When we do something for others, we organically drop into our right size. 

3.  Revel in Enoughness

Abundance is sexy. I get it.

The idea of living the luxe life, and chasing the dream of "having more and being more" is super seductive and ingrained in our cultural mythology. However, it also leaves us unsatisfied and unaware of what we have sitting right in front of us.

When we're prone to inflating who we are in the world with every new compliment/promotion/win/shiny thing, and deflating with every disappointment/discouragement/challenge/loss, our sense of self worth is always in flux.

As Alice said to the Caterpillar in Wonderland, "I'm not myself, you see...being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.". 

You said it, sister. And it's exhausting. Being right sized means being able to inhabit what we have right here right now, appreciate that it's not perfect, and admire that it's "enough".

Ourselves included.

The Nakedness of Blossoming

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.  --Anais Nin

A day after reading these words, I found myself on a street corner of St. Marks Place in the East Village buying mauled paperback copies of Anias Nin's diary.

Volumes One and Two. Seven bucks a pop. 

I've always looked to literary lionesses for guidance. Essayists, journalists, novelests, bloggers. Women who write to know themselves, and report their world in a way that feels universal and brave in a way that I traditionally am not.

Bravery comes in many forms. Put me in a room with tigers, and I'm the grittiest gal you know. I'm strong in times of crisis. If the ceiling is caving in either literally or metaphorically, I'm the first to roll up my sleeves. 

Ask me to be vulnerable, however, and my first impulse is to close up like a morning glory at dusk. Tight inside my bud.

I've always seen vulnerability as something that looks good on other people. 

Maybe that's why I've always been more apt to declare myself an avid reader than any amount of a writer. I do both with similar frequency, but the latter requires me to stand out in the open with my words. 

The thing about opening, blossoming, after all, is that it requires us to unravel. To be exposed. Naked. And I was taught, like a nice and proper girl, to keep my shit together with a smile. Thank-you-very-much.

No exposure, no risk. No risk, no heartbreak. Seemed like a logical equation to me, but one that was paltry and missing a beat. I realized later that the tail of that equation is No heartbreak, no living. And frankly, what else is life for? 

Anais Nin's challenge of 'taking the risk to blossom' smacked with a bravery that I knew I wanted more of. I imagined she would disclose how she did it, conducted her life naked and exposed, while simultaneously strong.

A path to proverbial freedom.

Perhaps I read too much into that quote, or expected too much of her insights to lead me. Perhaps I wanted to defer the responsibility of living into it myself. Regardless, I spent that summer lapping up her words with a highlighting pen.

What I found was a map of salacious affairs, bohemian living, unrepentant sexuality. She lived fiercely on her own terms in many admirable ways.

In many other ways, though, Ms. Nin was not free from her bud at all. An intricate web of secrecy, maintaining marriages to multiple men, the "Box of Lies" she created to keep her own indiscretions straight. 

Paradox is part of being human I suppose. We all have contadictions. I expected a model of liberation-via-truth, and encountered a model of being messy, unapologetically flawed and complex.

Perhaps the punch line is that they're one in the same. 

Recently, I've been taking a course created by my friend and wordsmith crush, Patia Braithwaite. It's called The Soulful Blogger, and it's challenge to us is to get naked in our writing.

Its been messy. And scary. The thing about writing (slash-living) naked, is that vulnerability cannot be performed. It has to be embodied and spoken through, directly. Like the literary lionesses I look to for guidance,  The practice the freedom comes with sharing: our voices, our views, out in the open.

We can receive guidance, but no one else can give us the roadmap to our freedom, to our blossoming. We just have to disrobe, and stand out in the open. Imperfectly perfect. Human and flawed. In solidarity with ourselves. 

Taking Endless Shapes

Life is liquid, in it's underlying essence. Careening, cascading, and taking the endless shapes of the containers we create for it.

Even in stillness there's soft, subtle change. 

The question to ask then might be: What shapes are the containers I've built for my life to flow through? 

Some of these shapes are narrow, thin strips where life flows hesitantly: built up by safety banks that have buffered disappointment.

A sliver of life moves here where once a quixotic torrent of open hearted feeling carved it's hollows. 

We might funnel the flow into feedback loops, a figure eight that seems to turn a corner only to find itself treading territory we've coursed over

and over 

and over again.

Sometimes we keep life's substance frozen in tiny pools where we can (seemingly) control is contents. We anchor what we love in cautious ponds of the familiar and fixed. 

It undoubtedly feels safer that way. 

Life may conform to it's containers and shift to the shapes, but it is not that.

Life will only stay frozen for so long without freezing our flexibility and then evaporating in the sun; stay sealed so long until it cultivates claustrophobia.

Life will only stay thin and restricted without, too, making us closed off and brittle.

There's freedom in knowing that we can usher our circumstances without constructing dams.

Allowing life to dart and vacillate, live through us.

Resonant, vivid, dynamic. 

Nothing stays put here in the current of creation.

Even -- unspeakably-- ourselves.

We simply move with it. Arms out, hips steady, rocking back and forth from our centerline of gravity. 

Careening, cascading, and taking endless shapes. 

GONE FERAL: An Ode to shedding Convention and Living by Instinct & Intuition

Feral women trade rules for rituals.

Listen to the language of the bodies. Hear the call of adventure whispered on winds and follow.

They give themselves permission.

Feral women peel off perfectionism and stand patiently exposed.

Blossom from within. As everything in nature does.

Feral women know that the root of "humility" means "close to the earth" and shed their feathers to fall on their knees when necessary.

They draw a line against injustice, love like children, play like animals.

They travel lightly. In packs. And barefoot when possible. Their only home is in their skin and regard it as a worship ground. Scale trees for ripe fruit without avoiding bruises.

Feral women speak from a place just below the navel and speak up even when their voices shake. 

They occupy both soul and spirit, shadow and light.

They embrace their impermanent nature and choose not to squander mortality in an effort to keep things fixed and controlled.

They're discerning, pragmatic.

See elegant design and structure in the systems of nature and recreate them in their lives as an act of reverence.

They're wise, intuitive.

See unsustainable design and structure in systems built by man and defy them in sacred rebellion.

They seek out the stories of their grandmothers and keep them close for their daughters. Recount them to each-other to keep our core mythologies supple.  

They are paradox. 

Both In the moment and on the precipice of pure potential. 

They are you, they are us.

Liberated and welcomed home.