Life is always a mixture of fear and hope, of the choice to stay or change—and somehow knowing each choice is the death of something. Creation is the alchemy of taking what we have available and what we see in our minds and bringing it to reality—that is the very definition of life. But death lives there too. Life and death have always coexisted, some twisted bond, balanced in the energy of the universe in a way that only it knows the full extent of. This coexistence of life and death and the fact that something exists means something else does not or can not be. On this plane, I am not all of the possibilities of who I am at once. None of us are. With all of the possible choices we have, we all know that sometimes it’s easiest to stay with what we know. That means giving up the possibility of something else. And choosing something else means giving up what we know. Do we choose ourselves or others? Do we figure out a way to choose both? If you believe, all the possibilities, all the worlds exist at once and it’s up to us to choose our experience.
We hold the power of life in our hands, always. It’s a gift I think we still haven’t fully grasped the full extent of. Even before we are born, we are held in our mother’s womb. Then we are carried until we can walk on our own, and even then, when we fall, we are lifted up. Then we make different mistakes, perhaps bigger mistakes, and we continue to seek out those who can help us. Because we own that power, we also have the power of choice. We learn to navigate our choices on our own, to take responsibility for our lives in our own hands. Into adulthood and eventually (for those who choose to) we hold our own children and we guide them the same way. Each choice we make, the lessons that resonate with us, all of those decisions leave other choices behind. Sometimes the old patterns catch up to us and we have to decide again, do we stay and repeat the same thing or do we do something new?
On top of all this we know that life will end for all of us. For some people the idea that we only get one shot in this iteration gets to be overwhelming. They want everything to be the “right” decision. We have no way of knowing what the right choice is because even if something awful happens in that moment, we have to consider the possibility that, too, was meant to be. Couple that overwhelm with the pressures to not let the people closest to us down and this power could be enough to drown us. I know people who have navigated these challenges well and seem to float effortlessly through their days, never worrying about what they’ve done, sometimes up to and including some pretty terrible things. They overcame it all. I also know people who have become neurotic messes, paralyzed by fear by some of the most inane things, feeling like they let the world down by breathing. I study the brain because if fascinates me, but when the soul mixes in, that’s when the real magic happens. That is when we become who we are and we choose the path meant for us. No matter what fears we have, the power of life is in our hands. Do not take it for granted.
“Music is very therapeutic, it’s a fix, and it helps get a lot of things out of you, it helps you bleed,” Shannon Hoon. When you know what it means to feel like you need to bleed to let something out, you understand what it can mean to hear words spoken that feel like they say exactly what you’ve been trying to say all along. Trying to say the words that feel like they won’t come out any other way than to see them on your skin. Music is noted as the highest form of communication and hearing any form of music, reading poetry, the artistry behind these forms of communication, the way words paint a picture of the things we feel but can’t see or can’t always express, is something beautiful. I can say in my time that I’ve often struggled to say what exactly it is I’m feeling. Sometimes words fail to capture the depth and breadth of what’s happening inside. But hearing one particular melody, a string of sound/notes put together in a certain way seems to be a key to a lock that says, “This is the right place, that’s what it is.”
At my lowest point, the words that have always been my life source suddenly fell flat. I couldn’t seem to speak in a way that made sense—not even to myself. All of that turned inward and brewed and stewed and churned inside me and there was nowhere for it to go. I became the proverbial powder keg—waiting to blow. And it wouldn’t have taken much for it blow. I was able to bring that down to a small trickle when I found the music that screamed what it was inside of me. No, it wasn’t a perfect system, but it helped me to know that there were other people who clearly understood what it was that went through my brain. If this is something another person can speak to, perhaps I wasn’t so crazy after all. Now, I actually didn’t take Shannon’s words about music helping you bleed literally. I like to look at it as the music was what led to that small trickle so he didn’t explode. He needed something to speak for him, another way to know someone understood him too.
The human animal seeks recognition, not for honor or attention’s sake, but to be understood. We need recognition to find our place, to find what it is that courses through us. We seek that recognition to know we aren’t alone, that someone sees things as we do. The desire for attention comes with the desire for power or a desire to be seen a certain way—that’s manipulative. Sure, animals can use that as a tactic to survive, making other creatures believe we are a certain way, bigger/stronger than we are. But the truth is, it’s the soul that seeks the most recognition and that has nothing to do with ego. When our soul is understood, we feel seen in a way that nothing/no one else can describe. Sometimes we get feelings we don’t know how to work through because we don’t know exactly what they are and all we need is a familiar melody and suddenly we are home.
Sorry in advance, folks, I’m having a slightly obsessive period related to my topics here.
Perhaps it’s because I’m literally days away from starting my newest venture, but change has been on my mind a lot lately. I mean, we’ve talked about conscious change numerous times here, but this feels different. This feels like the implication and the action of changing goes further than just a job change. So, as I mentioned the other day, sometimes the inspiration for these pieces comes from the most random stuff. Stick with me on this one. I want to preface the rest of this that the focus on this piece is CHANGE, not necessarily a commentary on the people I’ve used as examples. So I was scrolling through YouTube looking for a particular song while working on a separate project I have going when I discovered there’s a ton of AI out there with Eminem collaborating on worship music. This was one of the first moments when I struck me how far AI is reaching. For the record, as a writer I’ve been terrified of AI since ChatGPT really became a thing and it didn’t take much for me to be incredibly concerned about the use of images and likenesses of people in the world to create things—things that may be so far off the mark from what this person would do. We can create ANYTHING with AI. That is another major point of being more concerned with whether or not we can v. whether or not we should do it. Regardless, some of these songs seemed 100% authentic. This is where it gets a little complicated for me. Even if this work isn’t truthfully sung by him, it still got me thinking about the facets of ourselves that we decide to share and what we hide—the pieces of ourselves that always existed but we never revealed.
Every time we see someone change things up (like changing jobs, wearing new clothes, a new hairstyle etc.) or take a new focus on a particular genre (Michael Jordan playing baseball, Beyonce singing country, Jim Carrey playing a serious role etc.) we have a moment of shock and adjustment. For me, I started thinking if Eminem went through this transformation to writing Christian music perhaps it applies that there are things inside of us that take time to come out. That we all have things we want to share but perhaps we’ve portrayed something else so we don’t get hurt or so we don’t have to face the hurt. This goes to the hidden parts of ourselves. We say things to express what we think we want people to understand about us, to protect ourselves. But the more we protect, the less we see the truth– that we are all hurt and need help at some point. That we’ve been wearing a mask and it’s time for it to come off. There is a very real importance on understanding the difference between what we show and who we are—I do not schedule my husband and son like I schedule my staff. There are different facets of each of us that come out at different times, that doesn’t mean we ARE that person, or rather solely that person. We adapt to the need in the moment but we all have the different pieces in all of us. There are so many things we want to say in this world and sometimes we can’t or we don’t allow it, but it is still in us.
The other layer to this piece is the combination of change as it specifically relates to faith. I used to think that we could induce change/endure change with pure grit. There is an element of grit to undertaking any change but I’m learning now that there is also an element of faith. Yes, we’ve talked about blind faith and leaping and following instinct and all of that remains true. But I’m talking about the faith that we feel when we have 0 clue what could possibly be next. The faith that allows the right things to show up at the right time, the faith that gives us signs that we know are for us, the faith that reminds us there is something bigger than us every day. Even my husband has started talking about finding faith again—neither of us are full proponents of organized religion but we understand that there is a higher power we seek connection to—and NEED connection to. I’m ready to find our faith together. Sometimes there are people who pair together and we never saw it coming, never understood what we may have needed from them—just like Chris and I. I NEVER saw myself with him at the time we met but we have become a different type of partner to each other at this point. Then there was what spurred this piece: artists who paired together in a fake (AI) world like Eminem and Adele, Eminem and Billie Eilish and the work still has meaning. There was the very real pairing of Eminem and Rihanna and that wouldn’t have been expected but they killed it. In each of them we see people who feed off of each other and find something in each other that they couldn’t get from someone else—they had something that needed to be expressed and they found a way to do that together. There are similarities in us that we don’t always know about, that aren’t visible to everyone, but when we find that connection, it’s like a kindred spirit. Effective change means recognizing all these facets of who we are and embracing them. Embrace the entirety of who we are with faith and courage and those pieces will show us the way.
There isn’t enough credit given to the benefits of changing things around. Ok, maybe I wasn’t giving enough credit to changing things around. No one is a fan of surprise change that disrupts our lives or creates unnecessary chaos. Chaos for chaos’ sake rarely works out well for anyone. But deliberate intent and focus on changing things up can have great benefits for the mind, body, and soul. Sure, there are amazing benefits to routine and efficiency—we tend to accomplish more, we know what we are doing/what the goal is, we know what we need to focus on to get it done, we stick to our timeframes, we are able to rely on anticipated outcomes, and as long as all parts are functioning as they are supposed to we yield what is expected and thensome. However, I noticed a drastic change in my productivity when I started working from home. I thought it was just the elimination of distraction from the office, the constant pull of people knowing I was physically there and available but as I continued working from home, I noticed a marked increase in knocking things off of whatever to do list I had. A colleague of mine who focuses on wellbeing for employees shared some thoughts on changing her environment when she had to go to a different location in our system and some of the research she was doing on new healing techniques/techniques for wellbeing.
The technique she mentioned that caught my eye was Forest Bathing (Shinrin-Yoku). I’ve heard of this before and it sounded absolutely amazing to me. It was when I read The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield that I first felt the draw toward it. I loved the idea of maintaining presence while in a forest, surrounded entirely by nature and the degree of connection the main character expresses. Every time I’ve ever been surrounded by trees I’ve felt an intense calm come over me. Every time I’ve passed a forest preserve or driven past hills/mountains covered with trees, I’ve had the urge to walk through it. Trails entice me, I love watching the trees breathe outside my windows. So I’ve naturally had this connection to the technique my whole life and there is genuine validity to it. Nature itself lowers blood pressure/heart rate, engages the parasympathetic nervous system, reducing anxiety, and increasing feelings of connectedness—and that connectedness is with self. There is grounding when we are near such a high energy source. So this technique is demonstrative of the benefits of even temporarily changing our environment but it hits on so much more. Sure, temporary change can stimulate us but it can also inspire us for something bigger. It can revitalize us, connect us to our purpose again, still us enough to show a new way. Change can be the catalyst to the stillness/peace we are looking for.
As I step into one of the biggest changes I’ve made in my life, I feel the difference in me. I made a conscious choice to do something different for myself and my family and it means giving up nearly everything I have known/done for the last 8 years and giving up what I’ve worked for over the last 23 years. But it is the culmination of the bigger picture, the next step into my evolution. Perhaps more of the unveiling of who I really am. I thought I wanted a specific type of power, to call the shots, but I’ve realized that there was so much bureaucratic bullshit with it that I would never be allowed to accomplish what I wanted to regardless of what I did. I see the toxicity of what I’ve been living in and I feel the weight of who I used to be falling away. The expectations I’ve known for a while that don’t work, the unnecessary pressure, the behind the back jockeying for position. I have moments of clinging to it because that is still familiar. It still feels weird to be that person who calmly goes with the flow, who follows her instincts, who listens to her spirit, who tries to find guidance and connection in something greater, who has taken control of her personal habits and is taking care of herself, who stands confidently on her own two feet. But all of this came from changing things around. Do we have to disrupt our entire lives to find the benefit of change? No. We just need to make the conscious choice to find where we belong because we have that knowing—and then we need to get there.
Today I am grateful for help. I am the first to admit that I hate having to ask for help. I want to figure it out on my own, I want to be able to do things on my own, I hate being held back by others, I hate it when things don’t work how they are supposed to. In life, these things happen all the time and there is no way to avoid it. So when those moments happen, all I can say at this point is that I am grateful for those around me who DO help. For those who have helped carry me through and given me what I needed. My brain seems to be all over the place a lot lately and I struggle with controlling the pattern of thought to focus enough to actually contribute anything of value to my own life. And I hate myself for that if I’m totally honest—I’m working through that. But I am completely grateful for the people who step in to help when needed. I’m grateful to those who answer the call when I put it out there. I’m grateful for those who hear me.
Today I am grateful for magic moments. Signs come in all forms, some of the most powerful are animals. The creatures that come into our lives or how they behave tell us what we need to know. Recently I took my family to the zoo. It was the first time we have gone that my son will remember. This zoo has free roaming peacocks so you run into them all over the place—people are constantly waiting for the males to display their feathers. I always love seeing it too and it had been years since I’d been to this zoo so I was excited/hopeful as well. After we finished an attraction, we sat together at one of the picnic benches right in the area and we saw a male laying there not too far from us. One of the females wandered by and the male saw her. Sure enough, right where we were in that moment, he stood up and began to display. People came running from all directions with their cameras and kids in tow. A few minutes after that we were walking in a new area and a group of people stood around a different male who seemed quite curious. He was standing alert and watching everyone. People were taking his picture, myself included, I was on the opposite side of the group away from everyone. He turned from the group and started to walk toward me, stopped less than a foot from me and we held eye contact for almost a full minute. It felt like he was looking right through my soul, no fear whatsoever. It was a spiritual moment for me, having an animal approach like that, seeing the trust. If I had reached out, he would have let me touch him, but we understood each other in that moment. People stared as we looked at each, shocked he was that close to me, but we only had eyes for each other. As a family we also had repeat appearances of groundhogs—not nearly as close as the peacock but when animals show up repeatedly, they mean something as well. These moments absolutely meant something to me—and the universe knew I needed that.
Today I am grateful for diving deeper into the hurt of self-loathing. Understanding where the trigger is, the issue with identity and not feeling like I’m worthy, like I haven’t contributed anything to my life—or to anyone else’s. That it’s ok to set boundaries with people, even at work, even if they get pissed, even if they don’t like that the work they are supposed to do is pushed back on them. I’m here to perform a role and that isn’t for them to dictate what I do—I don’t have to jump when everyone tells me to and that’s a habit I’m learning to get more comfortable with—standing still when I need to. Holding my ground. I’ve always been the first to move, always the first to try and fix and adapt, I’ve never sat in who I am long enough to settle and BE who I am. I jumped quickly and people reacted poorly when I stood my ground, accusing me of being difficult, over-sensitive, over-reactive, etc. The truth is they couldn’t handle the truth and someone putting their own shit back on them. I don’t need to wade through the depths of your crap in order to prove I’m worthy. All that happens is I come out smelling like your shit. And now that I understand these behaviors and the triggers behind it, I know to avoid it all together.
Today I am grateful for closing chapters. It admittedly took me a while to get here. I’ve been at peace with my decision regarding my new role for a while but there were still pieces of me that wanted to receive a certain level of validation that I was wanted on my current team, that I was valuable. It was hard to not have feelings of being pushed aside like I had been some problem they were waiting to figure out and I solved the issue by removing myself from the equation. But if someone is holding the door open that wide, then there has to be some truth in simply needing to walk away. Don’t wait for people to tell you you’re needed. If they didn’t see your value, shine somewhere else. So I appreciate what I’ve learned and I’m grateful to move forward but most importantly, I’m grateful to shed what clearly doesn’t work, what clearly wasn’t for me. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, knowing you were the one they were willing to let go. But instead of worrying about my place in someone else’s life, I’m now focused on where I’m at in mine, what I mean in my own life, what is important in my life.
Today I am grateful for total freedom. The day is here when I am starting my new role at my 9-5. It was a strange feeling over these last few days as I wrapped things up in the office, cleaning, going through old paperwork. I realized I am 100% a hoarder of paper, keeping record of everything I’ve done. Years upon years of stuff. I sorted and sorted the documents, looking for what I may need, debating about keeping nearly all of it. But the thought kept going through my head that I’m going to be working from home now, I can’t bring all of this stuff with me—and I really didn’t want to. It’s time to lovingly and completely close out this chapter of my life. It’s time to let it go. All the keeping and searching and believing I need these things to protect/prove myself is such a drain on my energy. My entire career up to this point has been about proving and covering my own ass. I’ve done amazing work but I’ve been in the same situation over and over again, fighting for something and carrying everything. I’m done with that—I’m exhausted by that. So I made the decision to shred everything. I tossed it. It was by far one of the most liberating feelings I’ve ever had. I’m grateful to know I can wake up tomorrow and take my time, enjoy my life and I don’t have to be out the door and ready and dressed to the 9s at an exact time, on the road at an exact time. I feel like I can breathe and enjoy life simply because I don’t have the weight of the world on me anymore—I am making decisions for myself. It’s all coming together.
I recently heard Blind Melon’s Change for the first time–I know, it’s one of their first songs, it just wasn’t my thing at the time–and I believe we receive messages when we are meant to, so this was my time. We talk about the power of words and listening to this song, admittedly the first time I’ve heard it, stopped me in my tracks. This is where I’ve always found my passion for words. This is why words matter to me. Words are the etchings, the recordings of time, of a moment, that capture the visceral feeling that we have. In some respects they transport me around and I have a near existential crisis as I sit in my office thinking and feeling what it was like as a kid to be in my house, to know that those times are gone, wondering what my siblings felt and thought at that time as well. How we all learned to live our lives in our own way. How there is this knowing we all have, these feelings we have that we can’t explain yet we know are true. I’ve written for years about not knowing what happens in my life after a certain point and it’s true. I’m listening to this song and it was one of the first released and he knew what was going to happen to him on some level. He also knew what to do to fix it. We all know what we need to do to fix it, but the question is if we do it.
“I know we can’t all stay here forever so I want to write my words on the face of today before they’re painted,” Shannon Hoon. The other side of this is believing that definition of who we are. Sticking with it no matter what because we don’t know who else we can be. We have to be willing to let those pieces of us, those definitions of who we are, die because when we let those pieces die we allow the rest of the pieces that remain to live. We have to be more willing to live than we are to die with the image we’ve created. Most importantly in this song is the line about not seeing the sun from where we’re sitting. Sometimes we have to move. Simply move, decide to step out of the shadow. Step out of the darkness we carry, let the sun fall behind us. And the line that says, “When life is hard, you have to change,” he acknowledges looking for the good when we are down rather than staying in the dark. So when things get hard, we have to change our outlook on it or we have to change the view.
The sensitivity of people today, the things that bother people today, the things people prioritize today blows my mind. I’m watching videos from the early 90’s, from the 50’s, from nearly every decade, and there were good things and bad things about each time. But the point of what I’m seeing is that we had a different tolerance for different things (again some good, some bad). We have always known historically that what we find acceptable has changed over time and that is natural. We evolve, we learn, we adapt. But the human psyche must be slower going in that evolution at times because the emphasis we put on being offended astounds me. It seems people taking offense to things takes more precedence over actual areas of concern like equality, access, life, and death. And look, I fully acknowledge I’m a hyper sensitive person, my emotions ran the show for a long time. But I am the first to admit that WASN’T a good thing. Emotions and feelings are valid but they aren’t the truth. Just because we feel a certain way doesn’t mean that’s what’s happening. We can’t let long term decisions be made over temporary emotions.
So much of my work surrounds the notion that we need to have a keen awareness of who we are, why we act a certain way, why we feel a certain way, and how to navigate those instincts. We need to be astute enough to recognize what we are feeling and how to handle it at the same time. We have created a recipe for disaster when it comes to allowing what we think and feel run the show. From social media, to click bait entertainment/news, to diluted facts to help people cope with what they think they see all the way to lowering the bar on what we accept as effort—all in the name of making people feel a certain way. Emotions are manipulative in their own right. When we feel an impulse to buy something we’ve really wanted and we know we can’t quite afford it but we see it’s on sale, it takes a tremendous will to make a logical choice. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for emotion—we need to use them as a compass. It’s a guidepost, not where we stake our claim. The saying about the hills we want to die on comes to mind. Is how we feel really where we want to settle/stand our ground?
The bottom line is that people have different points of view and different priorities all based on their experience and proclivities. We struggle to accept these differences because in our primal brains, this is somehow a danger to us, an area of unknown discomfort. The reminder is this: being comfortable isn’t always a good indicator of what is right. It’s very often that what’s right doesn’t feel good. But for millennia we have found ways to figure this out—we have also struggled to do so. However, if we accept our differences and points of view and understand that there are things to work through in reaching a resolution or common ground—or we understand that there is no common ground and we are the ones who have to change or at least to do something differently, then we are closer to an answer that benefits everyone. And that is the true goal: mutually beneficial growth and freedom. We are allowed our respective thoughts and feelings but we are not allowed to expect others to feel how we do and we are not allowed to expect people to navigate through our emotions. There are enough issues in the world without causing additional problems based on how we feel. So when we feel offended or sensitive, take a beat. That moment can determine whether or not we need to really address whatever is happening in that moment or if we can find another way. We can always learn another way.
“It’s time you grew your own shadow instead of living in someone else’s,” Yellowstone. I promise I’ll get over this kick with Yellowstone soon, there’s just some gems even in the twisted parts of the story. It’s also appropriate that this fell after my discussion on name. We behave how we think we are supposed to from learning behaviors from all those people around us and we often go against what we know of ourselves to make things easier for the sake of those around us. We work on fitting into someone else’s definition of who we are before we realize what we knew all along—that we know what we need and who we are. When we live under the shadow of someone else, sure we can still grow and thrive. But we will never reach the heights of all we can be if we live under someone else’s definition and thought of who we are. It’s the conversation about the flea again and limiting that jump for ourselves and future generations. We don’t need to cast our own shadow for the sake of towering over someone, we cast a shadow that embraces all of who we are. We cast a shadow over an empire we build for ourselves. It doesn’t need to be a thing of dominance. It’s a thing of certainty in who we are and when we have built what we were called to we are able to help others build their calling as well.
It is some of the most random moments that bring about realizations sometimes. Life works like that, lessons in unexpected places. It makes them no less profound, sometimes just a little more surprising. I had a conversation with some newer acquaintances the other night and I heard them pronounce their last name for the first time. I’ve known these people for some time now but I hadn’t really taken the time to get to know them, mainly due to time and the timing of events—so I’d never really been introduced properly and only heard their names said from other people. When they said it in front of me, I took the time to ask them if that was how it was supposed to be said because I’d only ever heard it what was apparently the wrong way. They responded with saying it doesn’t matter, just say it how you want to. To that I told them, no, if that’s how you say your name that’s how it needs to be said. Our names are more than just what we are called, they are how we identify ourselves and how we interact with the world. Our names are ours and that is the representation of our identity to the world—it should matter how it is said.
Language is a funny thing because it is both irrelevant and important on so many levels. The words we use, the way we use them, when we use them all impact our understanding yet, at the end of the day, they are just words. The understanding comes from us. It matters what we allow people to call us. Shakespeare said, “That which we would call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet?” Sure, Juliet is a love struck hormonal kid, but the truth is still there—we know a rose as a rose and all that comes with it. The same is for our name. The words we use to label ourselves come with equally important connotations. Blind Melon’s No Rain touched this as well—the video depicting a girl looking for where she fits in. She’s rejected from every place she goes for being herself until she finds the field full of people dressed as bees. Now, there was no real insinuation that the girl thought she was a bee, it was the freedom of finding people who understood her passion. Sometimes we just need to find the right place to find ourselves and that means finding ourselves and where we know we belong. We are born with the knowledge of who we are, it is only our habits and training that try to tell us we should be something or someone else. I had previously been taught to not hurt someone’s feelings by correcting them on how they say things, even names. It never felt right hearing my name wrong.
Now that I’m older, I know every time I hear someone pronounce my name wrong, I correct them. When they call me some version of my first name that I don’t like, or if they use a more familiar name/nickname and we don’t have that relationship, even if we do know each other and we are in a different setting where anything other than my real name is used, I make sure to correct them. I have a friend who refuses to use their first name—they only use part of it. The connotation of their full name hurts them and makes them feel different about who they are and triggers painful memories. A name is different than how we feel about ourselves and who we think we are—a name is literally who we are. Details matter. Mispronouncing a word can change the entire meaning of the word. So too can the name we call ourselves change who we are. When we are beyond the process of trying to figure out who we are, we know our name. So don’t be afraid to tell someone when they said your name wrong. People who get offended at being corrected are working through a different issue so let them be upset. That doesn’t change anything about who we are. Tell them how to say your name.
“It’s good to be good and kind and real and sometimes it’s for your own good to say how you really feel,” Stacie Martin. The key is knowing the difference and when each is necessary. I once heard a rule of thumb that if something still bothers you after 24 hours, speak up within 48. It’s about being honest with ourselves and allowing the feeling we have in the moment—but not letting it control anything–and accountability to ourselves about communication. We allow ourselves enough time to decide how we really feel and we communicate about it. People pleasing aside, I never saw the point in approaching any conversation with demands, anger, or malice–my goal is to have honest communication. Sure, I’ve had to have tough conversations with demands that likely could have been more pleasant, but the intent was never anger. And while I spent the majority of my life allowing myself to be shoved to the background, I have spent a lot of my time in the spotlight advocating for others. I know what it feels like to be the underdog and to need backup—and while I haven’t always defended myself, I have always defended those who needed it. Kindness had nothing to do with it—it was the right thing.
Saying how we really feel doesn’t have to be mean, it just has to be honest. As long as we are direct and not intentionally cruel, we have no say (or responsibility) in how our message is received. People will perceive a message in their own context based on experience anyway. We can say how we really feel and still be kind, and sometimes we just have to pull the band-aid off. I’ve spent a significant amount of time worried about what others think of me and how I behave with them, all the while they never gave a damn about how I interpreted or felt about their actions. Each time I worried about that perception, the message was watered down, not quite what I was trying to say and then I’d get frustrated that I was misunderstood. There are always times to choose words carefully, words matter, but there are also times we need to let go of the reins and simply say what we need to. As scary as that can be, I will say that every time I’ve allowed the truth out, amazing things have happened. Not that it was easy, but there was no denying the clarity that came out of it.
I wrote a while back about victims and villains and I stand by it: we will all be the victim in some story and we will be the villain in someone else’s. The world is a complicated place and we are different people to different people. I know I’ve been different people to myself when it came down to it. There were moments I felt like an entirely different person when at work, while in creative mode, while helping my parents, while being a daughter, while being a mother, a lover, a wife, a friend. Sure, those are all different titles but I’m physically the same person in each scenario. So how can the same person be different? Because we need to be. We aren’t one thing—ever. And being those different things isn’t a bad thing so we can take the pressure off of ourselves to be a certain way. Take the pressure off by simply saying what needs to be said. The truth is always easier to remember regardless and instead of watering down a message that’s important to us, or the truth of how we feel, it’s easier to let it out. Now, if it’s something that someone can’t change in 30 seconds, that doesn’t need to be said—I wrote about that too. The goal is never to be cruel, just honest. Painful honesty can be resolved—cruelty cannot. So let down the shield and let the truth out. The goal isn’t to placate anyone at our expense. It’s to get the truth out.
The Intentional Dreamer 