Identity, motherhood

Your Strength Comes from Within

Flashback to that time in prenatal yoga. The first time you were pregnant and had no other job, maternally anyway, than growing that tiny human and channeling all your energy into it. When you could go to a class once a week by yourself, surrounded by other expectant mothers. Where you could bask in the beauty of rounded bellies, orbs in profile as your fingertips pointed forward. The potential energy of abdomens and archetypes. Muscles taut and ready to tense, to push a new soul earthward. And while intuition and multigenerational muscle memory take hold in the throes of labor,

it is you

who fire the muscles

who isolate the exact ones at the precise time

who activate the strength within

and gasp the first lung-filling breath.

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Identity, motherhood

Balance the Equation

I think I know why mothers put themselves last. The one thing they can unequivocally control, with no x-factors or unknown variables, is themselves. In a world of crushing responsibility and swirling chaos – with them at its center – it is easier to remove oneself from the equation than adjust other unwieldy elements to make room for themselves.

When my now six year-old was a SCREECHING toddler-preschooler (and yes, it was in all caps and a continual hybrid of those two phases), many freak shows occurred in the tinny tube of a well-sealed minivan. When we had no choice but to hurtle through the tunnel of terror, my husband would often turn up the volume of the music. With all the children, we’ve always joked that music calms the savage beast, but if that didn’t work, I believe his secondary goal was to at least drown out some of the noise with more pleasant ones. But music – no matter how soothing it was – was just another layer of auditory assault on top of her banshee screams and the increasingly agitated protests of her sisters, who had a front row seat in the fallout zone. At some point, all the windows would be shooshed open, adding full-blast high-velocity wind to the affront. With something in my head about to twist in upon itself and either roll out my ears or burst out my forehead, I would lean forward and snap off the radio. Which inevitably would anger my already wound-tight husband at the wheel. I think his reasoning was to have some say in the cacophony, a pleasant personal addition to counteract all the negative auditory input over which we had no control. Mine was: the one thing I have control over and can remove from the untenable equation needs to be gone before I go out of my ever-living mind.

And that is much how I’ve operated these last several years. In the midst of pick-ups and drop-offs, errands to run and food to buy, kids who don’t nap and others who stay up too late – it was easier not to dream. It was easier to not start a project than be interrupted and watch it languish in the corner for months, years. It was easier to not even entertain the thought than watch it drift away on a sea of to-dos on scraps of paper.

It was certainly easier than fighting.

The amount of fighting it takes for modern mothers to get validation not awash in guilt and judgement is ridiculous. Unconscionable. Borderline criminal.

I’ve been trying to leave that combative quality out of my more recent mathematics. For I feel it just feeds into the idea that I’m doing something abnormal.

I want feeding my true authentic self to be as natural as the air I breathe, we all breathe.

Hopefully not as it’s whooshing past us in an attempt to drown out one (or more) of our screaming offspring.

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Identity

Deep Thoughts with Karen Day

Several years ago, I heard Karen Day, author of several novels for young adults, including my and my thirteen year-old daughter’s favorite No Cream Puffs, speak at an ASTAL panel at Rhode Island College. As she shared lessons learned about the craft of writing, she dropped a bit of wisdom that will forever be ingrained in my mind.

Whatever age of character you gravitate toward is likely the age or stage where you are stuck.

I’m paraphrasing here, but I gave a knowing laugh when she said this, as did she and many other audience members. This comment, equal parts profound and simple, is one of those nuggets you come across in life that make you say, holy shit and well duh at the same time. It is absolutely no surprise, when I stop and think about it, that my first YA novel concerns a young person finishing high school and struggling with familial vs personal ideas/dreams of what should come next. And that my first adult manuscript centers a woman processing loss and a spiritual/emotional crisis.

As someone with storage boxes and shelves full of no-longer-blank books, I obviously use writing to process things in my life – interior and exterior. This blog serves as a weekly/monthly/yearly example of that as well. But just as my fictional writing is coated by a thin veil from my autobiographical or personal feelings, so has this concept of Karen Day’s permeated my everyday life.

For seventeen years of my life, most of my time was governed by the academic cycle. Sept-June. Academic planners were of more use than Gregorian calendars. The new year began in fall, not New Years’ Day. Then I became a teacher. Then I became the time keeper and facilitator for four students of my own. I’ve been feeling for quite some time now that I will never graduate; that I will be forever encased within the concrete block walls of classrooms and bell schedules.

With the amount of anxiety wrapped up in my school career – pre- and post-graduation and perpetually – it’s very easy for moments in my daughters’ lives to rehash my own experiences.

Big case in point: my eldest just committed to college.

I was filled with the rosy warmth of pride and love as we toured campus with her. For what she’d done and what she’ll do. For who she is and who she’ll become. Just gratitude for this fully formed yet evolving woman before me.

And yet, I couldn’t just let myself feel it. That warmth rolled around my chest and I felt it and the smile that threatened to permanently crease my cheeks.

And I fretted over how this isn’t just cause for celebration, this is just the beginning.

I worried about how closely we’ll have to read the financial aid packet and what scholarship applications we haven’t submitted.

I questioned the new direction the honors program will be taking.

I wondered what is the proper balance between sharing what I’ve learned from my base of experience and leading her to places she’ll resent me for later.

I second-guessed my own choices and those I let others’ make. I felt the what-ifs pull at my edges. I pondered could-have beens and what the hell I’ve done since I was in her shoes, which seems like fucking yesterday.

And I thought, have I ever really left that part of my life. Am I forever stalled in that existence that I never came to terms with.

And will all the writing in the world ever let me get past my fear.

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Identity, Living

Fallo

Why do some people have a fear of failure and others believe they can do anything?

It isn’t as simple as ego,

for some people possess profound confidence without arrogance.

For some, anxiety factors in somewhere,

looping a lasso around self-esteem and dragging it down.

Is fear of failure fueled by perfectionism?

The idea that an ideal is unreachable

so the motor is cut before passing go.

In what way are we programmed?

How is failure default for some and left to previous versions for others?

How do those infected with the virus

code switch

and update the mainframe?

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Identity, Perspective

Holy Smokes

I was going to say something along the lines of “Holy Therapy Session, Batman!” but this has nothing to do with male superheroes. This is all about the ladies.

The innate power of women.

The smoke is from the top of my head blowing off, my mind exploding. The holy vespers of the spirit swirling around the space.

When something is known with surety, a warmth spreads from your chest, across your shoulder blades, up your neck into a tingling of the scalp. Water rises and pools along the cusp of lashes, glazing the eye in a softened yet magnified lens. The heart swells and throws the arms outward, seeking the embrace – of an idea or confidant or both.

Searching all one’s life for the fiat; once found, the yes is effortless.

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Identity, Living

In the Mid-dle

I don’t know when it started exactly.

Perhaps as early as second grade when we had to cut out a construction paper bear and dress it according to our chosen profession.  My brown bear with peached fur of circa 1986 seriously-thick construction paper was clothed in a crisp white uniform emblazoned with a bright red cross on her cap.  My godmother was a nurse, a professional woman performing heroic feats on the daily.  I wanted to grow up and do the same.  I actually kept the bear for years and years, its rounded belly and little ears a visual reminder of a future I thought I had pinned down.  Then I learned what nurses actually did and how little I wanted to see or attend to blood and that plan went out the window.  In sixth grade, I had a folder of detailed drawings, ruled with my grandfather’s drafting pencils.  Architecture became my new career goal – until I learned how much math was involved.  In junior high, I began the self-awakening and introspection of adolescence and writing became and stayed my love, but it was certainly not a straight line from there.  There were – and are – many detours – self-imposed and otherwise.

But wondering about my future wasn’t limited to only possible career paths.  I was not one of those girls who played dress up and dreamed of her wedding day in a frilly white dress, but my parents were happily married and I assumed I would be someday, too.  Likewise, I never dreamed of being a mother.  I didn’t love little kids or clamor to babysit, but I did figure someday it would be different when they were my own.

Though at times I wondered – and worried – exactly how it would all shake down, there seemed to be a pretty clear progression of how life was expected to go.  Do well in school, get a part-time job and save for college, graduate and go to college, get a degree, a job, get married, buy a house, have kids, and – be fulfilled?

The entire first two (plus) decades of my life were so consumed with working towards these goals, it never occurred to me what would come after that.

My husband is three and a half years older than me.  He has hit many of these milestones just slightly before me.  He turned 41 a month before we welcomed our fourth child – and started shopping for a motorcycle.  I told all our friends that he was going through a mid-life crisis.  While it amused me to no end, there was part of me that wondered if it was true.  I began to wonder in earnest about what that clichéd phrase actually meant.

I hadn’t yet figured it out when I hit the big 4-0.  Age ain’t nothin’ but a number, or so the song goes, but it did mess with me.  Whether it was the extra introspection or society’s insistence of a shift, I did feel different.  It could have something to do with knowing you’ve reached the back end of your life.  That stupid ‘over the hill’ metaphor does have some potent imagery.  But my musings presented a different metaphor.

As I sat in the driver’s seat of our little standard-shift car, having just pulled into the driveway after a rare coffee date sans kids, I stared out the windshield at the garage doors and the bright light blooming over the roof and explained my theory to my husband.

The whole first segment of our lives, we are propelled forward by the steady string of goals we seek to accomplish.  Then, suddenly, we find ourselves in a state of slack.  We’ve pushed and pushed and pushed, ticking the boxes and striving for all those markers that make a life – or the conditions of a successful life we’ve been sold – and now we’ve reached them.  Completed most or all of them.  Our sense of forward movement is stalled.  And in that sudden, unfamiliar stasis, we take stock.  We look at what we have accomplished and how – or what we haven’t – and have to decide if we like where we are.  We may not recognize where we are, where we have ended up.  We may realize that pushing ever forward has made us miss the sights or alternate paths along the way.

Rather than seeing the second stage of life as a downhill slide on the other side of the mountain, I see a sailboat.  The first phase of life moves at a good clip, a strong wind pushing the sail straight out in a fully formed billow, propelling it across the tips of the waves, blowing our hair back and ruddying our cheeks with exhilaration.  At midlife, we are becalmed.  The wind drops out with no warning and the sails go slack, leaving us wondering if we’ll get back to port before sundown.  We feel a loss of control.  We look around and wonder what we did to find ourselves in this predicament.  We don’t know when or how we’ll start moving again or in which direction.

But the beauty of sailing, and midlife and beyond, is that we have the power to tack; to move in varied directions to get to a fixed point.  Or to change course completely.  We also have a bit more time to sit and float for a bit while we assess or wait for the next gust of wind to present itself.

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Becalmed by twjthornton

It’s strange and different, but the mind shift that comes with this age allows us to focus on what we want in a totally different way than when we were young and obsessed with success.  Now success means listening to what our soul is calling us to do; achieving what we can’t bear to leave undone.  We care less about what we’re supposed to do and more about what we want to do.  We are more willing to take risks to achieve our wildest dreams because we’ve lived one version of our lives for too long and it’s time.  And because we have some very wonderful things under our belt and wonderful people beside us.

I didn’t go out and buy a motorcycle, but I did look around and wonder, what now?  I won’t even get into how the total consumption of motherhood came into play; that could be, and perhaps someday will be, an entire book.  It’s scary that floating in this lull, alone and independent, means I am responsible for fashioning the next phase.  It’s also exhilarating if I keep breathing and don’t let fear take hold.  Two (plus) decades in, I feel it’s my time to pick the path.  I can draw on the examples of others, but know, deep down in my soul now, that the ultimate decision is mine.

There is nothing in the mid-dle about that.

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Identity, Perspective

Old School Soul Hole

Last week I learned via a post from Reggae Steady Ska that May 29, 2019 was dubbed (see what I did there?) The Specials Day in Los Angeles, California.  Now I was a little confused as to why LA would honor a band who hails from the UK, but then again, I am a white woman in RI who listens to reggae, rock steady, and ska.  The idea that The Specials themselves and the themes of their music exemplify and encourage diversity is what drew a Los Angeles councilwoman to hold them up for the city to see.  It drew me to my CD rack (yes, I still own those) and The Specials album I hadn’t listened to in far too long.

As the bright beats of trumpet danced above the driving guitar, the music swelling from the speakers and spilling into the corners of this room and the next, I realized the deep hole that is left inside me when music doesn’t play.

I have four children.  My house, my life, my mind is very loud.  The last few years I’ve taken to not turning the radio on at all in the car because, there is enough noise in there already.  The power button on the radio is one level of sound on which I can hit the kill switch.  About a year or so ago, on a return drive from ‘the city’, about an hour away from home, I got through more than two thirds of the trip before I realized I hadn’t even turned the radio on then, when I was by myself.  The cacophony in my head was complete if I couldn’t even partake of music when I could listen uninterruptedly to what I chose.

And that’s so sad.

Most of my memory has an overlay of obsession with music.  So many genres and artists.  So many generations and styles.  I’ve imagined the soundtrack of certain parts of my life and relive other parts of my life through song.

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In August 2017, 95.5 WBRU, the local modern rock radio station I had cut my anti-establishment musical teeth on, closed up shop.  (Well, they were sold to a Christian rock outfit.)  I still had the CDs, I still had internet access, I still had the memories – if I dare be so dramatic – but I mourned the loss of that running record of new and individualistic music as if someone close to me had died.  Still, nearly two years later, I wax nostalgic if I happen to catch the low-power signal they sometimes broadcast on.  I still post from time to time about how much I miss the station when I find a song they used to play on YouTube.  I was getting to the point where even I was wondering what was wrong with me.  Why was I so attached to a freaking radio station?

The obvious answer is because its going off the air was a death of part of my youth.  BRU’s Retro Lunch was the soundtrack to the lunch we all had at my house before Junior Prom.  Their Screamer of the Week was something I talked about with the guy I’d just started dating.  Their Friday Night Countdown was what I recorded onto a cassette and mailed him when he went away to Boot Camp and we were still dating.  So many pivotal moments of my coming of age were backed up by the beats of WBRU.

And research shows that songs elicit the same emotions we experienced when we first heard or listened to them most frequently.  If I loved that part of my life and its soundtrack was now going away, it was almost as if that part of my life was dying.  A leap, yes.  And yes, I can cue up any of those songs on a streaming service or ‘go down the YouTube rabbit hole’ as I say my husband does of an evening every so often (He likes to relive the days I made him all those mixed tapes – yes, we married), but the spontaneity of what would appear next, the destiny of your song coming on at just the right moment, the discovery of something new you’ve never heard before, or hearing it at the moment of its release – that magic of the broadcasting universe is gone.

That radio station represented my teenage self thumbing my nose at the world.  It signified my independence, culling my own style, my own voice, my own philosophy.  I started listening to it when I was first heading out into the world.  Its closing reminds me that I’ve been out here some time now.  Not hearing it makes me suddenly wake up from the melodious trance and notice all the things I wanted to do, but haven’t yet.  I don’t know really any much more than I did then; I am really no happier than I was then.  The teenage angst has been switched out for that of the existential sort.  Only now I can’t blare the radio and rage.

I think the closing of BRU was also the death knell of something bigger in my life.  The joy of music I once had.  The carefree release of a rollicking rhythm.  Now I think too much about heavier things.  I have too much to do.  I don’t have time to pop in the CD or turn on the radio before I rush on to the next thing.  I really feel adrift when the only two stations that play anything remotely my style of music either are out of range or on commercial.  There’s probably a part of me that figures it’s so different, so lesser, then why bother trying to find the music at all.

It’s no secret that I hate change.  I dig my heels in and get drug along unwillingly more often than not.  I’m trying to open my heart to grace, allowing the full potential of situations, my life unfold.  I know reopening my heart and soul to music would only make the journey that much richer.  It’s just sad when you’d found your canon and reveled in it – and now it’s gone.  But I can always use signs from the universe – like FB posts read in RI of UK bands being honored in LA – to signal it’s time to break out those old albums.  And there’s always Pandora.  But if it’s not painfully apparent already – I’ll always be hopelessly old school.

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LA Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez with Horace Panter and Terry Hall of The Specials

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Identity, Living

Marie Kondo Mind%#@&

It is a hell of a lot easier to make fun of Marie Kondo’s clients when you haven’t tried the KonMari method yourself.

On our New Year’s Netflix binge, my husband and I, along with millions of others across the country, watched Marie Kondo’s Tidying Up.  Yes, there seemed to be a disconnect between the first couple at which the disorganization only hinted.  Yes, I cringed at the way the toddler’s face was seemingly smashed against the mother’s ‘boobies.’  [Not in an anti-public-breastfeeding sort of way, but in an anti-awkward-hold sort of way?]  But those are all criticisms in the category of House Hunters nit-picking.  What got me was the way the second woman still kept what seemed to be an insane amount of clothing she’d bought to ‘hit [her husband] where it hurt.’  The way the mom hoping to have a third child said she was ready to ‘tidy’ but refused to get rid of anything – and then miraculously turned the tide with no clue as to how.  There was and is obviously more of the psychological to tidying than the physical.

I already knew this.  The milkcrates of ephemera in my basement already told that tale.  Knowing and embodying this psychological and emotional truth are two entirely different things, however.

Let it be known that I embarked on our once-nightly KonMari marathon in the midst of helping my mother clean out my grandmother’s house.  My grandmother, thank God, is still with us, but recently required a move to a nursing home.  Knowing that she sat in a facility across town while we rifled through her belongings didn’t necessarily help, though.  There was a weird element of mourning someone you had not yet lost – or at least the existence that you had together, the way of life she’d known.  It also made me mourn my grandfather’s death, which happened when I was five.  I mourned it then, as a five-year-old can in her limited understanding, carrying that childhood sorrow and sense of loss into adulthood, but unearthing his buried belongings brought a fresh wave of poignancy I hadn’t expected.  Then I would come home, with a bag of someone else’s belongings I thought I needed to remember her (and him) by, and watch a show about purging the things of which I already had too many.

Two whole days went by with me fully intending to make that massive pile of clothing on my bed and start with Kondo’s first step.  I’d look at the clock and wonder whether I’d have enough time to tackle it before bedtime.  I’d gauge whether I had enough energy.  I discussed with my husband the difference between a piece ‘sparking joy’ and practicality.  But in a practical sense, those pieces that spark joy are really the items you actually wear and the others are just taking up space or waiting for the day you run out of clean laundry.

I finally decided this last Saturday to do it.  I went into the basement and grabbed an arm full of plastic dry-cleaning bags encasing one prom and a few bridesmaid’s dresses.  I hauled up my bin of summer clothes, all neatly rolled and stored for the season.  I emptied my drawers and closet.  I patted myself on the back for taking this drastic step, then looking at the huge pile, realized how many more steps I now had to take.

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So much excess in a world of want (Jennifer Butler Basile)

I probably should’ve started by holding one piece I was absolutely positive gave me joy to get that sense of what I was seeking.  Instead, I pulled out the several pieces I’d already had in my head as goners and chucked them into a pile on the floor.  This felt good initially, then left me with no idea of where to go next.  I picked up a sweater I remembered buying on our honeymoon at an Esprit store in San Fran.  Those of you children of the eighties who grew up in New England know what a big deal it was to buy something from an actual Esprit store.  I stared at it, waiting for some sort of answer, then put it down.  The memory of it sparked joy for sure, but did the sweater?  I tried on a bunch of clothes to check for fit and style, but I suppose the fact that I didn’t quite remember the fit meant I didn’t wear those pieces frequently enough to keep them.  One pair of pants in particular kicked my practicality into high gear.  I only wore them when none of my favorite jeans were in the closet, but they fit, were in good condition, and served as a good back-up.  Now, when I wear these, I curse the fact that they aren’t my better jeans, I am annoyed by the waistband and back pockets and poor stitching on some of the seams, but they are a nice neutral color and the length and boot cut of them work.  They are perfectly good pants – why would I throw them out?

Because, apparently, I have an unnatural attachment to things.  My anxiety makes me second guess my decisions.  My desperate grasp for control makes me think if I let something go, I will need it someday and won’t have it.  My tight budget won’t necessarily allow for replacement of missing items.

As I stood staring at the embarrassingly large pile of clothes, so big that I was ashamed to post it on social media that day despite the trending Marie Kondo hashtags, I was paralyzed by so much angst.  Saying thank-you couldn’t absolve me from the guilt and remorse I had in letting these things go.   Not because I was madly in love with pieces, not because I felt compelled to do a penitential cleanse.  Because it was forcing me to make decisions I’d avoided due to lack of brain bandwidth.  Because it meant facing the fact that I no longer needed the beautiful professional wardrobe I’d picked out with such pride when I’d started teaching.  Because it meant accepting that I can no longer wear skirts cut on the bias due to the way childbirth has forever altered my hips and backside.  Because it meant finally owning that any day is special enough to wear my favorite items and look good.  Because it meant not letting laundry reach an untenable level so that I actually have key pieces to wear.

Sorting clothes Marie Kondo style messed with my head because it forced me to face truths about my life, my body, and me: the ways each of them have changed, the ways they need to change.  Perhaps these realizations hit me even harder since I wasn’t expecting pieces of clothing to elicit them.

While I’ve collected these realizations, I’ve yet to process them; they’re my metaphorical basket of clean laundry in the corner yet to be folded and put away.  It took me two days to bag my discards for donation.  I still held certain things up to the light, like my Esprit sweater in the beginning, wondering whether I should part with an item so nice but so infrequently worn.

I’ve obviously learned that physical items carry psychic weight and hope that once the bags are no longer in my peripheral vision, I’ll no longer doubt my culling decisions.  I can already appreciate the way my hangers run freely on their rail; the way I can easily see and access my scarves.  I’m putting much more thought into what I wear, finding new ways to combine pieces I decided to keep.  The prospect of thoughtfully adding new pieces tailored specifically to my style as budget, necessity, and time allow is kind of exciting.  I can’t say the process has brought a whole lot of joy upon my house, as one of the children on the show proclaimed, but then I never was good at dealing with change or letting go.  And clothing is only step one, after all . . .

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Identity, Living, Perspective

Granting Ourselves Permission

In college, a friend and I went out for a night of shopping.  When she was ambivalent about buying a certain item, or deciding between two, I encouraged her to buy it, or both.  Why not?  It looks great, it’s so fun, you like it, go for it.  It was so easy to pull out these positive affirmations.  There was no doubt she deserved a gift to herself.  The approval rolled off my tongue like water.  Plus, it wasn’t my money to spend 😉

This isn’t a case for fiscal irresponsibility, but a small example of how easily we give others permission, yet don’t permit ourselves the same freedom.

I grew up on the back cusp of Generation X, not quite part of it, but as of then, Millenials didn’t exist and there was no Generation Z yet leading to a brief mention of the Ys squeezed in the middle.  In any event, my hands were in technology, my heart firmly rooted in the old school.  I gauged success as being chosen for a job by a superior, validated by an organization, an agency.  By membership, the man, bureaucracy.  Not because I particularly liked it, but because it felt more official, came with a certain amount of cache.  I was used to looking at existing structures and following the chain of command.  I still hold the deep desire to be granted authenticity by a major publishing house.

Then there came under me whole generations of people, who some may say eschew all tradition and decorum to a fault, but who aren’t afraid of creating their own structures.  People who crowd source and crowd fund.  Who wake up one morning with an idea, a dream, and chase it.

In that weird shiftless space between Christmas and New Year’s, my husband and I got our adult time (as surrounded by children) by taking to the couch and Netflix documentaries.  If you watch enough food, travel, and minimalist episodes, their algorithms eventually bring you around to Expedition Happiness, a sparse, reflective film documenting the trek of two young Germans across North America.  Mogli’s music sets an ethereal tone for the film and their attitude does the rest.  They bought an out-of-commission American school bus online, secured a work Visa to retrofit it as a camper, then headed through Canada to Alaska, south along the west coast to Mexico.  Other than an outline of a route, they had no plans.  I still don’t know what they did for money.  I’m having a panic attack just thinking of it all.

And yet, I want that ability, even in small ways in my life, to allow myself such adventures.

Following up on the couple after the documentary, I saw a video wherein Mogli appealed to her fans who wanted her to perform stateside.  She explained that, in typical music industry fashion, she and her band would have to finance a trip to the States first to host a showcase to garner agent interest.  Then, if an agent were interested, he or she would arrange a tour.  A lot of capital up front for something that might never pan out.  But in the next breath, she vehemently exclaimed she wasn’t going to let such a process stop her from connecting with her fans.  She launched a plan to presell a set amount of tickets, which would guarantee her presence in that city.  She circumvented a system that didn’t serve her, cutting the head off an unyielding monster and went straight to the source – her fans.

Personality, not only generational hutzpah, also plays a huge part in such an outlook.  I am much too rooted in my sense of place, home to make a cross-continental trek indefinitely.  I am much too anxious to not plan obsessively.  However, I am also horrible at giving myself permission to follow my inner movings.

It is much too easy to say, oh I can’t do that.

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Kathy McAfee

Who is telling me I can’t?  Is it fear?  Is it adhering too closely to existing, yet increasingly changing, constructs?  Just as there is no one telling me I can’t, there is no one telling me, I can.  But no one ever will when I’m following my own movings – except me.

More people around me, my peers, my contemporaries, are branching out into nontraditional roles in the workforce by following their own desires for what they want in their lives and what they want to see in the world.  Just this week, a friend started her own business.  She got the credentials and experience she needed and went out on her own.  She didn’t look for someone to say her services were needed; she presented her skills to the world and people are seeking her out.

The ease with which I encouraged my friend to buy something special for herself, without guilt, without second-guessing; the passion with which I believe in my friends who have put themselves at the heads of their own destinies – I need to now turn these energies inward.  I must show myself the grace, compassion, and strength I offer to others.  For when I wake up in the morning burning with those dreams, it is only I who put my feet on the floor and follow them.

 

How do you grant yourself permission?

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