Me too, and Why The Conversation Starts Here

You’ve seen the #metoo movement?

You’ve posted Me too?

In case you’ve been disengaged, let me quickly catch you up. Millions of women, all over the world, are posting Me too as their Facebook update, with the additional copy/paste of these words:

If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote "Me too" as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem. Please copy/paste.

This is my copy/paste, because I need to say more. I believe we all need to say more. I believe this is the beginning of a conversation most of us have never had.

For all the times I’ve been out for a run in the summer’s heat, in running shorts and a sports bra, I say, me too. I wasn’t inviting your whistles and whoops. It was 90 degrees at 6 p.m. and I was logging 8 miles. I was training my body to be ready for many a 12.1 and a couple of 26.2’s. I was training my mind to believe I could. You didn’t take me out of my zone. I noticed, for sure, but I didn’t respond.

For all the times, after my divorce, I moved my right-hand ring to my left hand before I sat down at a hotel bar, I say, me too, surprised by how many married men said, “that’s a beautiful ring.” I never intended it to be a conversation starter; I intended it to be my personal symbol of transformation, a symbol of beauty that came out of my darkest days. In those conversations, I heard, “let me buy you a drink.” I was curious to see where this man’s mind was going. I was curious to understand how this new game was played. Me too, for all the business cards I received, followed by, “Travel here often? Keep in touch.”

For that time a senior acted really interested in me, a freshman, and I wore his scarf around in school. And then, he tried to unzip my pants in the backseat, while we were parked on a double date, I say, me too. I resisted. He lost interest. He never spoke to me again.

For the way I was asked, when I was eight, to put my mouth on him, a child himself, no more than eleven, I say, me too.  My little mind was curious and confused. He, a playmate whom I named in my nightly prayers, told the other boys, who teased me from the back row of the school bus. For that merciless teasing, I say, me too.

And now this conversation is open, this me too, invites looking inward, because that’s where the answers always rest.

I felt hesitant to claim, me too, at first, because I wasn’t raped by the senior boy, and so many women have been violated much more severely.

Yet, I want to honor that I felt diminished.

Diminished in my silence. I was afraid to be seen as a bad girl. I’d felt the shaming and blaming on the school bus. Why didn’t those boys shame and blame him? Was I the bad one?

Yes, I felt diminished.

Diminished that my smiling, curious way of being would be read as an opening into my body.

Maybe that’s the first lesson from me too. We can no longer accept as taboo what’s been hushed. We all, now, have an invitation to speak what’s true in our experience. As a wife, I invited a conversation with my husband about me too, and we shared with honesty about what we each have experienced. As a mother, I will speak more earnestly with my grown children about me too, and be a listener for my daughter and my son.

Now is the perfect time for all of us to speak, me too, and reject the discomfort of talking about our bodies and our experience, about abuse and power and force and consent and the sacred temple that we all are.

Now is the perfect time for each of us to claim a new relationship with our bodies, one that is steeped in self-love, self-care, and a deep, abiding gratitude for its strength and its resilience and its messages to us.

Now is the perfect time to embody the new knowledge that is this century’s greatest scientific gift from the field of quantum physics, and described this way by writer Dianne Collins:

Scientists began to prove in the laboratory what sacred texts have revealed and what many of us have felt in our hearts and souls—that the universe is a multidimensional unified whole, and that all of us and everything are intricately interconnected.

Now, then, is the perfect time to learn that when we harm another, we also harm ourselves, and its corollary of truth: when we harm our divine, sacred self, we harm each other.

Now is the perfect time for a new conversation.

“I read the news today, oh boy.”—The Beatles

It’s Monday, and I read the news. Then, this Beatles lyric popped in my mind. I’m not a Beatles expert—I just like their songs. I was born in ’64, and my older uncles played a lot of Beatles tunes in the mornings when they were getting ready for high school, drying their mop-tops with the vacuum cleaner.

The news today isn’t good. Mass shooting. Terrorist attacks. Wars. Lack of diplomatic discipline.

My stomach hurts, and I feel so sad for us humans.

I remember when some other terrible shooting happened in the U.S. when my children were small, more than twenty years ago, and I wanted run away. I wanted to take my kids to a country with almost no gun homicides; there are many countries like that. I wanted to go, to hold them safely in my arms, and to reject our policymakers' dangerous kowtowing to gun lobbyists. I wanted to distance myself from my country that built the military-industrial complex, my county that did insidiously fund the nation’s defenses as a tool of economic stimulus.

Today, I don’t want to run. I want to be in my own pain long enough to hear it, to know it. Today, I want to transcend criticizing my country’s practices and focus all my energy on our common humanity. Borders of voting districts, states, and countries are all made up, invisible lines. They are illusory.

Today, I ask you to be with your pain. All of it. Do not numb it by binging on Hulu or Facebook or M&M’s or wine or anything else that dismisses your feelings. Do not try to soothe your pain by pointing your finger at someone who wronged you. Do not join the blame game. Be all of your humanness.

And as you feel and see all of your humanness, tell yourself the truth: that we are all human, and we are all divine. Therein lies the paradox.

I am like you. You are like me. I am completely unique. You are completely unique.

Today, ask yourself: how can I see myself more fully, more clearly, and more compassionately? How can I look at my own wounds, without judging or being a victim? How can I see my pain for what it wants to teach me?

That is the divine work of being human. To stay in my own sadness, frustration, anger, heartbreak, disappointment and fear, long enough to see it fully. For it’s only when I see it that I can address it, claim it, diffuse it, transform it.

Today, when you speak with those you love, don’t speak of the blame you have for who’s done what in the world. Speak of how you feel about yourself, with compassion, and speak what’s true about you. Share beyond the minutiae with those you love and by whom you are loved. Make connection. See each other’s humanity.

Today, don’t read the news again and again. Call your mother instead. Visit a friend. Do a favor for your neighbor. Learn something about them that you don’t know, something about their own humanness. Talk about it. Share what’s on your heart.

We are here on Earth for each other. Let today be a day that we live like it.

The Risk

The risk is not following your heart.

Oh, but you protest—I have responsibilities.

What you really mean is: I won’t, because I’m more committed to someone else’s dreams.

The morning I called my manager to resign from my corporate career, I told him that I wasn’t going to work for a competitor—a big fear in that business—and that, in fact, I wasn’t going to work for another company in any industry. I told him about my desire to pursue my dreams, to step into a new chapter in my life, to have the space and time to create something from nothing.

I expressed my gratitude for the experiences, the support, and the collegiality. I asked his permission for me to call the executives on my team, to tell them personally. He supported that request.

Then, he said, “I have to tell you that I’m really jealous.”

And, in my conversation with every, single executive that day, I heard the response, “I’m really happy for you. I wish I could do the same thing.”

I felt stunned by these unexpected responses. After all, they each had a much higher salary than I, had more years of earning power, and possessed important entrepreneurial skills and, in this very competitive industry, were considered amongst the best at what they did.

From my perspective, every one of them could do exactly what they dreamed of doing, now. Yet, each of them were telling me that they were more committed to making the dreams of the CEO come true.

I was unprepared to hear the truth: that they weren’t ready to follow their hearts.

Yet, of course I understood. I lived in that space, too. We all live in a space comfortably, until we won’t. Until the noise within become too loud, too clear, and too direct, we stay put. That's the only choice. So that's the perfect choice. Until it's not.

The only risk we face is believing that what we truly desire to experience in this life can’t happen for us. Millions of people, every day, live in the center of their dreams.

Why not me?

Why not you?

The only risk is inaction.

The only risk is ignoring what’s possible.

The only risk is denying our heart’s urging us to a higher purpose, to our own expansion, to our next version of ourselves.

Is it time for you to leap?

Monday, Monday--Are You on Fire?

Fired up for Monday?

A few weeks ago, I was at a spinning class on a Monday evening, and the instructor started by asking, "who's had a great day," wanting to amp up the energy in the room. 

No one raised a hand, except me. Everyone had lived a whole day, but no one else was willing to claim that it was great.

I believe great days don't just come to us. I believe great days are made.

Ready to make this day great? Here are three ways you can choose to impact this day:

1. Decide before you begin. 

Learn what makes a day great for you and align you actions by deciding to do those activities and practices to set the tempo for your day. Are you a morning person? Then, make your morning delicious by engaging in what makes you most happy. Is meditation your thing? Then meditate in the morning--at your optimum time for you. Do you love a tidy home when you arrive back at the end of the day? Then take time in the mornings to push the reset button from last evening. 

If you're not a morning person, what can you do the evening before to make your morning go more smoothly? Decide what's going to serve you best and then do that. 

My friend, Meg, tells a story about arriving at her office one morning, feeling self-conscious about the pants she was wearing. It was early spring, her pants were white, and she thought they weren't flattering. Yet, she'd worn them and was faced with being in the office all day, not feeling at her best. Meg shared her discomfort with a colleague who look at her and said, "go back outside, and walk in this office like you own it."

Meg did just that. And that action shifted her discomfort enough that, for the rest of that day, she moved through her business interactions with more ease, confidence, and self-assurance. 

So, today, decide to own it.

2. Trust what transpires.

We know the adage of best laid plans. When something goes awry from you plans, when an unexpected interruption occurs, or when you're knock off your game a little or a lot, what if you could be okay with what is? Could you let go in that moment of frustration and be curious about what you could learn? Is the disruption calling you to have clearer boundaries so that you can still own your day? Are you able to practice flexibility? Could you cultivate compassion for the situation or for the person who seems to be challenging you? 

I spent nearly fifteen years teaching teenagers English. Remember high school English? You had English class once a day, likely, and I held English class every day, 5 or 6 times, for 180 days every year. I taught thousands of teenagers, and despite how clear and tightly planned my lessons were, things happened, from fire drills to broken copy machines to dogs eating homework and other bad excuses. My students taught me that, when the final bell rings, it's actually all okay. I learned that subtle balance of order and chaos, and it helped me out in the world, outside of the school walls, to remember this balance.

Just for today, trust what transpires, and see how that impacts your balanced living.

3. Use today's feedback for tomorrow's potential.

Most days are not make or break. If we can truly accept what we learn today and apply it to tomorrow, then tomorrow holds incredible potential. Feedback comes to us through our emotions, primarily, so use how you're feeling to decide what you can learn.

Is today frantic and uncomfortable? Then, do something radical to shift tomorrow. When my son was in elementary school, he was responsible for being dressed, with teeth brushed, backpack checked, and after-school gear packed. He decided to sleep in his clothes, so that mornings were less hectic. I thought it was a rather ingenious plan; after all, most 3rd grade boys are a little smelly and their clothes are often crumpled. He felt empowered and clever by his plan, and I easily let myself focus on the outcome--he was ready to leave on time.

If we are less rigid at times, we can tap into possibilities that are the proverbial "out of the box" ideas. Look for what today can teach you about how tomorrow could be.

Next time someone asks you how your Monday has gone, I want you to be able to confidently and truthfully say, "it was great!" 

A Grand Experiment

My husband, Craig, and I are living in a Grand Experiment (GE), one that we’ve designed intentionally.

The most recent phase of the GE has been a practice of living and working from somewhere in the world, somewhere other than our home, somewhere in Colorado. All experiments have an inception point, and for me, this GE started a long time ago, beginning with my questioning conventions and expectations. Let me take you back there before I tell you about the last, six weeks of living & working away from home.

When I was a child—about 2nd or 3rd grade—a cosmopolitan, exotic, woman moved into my small town in Kentucky, the wife of the new Baptist preacher. Of Asian descent, she worked as a flight attendant, and carried her tall frame with a grace and beauty the likes I’d never seen. I didn’t know much about Asia, or planes, or showing up with grace and beauty. And she drove a Volvo, an old 240 model, the first one I’d ever seen. My father noted it was “foreign,” not like the Oldsmobile brand he preferred. Everything about her sparked a yearning in me to leave my small town and to see the world.

After college in Kentucky, I moved with my first husband to Virginia, the northern part, where I taught students who had lived in countries around the globe before they even arrived in my high school classroom. My colleagues were scholars and artists and poets and thinkers, and while I hadn’t gone far away from my home, the world opened up in another new way. With each corporate move we made over the next 10 years, my world expanded. I saw the unique beauty of America, and I met people who inspired me, taught me, and amped up that urge to go more, explore, see the world.

Alas, my journey took me right back to Kentucky, as all journeys do take us home. There, I divorced while in my second career, a career where travel was a job requirement. I saw the parts of Kentucky I’d never seen, gaining an appreciation for its varied topography—from Appalachia to the Mississippi River—and its varied folks. I worked in states all over the Southeast and, at one time, had responsibility for 23 state departments of education and the school districts in each. I attended meetings in what have become some of my favorite places—Chicago, New York, San Diego, the Oregon coast, Puerto Rico, to name a few. This career quenched some wanderlust and fueled my promise to my kids: I’ll give you four years of tuition, room, and board, and then you’re on your own. I realize the privilege in being able to provide this start in life for them, and both they and I fulfilled that promise. One of my greatest travel adventures ever was with Emily and Alex, to Italy, where my supreme hope was to inspire them to dream even bigger. 

My second marriage, another GE crafted by Craig and me, two people who’d married and divorced once, who’d lived a lot of life, who’d learned a lot about who we are, and invited a new experimental design. We both had grown weary of the conventional, career track in corporate America, so Craig stopped working as an engineering, and I resigned a few years later from a global learning company.

It’s unconventional, this new phase of the GE. We moved on with gratitude from building retirement funds, taking paid vacations, sitting in some mind-numbing meetings, and dancing the sometimes-silly, corporate dance—and making big salaries. Our CPA and financial planner must think we’re crazy. They use words like penalties, and we reflect back that it’s our happiness fund. It’s our big, hairy, audacious dream fund. I think our moms worry a little—perfectly their role—and my children watch with curiosity and wonder, as I've never chosen to be so free before.

The GE has been a process of building something new, something that didn’t exist before the experiment started. Craig’s part of the GE has been marked by a fundamental commitment: to follow what feels most joyful. I’ve both admired and resented this commitment at times, which has presented the chance for me to explore my own limited beliefs about what’s possible. You mean you can really live and work joyously? It doesn’t have to be hard?  The concept has shaken my sensibilities, and it’s given me permission to be a writer, my biggest, most hairy, most audacious dream.

And that’s where we are now, expanding the experiment to answer the question: "Can we live and work from anywhere in the world? What would happen if we shook up our 'near field,'" we've asked, a term we’ve learned from Jennifer Roth, Craig’s business partner and our coach. How would it feel to leave home, to leave the daily routines we’d fallen into, and to blur the lines between work and play?

Thus, we left home the day before the great, solar eclipse of 2017, a fitting event, a new moon in Leo, the sun sign of my July birth. For Leos, the sun is the center of the universe. I’m not an astrology expert, but I follow it and read what’s happening cosmically enough to know that eclipses of the moon result in supercharged energy and call us to look at our emotions and deepest desires. They force us to look at our shadows, too, and since the shadows of each of us more naturally emerge when we press out of our comfort zones, these 6 weeks on the road—ushered in by the eclipse—have offered highest highs and lowest lows.

I guess it’s obvious that Craig and I aren’t ones who do things normally, so we also left behind some ways of consuming, namely eating refined sugars and drinking alcohol, which eventually turns to sugars in our bodies, anyway. Why not add that big shift to the GE?

As we are nearing the end of this GE, the formal conclusions will be written later, but I’ve learned 3 fundamental things about myself, about behaving unconventionally and unexpectedly, and about what’s possible in this life:

1) There are billions of people in this world, and few of them think like me, believe what I believe about who we are, why we’re here, and what’s next after the ultimate experiment called life, but you will find those who align with you, if you’re willing to be yourself and follow your nudges and intuition. Here are a few examples of magic we experienced in this GE—

Mandy and Rachel, expert rock climbers with whom we watched the eclipse totality, two women who are stepping into big dreams and desires, which include letting corporate jobs go and living a life aligned with their hearts’ desires. They're going to teach us how to climb.

Kate and Michael, owners of an airbnb Craig picked randomly while we were making our way West, who are using the asset of their home to create a future they desire, one away from conventions and corporate paths.

Talai, owner of Herbin Alchemy, maker of magic through her innate connection to and knowledge of plants, and whose hands helped wipe away old energies in my body. This woman has so much to offer to the world, and all I can say is: watch out! 

Lori and Scott, whom we met because of Scott’s t-shirt, and Craig’s bravery to walk up to him in a coffee shop and ask, “may I take a picture of your shirt?” They will be our life-long friends and help us expand our impact on the world, I’m sure, all because Scott made a t-shirt, and movement, that said, “say it with gratitude.” And, we connected Scott with our dear friend, Elena Anguita, and the lovely Sam Livermore in the UK, because they are all like-minded and fierce about changing the world.

Our Denver roommate, Anthony. Craig nor I have had a roommate since college, and it totally makes sense that we’ve been sharing Sara Ann’s 1,200 square foot, downtown condo with someone who’s interested in Dr. Joe Dispenza, quantum physics, guitar lessons, and more big, hairy, audacious dreams. Sail on, Anthony.

2) I love all my stuff back home, but I don’t need most of it. We’ve lived with what we packed in our car on this journey, and while it will be blissful to be back in our beautiful, 1920’s bungalow in Kentucky, it’s full of stuff that we don’t use very much. It’ll be a good opportunity to reflect, to declutter even more, and to consider the role of home in our experimental conclusions.

3) I’m at my best, no matter where I live on this planet, when I rest well, practice yoga, put my feet in the grass every day, eat mainly plants, love my body, meditate daily, write what’s in my heart, and show up always in the inquiry of, “what is it that I can learn from this experience?”

May you be purposeful in the experimental design of the next phase of your own Grand Experiment, and may each step be guided by your heart.

Riding—and Rising From—Life’s Waves

I had been riding a long, slow, turbulent wave, and once I let go of pushing against it, I gave it space to be my teacher.

The pushing had lasted too many days or weeks or months or years—I don’t know when the pushing started, just as it’s unclear where a wave begins in the ocean. The more I fought against the wave, I found myself empty on the hard sand, exhausted. You know, that barely-able-to-sleep exhaustion.

When the wave crested and fell to the trough, it felt that the world I thought I understood came crashing down. Uh, yes, it seems overly dramatic now, but isn’t that how it feels when you’ve had to confront how you used to be? In the midst of the wave, it’s nearly impossible to know what’s sky and what’s land.

In the crashing, I pummeled and bruised myself—I should know this old pattern. I should know. I should. I know. I should. I know.

During the crash, I did only what I knew to do: try to sleep; weep a lot; breathe fresh air; put my feet in the grass; and be on my yoga mat.

Every single thing that drains you will eventually empty you, just like the wave empties onto the sand. You will go dark. Draining people, activities, and thoughts—all knock your body out of homeostasis.

When you arrive on the hard-packed sand, completely depleted and out of balance, you must find the only thing you know to do that replenishes you. You must refill. Do not numb. Do not run. Stay with you through the wave. Withdraw, not from life, but into your source of life—into yourself.

And just continue to ask the question: what am I to see that I can’t see now? No matter how long it takes to get an answer, just keep asking, because when you are unsuspecting, the answer will arise.

At my 4th yoga class in two days (yes, I kept going back to my mat, again and again), I was invited into the pose, Humble Warrior, a posture of surrender. The pose requires the upper body, supported by legs in a lunge, to bow forward, deeply and completely, with fingers inner laced, arms stretching along the back body and toward the floor overhead. The invitation for closed eyes completes the surrender inward. As a humble warrior in this life, I asked, “what am I to see that I can’t see now?”

In this moment, I know nothing, because I’ve never known this moment before. This moment is the accumulation of past moments, but it’s a moment like none other. In this moment, I both know all of me and nothing of me.

That’s when the inner shift happened. In a moment of surrender, I saw everything and nothing. I saw my own magnificence and insignificance.  I saw what I hadn’t seen while riding this wave: that I can’t know the next version of myself until I see her.

Somehow, that was enough. In this new space, the difficulties didn’t dissolve, but I was at peace. Sleep returned. Tears dried. Perspective was gained, in time, as I stepped forward.

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