A Tale of Two Driver’s Licenses. A Tale of Transformation.

“Wait, I’m pretty sure I blinked.”

I blink in 97.6% of photos so if you and I ever pose together in a group portrait, I apologize now for ruining it.

“No, no,” she said. “It’s really good!” She turned the screen to show me.

Holy shit. Sound the alarms. Ring the bells that still can ring, this is a perfect offering. My new driver’s license photo is GOOD.

This has never happened before. All my licenses have been horrific. Once, when I was 21 and vain (as opposed to 39 and really vain) I told the handsome police officer I didn’t have my license just so I didn’t have to show it to him. I got fined for speeding and failing to produce a valid driver’s license. It was worth it. It was that bad.

So yesterday morning I paid $75 – not to be cheap, but $75 for 90 seconds of service ? Really? – to renew my license and was stunned by the possibility of one wherein I do NOT look atrocious. So stunned that I toted my sleeping baby out to the car and sat there for a few minutes with my hands on the steering wheel, going nowhere, going back.

Five years ago I was at this same office with an eight month old baby; a flailing, failing relationship; no job (except of course to raise spectacular little humans, but gawd, I wanted a career); no money; mad loneliness because my then-partner came and went as he pleased, worked like he’d go to jail if he put in less than 16 hours a day – often leaving the house at 6 am to return at midnight – and then disappeared into barbershops and community events on the weekends; and no clothes, because I thought nothing looked good on me. During the day, in our little townhouse complex, I wore a long African tunic that I’m calling a tunic because I don’t want to say it was a mumu but there you have it. That’s what it was. A mumu. That was my at-home daywear. These were the days when I needed assistance opening the blinds.

So I cut my hair.

Not as liberation from The Femininity Trap, but as a surrender to self-loathing: I’m not pretty. I’m not stylish. I’m not accomplished. Don’t look at me. Before all of this, I thought I was an independent, brilliant (if I did say so myself) free spirit on a grand mission – I knew I’d be famous, donchaknow. I went to university, I graduated with honours, I travelled around the world on my own, I lived in Taiwan, I had torrid affairs, I spouted poetry at parties, I made impassioned though often inebriated speeches, I was intoxicated with my own potential. And it wasn’t just me. I once had an interview with a Big Vancouver Mogul to be his personal assistant. Halfway though, he said to me, “What are you doing here? This job is not for you. If you want it, I’ll give it to you, because I’d be lucky to have you, but I want you to be honest with me: is this what you want to do?”

It wasn’t. Despite the fact that the rent was due (hell, overdue), I called him back the next day to admit that the job wasn’t for me. I could hear him smile. Then he offered me a job as a research consultant for three times the PA salary. He saw my potential.

And now here I was in a mumu and a bad haircut. Potential, my ass. Miserable, my life. Just another desperate hausfrau.

And I didn’t even look like a young, frazzled housewife in the picture on my driver’s license. I was thirty-four but in that picture I looked fifty-four and not the Oprah-esque “This is what fifty looks like!” kind of fifty-four. I looked like I wore comfortable shoes but both defended (I have fallen arches!) and resented them.

I’m not sure what shoes I was wearing in those days. Maybe flip flops. That would have been consistent with the mumu.

(I was going to say, “that would have worked with the mumu” but suggesting something about my sartorial choices ‘worked’ would have been overstating the level of deliberation involved).

I keep circling back to the mumu because it’s symbolic of my state of mind at that time.

And so is that driver’s license. I’m so glad it expired. I’m so glad that life expired.

Or, more accurately, that I killed it.

And I did. I burned it down and then I built a new one. I got out, I got a good job, I found a great daycare. I decorated my new home. I arrived. I arrived safely.

And then, once I was safe, I started taking risks. I started a blog. I started reaching out, extending myself personally and professionally. I started driving towards my secret dreams. I drove to Whistler to see Danielle LaPorte speak and arrived home to an e-mail from her that said “You’re hot shit and the real deal and you should be getting your ass published as widely as possible.”

If you’ve heard that story before it’s because I can never tell that story too often.

I started dating. I started internet dating and the best part of that was the initial e-mailing back and forth. Writing those e-mails got me hotter than most of the men I’d eventually meet.

And you know what else? You know what gave me confidence while I was dating, which, for me, was a confidence-assassinating endeavour?

My blog. My growing skill as a writer. My emerging audience. My…

…acclaim. Internet fame.

I started seeing RESULTS. I worked all day and then each night wrote for two hours. I had a full-time job and was a single mama to two kids under four and I was posting – and posting really good stuff – five days a week. And it was working. Opportunities – copywriting requests – came my way. So many that I started turning them down because I had to work.

Which led to me leaving my job and writing for a living.

Hallelujah.

And then I fell in love and I didn’t give up on him even though, as a friend summarized the situation, “he’s in a relationship but he doesn’t know it yet.”

Now he knows he’s in a relationship and he’s grateful. As he should be. I’m fucking amazing.

Sidenote: you know the drumbeat that goes like this:

Men can’t handle an accomplished woman, that’s why dating is so hard for strong, bright, ambitious chicks…

?

Bollocks. The stronger, more ambitious and more accomplished I was, the more desirable I was as a partner, especially as a potential marriage partner. Dual incomes, say hello! Who doesn’t want to increase their household earning capacity? Men think about this stuff, too. And so I’ve never had a man tell me that my ability to make money or garner acclaim was a downer. Instead, wannabe suitors marveled at me. Even my then-reluctant, now wildly committed, truly smitten loverloverman.

Steve Harvey, who’s hyping that archaic, erroneous rhythm and telling women, especially black women, that their success is a dating liability, can suck it.

I digress. But it had to be said.

My Big Audacious Point is this: the photos on my two driver’s licenses, one from five years ago and one taken yesterday, are so opposite they’re polar. They represent my two lives, my two states of being. One I was wading through. The other one I’m diving in.

I look different because I am different.

So often we’re entranced and seduced by makeovers and transformations because our lizard brain thinks that by changing our hair/our diet/our nose/our clothes we’ll change our lives.

So we buy products and services and surgeries and hope. We buy big dreams of profound, instant transformation and overnight success. We buy drama. We buy inaction.

And even if we do succeed in looking different, we probably feel like big fat fakes. We look the look but we’re not walking the walk. The boob job was financed, the car note is late and you can’t wear those hot shoes anywhere because there’s no money for gas.

Here’s the question I keep asking myself:

Do you want to look like something – rich, successful, beautiful – or do you want to be it?

I want to be it.

And I want you to be who you want to be, too. Not just look like you are. BE it.

So if you’re starting out, if you’re on a quest to rewrite your life, to merge brilliant and glorious from your cocoon, here’s what I want you to know:

1. It’s all incremental. It’s the little decisions and tiny doings each day that add up to dramatic transformation.
2. Putting in those incremental hours will grow your confidence like nothing else in the world. No compliments, no award, no reward compares to your own sense of marvel at your emerging mastery.
3. Mastery in one arena = confidence in all areas.
4. Accomplishment is sexy.
5. The externals – new hair, polished nails, smitten mate – are merely evidence of an internal transformation. Pursue the internal transformation. Pursue mastery.

And then take a moment or ten to sit in your car outside the DMV and marvel. Marvel that five years ago you were wearing a mumu to hide your sad flesh and last night, at age 39, after three kids and at fifty pounds “overweight” (don’t even get me started on that word) you submitted photos to a contest to be a plus size model.

Because you’re no longer hiding.

You know you’re beautiful.

You also know you’re smart and accomplished and living the life of your dreams with the man of your dreams.

And you know that, intimately, incrementally, because you wrote your way here.

I know it. I did it. So can you.

so they took the old license and haven't sent the new one yet, but here's the difference. On the left is me, last night (2012). On the right is my passport pic from 2009.

May 16, 2012 | filed under: Bodies, Red Shoe Blogger | tweet it, baby

no people have we need you too.

The Best Meeting EVER

“Let’s have a family meeting!” the five year old called from the other room. Families on Family Channel have family meetings so we should have them, too.

Her sister and I agreed and waited for her at the kitchen table.

“No!” she exclaimed, still in the other room. “In here!”

We met her where she was: in my bedroom. In my bed, to be exact, snuggling the baby whether he needed it or not.

“We’re having our family meeting in bed,” she explained. “We’re going to cuddle and talk about our dreams.”

I can’t wait until she’s a CEO.

———–

Now, you. Let’s cuddle and talk about your dreams. What are you dreaming of?

May 7, 2012 | filed under: Family | tweet it, baby

no people have we need you too.

towards non-shrieky boundaries

…had ah a-ha moment about boundaries. Many a therapist, coach and wise woman counsel the importance of having boundaries, and as soon as they do, my heart shrivels. I get the ick, uncomfortable feeling.

And not because I’m lacking in self-esteem and fear that people won’t love me if they can’t walk all over me.

But because all the talk about boundaries feels so off-putting, so arms-length, so much about distancing people from you, keeping them out. With a vengeance. I’ve seen people discover the gospel of boundaries and become shrill evangelists/customs officers. Borders are preached and patrolled and rigorously, angrily, loudly enforced.

But maybe they don’t have to be that way. To quote a cheesy film that you probably haven’t seen (I’m sorry if you have), boundaries don’t have to be about putting or keeping people out, they can be about inviting people in. They can be circles. They can be circles of protection.

A good man draws a circle around himself and cares for those within. His woman, his children.

Other men draw a larger circle and bring within their brothers and sisters.

But some men have a great destiny. They must draw around themselves a circle that includes many, many more.

Your father was one of those men. You must decide for yourself whether you are, as well. – TicTic in 10,000 BC

This is the way I’ve been thinking about boundaries: as an invitation, a circle of protection. Come inside.

We need boundaries to keep the people we want in our circles safe. Boundaries protect relationships because they ensure that you will NOT resentfully stretch too far and then snap and end a relationship.

My history is very snappy.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. I think there are other women out there, too, who avoid confrontation and awkward situations until they can’t anymore and poof! it’s all over.

So let’s get some boundaries. We don’t have to explain them, just stand in them, stand in them, stand in our circles, invite people – mates, children, family, friends, community – into these protected, safe spaces so we can take care of them without snapping.

And let’s do it like the most powerful young women I know: my daughter, Sophie. She’s eight years old, gentle, quiet, elegant, tall and thin and looks like a fragile flower. You might think she’s a fragile flower because she’s shy, she doesn’t fight, she doesn’t argue, she doesn’t explain, she doesn’t excuse or make excuses. But she has boundaries and if you cross them, she simply will.not.play.barbies.with.you.

But if you come correctly, she’ll play anything – including, oh god, the harmonica – for HOURS.

So it behooves certain five year olds (and everyone) to come correctly and respect her boundaries. Because then you’re in.

And – note to newly converted boundary-setting adults – there are no awkward conversations about the new fences. They’re just in place. Your limits become obvious to others when you respect them yourself.

Stand in your circles. There you can invite us in and keep us safe. Boundaries aren’t a no-trespassing sign, they’re an invitation, a promise of protection. They’re a gift to your people, not an awkward conversation.

April 17, 2012 | filed under: Uncategorized | tweet it, baby

4 people have we need you too.

A Sweaty Kiss Will Keep You Going

He was either indescribably brilliant or utterly inarticulate because when he spoke none of us understood what he was saying. Since we were all pursuing advanced degrees, we decided to err on the side of “he’s stratospherically intelligent”.

So. He was brilliant. And beautiful. Tall, dark and handsome and literally the prettiest man I’d ever seen. But shy. He was always hiding. He pulled his hat low over his brow, like eye contact was a challenge or an assault, like he needed to shade his eyes from an overwhelming world of women bent on adoring him. Even when they couldn’t comprehend a word he said.

But when he looked up, gazed out from beneath that ball cap, met your eyes…the blue, the blue, the blue, the beauty. “It’s like the sun comes out,” said my friend Emme, about that moment when he’d finally look at you, into you, right into your swooning, smitten soul, “and it’s practically a religious experience.”

And it was.

And that’s divine. That’s what makes it worth it. Divinity is always worthwhile.

Our mutual friend C married that man. Their first date, she was so nervous that when the waiter asked if she’d like a drink — one drink, you’d think — health-conscious, green-eating, smoothie-drinking C ordered two bottles of wine. From the jump. ‘Cuz let’s go.

And because she knew she’d be the one carrying the weight of the conversation with this inaccessibly intelligent/possibly inarticulate/stupendously shy/stupidly sexy man. She was terrified: dinner was going to be a lot of work. He was going to be a lot of work.

But he was worth it.

The great things – the glorious things – are always worth the effort. But it’s the hits of pleasure that keep us on our paths.

My path, this year, is about power. The power of fierce love, radical devotion, circadian creation. It’s natural, even primal: my loverloverman and I just had a baby and in the wake of his birth plunged even more deeply in love. It’s powerful. It’s where I want to live. It’s the way I want to live.

And so to live that way, I’m going to live that way. I’m surrendering to the sun-driven rhythms of divine creation: making love to my man, nursing my newborn, writing my opus. Nesting. Nurturing.

I’m home-ing my power.

And because I want to feel powerful in all the rooms of my lifehouse (and because I’m vain), I renovated my diet — gone natural, feeling powerful — and am now redecorating my creative cosmos with exercise.

‘Cept I don’t enjoy exercise. The only time I want to be sweaty is if orgasm is imminent.

But I do want to feel the strength of my thighs wrapped around my man. I want to feel powerful. Everywhere. Especially there.

So we worked out. It was intense. I was terrible at it. I felt terrible about it. I felt terrible about my terrible performance. I felt terrible about myself. I swore terrible oaths cursing the metabolic, diabolic gods. And then my loverloverman gave me a terribly sexy, sweaty, salty kiss and said, “I’m so proud of you. Seeing you try so hard makes me hard”.

And the sun came up. Heaven.

And that’s it.

It’s blue eyes rising and shining from beneath a ball cap; it’s a sweaty kiss and your lover’s lecherous pride; it’s the pockets of pleasure lining a coat nearly worn out with effort; it’s divine moments of desire and communion. They’re rays of sun lighting our way through the grind to glory.

The lesson: regular doses of interpersonal pleasure (ahem) are prayers of accomplishment. They satisfy and gratify and strengthen your soul so you can sustain your efforts. (In other words, I highly recommend the sweaty clinch.)

Also: work out with your lover. It’s hawt.

Which means I’ll do it again and again and again. Amen.

April 3, 2012 | filed under: Bodies, Love | tweet it, baby

no people have we need you too.

get the one you want

“If you want him, if you really love him, go get him,” I told her. “Don’t let reason or doing the appropriate thing get in the way. Go all out.”

Dave Doolin once told me that trying too hard is a valuable data point.

He really said that. “Valuable data point.”

If you study as much as you possibly can -

If you train as hard as you can physically endure -

If you write and edit to the best of your ability -

If you fully demonstrate your adoration in word and deed and wild enthusiasm -

and you fail, then you know that thing was not for you. You gave it your all and didn’t win.

There’s certainty there. A useful data point.

But…

If you could have done more and fail, you’ll always wonder:

Could I have done more?

Probably.

So that’s why I give unreasonable advice. If you want it, go get it.

And go all out.

Because then you’ll know.

This applies not just to love but to everything.

When my first daughter was born, I tried out strollers in the store, found the one I want, found out its price and decided to want another one. Then I decided to think about it. While I was thinking about it, someone handed-me-down a stroller. It was worn down. I broke down and bought another one but not the one I wanted. It was terrible and I despised it for a year until I woman’d up and got the one I wanted. I used it for four years and two babies – but I paid for it in three strollers and two purchases instead of one.

It’s also taken a few false starts to get this love thing right.

Lesson learned. You’d think.

This fall and winter I wanted a particular pair of knee-high boots. Like the stroller, I decided they were too expensive. I decided to make do with less. I bought the cheap boots. I wore them for six weeks. They fell apart and so did my frugal resolve and then I bought the ones I wanted in the first place.

Being cheap costs me money. Restraint is a false economy. It’s way more effective to be extravagant.

Extravagant tastes better and is better for you. Right this minute I am munching on popcorn seasoned not with butter but with the hickory-flavoured sea salt we reverently refer to as The Good Salt (from Salt Boutique in Smithers, BC. Salt’s a clothing store, so you’ll have to call Caroline directly if you want some of that good, good salt).

Get the good salt. Invest (once!) in the good stroller. Write excessively, err on the side of drama, risk being cheesy because you can edit judiciously later and enthusiasm is not an add-on. Buy the boots you desire and the best ones you can afford. Marry the only one you want.

Get the one you want. Invest extravagantly in everything and everyone you care about including yourself, sugar. Get everything you want.

I did.

And so did she:

“You told me that if I wanted him, to go get him, and I did.”

Well, Hallelujah! and pass the (well-salted) popcorn.

March 30, 2012 | filed under: Love, People | tweet it, baby

4 people have we need you too.

whip me good

Behind the emerald curtain. On Friday I got whipped by Erika Lyremark and it hurt so good.

I did it because several of you were raving about her, so I thought, let’s see. I thought I knew what it was – a freebie session with a coach aimed at getting me onboard as a client – and I thought she’d do her schtick…

This isn’t making me sound like a very nice person, is it?  Sometimes I’m a little jaded by this online biz.

It was a 15 minute call.

My life changed at moment seven.

Erika asked me why the book wasn’t getting finished (it’s in pieces all over my hard-drive and in my blog), why I’m not yet trying to get an agent, why I haven’t written the proposal. And I blathered something about my fear of rejection.

And she said – and I’m paraphrasing - bullshit.

She said that if the book was important enough to me I’d be willing to stand naked in the town square while being pelted with rotten tomatoes. She said that I’m not finishing the book and forcing it into publication and the world because I’m not passionate enough about it. She said the book I’ve been half-assing is the book I know people will like, the book I can sell, the book that will do reasonably well…but it’s not the book I NEED to write. It’s not the book that will make a rift in the world.

And she was right. And I said, “oh my god, how do I give you money?”

And as soon as I got off the phone I logged into paypal to do just that and and then I logged into my blog to write this.

I don’t yet know what The Book, my book, is about. But I’m going to dig deep and find out and then I’ll stand naked in the town square adorned only by my words.

The ones that will make a rift in the world. The ones I need to write. The ones I need to write for you.

Hopefully you won’t throw tomatoes…

But I look good in red.

March 26, 2012 | filed under: Meaning, Money, Work | tweet it, baby

15 people have we need you too.

this is not for you

When I’m writing a provocative or possibly-shocking piece, or about to do something shocking or provocative and possibly controversial and need to protect myself by preparing for the consequences, there’s an exercise I do.

I call it “This Is Not For You.”

(And you can do it with your own writing, with your own art, with your business, with controversial decisions you MUST make.)

Here’s what you do:

Hold each person who might be shocked/appalled/concerned/upset in your head and your heart, and say, lovingly, to each one:

This is not for you.

There’s no anger, no aggression, no haters-gon-hate, no defense. Just truth. This is not for you.

When I write, it’s not for my mother, my employer, my cousin, my ex. (Except when it is.) It’s for the women curled up in the fetal position rocking through her pain, the woman rocking out, the woman making out, the woman making it.

Each piece isn’t for an audience, it’s for one person. Write it for her. Do it for her. (Do it for yourself.) Offer it to her, the one who needs it, and tell everyone else, quietly, with care, this is not for you. Of course you don’t get it, don’t like it, don’t need it, maybe even wish I didn’t write it. Because this is not for you.

Because greatness, and even truthfulness, isn’t a popularity contast. It will repel some people. And that’s ok. It’s not even personal. It’s just not for them, so why write for them? Write for the people who need your message. Write for yourself.

And it’s the same in regular life, too. I spent a long time trying to be hot for every man on earth and was utterly disappointed in myself when I didn’t successfully turn on every creature in the street.

But now I think, This is not for you. I aim to please myself and the select people who can see my light.

And oh, he does.

March 19, 2012 | filed under: Meaning, Work | tweet it, baby

21 people have we need you too.

39. And We’re Gonna Have a Good Time.

moi. age 39.

When I was fifteen or sixteen – I can’t tell you which it was, I’m too traumatized, I say this of course with a bemused, adult smile – the birthday cake said “Happy Birthday, Sonny, Travis and Kelly.” Sonny was our Springer Spaniel. Travis was my boyfriend. Apparently my mother was rather fond of him.

My name was last on the cake, because neither Sonny nor Travis gave her any backtalk, nor did they drive away from the house with chocolate chip cookies burning in the oven.

(It’s now family legend. My parents arrived to an empty house – I’d waved cheerfully to them as our cars passed each other going in opposite directions –  engulfed in dark chocolate smoke but fortunately no flames; when the “cookies” cooled, my father dropped one off the second-story kitchen deck to the concrete below and it bounced but did not break; my mother had to throw out the cookie pans; but presumably she’s forgiven me because all though she’s currently in Palm Springs, rumour has it there’s a card with a cheque in it with my name on it cooling on my sister’s kitchen counter.)

Though, to be fair, Sonny didn’t cook much, being a spaniel and all.

I was quietly outraged but I ate the cake. It tasted pretty good. Coming last isn’t always bad.

(Here, dearest reader, feel free to insert the lasvicious double entendre of your choice).

So. Let’s put more names on the cake with 39 candles and send birthday love to some people I adore:

1. Ginger Hartman. We live blocks from each other, both have three kids, and met at school drop off…but turns out she has a secret identity: hawt shit blogger + copywriter 4 hire extraordinaire (I – me, another copywriter! – have used her services and been wildly satisfied). We even have matching fetishes: lingerie, manicures, pin-up style, and writing, writing, writing. OBVIOUSLY I would like her – and so will you. I introduce to you, Ginger Hartman, Mama of Ms, Clever Girl, my friend. Please join me in loving her up on her birthday.

2. Ricardo Scipio. Friend, fellow Pisces (obviously, since we share the same bornday), film director (Finder of Lost Children, Watershed, When), herbalist, author (Making Peace With Herpes: A Holistic Guide to Overcoming the Stigma and Freeing Yourself from Outbreaks), tennis-junkie (five hours a day!) and a natural-living, crunchy-granola type who eats organic, lives in a cabin in the woods, makes medicine from plants and art on his Apple. He also takes nekkid arty photos of women but would object to the word ‘nekkid’ because goddesses aren’t naked, they’re nude. There’s a big difference. (That’s the short version of his lecture on the subject.) Ricardo is working on his next Goddess Project book and is looking for models in Vancouver and Toronto, so if you want to share your natural, unadorned glory with the world so that the world will know women as goddesses not toys, he’s the artist for you. E-mail him. Tell him happy birthday.

3. You. In the last four years, my life has changed completely, unrecognizably. I write; I freelance full-time; I’m in love and in the most gratifying, fulfilling relationship I’ve experienced; we have a new baby; I lost 40 pounds; and oh my gawd you should see my newly blonde hair, it looks so good it deserves its own blog, thank you Regi Anselmi (Regi’s birthday was yesterday); and from my hair to my hips to my heart I am lightened, lightened, lightened. And it is all because you read me, hear me, see me.

Thank you for that. Thank you for reading my words and hearing my heart. Thank you.

Please let me thank you.

By now it’s a cliche – it’s my birthday! and all my products are on sale! – but the impulse is sweet and sincere, so pleasepleaseplease let me share my birthday with you, let me give you a piece of cake, or, since it’s the internet and I can’t pass you the cake, please let me give you anything you want that I’ve got.  Paywhatchacan. No comments needed, no questions asked, no names noted. Just edit the price in the shopping cart to the figure that works for you, no matter what it is, and it’s all yours.

So here it is. Here’s the virtual birthday cake we can share…(yum):

If you want to learn to write a magnetic, compelling, influential blog post, pay what you can for Artful, Heart-full Blogging.

 

 

 

 

If you want to learn to write your entire website in one day (give or take a month of writing exercises and an online, all-day workshop), pay what you can for Write Me, I’m Yours.

 

 

If you want me to review your website/writing in a one hour, one-on-one digital strategy session with me, pay what you can for a Red Shoe Blogger.

 

 

 

 

And then let’s hold hands or drop hands and air-guitar to our birthday song, courtesy of The Beatles.

‘Cuz it’s your birthday, too.

And I’m so glad to spend it and every day with you. Thank you, my friend, for reading.

xoxo

March 14, 2012 | filed under: Family, Love, People | tweet it, baby

11 people have we need you too.

protect

Let’s say someone you know knowingly put someone you love in danger. Knowingly made a choice that could have ended your loved one’s life. Not an accident, not a misstep…a deliberate decision, of course shrouded in denial and admittedly without true malice or evil intent, but a selfish calculation with consequences that were equally obvious and horrific.

And then, when confronted about that catastrophically bad choice, explained, I followed my heart.

Follow your heart. Follow your instincts.

It’s a frequent line of reasoning, advice, action.

But that self-centred – and self-centred can be a very good and grounded way to live – moral code will only work if it is also accompanied by an other-centred ethic of protection.

If you love someone, you protect her. You protect him. You protect them. You wake from a nightmare prepared for battle, because some shadowy imaginary figure threatened harm. You ride into the school on a white horse or in a white minivan and you slay dragons and bullies. You sometimes sacrifice your interests for the good of your loved one, loved ones, the greater good. You set the table for your enemies because good meals can bring about world peace and if not world peace at least familial peace and it would be good for him, for them, and therefore for you, too, for the family to come together, to forgive, to unite, to protect each other.

Because when you love someone, you follow your heart and you protect them.

This is a hard ethic for an artist to live. If, for example, you’re a writer, your life is your material and the most compelling, enduring relationship in your life has been with the page, there comes a moment when what you create endangers your relationships.

What you do can harm who you love.

So what do you do?

If you only follow your he/art, you publish it anyway. Because there is a truth to be told, there are consciences to inflame, there is world to change with your words.

If you protect your love, you hold it back. You hold back your truth-telling, life-altering and world-changing words.

Truth-telling? Life-altering? World-changing? This is not an overstatement or the grandious exaggeration of a self-important writer’s inflated ego. Even a seemingly humble blog post can change lives.

I once wrote a piece called “not ready but willing” that, truth be told, was about me and my man getting our heads around an unexpected pregnancy. We were not ready. We were not even willing. But we were willing to get ready to be willing. And now we have a baby boy and are more in love than ever and building a castle o’ love and an empire of aspiration together. Together. Forever.

Writing that piece helped me get my head and my heart right. And it helped other people, too.

One couple read not ready but willing while waiting for their take-out pizza and after years of come-here-go-away decided in the space of a few hundred heartfelt words to make the leap and move in together. And then e-mailed me and told me so.

And that was one of the most deeply rewarding days of my life. That is why I write.

So to hold things back…?

Mostly, I don’t hold back.

With one exception. It comes back to being an X-Rated Woman; to what committed parent, PhD, and neuroscience educator Mark Brady told me is another way to ordo amorum, order our loves; and to what memoirist Jillian Lauren explains is her moral pivotal point for deciding which intimate, revealing stories to release into the world.

She chooses who to protect.

Jillian Lauren wrote a memoir about her days as a sex worker and consort to Prince Jefri of Brunei and her parents were largely okay with that part of it. What they weren’t okay with: her frank accounts of physical abuse at her father’s hands. That doesn’t happen in nice middle-class Jewish families and if it does, it doesn’t get talked about. And so they don’t talk to her anymore.

She knew that was a potential consequence of her decision to write and publish her truth and she chose to tell it anyway. She decided to protect her truth over protecting her parents.

It might seem like her first allegiance is to her art. She protects it over her family.

But that’s not true. With each piece she writes or doesn’t write or publishes or doesn’t publish, she chooses who to protect, what to protect, which relationships to protect. And she protects her husband over everything:

There are certain relationships that I’m unwilling to lose in the world, that would trump me publishing something, and have. I have written a few things that he’s been very uncomfortable with, and so they haven’t made it out of the house. – Jillian Lauren in The Rumpus

And that’s it. When you follow your heart and your art, you must decide who and what to protect.

People – readers, clients, students – ask me all the time how can I be so brave? How do I get the guts to write naked stories and bare truths? How do I deal with the fallout from friends and family?

One part of my answer is fatalism. I get deadly fatal about the outcome of my revealing stories. I’m cheerlessly prepared. Any ensuing drama is of my own making. I accept it without wishing for miracles of acceptance. I accept the consequences of my actions, of my art, of following my heart.

And the other one part of my answer is an ethic of protection. Before I press publish, I choose who to protect.

My piece (“where the light gets in“) on Friday? A substitute for the one I planned to release, one that my loverloverman liked a lot but didn’t want the world to read.

And so no one read it except him.

Instead, I reworked my Pecha Kucha speech from November 2010, which I’m really proud of and meant to do for more than a year because I wanted it to have a wider audience, and re-released it into the wild. And the whole wide world – or at least everyone who e-mailed me or commented on it – loved it.

And I protected my love. I followed my heart.

Because that is what you do when you love. You protect.

———————-

This is the kind of thing I teach in my Artful, Heart-full Blogging course, so if you’re wanting to write brave and free and influential, please consider taking my class.

This kind of truth-telling – and practicing it in the wild aka “your real and daily life” – is what my friend Ronna Detrick teaches…and lives.

March 12, 2012 | filed under: Love, Meaning, Work | tweet it, baby

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where the light gets in

Once upon a time there was a young woman who lived in an ivory tower.

That tower was UBC. That young woman was me.

And in this tower, I let down my hair, talked a lot and read a lot and drank a lot of red wine with arty, smart, politically outraged and passionate people. In that world, the academic world, cleavage means conflict. Difference. Divides. The lines that shape us. In other words: life.

And so cleavage is a sexy word that means more than you might think. Cleavage is where I start my writing: the breaks, the cracks, the fissures, the wounds, the shadows, the caves. I mine them for joy. Cleavage is what I try to write about and through. Cleavage is the lines that shape us.

Cleavage reminds me of an anthem that Leonard Cohen writes and sings:

ring the bells that still can ring

forget your perfect offering

there is a crack a crack in everything

that’s how the light gets in.

It’s like poet Tupac Shakur writes and raps and asks: Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in concrete? Well, we are the roses, this is the concrete, and these are my damaged petals.

And that reminds me of another thing I learned at UBC: that our flaws allow people to get close to us.

One night my university room-mate got tipsy and told our mutual best friend and resident genius/beauty that she was so perfect, she was intimidating and the only reason she was ever able to talk to her was that the first day they met, her mascara was all messed up.

That’s the truth: our damage, our cracks, our imperfections and our vulnerabilities are what lets the light in. Vulnerability is a precondition to intimacy.

And creating and writing and blogging and publishing is intimate, especially when your life is your material.

And so the word cleavage also refers to me. (Perhaps you’ve noticed.) Cleavage refers to my spectacular rack – 36H for hawt, although the intention of Danielle LaPorte’s branding/biz question, What do people notice about you, comment on? may not have been this literal, alas –  and to my methodology: my writing is embodied. My life is my material.

Witness: this picture.

The ring on the necklace hanging around my neck is a wedding ring. I found it in my bed.

It’s not my wedding ring.

That’s a good place to start a story, yes?

That’s cleavage. That’s real life. That’s my life.

And hey, if  it was good enough for Anais Nin, it’s good enough for me.

Anais Nin has sometimes been criticized for being a “diarist” rather than a “real” writer (who of course would have published and been famed for fiction not diaries, donchaknow) and I think people – especially women – who publish on blogs face the same perception that their work isn’t serious, consequential, or art.

Anais Nin would have rocked the blog.

IF she had traded transcontinental affairs and bigamy to move to the suburbs and gain baby weight that is now school-age.

Which brings me to the single most inspiring, creativity-enabling resource that I can imagine and that is always in short supply:

CHILDCARE

 

A moment of silence and some white space and fervent thankful prayers in honour of childcare and caregivers.

Amen.

There is, of course, both a congruity and a fundamental tension with being a mama and being a writer.

Congruence: Why for so long “artist” meant “male” mystifies me because it’s such an essentially feminine enterprise. Writing, like birth, is an act of creation. Sometimes the little rug-rats even inspire a piece or two or an entire oeuvre or the best story I’ve ever written.

Tension: Alice Munro has written and spoken about writing during naptimes and though she wrote more lyrically and urgently and successfully crafted some of the best stories I’ve ever read during those snatched moments while the kids slept, I can sum up her message in a word: FRUSTRATING.

Being a writer and a mama is a study in conflicting priorities and loyalties.

Which gets my undivided time and attention?

Neither.

This is not ideal.

And that’s the fundamental truth that writers, painters, artist, entrepreneurs, provocateurs, adults, you must come to terms with: the conditions for creativity will never be ideal.

The Prince by Machiavelli, The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, Justine by The Marquis de Sade: all of these books were written in prison, where, one assumes, the author’s conditions were not ideal.

And then there was Jane Austen, who wrote all of her novels in the middle of a sitting room of a tiny cottage she shared with her mother and sister while visitors came and went and came and went and came and went. Legend has it that she never oiled the parlour door so she’d be alerted by the squeak that someone was coming and could put away her papers. Her scribblings. The ones that would later be celebrated as masterpieces.

(I was tempted to tie Jane Austen to the imprisoned male authors by saying she wrote in kind of a prison too, a domestic prison, but that doesn’t feel authentic to me, it feels like bowing to the patriarchy. Domesticity and the intimate provinces where women have traditionally reigned are not prisons unless that’s the only place we’re allowed to be.)

I digress.

My point: conditions will never be ideal. We must learn to create in the midst of the mess, in the midst of frustration, divided attentions, tension. We must learn to carry the tension.

And so I’m inspired by this motherhood gig and surrendering to it and my reality has improved my writing. Being a mama has not made me a better person, it has made me a bigger person, because I’ve grown to accommodate mixed feelings. That’s what parenting is: profound love and absolute frustration…simultaneously. It’s like being both of these little girls at the same time.

Sophie celebrating her first day of school. Lola grieving it.

Having the capacity to hold those mixed feelings, to carry the tension, makes my writing more evocative.

And emotional tension and mixed emotions is a recipe for authentic, provocative writing that feels real rather than writerly.  It’s like an ice cream dessert I had once at a spa: vanilla ice cream, fresh strawberries, cracked black pepper.  Cream, sweet, and heat.  It works on the plate and it works on the page.

That’s the recipe I teach and the one I follow in my writing. Contrast, mixed feelings, carrying the tension. That’s Leonard Cohen’s cracks and offerings, Tupac Shakur’s rose in the concrete, and my Cleavage.

And so if you’re reallytrulymadlydeeply (the way I say it, it’s one word) trying to absorb and believe the gorgeous message circulating out there in the world, the one insisting you are not broken, you do not need to be fixed (thank you Patti Digh for articulating it so compassionately and powerfully) but feel like maybe something’s wrong with you because you can’t quite believe it…

…then please believe this: cracked isn’t broken. Cracks are lines of experience, the lines that shape us, the lines we draw, the lines we write. Cracks in the sidewalk are where the roses grow and cracks in everything are how the light gets in. Cracks are cleavage and cleavage is beautiful.

Show us your cleavage.

March 8, 2012 | filed under: Meaning, The Unsexy Stories, Work, write me i'm yours | tweet it, baby

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