Wraith

Dreams are anything but sweet these days. No sugar plums in sight. The wee hours of every morning arrive in the same way for me:  The hazy recollection of a business presentation in a perpetual state of reform. The message we need to convey is always just out of reach. I’m searching for the right words.  As my consciousness rises, the criticality of this work plunges. Tell me again why we need to communicate this information?  Haven’t we been here before?  What feels like non-fiction in this nightmare becomes fiction as I wake. And yet, there’s no relief because there’s something I’m trying to solve for. I know it.

It’s all about him.  He needs something and I don’t know what it is.  I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know either.  But it consumes him. It drives him, this quest for the missing piece to the puzzle of himself, the one that will allow him to love who he is, to shape who he becomes.  In order to find it he’s willing to break my rules.  In the process he’s nearly broken me.

I’m thinking of my favorite line from Annie Proulx’s short story “Brokeback Mountain”:  “If you can’t fix it, you got a stand it.”  My head tells me I can’t fix him.  My heart tells me to be for him the one who stands him.  But in my brokenness, I can’t see how it’s possible to give him the love he desperately needs because I’m caught up in my need to exert my authority, to call out every infraction of the rules, every act of defiance in vain attempts to salvage my own dignity.

This is where it gets hard.  In order to love him completely, to give him exactly what he needs from me, I need to stop thinking about myself.  My demands for respect and obedience not only weaken me, but act as the bellows fueling the fire of shame and disappointment that’s already raging in his soul. When I put my pride on the shelf, I’m able to clearly see that yes, in fact, he knows everything I’m saying is true. I’m able to see how much he is hurting. When I suppress the need to let him know I know, those flames he’s unable to reconcile in himself die back to smoldering.

While I’ve spent years trying to solve for him, to head him off at the pass, we’re at the crossroads anyway.  Here my power is in being wordlessly watchful; my weapon is love. By invoking some selective aphony, I’m able to foster euphony. And it is possible to love and maintain my dignity at the same time. It’s possible to stand it.

As we move into the holidays, it’s in heavenly peace that I should be sleeping. So I’m emancipating myself from the demons inside me (or trying to anyway) and watching what happens. 

He can only break me if I let him.  

Gramercy

A postcard of a girl perched high on her tip-toes with arms outstretched as if ready for flight, long, blond hair and a cape whipping in the wind stirs me.  Pushing the holiday cards aside, I tell myself I don’t have time for this creative diversion, it should wait until ordinary time, but I can’t help myself.  The caption I see in my head is “sometimes I wish this world didn’t need so much saving.”  My superhero tendencies, blended with the pure exhaustion I feel over some of my futile capers means this spark must be stoked to life.

 

I start with pencil on paper and painstakingly line her out.  When I think I’m ready for ink, I find four black pens for varying line width, and go over my graphite.  I’ve captured her, but I’m not satisfied.  Out comes the tracing paper.  Hours slip by like minutes. I lose track of how many times and ways my pens travel over her silhouette.

 

The new wisdom we’re speaking around learning is that the best education comes from failures, although I don’t think this is really news.  Maybe we’re just becoming courageous enough to say it out loud. Asking the right questions, I’m told, is more powerful than having all of the answers.  So if it’s becoming more than okay to try and to fail, to be wrong, why are we still rewarding perfection and being right? 

The best students at the top of the class are the ones who have all of the answers, those who get the perfect papers.  The business leaders deemed most successful have the happiest clients and bring in the most revenue. Yet, when I think about the optimal training ground for any leader, where it is they find their grit, it’s in those challenging places where the unhappy clients live, where growing the business seems impossible, and where sometimes the only resolution is to sever the relationship. It’s where we fall down, pick ourselves up, and keep moving on without any expectation of ever seeing a reward.

In a world filled with opportunities to start over, to correct an error, right a wrong, to ask forgiveness, I wish the shroud of unspoken aversion around admitting mistakes and imperfection would fall away, so that we all can feel the freedom and relief that comes with accessing the escape hatch into next time. Instead, our kids still feel really vulnerable admitting to a bad grade, adults fear for their jobs acknowledging bad outcomes in the workplace and lots of us agonize over admitting shortcomings to those we love.

Me, I don’t know who I am without second chances, the opportunity to trace over those same lines again and again until I get it right, or right enough.  Without the option to try again, I wouldn’t be living the life I’m living today.  I’ve experienced failures in every possible arena and I’m still standing, poised for flight.

And so on this feast of giving thanks, I’m grateful that every minute of every day offers the opportunity to learn from each step I take to get me to where I stand.  I’m grateful that my flaws can be forgiven, that my course can be corrected, that my actions can be amended.  Because when there are second, third . . . hundredth chances, we’re free to take the risks we need to in order to fully live.

She’s still not perfect, my girl of the flowing curls and flapping cape.  And she never will be, no matter how many times I draw her. But with every refinement, I become a better artist.  I become a better me.  For this I am grateful.

Tautology

His sister’s weekend visit home from college spurns a conversation about ruling the roost; she’s here as regent while her parents are out of town.  Although he’s bemoaning this injustice, it’s acknowledged her power has not gone to her head, far from it.  We laugh that I’m the monarch of my castle and while he thinks he’s witty suggesting “Bloody Mary”, we all know my tactics bear no resemblance to those of the 16^th century queen who attempted to return England to Roman Catholicism by brute force.

I’ve been the controlling parent, attempting to will children into good behavior with yelling and might. And I’ve seen about as much success as “Bloody Mary”.  This causes me to realize, many years ago now, that I’d better work on my relationships instead. While influence isn’t necessarily the fastest route to change, it’s certainly the most sustainable. And you can’t influence anybody without a good connection.

Those of us managing by influence need a tremendous amount of confidence, patience and faith. Progress is slow.  You become tired of the sound of your own voice, repeating recurring themes in slightly different terms, desperately hoping the right combination of words will intersect the maturation curve of the brain at precisely the point where something, anything, can finally sink in.

 

I have accepted, become comfortable even, with this waiting game when it comes to my parenting, so it surprises me to realize that I lack the same level of assurance at the office. A wise executive reminds us that when it comes to change we must tell the same story over and over again, and when we literally can’t stand the sound of our own voices, that’s when we know we’ve only started saying enough. I know this to be true, yet I’ve been walking around for months assuming no one is listening.

This week I notice a subtle shift, easy to miss if not for the fact that with two teenagers I’m attuned to small victories.  People are beginning to see the changes we need to make, the very ones I’ve been touting for some time now.  But it’s not happening in the way I thought it would.  I start asking questions, expecting that I will receive answers. But these are difficult issues; the ones that make others feel vulnerable, so they go unaddressed.  Only I know in my heart we need to find the courage to speak the answers or the project will fail, so I continue asking.  This makes it okay for others to start questioning, too. And so they do.  No one needs to burst out with a proclamation that I’m right.  Instead, I find us in a groundswell.  It’s the last thing I expect; it’s the best thing.

 

Some might say I need to make sure everyone knows this swell started with me, that I need to get credit for this change.  I don’t need to be “Bloody Mary”. The team all moving in the same direction on their own accord is far more powerful than anything I could ever achieve on my own.  Recognition for a single act is nothing more than a split second in the sun. I’ll gladly take apperception, instead.  I’m forever in the sun, basking in the understanding that I possess the ability to ignite undulation that can change the world.

Influence works in mysterious ways. If you believe it in your soul, never stop speaking it.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”  -- Soren Kierkegaard

Gynarchy

“You’re not a princess.  But you can still rule the world."   I come across this marketing campaign for Mercy Academy, an all-girls high school in Louisville, KY and I am blown away. I subscribe to the power these schools possess to engage and encourage girls to achieve without the distraction of boys in the classroom.  That a school would take it a step further embarking on such ambitious messaging to attract their target audience makes me believe that just when I think we’re stalled, it’s clear the world is in fact changing.

The idea that there is a place where girls are guided at such a very young and formative age to write their own life stories is incredibly uplifting and hopeful. I grow up in the generation where girls are fully supported and encouraged to go to college, yet still feel compelled to find my prince so I can assume a traditional role.   Although I am educating myself and starting a career, I presume this is meant to be a fallback plan, in the event Prince Charming gets detained. Of course I will give this all up to care for my family. It never occurs to me that my screenplay isn’t original; I don’t really notice that I am doing little more than adapting someone else’s tired material. 

 

Circumstance causes me to hang on to my career, even in those years where beautiful, happy cherub-like babies and toddlers with sweet, high-pitched, wonder-filled voices pull on me like a kedge. Eventually I tear up the manuscript and put the pen in my own hand.  I think I am squarely at the helm.  And then I see this campaign, meant for girls who won’t know the kind of wisdom I possess for decades, and I still feel like somewhere there is a ghost writer redacting my story.

Yearnings for my prince are palpitant when I think about following my dreams of entrepreneurism as a writer, an artist or a coach.  In spite of building a really successful career entirely on my own, what keeps me from taking this momentous risk is this inbred belief I can’t seem to shake:  In the event I fail, I’ll need my prince to rescue me. It’s completely illogical, really.  Men, even sole breadwinners, take these risks all the time.  Why do I still think, in my fiftieth year on this planet, that, as a woman, I’m not capable of taking this step on my own?

We need to write princes into our lives for the right reasons.  From a practicality standpoint, an open wallet and insurance coverage come in handy when a start-up struggles to net enough income to make ends meet.  But really, I think that’s my own lame excuse.  I’m a savvy businesswoman.  If I want to do this, I’ll protect myself from financial risk and have my own back-up plan until I’m on my feet.  I think I’m really looking for a whole different kind of prince; the one who is excited to see me pursue my dreams, the one who will do whatever I need to help me get there, the one who’s fiercely proud when I succeed. 

My hope is that by empowering girls to write their own stories, to be more than princesses, they come to know themselves and what it is they want out of life. If they feel confident enough to pursue their dreams, and a prince is in their story, they’ll approach finding him differently, too. Let’s face it, without a strong sense of self, choosing the right prince defaults to nothing more than luck.  We need our girls to know who they are, what they need and how to ask for it, so their relationships grow and move forward.  The princes these girls write into their life stories don’t attempt to alter our girls to fit their lives, but live the sacrifice and compromise that allows them both to flourish.

 

“Be more than a princess” means our girls aren’t limiting themselves for fear they’ll need a rescue, they’re learning they are entitled to say out loud what they want and need for themselves and are capable of achieving it. 

Princes, be ready.

There’s been quite a bit of press about Mercy Academy in the last week, my favorites are here:  Today and Mashable and Huffington Post 

Genethliac

We are born barely 13 months apart.  Each year our grandmother buys us the same gift.  The thinking, I’m told, is that we are so close in age treating us differently could cause anarchy. Since my birthday comes first, she spends the next three weeks knowing what will be inside her wrappings.  I can’t recall if the twenty-three days that follow are experienced anticlimactically or anticipatorily.  I guess it depends on the gift.

Growing up we don’t get along very well.  Maybe we are in competition and I just don’t know it?  She is in the popular crowd.  She has lots of friends. She has boyfriends in high school and goes to dances.  I’m jealous.  I’m furious. She “borrows” my things and then carelessly loans them to friends who never seem to be able to return them.  To this day I’m still slightly bitter about Mary Lawrence and my “Eight is Enough” book.  I never did get it back.

Somewhere after high school there is a shift.  I realize that in all of those contentious years in a shared bedroom she’s been hewed and honed into my rock.  It becomes evident we are more alike than we are different. She influences and inspires.  I think I don’t want children until I meet her firstborn.

There are few who I admire and respect more. She’s a lodestar, but in a different way than I am. She’s always been very clear about the family life that she wants, and every day she creates exactly that.  From my perspective she’s built the best nest. Love lives in every corner and crevice of her home; it emanates from the chimney on a cold winter morning, probably even out of the dryer vent. Walking through the front door I’m welcomed with open arms, walking out I’m told I can never leave.

We all carry crosses, but few as visibly and gracefully as she carries hers.  She talks of her challenges and how they’ve made her a better person, shown her what’s inside and given her the opportunity to put it out there in the world in ways she’d never thought possible. She is grounded in acceptance of what comes to her, and understands that little is truly in our control. She turns tribulation into triumph.  She makes it look easy.

And she’s here to walk beside me as I carry my own cross, reminding me that even when I am exhausted I am tough enough.  When my choices are hard or unpopular she affirms for me what I know in my heart to be true and gives me the strength to keep moving forward.  She weeps with me when the road seems impossible to travel.  Tear-stained pages are evidence that my boys take more than a cursory glance at the good book she’s gifted them.  She thinks she doesn’t make a difference.  I know she does. 

As a kid I resent “sharing” my gift with her; it seems less special knowing she'll receive the same thing too.  Today I know that she is the gift.  She shows up on my doorstep with a warm pot of homemade soup and a present for this birthday I’m too preoccupied to celebrate.  I’m so fortunate the stars aligned all those years ago, bonding us to each other for a lifetime. Somehow it feels like her timing is just right.

Shavath

In a moment of boldness I say what needs to be said, and instantaneously ruffle some feathers.  I’m put on the spot, not expecting to deliver this message at this time, in this forum, but this doesn’t mean I regret my words. The ripple effect is pretty significant, and I now find myself preparing to facilitate a follow-up meeting that I fully expect to be contentious.  Sometimes I wonder how I get myself in these places, and how to feel good when the house stops spinning, landing with a thud.

 

Today is my Sabbath.  Technically, I’m a day late, but finding that the modern world makes it nearly impossible to sit still on Saturday, I choose the quieter Sunday. I’m sure devout Christians will tell me I don’t get to make that choice, but I’m attempting to embrace  the concept which feels like a way to bring balance, something desperately needed in my life.  Waffling, I’m tempted to start work on my presentation, thinking confidence lives in excessive preparation. But I decide that instead of toiling away on the one day a week I’m dedicating to me, I can honor my Sabbath by preparing my soul, using this day of rest to get at the root of the fear this meeting evokes in me.

 

Did I bring controversial perspective to the table that the group as a whole had not heard before?  Yes.  Did I raise issues that will cause others to believe they need to defend?  Yes.  Is this information coming to light at a time when we’re feeling extremely pressured to deliver a product that’s already been designed?   Have we been stuck in a holding pattern under cover of these misgivings?  Yes and yes. Will an open discussion about this lead to alignment and a path forward?  Yes.  Okay, so what am I afraid of?

 

The list feels endless.  Here are some of the questions, fair or not, the Greek chorus in my head is asking:  This message needed to make it to the broader group sooner, why has it taken you so long to get the right attention on this, to realize the team isn’t collaborating?  Why aren’t you capable of single-handedly getting the alignment we need to move forward?  Maybe you are wrong for the job if you need to bring all of these reinforcements in to be heard?  They shoot the messenger, don’t they? 

The vast number of talented writers peppering my Sunday reading tell me that all of the self-deprecation I am entertaining in my head is groundless.   In "The First Step to Being Powerful" by Nilofer Merchant, I’m reminded (again) that I never speak to others the way I speak to myself.  "What No Means"  according to Seth Godin is not that people hate me, but more likely they don’t understand the issue as well as I do and are busy combatting their own internal fearmongers.  I extrapolate from Stacy Janicki's post for Fast Company that by nature I am a collaborative worker, so imbued that I expect it from others to a fault, meaning I sometimes miss that this is not second nature to all.  Instead of thinking of collaboration as a woman’s quality and apologizing for it, I need to own it and show others this mode of operation because it’s so valued in today’s connection economy.

My favorite, by far, is this from Basil King:  “Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.”  I’m not in front of the heavy hitters next week as punishment for the crime of boldness and outing the issues, I’ve earned a moment of their valuable time because I’ve identified a show-stopper that only they are capable of resolving.  That’s quite a different feeling, which puts me in a different state of mind.

By honoring my Sabbath, I find some inner peace. On this day of rest, which could easily feel selfish, like I am its sole beneficiary, I accomplish the most important task of all.  Through investing time in me, I reassure myself that I am enough, and all I’ll ever need to make a difference.

“Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” – Goethe

Aphonic

If the blanket e-mail asks ten people to reply, I have a trigger finger on the send key. I am a first responder.  I can’t help myself.  I like having the answers.  I used to think this made me really smart.  Now I’m finding that sometimes it’s better not to respond.  Like when the questions are really complex and I realize I can’t address them immediately; I need others to weigh in.  Or when the questions are loaded, and watching others flail, I am thankful to be savvy enough to know to keep quiet.

Sometimes the questions at hand are beyond our powers of solvability.  Sometimes no matter how many possible solutions we throw at a problem, they don’t stick because others have ultimate accountability. But zipping our lips and watching what unfolds can be interpreted as disinterest, disengagement, despondency or defeat.  Isn’t it always better to expend some energy doing something, anything, than sitting back and doing nothing? 

Reading Phil Jackson’s book about coaching professional basketball players to wild success in “Eleven Rings”, I’m all about the Zen teachings he employs to love groups of individuals into playing as teams. He quotes Stephen Mitchell’s observation:  “Non-action:  The purest and most effective form of action.”  Wow!  That’s rich.

 

Sometimes the answer is in watching things play out, in trusting that those you’re coaching have absorbed your teachings and can get to the answer on their own.  You’re not in the game.  You have no choice but to watch others play it.

The trick is in keeping calm on the sidelines. If we let people, they’ll transfer their feelings of disquietude to us.  They’ll make us feel like maybe we should be doing something even though we know it’s not ours to do. And then not only are we frustrated that we can’t make things happen, but we feel like maybe we are somehow less because of it.

Phil Jackson says “Leadership is not about forcing your will on others.  It’s about mastering the art of letting go.”  I say you don’t have to accept the feelings others attempt to transfer.  Maybe you want to get comfortable being quiet.   

Eleutheromania

We all want it in some way, shape or form.  Many of us are fortunate enough to be born into it.  Some of us will argue incessantly that we’re entitled to it.  Others wake up to discover a yearning for it living, latent, inside. Me, I feel it in a restlessness that I’ve learned is telling me I’m not yet where I need to be, what I’m seeking is out there; I should be willing to move on, trusting I’ll find it.  While it manifests itself differently in each of us, its tug is impossible to deny.

Freedom, bestowed upon us is a gift.  We appreciate this when we look around the globe at the injustice and oppression in many places in our world.  Those who work jobs where new ideas and ways of getting it done are welcomed and encouraged understand this, as do those of us who’ve found our way out of suffocating, unfulfilling relationships. It’s what we want desperately for our teenagers to appreciate as well, as they wrestle out of our clutches anxious and impatient to own their life stories.

 

Not only is freedom itself a gift, but so is the intense and irresistible desire of wanting its absence creates.  Like pain, the minute we feel tethered, we know something is not right:  I’m not where I need to be. Maybe I’ve veered off my path?

 

A wish to be free means it’s time to look at the big picture again, to decide if where you are today will get you to where you want to be tomorrow.

Sometimes it’s enough to do an evaluation.  Many times over the course of my career I’ve been advised to look outside when frustrations in my current role besieged me.  Just looking at other options is often enough to suss, affirming where I am today is the right place.  Turbidity quells, the bight loosens.

I’ve been a free spirit my entire life, before I even knew it myself.  It was in my choice of the big, public high school over the small parochial my siblings attended, in my determination to move out on my own with an annual salary of $14,000 in 1987, in the way I leapt at the chance to live in California in my twenties.  

While responsibility for others colors the risk-taking in my world today, friends still immediately see the gypsy in me; some are convinced I should be dating a hippie.  Knowing that this is who I am helps me to work with my own restlessness, listening intently to what it’s trying to tell me instead of agonizing over why it’s there.  It helps me understand my oldest, as well.  He’s a nomad, too.  And so now I’m teaching him how to manage, not suppress his inner gypsy.

Just the other night, in my “bohemian go-go” costume at a 70’s party held at a friend’s impeccably well-preserved 70’s home, I’m intrigued by the enormous bell tower on his balcony.  Five huge, white bells suspended high in the sky with thick ropes begging to be tugged.  It’s 10PM, yet when another beckons me to hang on the ropes with him, clanging those bells with abandon, I can’t say no.  Janis Joplin’s hippie ballad rings true:  “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Follow your calling where it takes you, in the moment and for the long haul.  Learn from the experiences your freedom affords you. Nurture wanderlust in those you love because you know how cherished it is in your own soul.