Eos

It’s one of the few movies I’ve watched more than once.  I’ve sat through enough viewings to happily hum along with a comfortable familiarity, but not too many that I can’t still be surprised when words or nuances of the storyline I’d swear I never heard before come brilliantly to life.  We happened upon “Four Weddings and a Funeral” on Starz Encore (a channel we didn’t even know we had) and sat fixated in a holiday haze watching Hugh Grant, once again, be the bumbling, can’t get out of his own way, down on his luck yet always manages to win the beautiful girl in the end with his English charm hero he played to perfection in many movies of a similar genre two decades ago.

 

What was new to me this time through the movie reel was the poignant recitation of a W.H. Auden poem, “Funeral Blues”, by one of the characters mourning the sudden death of his life partner.  Hugh Grant and his close-knit gaggle of loveable misfits walk away surprisingly struck by the depth of feelings this man held for the deceased, so caught up in their own lovelornness they had hardly noticed that two among them were practically married.

 

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

--W.H. Auden, excerpt from “Funeral Blues”

I caught a rerun of NPR’s Ted Radio Hour this week; musician Sting talking about the writer’s block he suffered at a low point during his magnificent career of one pop hit after another.  What finally broke it, he says, was moving his focus away from himself and on to others.  He made a conscious choice to stop trying to write about himself, finding inspiration when he mustered the courage to look to his roots and contemplate the so-called ordinary people he grew up with, a chapter of his life he’d tried so feverishly to shake off in the name of stardom.  Twenty songs poured out of him to make the Broadway show “The Last Ship.”

A beautiful portrait of a long-lost friend on social media with the hash tag #cancersucks stirs up a torrent of emotions inside me.  Among them, guilt for failing over the last few years to pick up the thread of a lifeline I held to so tightly when she and I were in the same place, in another time.  “She didn’t need you until now,” is his soothing refrain when I admit my shame for letting her go, and my fervent desire to reconnect.

As 2019 comes to a close, every avenue of life is compiling little vignettes bearing the impossible burden of tying all the year represents into a nice neat bow to bring closure to what is, in reality, a mercifully fluid, open-ended opportunity to fall down, dust ourselves off, and get back up again to start anew, no matter what the date on the calendar says.  We don’t need to wait for January 1^st for our fresh start.  We get one every time we rub the sleep out of our eyes, blessed with the miracle of waking to another dawn.

Pang

After it happened, I was moving slowly anyway. So, I deliberately hung out in the locker room knowing she would eventually come in to rinse off and grab her stuff.  I was determined to confide in her and see what she had to say. A major muscle in my back was seizing. Unfortunately, I knew this drill; I sought from her an explanation of its root cause and cleaved to the idea of a cure.

Being an instructor and an avid yogi herself, not only was she knowledgeable about the tantrum my muscle was throwing, she periodically found herself in the very same clutches, and shared the physical therapy no muscle relaxant-prescribing doctor would ever suggest. But more than anything she reassured me I had not injured myself, and that in her experience an angry muscle was a sign she was on the verge of a breakthrough, able to express a posture at a new level once the pain subsided. While I left the studio in physical misery, hope sprouted in my heart.

“Growing pains” is actually a thing for some children who complain of aching legs just prior to a growth spurt. I put some thought to this idea in the context of yoga and decided quickly it makes a bunch of sense. The concept is ubiquitous, but we’re so afraid of hurting, we often fail to acknowledge or accept the role pain plays in activating growth.

 

Every time I transition into a new role at work, I can count on an awkward block of agony where I question my capabilities and struggle to retrieve the confidence so accessible when I was at my peak doing the job I just vacated in the name of career growth. Even in the artistic world, so many creatives will tell you their first work was crap. Amazing art or writing belongs to those who put in the work every day to hone their skills, the ones who instead of giving up keep practicing and turning out the mediocre until one day there is a body of work that when presented together communicates a marked and almost miraculous evolution. I need only to look at my collection of handmade holiday cards dating back to the turn of the millennium for proof.

But, oh, the pain!  When your back, or your heart, or your mind, or your pride, or your grief aches so profusely and incessantly, how are you ever expected to keep going? For those of us lucky enough (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it) to have been here before, we know that this too shall pass.  For everything else, it’s probably a little bit of faith and trust.

I will say that nursing my screaming back was much easier to manage now that I was armed with the good counsel of my trusted yoga teacher. I carried out her prescription of backward bends religiously, and true to her word the non-negotiable recovery time of two weeks I had experienced in the past was reduced to a mere two days.  I was back in yoga class by the end of the week, kicking out my leg and sustaining the hold in standing head to knee pose for the first time in five years of practice.

It’s a routine playing out repeatedly in life. As I heard myself confidently presenting a recent success story to a group of colleagues today, and letting the dissenting opinion wash off my back, I realized I am over the hump once again of crippling self-doubt and jumbled nerves threatening to hold me at bay just before I make the leap to the new level of leadership I need to embrace.

As we come out of the backward bend that is camel pose, the instructor will often say if you feel a little sick or uncomfortable, you’re doing it right. We probably don’t spend enough time telling ourselves or each other those feelings are normal. Imagine life if we did.

Ditch

I count four white toilets as I drive through the neighborhood. Our normally neat street is lined with old sofas, appliances and broken children’s toys stacked at the curb. Tomorrow is Community Clean-Up Day, a moment of amnesty for those wishing to toss out ugly, unwieldy, unwanted trash at no charge. And we know a few things about trash.

Renovating a home while living in it propels the occupants into an iterative cycle of assessment.  Items are packed up and forgotten, unpacked for short term use, and then packed up again as spaces are systematically taken down to the studs and rebuilt. Each phase presents an opportunity to re-evaluate the same item, to decide if you really need that table lamp with the misshapen shade or the juicer that’s never been out of the box. While I purge a fair amount, like many of us, I find parting to be sweet sorrow, and therefore I retain far more than I really need.

 

My appraisal process is suspect. Sadly, the obvious questions carry the least weight and are the last to get asked:  Does this fit me?  When was the last time I used this?   The deciding factors generally revolve around far less practical criteria:  Can I see myself using this sometime in the future?  Does this have sentimental value?  Is this beautifully designed or constructed?  Does this appeal to my senses?

 

Maybe the most valuable question of all is one I’m not asking:  Does this still serve me?

It’s a philosophy my favorite yoga instructor writes about regularly, connecting a yoga practice to the journey of finding your true self. As she inspires us to go after the lives we dream of living, she asks us to consider what behaviors, activities, and people in our lives are no longer serving the person we are becoming. I’ve considered this, and admittedly been shallow in my approach.  I identify what it is I need to step away from, but never dive into why I need to step away from it.

 

I’ve glossed over what it means to hold on to what no longer serves me.  The idea that my habits, my routines, the people I’ve always hung out with, the soundtrack that plays in my head could be a security blanket, fueling my fear of the unknown and providing the excuse I need to stay put instead of moving forward.

I see clients demonstrate this all the time:  Even though they’ve hired us to do the bulk of the work for them, they continue to do their jobs in the same way they always have, creating redundancy and confusion instead of moving into different and more interesting roles.

I start to think about my own behavior.  As the parent of grown children, I find myself wanting to step into their lives in inappropriate ways, tempted to treat them as kids rather than adults who need something very different from me now.  And as a partner, I’m known to choose lecturing (which always gets me in trouble) when what’s desired is listening.

The breakthrough for me in all of this is that I have held steadfast to constructs about life that no longer serve me. Somehow being scolded as a child that I should “know better” manifested into a belief that anything less than omniscience is unacceptable. The quintessential rule-follower and teacher’s pet still believes her place in any hierarchy requires obsequious behavior.

As we move into the final stages of construction on this house, less and less of what I was certain I needed to bring with me feels like it has a place in this new space. I could hold on for nostalgia’s sake, or for pride, or to make a statement about independence, but that’s not what I’m choosing to do with this next phase of life.  I’m going to take advantage of Community Clean-Up Day and leave what doesn’t serve me at the curb.

Beset

“Ugh.  I need it,” is her response when I text her on Friday afternoon to ask if she wants to get a margarita.  I do, too.  If for no other reason than to knock down a little hair of the dog, salve for the vulnerability hangover I’ve been nursing all week.

She meets me at the table outdoors.  I’m salivating at the chance to unload my anxiety on her, only to discover her world has turned upside down due to the notice she received from her company earlier in the week.  She’s been unhappy in her situation for a while now, perhaps the victim of one of Corporate America’s most commonplace and deadly bait and switch tactics:  A new manager.  It’s all done with the best of intentions; the company reorganizes or is sold, and suddenly the leader you had an amazing connection with is in another job, and her replacement is not a match.

Over cucumber margaritas we discover our heads have been pounding from the same malady:  We’ve acted on the compulsion to speak a dissenting opinion to people we believe have power over us.  The choices seem impossible.  We agree our younger selves would have followed grudgingly, rendering ourselves helpless victims, stripped of empowerment or flat out ignored.  We’d probably complain to our friends, not realizing respect for leadership is eroding, and with it sucking all the joy out of a role we once coveted.  Our older selves are a different story.  Years of experience in our businesses and the business of life breed self-confidence and self-security, the ingredients in the shot of courage we slam. We challenge the situation, ask why, maintain our integrity at all costs; we say no when yes is the safer answer. We can’t stay quiet if we try, because following blindly or hitting the mute button when there’s an opening to be heard goes against the beings we’ve grown into.

But there’s no avoiding the hangover. Brene Brown, the world-famous researcher of shame and self-worth coined the term “vulnerability hangover”, the feeling of apprehension laced with a pinch of shame washing over us when we stretch outside of our comfort zone daring to express a controversial, new or dissident opinion to the world.

As we talk through our situations, we wonder how much honesty is too much?  When do we need to share less of ourselves in the name of self-preservation?  I can’t answer the question over one drink on a hot, humid, sunny afternoon, but upon further review I’ll say power raises the stakes. When we’re dealing with people in power, the shot of courage we take before saying our piece needs to be potent because the risk of losing what matters to us is real, making the hangover especially crippling.  It’s so much easier to put ourselves out there in places where we feel safe.

Eventually all hangovers dissipate, the pounding stops, our minds ease.  We’re hydrated by the pat on the back from a friend proud of the courage we displayed.  Someone who heard us simply agrees with our position. Or we acknowledge there was no way we were not saying what we said, regardless of the outcome.

The best advice I’ve come across this week was shared in the hot room at yoga.  If we want our minds to be at ease, we need to be in the present.  Worrying about the future and replaying the past can pitch us into turmoil. Instead of ruminating on all that was said in your moment of vulnerability, take a minute to find a safe place to speak your fears (maybe over a margarita with a friend), and let the present move you on.   

Compass

He texts me to find out if I’m spending the afternoon in my art studio. When he discovers I am, he asks if he and the baby can come over and hang out.  Mama is enjoying a change of scenery, putting in a few hours at a part-time job. An hour later he shows up with a backpack slung over his shoulder (the new, hip diaper bag) and his precious cargo buried under blankets in the basket he’s ejected from its base, anchored in the car for safe travel. He looks exhausted, admitting this is the first time he’s spent an entire day alone caring for his child.

It’s tender and sweet and endearing. He’s not complaining by any stretch. It’s more like he’s shell-shocked, in the way your new first-grader looks when he comes home on Day One and falls asleep at the dinner table, overwhelmed by the havoc paying rapt attention and following new rules wrecks on a system conditioned to move at a much less demanding and looser pace.

My son just turned 23, an age I considered far too young for myself to be a parent.  But when I compare him to my own father, who was just 25 when I was born, I begin to realize he’s not too young to find his way.  Sure, the world is dramatically different today. Everything costs more, the pull of wanting more and living beyond your means is more persistent and prevalent than ever. We’re a conflicted nation, mortally afraid of robots or immigrants stealing our means to make a living. And what I find most sad, the puzzle pieces of humanity lay in a jumbled pile, dormant on the table of our society:  The perpetual, unfounded fear of our differences preventing us from picking up the unique pieces and fitting them together to make an unstoppable whole.

But when I look back to the mid-1960’s when my own father was launched into parenthood, our country was just as violently divided and volatile as it is today, maybe even more so.  The Vietnam war pitted Americans against each other; the weapons of the civil rights battle reduced to spitting on our fellow humans and assassinating public figures who presented the means and the passion to make change.

 
What’s been comforting and stable for me across these four generations is our family values.  I celebrate the joy I see in my son’s heart as he drinks in all being a father means to him.  I see him yearning to create the family he pictures in his mind’s eye.  It’s not lost on me that he has aching gaps from his own childhood he’s determined to fill.  Don’t we all?  I admire his conviction in himself to be the change he wants to see in his world.

And I’m grateful for all my father was able to teach me. We single mothers like to claim we can do it all ourselves.  It makes us feel better for the impossible choice we make when we concede to divorce and allows us to forgive ourselves just a tiny bit for not being up to the challenge of co-parenting.My father gave me a far richer and diverse point of view to pass on. 

Even though he’s less than a year into this, I catch glimpses of my own father in my son.  The way he has embraced his responsibility to support his family, improving his own position with a new job with benefits.  The moves he’s made to nest in a safe and healthy neighborhood.  The games he plays to make his baby smile and laugh.  The way he glows with pride when he looks at his child.

Happy Father’s Day to the new father I carried, bore and raised, and to the father who raised me.  In a world where very little is certain, I’m certain fathers pass a steady guiding light down through the generations, a light that’s solidly anchored in our souls, the one that tells us we have it within ourselves to find the way. 

     

Besotted

Sauntering down the hallway in a simple black cocktail dress, I plant myself in front of the TV he’s watching and ask what he thinks.  All this primping, packing and parading of fashion is an undertaking in itself, often requiring a complete inventory of the closet to suss the proper clothing:   Those pieces appearing professional yet casual, stylish yet comfortable, somehow insulating me inside air conditioned spaces while at the same time suitable in the sunshine and warmth outside; the ones that (wishfully) shave a few pounds and a few years off this vessel carrying me around.   It’s a tall order and my closet usually fails me, meaning if time allows I’ll make a half-hearted attempt to acquire some resort wear guaranteed to gather dust in my closet after the trip.  I’m curating my wardrobe for a 3-day business conference in Florida, and I’m exhausted.  

These events are a huge financial investment for my employer, a concentrated time commitment, an overload of opportunities for connection and teeming with more relevant and insightful information than any one human can possibly consume.  We’re in front of everybody who’s anybody in the organization.  Of course, we want to have practiced our elevator pitches and brand statements and be armed with a set of intriguing questions to ask the many new faces we’ll meet.  We need to be personable and witty, engaged but not overly serious, humble while channeling a little hubris, as this is the time to put our greatness on display. The pressure to look your best and be your best from the 6AM 5K run to the wee hours of the morning wherever cocktails are served is palpable. 

I have a love-hate relationship with these events.  I’ve slogged out of many conferences on the last day, feeling like the most plain, average, uninspiring woman on the planet, comparing myself to the beautiful people who have somehow struck exactly the right chord, looking totally comfortable in their chic elegance, while my resort wear hides in my suitcase because I can’t bring myself to don such foreign attire.  Everyone else seems to be in all the right conversations and at complete ease, lost in riveting dialogue with people they barely know.  All this culminates in award winners hailed in tear-jerking videos for not only their flawless work but selfless volunteering and unwavering devotion to their families. 

Oh, the stories I tell myself about not seeking out enough connections, not enticing enough meaningful conversations, not asking enough questions, not staying up late enough to network, or staying up too late and choosing sleep over breakfast in a ballroom with a slew of colleagues.  Everywhere I look there is an opportunity to tell myself I am less than. 

What my experience at these events tells me is if I want to thrive I need to call upon the powerful sense of self-love I’ve been religiously cultivating for the last several years. Working in such an amazing culture of incredibly smart, organized, prepared, thoughtful and caring leaders means there will always be room to doubt myself.  Even though I’ve been strengthening  my self-love muscle for years, it inevitably buckles under the sheer weight of the convergence of so much excellence under a single roof.   So, the question becomes how do I rekindle the romance, remind myself about all there is I love about me so I can ward off the ferocious feelings of inadequacy that threaten to take me down? 

This time I dug deep into my reserves and brought to the forefront me at my very best.  I not only wrote my own story, I told my story, and the dividends I reaped are priceless.  I helped a struggling colleague find her energy reserve to keep going in a tough job.  I used my superpowers of inquisition to facilitate a lively and thoughtful conversation I was asked to moderate.  I listened to an old friend tell the tale of his recent divorce.  I met the families of our award winners and shared my own views about what makes their loved one so special to me.  I spoke out about some behaviors I have observed that run counter to our culture.  I encouraged another to make the very courageous choice to speak up about a colleague in trouble, opening the door to some much-needed help.   I found a deeper clarity of my purpose in this organization and shared it out loud.  Instead of wishing I was more like the others in the room, I owned what makes me different, and in being brave enough to tell my story I was rewarded with respect, even reverence.  

Sitting in my middle seat on the airplane flying home I’m determined to finish this piece and post before this Valentine’s Day comes to a close. There isn’t a better day of the year to reinforce the power of self-love, to recount our own love stories in hopes of inspiring others to give themselves this very special gift.  

I was not the most glamorous, the smartest, the most vocal or most connected person at the conference.  Not only did I skip breakfast one day, I didn’t even sign up for the 5K.  At the end of the day it wasn’t about quantity, it was about quality.  I took risks. I spoke my mind. I wore the black cocktail dress he gave the thumbs up to.  And I didn’t even bother to pack resort wear.  

Positraction

Technically, I’m the mentor, but what I love about these relationships is the moment my group of mentees enquires about what’s happening in my world I don’t hesitate to the turn the tables and ask for their take on a troubling situation that’s hurled me and my car into a ditch. They represent everything a good mentor should:  They’re removed from the organization I’m involved in. My future success doesn’t depend on them in any way, shape, or form.  I can be my most authentic, letting my hair down in its most disheveled, tangled mess with no threat of running into any characters outside this trusted circle in this unpolished, unapologetic state.

 

Each one of the three contributes a sliver of solid perspective, a glimmering nugget which I turn over and over in thoughtful consideration while deciding how I ultimately want to show up. A veritable roadside assistance crew, they are instrumental in helping me put my vehicle back onto the pavement. 

They suggest I keep an open mind, presume the uninvited protagonist entering the pages of my story comes confident in my abilities and ready to advocate. What could happen if I assume her intentions are good?  If I give her the benefit of the doubt, entertain the possibility she might just be a jughead, ignorant or naïve about how she is landing on me.

   

They ask me to consider what a personal win looks like to my new foil. How do I make myself as valuable to her as anyone can in these circumstances?  Could focusing on what makes her tick help me feel more comfortable about my own standing?

Reflecting on their sage advice, it dawns on me I’ve been very myopic, intent on my own insecurities. My old, demonic nemesis, Perfectionism, rearing her ugly head yet again, demanding I shore up every aspect of my responsibilities, admonishing me for any inadequacies, marginalizing the places I shine by intimating they neither matter nor are valued, suggesting my biggest weakness is the only chapter of the story anyone is reading.  Ultimately bolstering the perpetual fear I’m one day away from being put out to pasture.

 

With this clarity I’m able to put into action my mentees’ most powerful message. They reinforce the concept of focusing on my strengths, of doing more of what I do best:  Asking questions to induce her to reflect on how she is showing up, to suss an alternative point of view, to open the lines of communication. “You are the master of these questions,” they tell me.  How do I use this skill to tamp down my own rising resentments and pave a positive experience on the road I’m now traveling as Tonto instead of The Lone Ranger?

The professionals sharing research on people development tell us the data suggests we get far more bang for our buck by ameliorating our strengths instead of trying to improve our weaknesses.  So, it shouldn’t surprise me that when I’m stuck, sending more power to the place where I have the most traction will ultimately catapult me out of the mud.

 

It’s the shining moment in the movie “My Cousin Vinny” when Marissa Tomei, as the glam Italian girlfriend, is on the witness stand using her experience growing up in a family full of mechanics to define the word for Joe Pesci’s bumbling amateur defense attorney, and with it, winning the case for the yutes.

 

And so I’m determined to make it my shining moment, too.  I focus on returning to my bedrock, the dependable and infinite well of my strengths, pressing the accelerator to the floor without letting up.  It may feel like overkill in this moment, but what I know for sure is this extra power is everything my tender, bruised ego needs to burnish in my next chapter, back on solid ground.