Impossible to believe, but here we are in November once again. I always feel introspective this time of year. Maybe because we’re sliding into the holidays and the home stretch of another calendar year. Maybe because I’m thinking about Thanksgiving and all of the many blessings for which I’m ridiculously grateful. Or maybe because my birthday is coming up, and I’m pondering my latest and subsequent trips around the sun.
This past year (42! incredibly!) has been one of transformation for me. I give much of the credit to my dear friend and talented life coach Ronda Stevens, whose message has impacted my life in more ways than I can count. I’d attended her sessions and seminars in the past, with wonderful results. But I’d always managed to slip back into my old habits and negative thought processes. This time was different.
I can say with 100 percent certainty that 2019 was the year I learned to silence my inner critic. I was able to quell the anxiety and panic that had characterized so many of my waking (and non-waking) hours and quiet the internal chatter that made me feel like I was “less than” or lacking in some way. Ronda’s no-BS method of embracing the authentic self and quieting the conditioned (lying) self and its devious ways has shown me how much love I was reluctant to receive. How I’d convinced myself that even the people closest to me didn’t really care about me. How many lies I told myself on a daily basis. Her coaching and guidance also allowed me to tap into my inner dreamer, who’d been pestering me for years to get off my butt and pursue my dream of becoming a certified yoga teacher. And so earlier this summer, that’s exactly what I did.
The gentle nudge that led me to pursue yoga teacher training has become an avalanche of positive life changes. And not just the act of practicing yoga all the time. I drink more water now and eat and prepare more nutritious foods for my family. I go to bed earlier and sleep better throughout the night. I wake up calmer and more refreshed, excited and enthusiastic to start the day–after a cup of coffee, of course! My relationships with my husband and my children has improved. I eliminated daily alcohol use from my life. I’ve started saying “no thanks” to volunteer opportunities that don’t excite me, which has opened to door to other possibilities that light me up inside. Rarely do I get overwhelmed by that “holy crap this is too much life is too hard” feeling of panic that used to drop me to my knees. And now even when I do start to feel like I’m caught on an emotional hamster wheel, I have tools and techniques to calm down and get to the heart of what’s really going on.
One point about tools: Ronda is a big proponent of the Holistic Breakthrough Method. The idea is that when we feel anxious or overwhelmed, or get that sensation that our lives are spinning out of control, we can usually boil it down to some sort of painful feeling — fear, many times, or guilt or shame. By working step-by-step through Ronda’s process of identifying that painful feeling and the false beliefs we associate with it, we can work our way to the truth of the matter and then write out a series of positive steps to solidify that truth. If this sounds like something that would be beneficial in your life, I urge you to check out her website for more information.
Painful feelings. This was a big one for me. And this is MY birthday gift to each of you: Don’t wait until you are almost 43 to learn this! Growing up, I felt that having painful feelings was a sign of weakness, and that reaching out for help meant I was incapable of taking care of myself or couldn’t cut it on my own. I thought stuffing those feelings of inadequacy, shame, regret, pain and disappointment was the way to deal with them, but “stuffing” was all I was doing. There was no processing going on. Eventually, like a pillow crammed too full of stuffing, my negative feelings had no place else to go, and so they started to burst at the seams and spill out the sides. (This spillage takes many forms — anxiety, for one. Numbing with alcohol was a huge one for me. So were snide comments and feelings of resentment, especially toward my husband.) I was filled to the top with toxic emotions: regret, shame, fear, inadequacy, self-hatred, failure, disgust. And I didn’t know how to process any of them.
This is seriously some of the scariest work I have ever had to do.
The secret, my friends, is not to stuff your painful feelings but to run at them — to sprint toward them as hard as you can. And once you are right smack in front of that feeling, whatever it might be, you acknowledge it. You give it a name and confront it head on. And then you find a loved one whom you trust, and you reach out and you ask for support. This is seriously some of the scariest work I have ever had to do. My husband, who has been my rock through this personal endeavor, has witnessed some pretty emotional scenes these last few months. But rather than be embarrassed or ashamed of my tears and outbursts, I’m actually proud of myself for refusing to hold back and allowing those emotions to come to the surface where I can process them and move on.
What does any of this have to do with my writing career? It’s been so long since I’ve had Word Press up and running that I can’t even remember the last time I posted! Quick recap: Last spring, the girls asked me to write a YA novel that they could read, so I started NINE CIRCLES in May and finished it in August. I’m doing a complete re-write of FINDING SETH, which I’ve renamed WHAT LOLA WANTS and am working with a critique group on those edits. At the same time, I’ve been querying LAST DREAM OF MY SOUL since June, with only a handful of full requests so far.
The reason I’m taking the time to outline my personal emotional growth is that it’s helped me to better wrap my head around the complex and infinitely frustrating publishing industry — specifically by identifying the areas in which I have control, and making peace with those in which I have none. I can’t make an agent fall in love with my manuscript, but I sure as hell can do the research, read the Twitter feed hashtags and bust my butt to get my query in front of as many potentially interested professionals as possible. I can also ask for help from my writer friends, critique group and accountability partner to keep me focused and on task, and give me a nudge when I need some encouragement.
Full transparency — that’s another big one for me. Even though I’m a journalist and believe wholeheartedly in telling the truth in all its glory, I’m still pretty good at painting the picture I wish for others to see. I don’t like posting “another agent passed on my full manuscript” or “I’m seriously really bummed that I got three rejections in less than two hours.” (That actually happened in October, BTW.) It’s much easier on my ego to share only the good stuff and gloss over the painful feelings. And then run out for another bottle of wine. But again, that’s nothing more than stuffing emotions into a pillow case. Eventually, it will fill up … and then what?
Earlier this year, when I first started to fully embrace the yoga lifestyle and all its components, ethics and standards, I started to get mad at myself for not doing my teacher training years ago. How much easier would my life have been, if I’d only started sooner? What changes could I have made when the girls were small if I’d done these readings or practiced regular yoga and meditation during their infancy? How much stronger would my marriage be today if I had been a yogi from day one? Would we have needed all that help and support/gone through those struggles if I’d made better choices for myself 15 years ago?
It’s foolish, of course, to get stuck in the “what ifs” and the “if onlys.” So this little scenario has been my first exercise in embracing and trusting the universe — that I’m doing exactly what I’m meant to be doing, exactly when I’m meant to be doing it. Perhaps my heart would not have been open to these teachings, say, five or 10 years ago. Perhaps my spirit wasn’t ready for these lessons or this level of surrender to my higher power. Instead of looking back with wonder and regret, the very valid lesson I’m taking from this experience is that things happen in their own time, for their own reasons. I’m applying that as well to my pursuit of a fiction-writing career.
Somewhere out there is a literary agent who is going to fall in love with my books and get caught up in the intricacies and the ironies and little quirks and nuances of all my plots and characters. And this person is also going to see and understand how to make them better. Together, we are going to revise one of my stories and sell it to a publishing house, which will be the first of many sales of novels I have yet to dream up. But before this love connection comes to fruition, clearly I have more learning to do, more practice to complete. And so I return to my manuscripts, I check in with my accountability partner, I buckle down with my critique group … and all of this I do in full, open view of my loving and supportive friends and family members. Because living a life of full transparency means showing up authentically through the good and the bad — embracing both and realizing neither one will last forever.
What will the next year of life bring to me? I have absolutely no idea, but I have full faith that it will be wonderful. That’s the thing about positive changes — they tend to snowball on you. One day you are signing up for a free “Spring Clean Your Life!” challenge online, and before you know it, you are waking up before your alarm to go work out, drinking 80 to 90-plus ounces of water every day, finding peace and tranquility in the tidiness of your space and getting ecstatic about each and every positive opportunity that comes your way. So that’s going to be my birthday wish — that everyone I know and love can feel this same “I am enough” satisfaction with their lives as they identify new dreams and more forward with courage and confidence. Good thing my cake will have a lot of candles!