Hello, You!
It feels like it’s been ages since I last wrote though it’s only been a few weeks. Wedding season will do me like that, tbh.
I’m currently in Big Sky, MT – out of state for the third weekend in a row. But the light is at the end of the tunnel and I am DETERMINED to book myself wayyyyyy less for 2027.
School just started and I’m so excited about this new batch of students. They seem excited to learn and I’m excited to learn with them, too! There are always new lessons to discover.
As the summer winds down, I’m taking stock of all of my projects and trying to decide how best to use my off-season time. It already feels clear though, I’m more ready than ever to eschew old patterns and step into something new.
You know, I’ve been writing these essays for about five years now. I started the practice somewhat accidentally, but once it became an established part of my routine, I found myself so worried each month that I wouldn’t be able to find a common thread between my three guests.
As a result, I found myself taking pages of notes as I re-listened to each conversation. What began as an attempt to pull out my favorite bits of wisdom became a hunt for anything and everything that might potentially be interesting to a hypothetical audience. Sorting through my notes became overwhelming. And I felt obligated to synthesize all of my findings into a coherent narrative at the end of each month.
Reader, I got lost in the sauce.
So, I started this season somewhat reluctantly (fearfully) committed to only writing down what I felt like I personally needed to remember from each episode, the lessons that felt particularly relevant to my own evolution. I’ve often found myself sitting up to hurriedly transcribe a quote or jot down a concept, and have had to remind myself to let things go unless they feel meant for me, specifically.
My notes for this month are the sparsest they’ve been in years, but they couldn’t be more cohesive if they tried. And I’m reminded once more that I’ve called in magic for this year and magic said “I gotchu, babe.”
All this to say, it’s gonna be a short and sweet one. This lesson’s ready to serve.
It was such an easy joy to talk with Deanna. Just the gentlest, calmest time.
Hearing Deanna describe the experience of presenting her design portfolio for university admittance sent me right back to my own late-teens experiences auditioning for music schools.
Deanna told me she was waiting in a huge room for her name to be called to go back and present her portfolio to the faculty. She needed desperately to pee, but because she was there alone, she didn’t dare run to the restroom for fear her name would be called and she would miss her chance.
My heart does such a flip flop hearing this. I feel it deep in my belly and zinging through the hairs on the back of my neck, too. It’s such a painful thing to jump back into the body of a shy child who didn’t consider like, idk, just letting someone at the front desk know that you are running to the restroom and will be right back??? But I remember being this way, too. My cells remember it.
And just like Deanna, I too spent years and years continuing to show up bravely in that scared-to-death frame until suddenly there’d simply been quite a lot accomplished. I love the way she puts it – “I’ve seen this before.” Been there. Done that. What’s next?
It’s funny though, underneath all of that deeply innocent fear, there was always a brazen little maverick in Deanna, as there was in me.
She tells me that as a child she read a book about a fictional character who was becoming a fashion designer. She says, “the feelings were enticing…I kind of felt like I could feel that way, too.”
This is profound to me. Read it again, slower this time – I kind of felt like I could feel that way, too.
Like…omg how BOLD. How embodied. How perfectly intuitive.
Let me tell you, I know this experience. I’ve felt it in my earlier chapters and have seen myself come out the other side fully confident inhabiting postures and commanding vocabulary previously so foreign, nearly unthinkable. But like Deanna, I had a very, very small voice tucked away in a far corner of my being. And the voice said – I think we can grow into that.
And holy cow have I been feeling that same old tingle recently. It’s a bigger, scarier version than what I’ve felt before. It’s less defined, and it’s farther off script. It’s all tangled up in my deepest triggers and shadows. But it’s there. And it’s picking up the pace.
The feelings are enticing. And I’m starting to see more and more of myself in them.
I’ve been reading a lot lately about the effects of emotional neglect in early childhood. It’s comforting to know it’s normal to feel like you don’t really exist, like you’re waiting for someone on the outside to see you and let you know you’re real.
Just this week I had a small epiphany while out on a long walk with Fox. I’ve often said that as a little kid I felt like an only child when I was talking to God. In my prayers and private moments, I felt solid.
It occurred to me this week that what I was experiencing in those moments was the depth of my own power, my own brilliance and bravery, my own agency. But of course, a child is ultimately quite powerless in the real world, particularly if her caregivers are unsafe.
My little brain rationalized (largely accurately) that the only answer was to try to convince the adults in my life to see my inner power, and to help me wield it in the real world.
I’m so proud of my young self for figuring out as much as she did, but I’m just beginning to crack into this lesson. I’m just beginning to understand that I don’t actually need someone else to tell me I’m real. I can realize myself.
But of course, it’s tender, isn’t it?
I loved hearing aerospace engineer-turned-musician Mark talk about his experience with this phenomenon.
During his days as a forward-facing scientist, Mark’s deep artistic inclinations were invisible to his friends, even when on full display. He tells me he often wrote poems as personalized gifts only to have his heartfelt offerings discarded without ceremony. His friends simply didn’t know him as a poet, and therefore couldn’t see him as a poet even as he pressed his poems into their palms.
I’m not saying it makes sense. I’m just saying it’s a thing people do. And it’s a very difficult thing for the affected individual to overcome.
I’m learning this lesson so hard lately.
As I’m healing my nervous system and dropping more of my coping strategies (masking, people pleasing, hyper vigilance, over functioning, etc.), I find myself receiving subtle and not-so-subtle messages that some of the people in my orbit see those survival skills as my whole personality. They’re not interested in what’s underneath. They’re not interested in seeing me drop that dead weight.
It’s difficult for many reasons, but perhaps the sorest one is the struggle to prove you’re something else when that something else is still unknown to you.
As Mark puts it, “you don’t know that you yet. And so you’re getting to know it. What is that you good at? What brings joy to that you? And you just don’t know. And so you have this intense period of self-doubt…I have this vision and it’s blurry, but it’s this way and I’m sticking to my guns and yes – I’m going to be bad at the thing and I’m gonna have to get better at the thing, but I can see it. I know there’s something in this direction that I’m going toward. It’s the me over there. And having the gumption, the grit to get through all of that was a lot. It was probably the hardest part of my journey.”
So viscerally said. I’m decidedly about it.
There’s maybe nothing I love more than connecting with a woman who’s lived more life that I have, and it was a blessing to talk with Amy. She is mega rad.
The warmest parts of our conversation didn’t need my note-taking. I’ve stored them in my sense-memory. It’s possibility and encouragement and audacity with a girly twist. Thank you for the inspiration, Amy. I hope I get to meet you in person some day and hold both of your hands and give you a big hug.
And for my notes…the perfect cherry on top for this here collection of lessons.
Amy tells me simply, “I had to become who I was. And I wasn’t there yet.”
Put. It. On. A. Shirt.
Amy elaborates: “I took what was this amorphous cloudy stuff that’s in my head and I made something real out of it…You have to sort of surrender to something that exists somewhere above your intention. It’s there. And that’s what gives you faith that there’s more to the world than your everyday perception of everything.”
And, “technically is it magic? Of course not. But it feels that way.”
And, “you’ve got to rethink what ordinary is.”
And, “it feels better because it’s taken me awhile.”
So, OOF!
All this to say, folks, I’m doing my cute little best to become more of myself. And I’m having fewer and fewer fucks to give about what anyone else thinks about it. 💃🧚♀️
Cheers!
Emily
P.S. Here’s a creepy pretty thing that Amy made >>
