Monthly Archives: October 2018

The only safe place to go.

I’ve been flatlining for months – exhausted, crawling into bed at 2pm each day, wondering where all my energy has gone. I listen to the news and it’s full of vitriol and hate. Bombs. Shootings. More hate. I can hardly listen without going into a sort of trauma response. And so I turn off the radio, close the shutters on my heart, afraid to take any of it in, lest it take me down.

And then yesterday, in the dentist chair, the dam broke.

It’s not unusual for me to cry at the dentist. Something about lying on your back, mouth splayed, strangers peering inside with metal tools. I can’t think of anything more vulnerable.

“I’m sorry I keep crying,” I told the dentist. “You can do your work. It’s just really vulnerable to be in this chair. I can steel myself and try not to feel it, or drug myself out of it, but here it is.”

“I’m exactly the same as you when I have to get work done,” she replied and handed me a Kleenex and a blanket. Then she asked me if I wanted Cat Stevens or Krishna Das on the stereo. (It’s Berkeley after all!)

It was almost 2 hours in the chair- a lot of drilling and numbing and cotton, the smell of burning god knows what… fists clenched. This is suffering I thought. And I remembered the practice I learned from Kristin Neff. First, you recognize the moment as a moment of suffering. (This is suffering) Then you remind yourself that suffering is a part of life. That everyone suffers. (You haven’t done anything wrong, nor are you being punished) And in that moment you become connected to the suffering of others. You become connected to an entire human race that suffers each and every day. This is not meant to bring you down. It’s a reminder of our shared humanity. And for me, in that moment, it was a reminder of the pain in our world that I have been trying to keep at arms’s length.

Sometimes allowing a little crack in the armor- to allow ourselves to feel – also means feeling so many more layers. This might be why we avoid it. We numb ourselves with screens and work, alcohol and weed, Facebook and Instagram, busy busy. Because if we even felt into the edges of our grief, it might unleash something unmanageable, like a tidal wave of pain that we would never recover from.

This is the fear. But it’s not how it works.

There is a great story that Frank Ostaseski shared on my podcast. He is the buddhist teacher who created Zen Hospice and mentors caregivers in offering compassionate end of life care. He also wrote one of my favorite books – The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully. Frank was once giving a talk on the topic of moving toward what’s difficult and a man in the audience remarked, “It’s like telephone poles!” Confused, Frank asked him to explain:

I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. “Telephone poles? What do you mean?” I asked.

He explained that he once had a job installing telephone poles. “They’re hard and heavy, standing up to forty feet high.” There was a critical moment after you placed a pole in the ground, he said, when a pole was unstable and might topple over. “If it hit you, it could break your back.”

His first day on the job, the man turned to his partner and said, “If this pole starts to fall, I’m running like hell.”

But the old-timer replied, “Nope, you don’t want to do that. If that pole starts to fall, you want to go right up to it. You want to get real close and put your hands on the pole. It’s the only safe place to be.”

It’s counter-intuitive, but moving toward what’s difficult, being willing to feel it, is in the end the only safe place to go.

Yesterday, I had an impromptu session with my friend Laurel Bleadon-Maffei. I mentioned the synagogue in Pittsburgh and the floodgates of tears opened. “What’s the feeling inside the grief?” she asked. I thought for a moment. “Like we’re outnumbered,” I replied. “Like there is too much hate, ignorance and unconsciousness for us to stand a chance.”

This is the place of despair I’d been trying to avoid. A kind of collapse. Defeat is a familiar place for me to go. It’s hard for me to find my fight.

I’ve been doing EMDR lately. If you’ve ever experienced it, you probably know a bit about its magic. It’s a way to work with traumatic events, anxiety and other issues with the most astounding transformational effects. With the therapist I’ve been working with, I hold two small buzzers (one in each palm) that alternately vibrate in a soothing and rhythmic way. This stimulates both sides of the brain and (I believe) allows you to process more three-dimensionally.

During one of my sessions a few weeks ago, I placed myself in a scene from my childhood that was particularly charged. I watched the scene as I held these little buzzers in my hands. After a few minutes, my body began to jerk in a way I couldn’t control. “My body keeps jerking!” I said to the therapist, a little alarmed. “See what it’s trying to tell you,” she replied.

My shoulders moved forward and my chest caved in over and over again. Then I heard the words in my mind… “This is recoiling. It’s fear, disgust, terror.” I sat with it while tears streamed down my cheeks. Then something extraordinary happened.

An enormous woman with wings swooped down, like a goddess or an angel or a Renaissance painting. “Oh my god,” I said aloud. “The feminine just came in.” I don’t normally express myself this way. I rarely talk about the sacred feminine or have even fully understood the concept until this moment. But this was her.

In the vision, she wrapped my little girl self in a blanket, looked me in the eyes and said, “I’ve got you.” Then she took her gigantic hand and pointed at the person I was with who had created all that terror in me. “NO!” she boomed.

One word. No. And she carried me away.

I was stunned. And opened my eyes. “I felt her Andrea,” the therapist said. “She filled this entire room.”

I can’t remember why I am telling you all of this. Perhaps because we are all suffering as a collective, we are afraid, feeling vulnerable, trapped in a world that doesn’t feel kind or charitable. We are in our own kind of recoiling – in disgust, fear and horror.

And maybe that’s what’s needed right now. That fierce, powerful feminine to come in for us as a collective whole. To gather us up, look us in the eyes and say, I’ve got you. To point a finger to the oppressor and say “No. No more.” 

We also need the sacred masculine, defined here as:

Each of us carries within us aspects of both the sacred masculine and the sacred feminine. The true masculine is characterized by confidence without arrogance; rational thinking without a need to control; honor without a desire for war. It provides stability, strength, and courage in an ever-shifting world.

Through all these experiences – the dentists chair, talking with my friend, the EMDR – I am learning that when we open to our discomfort in a conscious way, it has the opportunity to move, to shape-shift, to instruct.

We discover resources we didn’t know we had.
We can move from flat-line mode to feeling alive again.
Creative solutions arise that would otherwise not have found a way in.

Maybe this is the best we can do right now. To show up fully and consciously for what we are all facing. To practice this kind of moving toward what hurts… not to collapse in defeat, but with the fierce love and nurture of the feminine alongside the stable strength and confidence of the sacred masculine.

 

 

It was never about me being a singer in a gospel choir.

Have you listened to the Ted interview with Elizabeth Gilbert? (a new podcast from Ted) It’s ah-mazing + you should stop what you’re doing and listen right now. She talks about creativity (and grief) in the most resonant and beautiful ways… and she makes a really helpful distinction between passion and curiosity:

“Passion asks you to throw it all in the bonfire. Curiosity is way more generous. It says, just give me a little bit of your time and let’s see what we can do.”

Curiosity has always been the starting place for me too. I wonder what would happen if… I wonder if I could… I wonder what it would be like to… We don’t need to know why. We can lean into the mystery.

Decades ago, after many years of going to Glide Memorial in San Francisco (mostly to listen to the gospel choir!) I found myself thinking, “I wonder what it would be like to be part of that swaying mass of sound… “ and so my friend dared me to audition. And I did. And it was hands down, the most terrifying thing I have EVER done. But I got to sing with the choir for a few months and I got to experience that incredible feeling of being part of the music. Inside the music. Full body, holy wow.

In the end, I’m not much of a singer (I was kind of terrible at it!) and it was really stressful to keep it up. I realized that I actually enjoyed listening to the music so much more than I enjoyed singing it. With much relief, I quit. Hallelujah!

It could have felt like a failure, but here’s the thing: It was never about me being a singer in a gospel choir.

I was laid off from my dream job soon after + I knew it was time for me to start my own business. This experience was exactly what I needed to strengthen my courage muscles. Whatever it took for me to audition, to go after something that I wanted so much and yet was so terrified to pursue, was exactly the kind of daring I needed to take the leap and start my business. In fact, compared to singing in a world renowned gospel choir, starting a business started to look easy!

Follow those whispers of curiosity. They are purposeful. If only to delight us + grow us in new ways.

And if you have been thinking, “I wonder if I could start a podcast…” The answer is yes! I will show you how.

Class starts tomorrow. Monday, October 22nd, 2018.

[Video] Do you have a dream of creating a podcast? Class starts on Monday.

Over the course of 4 weeks, I will help you through every step of the process to creating your very own podcast! Learn everything from how to choose the name of your show to how to get it up on itunes! I promise to make it fun + easy so you are sure to make this dream real.

In this course, we will explore:

Week #1: Let’s make it real.
This week we will get clear on what our podcast is about, what our vision and deeper purpose is for our show, choosing a name and creating a description for itunes. We will also create a graphic for our podcast! And some fancy music for the intro + outro.

Week #2: The technical pieces you need to know.
Equipment, how to name your files, what software you might need. Don’t worry. I promise to make this all very fun + easy. We will hold hands when it feels overwhelming!

Week #3: We’re geeking out now.
Writing and recording your intro + outro. Show notes. Creating graphics for each episode. How to infuse storytelling into your work.

Week #4: Recording, editing and publishing
Launching your show! And getting the word out. We will be bringing it all together in this last week and making sure you have everything ready for your podcast launch. Then we will celebrate because holy moly, we deserve it!

P.S. If you love podcasts but don’t want your own show, listen to mine! Some favorite episodes lately:

My BIG SALE of the year! 72 hours to get an amazing collection of courses + e-books.

Dear Creative Friends,

I’ve curated a FANTASTIC sale happening for the next 72 hours where you can get one of my newest creations (Choosing Ease: 21 days of letting go of struggle and finding your flow)  + a huge bundle of other courses (ie. Kelly Rae Roberts, SARK, Christine Mason Miller, Mati Rose + Faith Evans Sills,, Laurie Wagner, Flora Bowley, Jennifer Lee + many more!) for just $97.

It’s a great way to experience a lot of beautiful work for one nifty price.

You can check it all out here!

The sale ends in 72 hours! so don’t miss it. ?

 

 

Let’s geek out on podcasts together.

Many years ago, at a retreat for creative women on the Oregon coast, it was my turn to have my “Radiate session.” In this session, we received mentoring from the group – laser focused on us for that particular 30 minutes. It was powerful. But what I remember most from my session is that someone said, “Andrea, you need your own radio show!” and the rest of the women squealed in agreement. I was like, what the what?

It only occurred to me years later – Podcasts! I could create a podcast! That’s how I could have my own radio show. They were so right and clearly saw it before I could see it for myself.

In the last year that I have had The Creative Superheroes Podcast, I have interviewed some seriously amazing people! SARK, Kelly Rae Roberts, Dr. Rick Hanson, Frank Ostaseski, Danielle LaPorte… just to name a few. With each episode, I felt like I was finding my voice, finding my power and practicing courage. It’s become one of my favorite parts of my business.

But why am I sharing all of this? Because you can have your very own podcast! And I’m going to teach you how.

Over the course of 4 weeks, I will help you through every step of the process to creating your very own podcast! Learn everything from how to choose the name of your show to how to get it up on itunes! I promise to make it fun + easy so you are sure to make this dream real.

In this course, we will explore:

Week #1: Let’s make it real.
This week we will get clear on what our podcast is about, what our vision and deeper purpose is for our show, choosing a name and creating a description for itunes. We will also create a graphic for our podcast! And some fancy music for the intro + outro.

Week #2: The technical pieces you need to know.
Equipment, how to name your files, what software you might need. Don’t worry. I promise to make this all very fun + easy. We will hold hands when it feels overwhelming!

Week #3: We’re geeking out now.
Writing and recording your intro + outro. Show notes. Creating graphics for each episode. How to infuse storytelling into your work.

Week #4: Recording, editing and publishing
Launching your show! And getting the word out. We will be bringing it all together in this last week and making sure you have everything ready for your podcast launch. Then we will celebrate because holy moly, we deserve it!

 

P.S. I am deliberately calling this the Mighty Little Podcast Course because I want you to know that your show doesn’t have to be huge. You don’t need to have big advertisers (or advertisers at all!) You get to make a show that is for you + your people. You get to create something that is purely for your delight + to delight others. It’s a beautiful way to grow a community.

CSP #37: From Heartbreak to Wholeness with Kristine Carlson

Kristine Carlson, New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned speaker, is passionate about spreading her message of living with joy and gratitude.

Kris’ life mission expands upon the phenomenal success of she and her late husband Dr. Richard Carlson’s work in the (“Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” series). She continues his legacy of peaceful and mindful living through her own bestselling books, including the most recent, From Heartbreak to Wholeness, The Hero’s Journey to Joy.