Reflections on journeying through 2020

 

#1: Where were you when you knew the world had changed?

 The day was March 11th, 2020, and the time was 8:30 pm as I walked the streets of New York City. I lurched through the sensation of the world changing over the course of an hour or so. I couldn't have predicted the chaos that was to descend upon us all in the hours and days following. It was a slow-motion nose dive from high in the stratosphere, that your stomach feels before your eyes can understand the shifting angles outside your window.

In spite of receiving concerned texts from my mom urging me to be careful and to come home already, I had decided to pop out for a bowl of the best cacio e pepe I had ever tasted, first sampled the night before at Via Carota, a swanky Italian place within walking distance of the apartment I was staying in. I wound my way through Greenwich Village, which is a particular section of New York that seems in a league of its own. Nestled up against the silence of the Hudson River and peppered with cobblestone streets, this little pocket of NYC seems to have a certain magic about it. On this day, I noticed that the streets were especially quiet, almost eerily so, as I navigated my way from Bedford Street to Grove Street. I could hear my own footsteps, which in my memory has never been a thing in the concrete jungle. I checked the map on my phone to make sure I was heading in the right direction. As I walked, I was present to a particular atmospheric undercurrent of anxiety and uncertainty, bringing all of us into its swirl. People were walking more briskly, yet also more hesitantly, as if they weren’t sure if their outdoor jaunt would have dire consequences or not. 

  • Hand sanitizer had already begun to sell out and news channels were filled with red banners of case counts as the COVID-19 virus took hold at a rapid rate in the US. I had come to New York for a stacked week of meetings, and one by one all of them had been canceled. I, as a self-proclaimed non-alarmist, was determined to will this virus away by my rejection of its efficacy. To me, it felt like things were being blown out of proportion, or maybe that was just what I was telling myself in order to stay level-headed in the midst of traveling in the newest virus hotspot epicenter.

    I arrived at the restaurant and let the door bang behind me as I sidled past two gentlemen in suits and entered the cramped entryway.

    “Reservation?” asked the hostess, her eyes narrowed towards the tablet screen situated on the wooden stand in front of her.

    “No,” I said, as I looked around at the packed restaurant.

    “The wait will be forty-five minutes,” reported the woman, as she swept her long dark hair back over her shoulder and glanced up at me. It was already late, and I was not jazzed about standing beside the flapping cold doorway for almost an hour. I spotted a vacant seat at the bar and pointed.

    “Would it be alright if I posted up over there to do some work? It’s just me.”

    She glanced at the iPad I held loosely by my side.

    “There are no computers allowed in the dining room,” she informed me.

    “Oh,” I said, discouraged. Intent on getting another bowl of their magnificent pasta, I looked past her shoulders and gestured to a bench with a pedestal table pushed up in a corner. “What about over there?” She turned around and looked where I was pointing, and then turned back to face me. I could tell she was about to tell me no, so I quickly leaned into my southern charm and gave her some context.

    “I live in Nashville, and I fly out tomorrow morning. Your cacio e pepe is the best on the planet. I have set my heart on eating exactly this tonight.” She paused. “I won’t get out my iPad,” I quickly added, a little too enthusiastically.

    Her face softened and she gave me a wry smile, obviously fascinated by my passion for this pasta. “Okay,” she tossed her head in the direction of the bench. “Go have a seat and I’ll send someone to take your order.”

    “Thank you so much!” I said with gusto.

    I sat down on my creaky bench, in a corner of the room paneled with dark mahogany walls. Intent on keeping my promise to my new hostess friend, the facilitator of my ideal meal, I did not get out my iPad. Instead, I nestled into the corner of the bench, and I watched. I noticed that the smiles of the waitstaff quickly vanished after they turned around from the tables they had just addressed. I searched their faces as they walked past me to key in orders at the kiosk. Their eyes held a certain apprehension like they were asking a question they couldn’t name, just outside the edges of their awareness. They could feel something shifting. So could I. So could the other patrons. The uncertainty of the other diners was masked with forced laughter and talk of the latest business dealings. There was another category of diners who had looks of drawn confusion, speaking quietly to one another with serious expressions on their faces, nodding, wide eyes, lingering blank stares somewhere on the ceiling.

    My phone lit up with a text from my friend Mary Catherine, who is a brilliant executive and economist with a vast understanding of the ways of the world, and a spot on intuition. We were supposed to meet up while I was in the city, but she didn’t feel good about it.

    “What a crazy time this is,” she had said in her text.

    “Truly crazy. What do you think this is all gonna mean three months or six months down the road?” I asked her.

    “Very hard to say. But I think we will look back and regret being underprepared,” she answered.

    “Well if it starts to get too crazy up here on this island come on down to Nashville! I feel more afraid of people’s panic responses than the actual illness,” I texted back.

    “Same.”

    We were agreed, but even still, the gravity of it all had me in its grips. We were all going down, with no ground in sight. I think a part of me sensed this because I ordered two pastas that night. One was my cacio e pepe. Another was a pesto ravioli dish. Fitting, seeing as what I didn’t know at that moment was that would be my last restaurant meal for months. The world shut down around me in what felt like a matter of hours, smack dab in the middle of the city that never sleeps, over a bowl of the tastiest pasta imaginable.

 

#2: What happened to you in 2020 that feels noteworthy?

I have said this in various ways when speaking about my personal journey over the past year, but the words that are coming up in this moment are that I cast off a really heavy shroud I had encased myself in for many years. This shroud was woven with threads of self-doubt, fear of criticism, and apprehension about what would happen if I stood up and remembered who I am. I spent the first 25-30 years of my life accomplishing huge things, but I was accomplishing them from a place of trying to prove myself. Trying to prove what? Not exactly sure. Trying to prove to whom? Various contrarian faces and personalities from my past. Trying to prove why? All I can say is that it felt like my very survival depended upon succeeding in this exercise of proving myself. Sourcing my energy from that place wore me down. As someone recently said to me: "When you're proving you're not living." Yikes. If that's true - and I think it is - I spent a lot of time not living my life. I had to sort through some really intense inter-generational wounds and narratives. I had to come face to face with truths that were hard to hold, burning my hands when I got too close. But I kept going. And I shed layers upon layers. As you can imagine, I was a totally different person than I was when I first stepped on this path of inner work. And so after all of this, I realized I was left holding the weight of a particular type of trepidation about showing up in my life (particularly online) as my fullest, truthiest, cosmic self. I spent so many years in a cocoon of mush, reorienting myself to myself, that upon emergence I would be almost unrecognizable to most all of the people I have ever known...and this felt dangerous.

On one hand, I didn't want to alienate people with my shifting perspectives. I didn't want to offend them with my radiance. I didn't want to come off as aloof or tone-deaf. On another hand, self-transformation is easier behind closed doors, because the process of it is messy as hell, and I wasn't ready for online acquaintances to see that. I was also acutely aware of how fast I was changing month to month, and I didn't want to "commit" to anyone's expression of myself, thinking I'd eventually have to eat my words. Another phenomenon was that I felt that in order to say anything, I needed to preface with all of the inflection points that had led to that perspective. Catch people up. But how could I “catch people up” on all of the eternal moments that were so sacred, so vast, and so impactful in a few sentences at the beginning of an Instagram post? It was impossible, so instead, I just kept quiet. I guess in many ways it was always about wanting to belong. But in belonging to a past idea of myself - which was a mirage - or by belonging to other people's ideas of who I was, I was sacrificing belonging to my present self, and to my present endeavors. And that slinging of my energy into the black hole of the past is what really wore me down. So, although I had been coming face to face with some deep multi-dimensional inner work over the course of the last decade, all of this work came to a head in 2020 for me. 2020 was the year that I stopped fucking around, and I stood up and remembered who I am. I crossed fiery threshold after fiery threshold, crying hot tears the whole way, relentlessly insisting upon my own becoming. For the first time ever, I quietly created and offered, and ran three cohorts of a group program called Alchemy of Chaos. It is a magnificent work of art - my favorite thing I've ever done. 50+ leaders from all over the world have participated in this program so far, and we are just getting started. The coolest thing about Alchemy of Chaos is that because of the convergence of current events with the journey that it provided, I did not have time to waffle, to perfectionize, to over-think. The urgency of COVID is what pushed me over the edge, straight into my potential. And within 3 weeks of the idea dropping into my head, 18 people sat before me in the first Zoom session. But the program isn't the point. The point is that I had to commit to my future and live my way into it, and I had to drop the act of belonging to the mirage of my past. It was one of the most excruciating and exhilarating things I have endured. It truly felt like a death. Because it was. A part of me had to die in order to birth a new self. So to circle back around to the prompt for today, I'd say that's pretty noteworthy. Everyone seems to love births - well, I gave birth to myself this year, in the midst of so much planetary chaos. I have been expanding my capacity to feel all of it - the joy of collective birth, as well as the heartbreak of collective pain. And I have never been more elated, more devastated, more focused, or more free.

 

#3: What did you lose in 2020? How did that loss affect you?

In 2020, I lost hope, and I abandoned optimism.

If I were reading those words a few years ago, I would have been shocked and appalled at what I would have perceived to be negativity or apathy. I would have shaken my head and thought "wow, what happened to that person for them to have such a terrible outlook on life?!" I thought people who referenced pain were wallowers or depressed, and it made me super uncomfortable. Past versions of me boasted about my eternal optimism. I prided myself on being able to wave my magic wand, turn any seemingly atrocious situation upside down, and find the silver lining...which I've now dubbed "rainbow washing." (What I didn't realize in all those years of considering this a skill and liberally doling out rainbows upon anyone who brought me a problem is that I was invalidating the lived experiences of human beings in pain, but that's a post for another time.)

Up until 2020, I had used hope and optimism as tools to bypass pain - my own pain, the pain of others, and the pain of the world. And as a result, a part of me was disconnected and paralyzed in a way. As one of the brilliant participants in the most recent round of Alchemy of Chaos put it: "Be careful about shooting up with that hopium!"

As a result of opting out of hope, the me that walked through 2020 now enjoys reference points of much more depth, texture, and nuance than ever before.

I have replaced hope with possibility, and I have replaced optimism with reality.

  • These trades have made me incredibly more effective in my life and in my work. I have felt immense sorrow and grief, and I have felt immense amounts of joy and gratitude, sometimes in the same 5 minutes. It's a wild sensation to lean all the way through the pain and suddenly feel pleasure. To wade all the way into the deep ocean of impossibility while barely keeping your head above the waves and suddenly touch possibility in the most confronting and hilarious way, like kicking an underwater rock with your foot when you thought the water was 50 feet deep. It is almost as if the more grief I feel, the more joy is infused to match that. Like some kind of strange equilibrium that is kept, as long as I am available to FEEL the grief and pain, rather than rainbow wash it or pretend it isn't there. Newsflash: it's there. And it's big. And 2020 made it impossible for me to hide from it, and I became a better version of myself because of this. Particularly around the time of the social justice movements, instead of flinching in the presence of all kinds of discomfort from multiple angles, I opened my heart to it. And when I did that, my heart broke wide open. There was another highly personal series of events within my family, having to do with one of my children, that turned my world upside down in the worst way. I could barely breathe in the face of it. And again my heart shattered. And again I picked up the slivers of the pieces all over the floor, and when I had finally put it back together again I realized that that same heart was somehow bigger. Somehow more vast. Somehow more mysterious. None of this was pretty and it was not easy. And the result was a more sober, yet more true existence. The result was the realization that when I am present to reality as it is, I can grapple with it in a way that I am unable to when I slather it with optimism. The result was a more grounded way of being with the capacity to hold more. More of my own stuff, and more of others' stuff. Again, making me a far more compelling and centered human being, parent, coach, friend, and partner.

    In 2020 I lost my connection to the adage "everything happens for a reason" and I cultivated a connection with my new mantra of "horrific shit happens, and then if we're still standing we get to learn how to alchemize the chaos."

    And let me tell you. In my opinion, there are few things more gratifying than becoming the type of person who is able to alchemize chaos. Like a fckn jedi wizard. Gandolph Skywalker, comin' in hot.

 

#4: What did you overcome in 2020, and how does that make you feel about yourself?

I overcame the long-held belief that I have to have it all figured out before making a move.

I learned that I can be still and in motion at the same time.

I overcame the inertia of years of not trusting myself to be visible and messy at the same time, into a full-blown sprint that could only include trusting myself to be visible and messy at the same time. (via creating and running Alchemy of Chaos)

I learned that when an idea chooses me, I must stop in my tracks, trace its path with my eyes to the horizon, then start the long step-by-step journey to move towards it and bring it into existence.

How do I feel? Powerful, liberated, and giggly with marveling.

Acknowledging today that my writing ebbs and flows. The last few days it was way long. Today it’s just a few sentences. 2019 I might have used this as a justification to shrug off this writing challenge. 2021 I understand that life is ebb and flow and that it’s all part of it. So no matter what I’m gonna keep showing up here, for at least the next 26 days. For now, this is my practice. Let’s see what happens.

 

#5: What are some big questions you still have leftover from 2020?

Obsessed with this question, because one of my favorite exercises is sitting in the midst of unanswerable questions for longer than is comfortable. Yummy.

Do we experience/create limits for ourselves so that we can overcome them and remember that we are limitless?

Is it possible that death always births something else?

How do I hold the tension between the ever-increasing disparities and gaps within society, where hardships are felt so differently across the human system? What can be done? What can arise?

What the fuck does it mean to have an answer? (this one is borrowed from an Alchemy of Chaos participant...when he said this in session I got full-body chills because it is SO URGENTLY TRUE)

How do I hold the tension between the ever-increasing political divide in the US, where both sides are committed to their version of the truth? How do you even begin to play in that sandbox? Is there even a sandbox that connects the two anymore? If so, where is it? If not, is there any recourse? If not, can something new arise from this highly charged tension between the two? Is a resolution possible? Is a resolution desirable? Where is the window for collective evolution when so many people have such a vastly different idea of what collective evolution involves/requires?

How is it possible for this perfect stunning ombré flower to exist naturally in the world?

  • How can we normalize the sensations involved in the excruciating process and path of becoming, so that more of us walk this path of our own free will rather than favoring smooth sailing...at which point in time what often happens is getting thrown unwillingly and unceremoniously upside down on our heads in the middle of the path, crumpled up and bruised?

    And finally, one of my @jaiyajohn faves: “Tell us. Why does everything now tremble? How is grace polishing our looking glass? And what, oh what is this overwhelming sunrise for?”

 

#6: What is one lesson you learned in 2020?

I could write 20 books on all of the life-altering lessons from last year. However, the one that arises for me at this moment has to do with relationships.

Wonder and curiosity electrify relationships.

Assumptions and expectations crush them.

I learned that no matter how long I've known someone, no matter how much I think I know them inside out, that it is absolutely critical to approach that relationship with a sense of wonder and curiosity. Otherwise, atrophy and apathy sneak in. The standard course becomes a string of assumptions based on past experiences, and then I have found - plot twist! - that I have been guilty of being the limiting factor in someone's evolution (all the while pointing at them wanting them to change), because I can only see them through my old, unpolished lens of who they've been in the past.

I once did a certification program that described the human brain as a social organ unconsciously impacted by certainty, or the desire for it. I find it so interesting that we work so hard to create certainty and stability in how we see the world and in how we see others. That is helpful as we make sense of stuff and sort through context. But there comes a time when that helpful behavior edges into harmful behavior when that same muscle we used to create stability for ourselves is the muscle that is wrestling down someone's potential into the mud.

What would it be like to approach every conversation without an assumption about who you think someone is, no matter how well you know them? What might be possible if someone were allowed to be who they are, in this present moment, without the projections of others (and self, let's be honest) about who they have been in the past? To me, this is the epitome of respect because we respect who someone is becoming more than we pander to whom they've been. There is tremendous potential in this.

I recently saw a quote that said "To love someone long term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. To love someone long term is to attend a thousand births of the person they are becoming."

 

#7: The year 2020 (your life edition) is being turned into a movie. What's the movie called?

This one is almost too easy.

The title of the movie about my 2020 life is the same as the title of the book I'm writing, which is the same as the program I created, which is the same as the podcast I'm releasing in a few weeks.

Alchemy of Chaos.

Alchemy of Chaos is an expression of the part of me that relentlessly insists upon my own becoming. The part of me that pulls me across the fiery thresholds. The part of me that constantly invites me to move differently, to explore anew, to make no assumptions, to ignite the flame of a potential future that I only know by the feeling of it. It is an experiment in what is required of me in order to claim leadership in exceptional times, and what is necessary in order to create from beyond the known. This experiment is deeply personal. But, as it turns out, what is most personal is most universal.

Full disclosure. It is late, and I am getting up early tomorrow. So I am going to save my creative st(r)eam for the next prompt. Today I'm going to share with you an excerpt from the book about how and why I created Alchemy of Chaos. It's not much, but it's the beginning of the story. A story which I’m sure I'll tell you over time.

The End came on a relatively normal Saturday in late March. Except it wasn’t normal at all, because it was on this day that everything changed. The end of me ushered in the beginning of me. But isn’t that how these things always seem to happen? When you least expect it? 

I blearily opened my eyes as I awoke to my one-year-old daughter Orion softly singing in her crib. She most always wakes us up with singing. Pieces of Twinkle Twinkle (“How I wondoh what you awh”) come wafting out over the mezzanine balcony, finding their way through our open bedroom door below.

  • Being woken up by the magical voice of a happy baby makes the 6 am start a little more enjoyable. “What a beautiful way to begin the day!” my husband Ben sleepily said to me as he rubbed his eyes. I yawned and looked out our bedroom window.

    The cherry blossom tree - who I lovingly named Vidalia - was in full bloom, softly swaying against the early morning pale blue sky. I wistfully reflected on the fact that her mosaics of pink-white flowers were already starting to fall down like springtime snow. She was currently demonstrating what it means to bloom and asking earnestly if I was going to choose to do the same. I let this question she was asking me to wash over me in waves, as I watched her branches move to and fro. In order to capitalize on using this beautiful metaphor planted in my own front yard to motivate me to do something I’d never done before, I had to hurry up. By next weekend, her petals would have created a pink and white carpet on our lawn. I thought to myself: “Today is the day. It has to be today.” My stomach lurched and I took a deep breath.

    Several days before I had conceptualized a leadership program called Alchemy of Chaos. It had been such an effortless process of creation that I remember - after a fervent rush of 10 minutes of typing - sitting back in my chair and marveling. It felt meant to be like I was given a gift. A flash of perspective came down from the universe and softly landed in the murky edges of my awareness. The feeling of this perspective flash reminded me of Harry Potter’s golden snitch: it had suddenly illuminated in the corner of my eye, momentarily revealing itself. If you aren’t down with Harry Potter references, it was like a shooting star that you turn your head just in time to see, and you follow its path into the horizon. Without another logical thought, I suddenly made the choice to get on my metaphorical broomstick and chase it down the quidditch field. And then the most unexpected miracle happened, that to this day I go back and wonder how it was possible.

 

#8: What was something that scared you in 2020 and what did you do with that fear?

What scared me in 2020 was the gravity and impact of desperation in our world. At the onset of the pandemic, I saw it in the way people mined grocery store aisles for toilet paper and canned goods. I saw it in the extreme polarity in the political playing field. I saw it in opinions on human rights and social justice (from all sides). I saw it in how people handled the question of their relative safety or lack thereof. I saw it in how people treated each other in the midst of what every side saw as a fight for their life.

This feels like a tricky thing to comment on because I don't quite know how to hold it all at the same time, or if it's even possible to hold it all at the same time. And I am most certainly not under any illusion of having any answers, and fully get that my lens could never see or understand the breadth and depth of what this all means and how and why desperation plays out. But I still wanna talk about it. I still wanna name it, even if what we name is a completely opposite reality to each other.

I think that the desperation has been a gift in so many ways so that a certain part of the population could no longer blindly ignore the plights of other parts of the population. Desperation in many cases is loud and necessary, and illuminating. The question then becomes, what do we do about it? How do we be in the midst of it? Who do we become in order to wrestle with meaning-making and ensuing action to address it? To alleviate it? Or even to transcend it, together?

What I did with my fear was channel it into two things. Creation and education. I created Alchemy of Chaos as a tool to use to grapple with the unthinkable, the unanswerable, the unmovable. And I educated myself on privilege, bias, white supremacy, and the implications of systemic whiteheteronormativepatriarchy. My work will continue in both of these arenas - always creating, always learning. Both of these things felt like worthwhile and meaningful ways to channel my fear, and over time that fear transmuted itself into perspective.

Photo of my kids because it’s the opposite of desperation.

 

#9: What do you regret from 2020? What do you wish you could rewrite?

I have been avoiding sitting down to write about this all afternoon and all evening. Good thing I'm committed to this 31-day practice, or else I wouldn't be writing right now, eyes heavy, throbbing headache.

My answer to this is something I don't feel ready to write about. It's raw and maybe too real for an Instagram writing challenge for a couple of reasons. 

#1: it is a regret that is still so palpable that when I think about it I feel pangs in my stomach. 

#2: it has to do with one of my family members and it's not my story to tell, especially on the internet. I’m going to keep it vague, mostly because of point #2.

My biggest regret from 2020 is that when my loved one came to me, communicating in the best way they knew how, in order to tell me about something that was going on in their world, I was too naive or too unavailable or not attuned enough to hear their pain and confusion. And my lack of listening, and therefore my lack of action, resulted in them continuing to exist in precarious, traumatic, and painful situations beyond their control. When I realized what I had done - or not done - weeks later, I cried as I had never before cried. I wailed with rage. Still not sure how much of that rage was directed outwards or directed at me.

If I could re-write it, I would've not shrugged off the words that were used, assuming that it was a silly misunderstanding. I would've reached out to the parties involved and had direct conversations. I would've refused to care more about the comfort of other people than the safety of my family. I would've drawn a very clear boundary with explicit directions of where, why, and how to not cross.

  • And mostly, I would've sat down with this human who came to me, who trusted me with this information, and I would have taken them seriously. I would have looked into their eyes and told them that I would step in on their behalf when they couldn't. As I wrote that last sentence, my whole face lit up with heat and emotion, eyes blurry, facing off with that never-quite-gone feeling of grave failure to show up when and how I was most needed. Sometimes being a flawed human is so hard. Sometimes impossible. But guess what? I kept going. We all kept going. We took the necessary steps to get re-centered, to process, to land everything in a way that might serve us all later in life. And we are still here, and joy is still possible (perhaps more now than ever, because we know what joy is and also what it isn't), and that's something. I know that we all had the opportunity to dig deep and become more resilient than we would have imagined we would have had to become. The type of resilient you don't want to ever have to be. But here we are. Here I am. Writing this down, sharing it with you. And that's something too.

 

#10: Did you have a resolution or word for the year at the beginning of 2020? What was it?

When I read this question, I thought I was going to simply answer "No, I did not. I'm not a New Years’ resolution kinda gal. See y'all tomorrow!"

And then I did a quick search in my Evernote, and I found the below excerpt that I don’t remember writing. I am shooketh. Disbelief abounds. I could have easily written this Jan 1 of this year...but whooaa nelly I wrote it before the firestorm of 2020 even began. I mean. WUT. The preparation that 2019 provided me has taken on a whole new meaning for how I was able to skillfully activate myself within the 2020 chaos.

January 1st, 2020

I sit here, up and awake before the family, thinking of the year that has been. What a year. It seems like 2019 was uncannily difficult for lots of people. It was the darkest, most difficult time in my life. And also, the most valuable, the most beautiful, the most full. There were countless inflection points of anger, despair, conflict, and shakeups, woven in with clarity, power, reclamation, and expansion.

If someone gave me a magic wand and told me I could undo all of the circumstances that created the hardships, I wouldn’t use that magic wand, because I wouldn’t trade my personal growth this year for a damn thing. What I have learned by walking through the fire this year has been absolutely priceless. What felt like my worst nightmares coming true, looking back, activated me in ways that I didn’t know were possible.

I feel this interesting, new sensation of having no fear of anything. Me that existed before 2019 was relatively fearless, but I was fearless in naivety. The me that exists now is fearless because I know for certain in a way that I have never had the opportunity to know before, that no matter what shitstorm of dumpster fires lands in my life, I have the ability to choose energetic integrity.

  • I have the choice to be with it all, and in being with it all, I get to see myself. We are all of it, the light and dark, the despair and hope, the clarity and confusion, the infinite and the depth, the vastness, and the details.

    And denying the shadowy aspects of ourselves is to deny the world. To deny the shadowy aspects of the world is to deny our full human experience. To deny our full human experience is what creates true hopelessness.

    So this year I have learned that to the extent to which something is impossible, it is equally as full of possibility for new: new realities, new experiences, new perspectives, new depth. Without being pushed up to our edges and being crushed from the pressure there, we would have no reason or way to expand beyond ourselves. And it is in this expansion beyond myself, as a direct result of being crushed into near-lifelessness, that led to Life. Vitality. Recognition. Reclamation. Declaration.

    I stand here today as the most full version of myself. I sat with the difficulty for long enough that I Kung Fu’d that shit into the momentum that was required for me to transcend myself. And, the experiences this year have taught me that there is literally nothing to fear. Connecting the dots looking backward, my current truth is that every worst nightmare is a new opportunity to come even more alive.

    PS - this is a photo of me in 2019 insisting on playfulness, in the midst of everything that was going on. Playfulness mattered. So I built a sandcastle.

 

#11: Believe for a moment that 2020 was here to deliver a message. What is the message?

Times are always unprecedented if you are paying attention.

On this here rock is known as planet Earth, spiraling through space with wild abandon, everything and everyone is interconnected, woven together with threads of energy supporting a small and stunningly fragile ecosystem of life.

Times are always unprecedented if you are paying attention.

It was just that over the course of this year a few veils were ripped down and a few blinders were ripped off. Perhaps so that we would remember a lot, lose a lot. Perhaps so that we would recover our humanity (or lack thereof) and recover our significance (or lack thereof). Perhaps so that we would face ourselves and face each other.

Times are always unprecedented if you are paying attention.

Here’s a picture of my dog named Freo, sitting next to one of my fig plants named Brad. Neither one is any more or less alive than the other. A random thought, but one worth noting.

 

#12: If you had to sum up your 2020 with one single moment from the year, what would that moment be?

Walking through a cathedral of soaring white oaks in the forest, I had a heightened awareness of each of my footsteps. There was something in the air here. It smelled sacred to my soul. I thought about the indigenous people of the past, and even the ancient past, walking through these woods, which have still not been touched by modern hands or machinery, which given the state of our earth, it struck me as especially rare to be walking in a place that was as it existed hundreds or thousands of years ago. What had these trees seen, as they grew to be their own cathedral, as they watched the world scurry around below them? What all had they been witness to? What love? What conflict? What developing awareness? What evolution?

I noticed my pathway was sloping downwards as the trees thickened, just like the plot. The trees seem to wave at me, knowing where I was heading. 2 hours earlier, on a drive from Nashville to Kentucky, I suddenly felt and knew that I needed to go to Mammoth Cave. It was about an hour out of the way, but my intuition had spoken and I made the turn off of the interstate onto a state highway. I called the welcome center to inquire about a cave tour, but all the tours had ended for the day, and they were closing up shop soon. I sounded dejected on the phone, seeing as I was already well on my way, so the woman on the other end of the line dropped into another tone, and told me that the historic entrance to the cave would stay open and that I could walk down there myself.

“They keep the caves open? Isn’t that a liability?” I thought to myself. I didn’t say it out loud though, because I didn’t want to ruin my chances of doing whatever it is my intuition wanted me to do. I kept driving. I thought to myself about the book Underland, written by Robert Macfarlane. I thought back to the On Being podcast I had heard him on when he talked about caves in a way that left me gobsmacked. He had been discussing the human condition, the human experience on planet earth.

  • “We gaze upwards, and we can see trillions of miles out upon our galaxy, and even beyond if our eyes could differentiate between the specks of light reaching us from light-years away, beyond our galaxy. And then, we look down, and we cannot see past our own toes.” His point is that looking up and outwards comes naturally, but looking down and inwards does not come so naturally to us. However, he pointed out that for as long as humans have walked on the earth, despite the ease of gazing upwards and outwards, we have sought out the darkness of caves to find and make meaning. We go into the darkness to access vision.

    We do not go to the light for vision. We need darkness to do that. So the way that Robert discussed caves put it all into a different perspective of metaphor for me. It’s all about going inward. Going underground, both in the earth and in our own underground. The domain of the human soul. We go inwards and underground in order to create a sort of initiation. I felt that I was on the edge of some kind of threshold as I drove up to Kentucky to begin this book that I have been wanting to write for over a decade. And I think somewhere in me I knew that I needed to tie this threshold moment to something physical. I was meant to bring something out of the caves of my being, by surrounding myself with one of the earth’s caves. The largest on earth, by happenstance. What are the odds that I happen to live less than 2 hours from the largest cave on earth? How lucky am I? And I have never been fascinated by caves until Sir Robert educated me on them. This solo cave expedition felt important for reasons beyond my direct awareness. I just knew I had to get there.

    As I approached the cave, I slowed down. I became acutely aware that I was the only person in my sight. No one else was anywhere around me. I couldn’t hear anything else apart from the wind moving through the trees. I felt apprehension, I felt hesitation.

    As I rounded a corner and saw a staircase, I suddenly felt a blast of cold air. It was a hot summer’s day, and it felt like an AC blasting on me. I looked down and realized it was coming from the cave. I wondered again what it must have been like for the indigenous people to discover and rediscover this incredible place. I peered over the edge of the railing and saw the waterfall. The woman on the phone at the visitor’s center had told me about that waterfall. It apparently only works after a large rain, and it is a special thing to have it going when you visit. I wound my way around the railing, and slowly began the descent into the mouth of the cave, listening to each of my footsteps echo eerily off of the rugged stone angles rising further around me as I descended. The cold air kept rushing around me. I don’t know why I felt so confronted by that cold air. I am not sure if it was because it was unexpected, or because it gave me a chill and caused me to cross my arms over my body, or because I don’t like the sensation of cold, or because it felt so out of place on this hot day in Kentucky. I kept walking. The coldness is out of place. The way a sudden frigid interaction makes me question my reality.

    I let my eyes take in the lime green of the trees, which got taller and taller as I got lower and lower. The mouth of the cave was 30 feet high at least, and all I could see inside was darkness. I realized that this was probably the perfect experience for me to have descending into the darkness because when the tours are operating I imagine there are interior lights on everywhere, conversations between tourists, laughing and goofing off, straightening of shoes. I was elated and apprehensive. Both/and. My steps slowed again. My awareness of my aloneness crept back in. I felt my amygdala fire off, understanding that if someone was following me who had bad intentions, that I would be in trouble. As I walked further into the darkness, I couldn’t believe how quickly it was inky black - a blackness I had not seen before. Because there is no light, my eyes couldn’t differentiate between textures or angles, making it look like a hole was ripped in reality.

    I had lost almost all ability to see anything. I could feel my heart overwhelming my chest with its pounding and I spun around towards the blindingly bright cave entrance, towards the green, towards the sky, towards the nice waterfall, and I began reversing my course. What was I so scared of? I have walked through dark city streets alone in cities all over the world. I have been lost in the Sharjah desert at night, attempting to communicate in Arabic with Bedouin tribespeople. I have been in New York City alleyways at 3 am on a Saturday night, taking a shortcut through to Broadway. I have walked miles alone at midnight in Ecuador with nothing more than a cloth handbag hanging from my shoulder. I turned back around to face the blackness. I reached up and touched the wall of the cave with my hand, briefly considering all of the souls who had walked these paths, particularly before this was a tourist attraction. Who were they? What were they attempting to do? What did they think about it? What did this cave mean to them? As I pressed my palm against the cold rock, it told me things, in words before words. I quickly removed my hand. I could feel the gravity of the wisdom these walls held—the breadth of the human experience—and I wasn’t sure I was ready to hold it also. I kept walking into the dark. My steps slowed for the third time. "What the hell am I doing?" I thought to myself. I came here for a reason. What was it? To feel this? Why? I breathed. I could hear my breath moving between the rock walls and ceilings all around me. I felt part of this cave. I am it, it is me. Just like everything else. It is important that I walk all the way. I turned my eyes back towards the deep expanse. I walked. And I walked. And then, all at once, all the tension and fear melted away. Not because what was scaring me went away, it was because I marched straight into what was scaring me. What a paradox. Transcendence, integration, and rapid becoming, in a single moment. This is what I came here for: to have a visceral, embodied experience of what it is to exist within vision, darkness, soul, history, future, stumbling, uncertainty, and breakthrough. And so this moment became a tool. A tool that I have used liberally ever since. What I most fear is littered with treasure. But I can only claim that treasure by walking willingly into the contrast.

 

#13: Did you feel lonely in 2020?

No. 2020 was the most connected I’ve ever felt. Connected to me (all the deep work!), to my family (quarantine!), to clients (profound conversations!), to friends (we chose each other!), to my community (we needed/supported each other!), to the world (our interconnectivity has never been so obvious!).

Here’s a photo of half of the group in an Alchemy of Chaos session (all 19 of us couldn’t fit in the Instagram square) because to me it demonstrates the lack of loneliness I felt. The love is real. And the connection was palpable. And, despite the circumstances, completely possible.

Photo of half of the group in an Alchemy of Chaos session.

 

#13: From your present-day perspective, write a letter to yourself on January 1, 2020.

In the words of CT Vivian, "It is in the action that we find out who we are."

Get ready, get grounded, get centered...the year ahead is going to be the year that you come alive. The year that you allow a wider sphere of people to see you - the real you - and that will require courage. The year that you expand your awareness and your discernment.

You'll realize that 2019 was a training ground for you in order to carry a certain kind of torch in the coming months. And I ask you to carry that torch, even when it scares you. Especially when it scares you.

You'll watch in fascination and terror as the world shuts down. I'd give you details, but I don't want to ruin all the juicy plot twists.

You'll settle into the truth that there is nowhere to go and no one to become in order to be who you already are.

You'll learn to lead without feeling like you have to have the answer. In fact, you'll access a knowing that having the answer can be shockingly limiting.

You'll discover that there is a difference between figuring it out and feeling it out.

You'll do things that make you uncomfortable. You'll learn things that make you uncomfortable. You'll confront things that make you uncomfortable.

Learning to live within discomfort will be key - it isn't something to deny or try to fix, it's something to step into as much as you can. Allow it to surround you like flames licking at your feet, and don't run away.

It will not be easy, but you'll do it all with relative ease.

  • Easy isn't the same as ease.

    You'll ask people questions that illuminate hidden worlds within them, which will then ignite incredible possibilities. You will be profoundly moved by witnessing people in their process. People will be profoundly moved by your work with them. It doesn't matter that you are also going through the wringer...oh yeah, this is also the year that you stop doubting yourself (for the most part). Just you wait - it's exhilarating.

    This is the year you will be so challenged and so thrown off course that you’ll be able to see clearly with a new kind of vision without the fog of a planned life getting in your way. Life is way better than you could ever plan it (even in the impossibility!), so please stop trying.

    This year you'll settle into your gifts as a world weaver.

    This year will present infinite opportunities for you to integrate all you've learned thus far and become all you've imagined.

    Buckle up. (But don’t take your foot off the pedal!)

    PS please also let this be the year that you stop buying sour patch kids at the gas station. Those things are toxic to your soul and you know it.

 

#15: What is something you gained in 2020?

Perspective.

 

#16: What’s the most illogical thing you did or believed during the lockdown

This is random and borderline silly. I actually don’t know how I feel about it. But it’s the first thing I thought of when I read the prompt tonight so here we go.

I got home from NYC on Thursday, March 12th. On Friday I picked the kids up from school and we stopped into Costco. The place was wild. People frantically running around, a few people already in masks before masks were even a thing, check out line reached almost to the back of the building. I’m a relatively calm person, and I’m especially good at keeping my wits about me in crises. But this Friday the 13th Costco apocalypse energy really got to me. I did several illogical things in rapid succession.

#1: I had a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old, one in each arm, and I almost turned around and went home when I saw the scene. And then I didn’t go home exactly because of the scene, letting my mind get wrapped up in a foreign state of scarcity thinking. Looking back I cannot think of a more miserable circumstance to add to the ambient stress than toting emotionally sensitive toddlers around Costco, waiting in line for an hour to check out. Illogical. Orion was crying and Atlas was coughing (!!) which at that time was resulting in death stares from 80% of people.

#2: I felt uncomfortable making eye contact with anyone. It was so strange how quickly shared humanity norms went out the window.

#3. I was initially going to Costco to pick up school snacks and a few other things, but then once I got there I found myself buying the things everyone else was. The most preposterous illogical the thing I came home with (that my husband still has not let me live down) was a box of 200 pairs of surgical gloves. That box still sits fully in the bottom of our pantry.

Buying those gloves - but really that entire Costco experience - was the most illogical thing I did during the lockdown. I still marvel at how I got completely swept away in the current of other people’s energy. I could further psychoanalyze myself/the situation but Imma leave it here for today.

(I had spent the week prior learning from these majestic horses.)

 

#17: Did 2020 change the way you see yourself? How?

Unequivocally. The evolution of my self-sight was a series of choices, rather than a series of experiences that informed my perception of myself. (Big difference.) The choice was a powerful ally for me because when it came down to it, I had to choose to leap into my next self based on zero actual understanding of what that would mean. I just had to do it. I just had to choose to see myself with new eyes, in a new light, wrapped in new possibilities.

Alchemy had everything to do with 2020 for reasons that I could write a book on (...and I literally am writing a book on it because there is THAT much material, lol). Alchemy - in the most basic sense - is coming to understand the layered and dimensional mirroring that is happening all the time, between self and other, self and nature, world and environment, self and world, inner and outer, quantum and cosmic, physical and spiritual, etc.

The way I saw myself changed in 2020 because I feel like I finally began to grasp that I am this infinite being living within infinite tiny moments of existence and that everything I experience is a compounding set of mirrors and metaphors.

Therefore, I take myself less seriously.

Therefore, I can be far more compelling in the present time because I'm less focused on my past self/future self.

Therefore, I can respond to conditions as they are.

  • I have cultivated qualities of curiosity, discernment, clarity, agency, and power. And this means that whatever comes, I know that I can meet it. Unknown or familiar, it doesn't matter. I now see myself as able to do this.

    Whereas before, I saw myself as needing ever-more information in order to be sure that I could perform or to be sure I would "do it right."

    Now, instead of performing, I just show up.

    I say the real thing instead of the right thing.

    I was locked in a jail cell not realizing I was both the builder of the walls and the holder of the keys. And all it took to walk free was being hospitable to what's here, within me, in front of me, in the world, right now.

    At the exact moment I chose to see myself, I chose to see the whole universe.

    (And vice versa.)

 

#18: If you could do 2020 all over again, what would you do differently?

I just wrote out and then subsequently backspaced each letter of the word "nothing."

At first glance at this question, knee jerk response was that I wouldn't do anything differently because I am who I am today because of every single detail of 2020. And I really love who I am today. Don't wanna lose that by presuming that any moment of the past year was unnecessary or re-writable.

And. I would be remiss to mention that I absolutely wish for the re-do I wrote about in prompt #9, even if I became an entirely different Christine as a result. That tradeoff would be worth it.

Other than that it's all the tiny things.

A little bubble-up detail that occurs to me at this moment is that something I would have done differently is been a bit more intentionally present with my family. A big chunk of 2020 was dedicated to me birthing new offerings for the world, and my gaze was often up and away from the actual humans I birthed. Ben and my mom held down the home front, especially last spring.

Perhaps I would have volunteered more within my community. Perhaps I also would have watched a few more sunrises and sunsets. Each time I make space to do this, I marvel, I thrive, I am ignited. And it's so easy to do. There's a quote I love which says that humankind's greatness lies in the ability to stand alone and watch the sunset.

That feels true to me.

The picture is of Orion on one of our many rain walks, which we came to cherish.

 

#19: What is something you accomplished in 2020 and how does that make you feel?

Accomplish. Accomplishment. I sat here with my laptop staring beyond my screen into the sky and watching the wind for a good 10 minutes, biting my nails, feeling unmoved and uninspired by the concept of accomplishment.

So much of my life used to be driven by accomplishment, and this caused me to miss the point a lot of the time. Therefore, I've spent the last few years slowly backing away from this word and all of the energetic attachments I have to it.

In 2020 this re-evaluation was particularly interesting with the backdrop of so much commerce of the world being made irrelevant and shockingly unnecessary. Overnight, countless people were faced with a lack of ability to zoom around as they once had, deriving purpose from busyness and external accomplishment. Overnight, results-oriented business players and forecasters were left with a haunting form of "I don't know" that settled over all of us like a frigid fog. Overnight, the ethos of the western world of outward demonstrations of how much one had accomplished in life was woefully deficient.

One of the things we discuss in Alchemy of Chaos is what it might look like to engage in a process (of a day, of a conversation, of a business venture, of life, etc.) and not be fixated on the outcome or accomplishment within it. What if instead, the only "goal" is to be engaged with the process itself? And the things that have happened for me and for the people I am honored to host in the AoC process as we discuss this are astounding.

Just now I looked up the etymology of the word accomplishment and it says: "performance of a task; state of completion." And boom.

  • Herein lies the issue for me. Not only do I no longer feel the need to perform, but I also no longer believe that a state of completion is desirable. The illusion of arrival is exactly what has kept me stuck running in place, dosing on the drug of perpetual accomplishment.

    The less I fixate on completion and accomplishment, the more able I am to flow with what's most true and relevant in the present time. The big trick of the universe is that this is what actually makes me more effective in "accomplishing" things if that's your cuppa tea. That was a surprise for me. I did all this work to not define myself by my accomplishments and there was part of me that believed I would turn into a stale loaf of bread. But what I found is that not fixating on accomplishments was like yeast - it made everything around me come alive and alchemize.

 

#20: How is YOUR world different than it was in January 2020?

less plans

more presence

less distraction

more space

less doubt

more action

less overthinking

more flow

less hugs

more cuddles

less brunches

more closeness

less apathy

more groundedness

less hesitation

more vision

less aloneness

more heartache

less understanding

more awareness

less knowing it all

more self-education

less anger

more tears

less blinders

more visibility

less packed

more time

less weight

more gravity

less paralysis

more courage

less trying

more writing

less travel

more support

less ice cream

more greens

less offsites

more clients

less choices

more love

more death

more life

 

#21: Who was someone you looked to for support in 2020 and what did you learn from them?

I have had a go-to advisor for the last 8 years. Her name is Sandy. She is technically a craniosacral therapist, but she is lowkey also a psychotherapist, an intuitive clairvoyant, a business coach, a Buddhist scholar, a holistic medical expert, a spiritual luminary, and many many other things. She doesn't have a laptop, a website, or even a cell phone. She is the most present and magical human I know. When you look at the bright blue fire of her eyes it feels like you are transported to another universe. My life would be entirely unrecognizable without Sandy and the wisdom she has endowed me with over the years. I wouldn't have my kids or my company or my relationship without her. I wouldn't have been able to contextualize various elements of my past and potential future and use them for fuel for growth rather than repeated stumbling blocks.

As usual, I looked to Sandy for support in 2020. And as usual, I learned so much from her. Topics that stick out at this moment are these. She taught me how to trust myself more than I ever have, how to metabolize trauma, how to create new depths of understanding in conflict, how to be radically discerning, how to not know (and be cool with it), how to ignite my intuition, and how to be more present in my own life.

She has taught me so much about the meta understanding of all that is, while also being able to giggle and cry with me about the nitty-gritty details. I love her with the entire depth of my heart, soul, and spirit. She has changed my life and I feel so lucky to have found her in this lifetime.

  • I don’t have a single photo of me and Sandy from the last almost decade. Which makes sense seeing as she asks that I leave my cell in my car bc she can feel the frequency of it and she doesn’t like it. So no photos of Sandy are a testament to me respecting her boundaries!

    Instead here is a photo of one of my gorgeous soul sisters Krista (she is also someone who has supported me) on a walk in Cabo yesterday as we contemplated the perfection of this square white beach rock. She gets married tomorrow!

 

#22: What’s something that changed drastically for you in 2020?

Before 2020 I really counted on my perfectionism to shelter me from criticism. I banked on anticipating outcomes perfectly to drive my success.

After 2020, I have confronted that part of me that has ever-increasing high expectations of myself (which always end up being unattainable anyways). The result of this confrontation has been that being seen as having my shit together all the time is no longer my metric for success. Because it kept me so stuck for so long. So stuck, y’all. For so long.

My new metric for success? Doing the thing. Pressing the LFG button. Moving forward. Taking the first step even if I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

I could not adequately express to you how liberating this has been. All those moments in my past where perfectionism and too-high self-expectations stopped me in my tracks inevitably led to exactly that: stopping.

And now, I start. I move. I begin before I’m ready. I create motion in the water and ride the waves of the ripple effects. And it works. It leads straight to exactly the positive outcomes I was trying so carefully to ensure via perfectionism. But perfect had to be dropped from the agenda in order for true success to rise.

It’s messy at times, but it doesn’t matter.

Because these days I prefer messy results over nonexistent ones.

 

#23: How do you want to remember the year 2020?

**This is a sample photo of my body language as I list off these rememberings, taken yesterday at an ~actual~ in-person wedding yahoo can ya feel the post covid emergence? I can.**

I want to remember resilience, and how the human spirit is heart-wrenchingly strong in the face of impossibility.

I want to remember togetherness, and how it is more necessary than we ever knew.

I want to remember the ache of a sudden pivot, and how it can open hidden doors that we couldn't see before.

I want to remember family, and what it now means to me.

I want to remember threshold crossing, on an individual, relational, and societal level, and how the burn of passing through those gates is minimal compared to the liberation beyond them.

I want to remember separateness, and how it created such profound acknowledgment of things as simple as the nuance and fragility of life itself, the connection received from hugging friends, the freedom felt when strolling through a city at dusk.

I want to remember the skill set it requires to hold the meta-perspective evenly alongside the micro experience, and how one is able to move through the world as a result of this skillset.

  • I want to remember witnessing moments of incredible strength and incredible loss, and marveling at how powerful it is to be faced with the unthinkable.

    I want to remember the feeling of finding something ridiculous to belly laugh at amidst pain and confusion.

    I want to remember how hard I grappled with division, and how much it hurt me to wrestle with what it all meant for my future, my kids' future, the country's future, the world's future.

    I want to remember how obvious our global interconnectedness and interdependence were, in a million big and small ways.

    Most of all, I want to remember our collective breaking and our collective becoming, and the new avenues of possibility and perspective that were opened up because of both, separately and together.

 

#24: Write about a time you laughed until you cried in 2020.

Well. I’ve tried to write about this. And there are just too many details that go into setting the stage in order for you to find this situation as funny as it was. I’d need an entire book chapter in order to do it justice.

But just know it had to do with three marvelously hilarious girlfriends, fresh-picked citrus, artisan truffles, a picnic in Topanga (pictured), ski jackets with fur hoods, graduation, a passerby group of 15 cackling hiker women, and us asking each other questions like “what even is a hand?!” and “what even is a text message?!”

I have never laughed harder. Even right now I can feel that special kind of uncontrollable laughter bubbling up from my chest. The kind that seems to hit in moments you’re not supposed to laugh like in a quiet classroom or at a serious meeting or in church during prayer. But not this day. We let it all out. We laughed until we cried and cried until we laughed. At one point, after laugh-crying for a solid 10 minutes, one of us noticed the constant tear stream running down her own cheek and exclaimed “I’ve sprung a leak!” which set us off all over again.

It felt so good. Laughter really does nourish the soul.

I used to follow someone on Instagram who said she loved watching comedy because the most hysterical comedians are just people telling the truth out loud about things most of us are too shy to acknowledge in words. So the best kind of laughter is the laughter of shared experience, not of making fun of something or someone. In its purest form, great comedy is highlighting recognition, not highlighting separateness. It’s getting real about our shared humanity and our shared truths all boiled down into the base ingredients that we can all get our hands around and giggle at together. The simplicity and absurdity of life. This is why she believed that comedy is a necessary ingredient in consciousness evolution.

I can get down with that.

 

#25: What is something you were grateful for in 2020?

Extended family time.

Even though there were many challenging moments in quarantine, I found myself coming back over and over to how grateful I was to have had those months of hunker downtime with the kids. They were at this key developmental time of ages 1/2 and 3/4, and pre-COVID-19 life was increasing in speed and steam with no glances backward.

Quarantine helped me realize how quickly the kids were growing up and helped me enjoy those small moments, those fleeting margins of minutes, where so much magic lives.

Especially in kids who are learning and developing at such a rapid pace, where each new day was a new adventure right here at home base. It redefined adventure for me, from an outward-facing thing to an inward-facing thing...within our little family unit.

 

#26: In the absence of a prompt today, please find below a soul-salve passage

From a book I just started reading last week called Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home. This is on the first page, and I spent 30min reading it over and over again. I invite you to let it wash over you in layers. It’s a medicinal situation.

“For the rebels and the misfits, the black sheep, and the outsiders. For the refugees, the orphans, the scapegoats, and the weirdos. For the uprooted, the abandoned, the shunned, and invisible ones.

May you recognize with an increasing vividness that you know what you know.

May you give up your allegiances to self-doubt, meekness, and hesitation.

May you be willing to be unlikeable, and in the process be utterly loved.

May you be impervious to the wrongful projections of others, and may you deliver your disagreements with precision and grace.

May you see, with the consummate clarity of nature moving through you, that your voice is not only necessary but desperately needed to sing us out of this muddle.

May you feel shored up, supported, entwined, and reassured as you offer yourself and your gifts to the world.

May you know for certain that even as you stand by yourself, you are not alone.”

Toko-pa Turner

 

#27: What did you let go of in 2020?

I let go of the notion that things have to be predictable in order to feel safe.

I also let go of the notion that leadership means knowing the answers.

These two are deeply linked, but it’s worth dividing them out for the sake of this writing.

I figured out early on in the pandemic that my attempting to rationalize and/or resist what was happening was perpetuating - and even amplifying - a lack of ability to be helpful. So I had to quickly renegotiate what baseline safety meant. And for me, safety could no longer be attached to predictability or else it would have rendered me triggered and useless in my leadership roles seeing as zero dynamics were predictable.

I spent a lifetime assuming that if you’re a leader, you know the answer, you see the path, and you march confidently ahead as people follow you. Hashtag leadership. But a new brand of leadership emerged in 2020 whereby if you were someone claiming to know the answer when the world was spinning into unrecognizable stratospheres, it was almost as if your credibility was compromised. Instead of confident, you appeared out of touch. The most compelling leadership looked something like:

“I know just as much as you, I know just as little as you. I don’t know where to go from here. No idea. All I see are foggy questions and constantly shifting grey areas. It’s disconcerting and scary.

  • My commitment to you is that I will stay with you so that no one is alone, I will be present with what’s happening so that I can respond with possibility and opportunity, and I will not sugarcoat because I respect you all too much to play that game. We are all walking through an exceptional time together. And the only place we can surely be is here.”

    Owning the not knowing and owning the unpredictability ended up being the life vests that kept heads above the rushing river rapids of covid. Doesn’t make logical sense, but I saw it work over and over.

    What if leadership could be as simple as eating a chocolate Nutella popsicle while having a super juicy convo laced with the potential of the present moment?

    (...it can be that simple.)

 

#26: Looking back, what do you wish you would have known at the start of 2020?

One of my life observations at this point is that I learn deeply (and quickly!) from confronting events, people, environments, experiences. Beautifully confronting as well as harrowingly confronting. But stuff wouldn’t be confronting enough to stop me in my tracks and see with new eyes if I already knew what was gonna happen. And I would then not be changed and moved by it in profound ways.

I wouldn’t trade the me that was forged in the fires of 2020 for a billion dollars. You just can’t manufacture the perspective of the type that last year presented us with. It’s priceless. I believe we are all forever changed.

Therefore, I don’t wish that I knew anything different at the start of 2020. That freight train was transformative, and I was on board. I’m imagining that even a little extra informed knowledge at the start would have scared the shit out of me and might have allowed me to move out of the way of the train...and we can’t have that, folks.

Because the freight train of 2020 was carrying cargo that nourished me, tested me, inspired me, devastated me, liberated me, crushed me, carved me. Give me all of it. I’m here to live this human life to the fullest extent.

 

#29: What was the biggest obstacle you faced in 2020 and what did it teach you about yourself?

Full transparency:

It’s late. The writing isn’t flowing today. Ally says that when writer’s block happens, it’s not because there is a lack of inspiration or content. Instead, it’s usually because there’s something really big that wants to come through but it’s like trying to fit a chunky too-big idea down a swirly too-small channel. So it gets lodged. Writer’s block can be reframed to an opportunity to drop a level deeper in order to start chipping away at the block, using raw truth as the dissolution agent. The simple act of choosing to lean in and work with it is when you start to wring out the magical droplets of wisdom, one word at a time.

I cannot believe I’m still here writing every day. If someone had told me a month ago that I would have shared my thoughts and observations on this platform 29 times from then until now I would have crinkled my nose, shaken my head, and waved them away.

I have learned that writing for me is what works for me. In the past, I would be writing for “You.” And writing for “You” meant that I spent way too much time considering what your perspectives are and if they’d jive with mine. I wanted them to jive so that I could belong. But there are several problems with that, one of which is that there are countless “Yous” all with radically different perspectives. It’s a waste of energy to attempt to anticipate the infinitely complex ways something might be received by someone. I have zero control over that. Trying to morph my thoughts into being universally palatable made my writing into this formless blob that had no meaning, no teeth, no significance, and no helpfulness (to anyone).

“In order to avoid criticism, follow these simple steps: say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”

  • I remember when I first read that it hit me hard. I slowly realized that I valued avoiding criticism more than I valued being me, more than I valued being a participant in the larger world. Yikes.

    Not anymore. I now not only know who I am, but I also trust who I am. And it is that place from which I now write. And it feels damn good.

    And the feeling good part is not contingent upon positive feedback, or lack of negative feedback. My #1 contemplation lately is from Georgia O’Keefe: “I’ve settled it for myself that praise and criticism go down the same drain.”

    This helps me continue to feed my own momentum and belong to myself. Both of which allow me to be a much more powerful communicator.

    If you’re reading this, I deeply value your companionship on this mini journey. Drop me a line if we’re not already acquainted! I’d love to connect.

 

#30: How are you better because of what you experienced in 2020?

I am now an alchemist.

Settling into this identity and practice felt like coming home to myself in so many ways. Today I’m gonna tell a cool story that demonstrates one small element of proof (if you wanna call it that) that alchemy has always been floating in my awareness. I just call it another link in my never-ending synchronicity chain.

I was born in Tennessee. One of the components of being a “good southern child” is that you must give handwritten thank you notes to anyone who gives you anything or does anything for you. I resisted it so hard growing up, however, it was successfully drilled into me.

One week after I started my own business back in 2015, the good girl in me prioritized ordering custom thank you cards for my corporate correspondences from this one company my mom had always said was the highest quality. I had not made a cent so spending what I spent on stationary was preposterous at the time. But I did it anyway because my roots told me it mattered.

I picked a template that allowed for my name at the top and the address in small print across the bottom. Because I didn’t have a biz address, I instead wanted something that would be a little punchy, slightly intriguing. I wasn’t just any executive and I wanted this stationery to showcase that there were many layers to the way I did business.

I ended up choosing this one quote that I don’t think I was particularly connected to but it obviously resonated. It was:

“As above so below, as within so without, as the universe so the soul.”

  • I remember that it barely fit in the allotted number of characters in the template.

    Fast forward to January of this year. I was interviewing participants for cohort 3 of Alchemy of Chaos, and I had the pleasure of hopping on a call with a legend of a man who was a multi-entrepreneur/exec and impressive for lots of surface reasons. And, he also happened to be a student of alchemy for several decades.

    I had created this program all about alchemy, just trusting my intuition on what alchemy was to me, not having any idea of the specific science of it all. Therefore, I asked him about the principles and practices of alchemy, and I was enthralled.

    He then said in passing, “And the most important rule of alchemy is Correspondence, like the alchemical adage ‘as above so below.’ And my jaw dropped as I got chill bumps head to toe. I interrupted him and blurted out: “you mean to tell me that the ‘as above so below’ thing spells out the most important principle of ALCHEMY?!” He nodded.

    Y’all. At that moment it was like I tore a hole in the edge of the matrix, rammed my eyeball up against a keyhole, and saw myself at every age I’ve ever been and every age I will ever be and it’s all about alchemy for me.

    I put the alchemical principle of correspondence on my business correspondence stationary without even knowing it. Then 6 years later to have alchemy as such a huge part of my life...it blows my ever-loving mind.

    I still have that stationary today, and now it represents the magic that stretches across time and place, seemingly connecting fibers of life together in a way that makes you wonder if time really is just a construct.

    But that’s a different post.

    Photo is of the Banyan Tree, which is another version of what being an alchemist is to me. Standing tall as a channel of illumination and possibility amidst the darkness and shadowy reflections around us.

 

#31: Reflect on the past month of writing. What has been overcome? What is now possible?

This is yet another photo from the magical wedding of @itskrista and @ohthatsjhall.

Thank you @ericarachelgalia for this photo!

A large and very stubborn boulder of inertia has been overcome. The only way it moved was by moving around it, within it, and of it until it dissolved in my hands. There were so many days I just wanted to go to sleep without writing. I felt like I didn’t have anything to say, I was getting self-conscious of posting so much, and I thought I had shared all there was to share about 2020. But I found that there are infinite angles and crevices of myself and that there is always something new that I can discover within my own awareness. What an exhilarating thought, that there is an infinite adventure into my own mind available at my fingertips, with the only gatekeeper being my willingness to ask, to go there, to return to the page. It reminds me of something a friend once said to kick off a group retreat at Onsite: “The human soul is like an onion, and you’re always peeling back layers. Unlike a Tootsie Pop, there’s no center to the human soul.”

This online challenge format worked for me because although it was uncomfortable for me to keep posting all month, there was a certain undercurrent that kept me moving that was made up of the built-in accountability of doing this on a public platform. This turned out to be the magic sauce. The very unexpected magic sauce, seeing as I have been the opposite of public with my meanderings and movements over the large part of the last 6/7 years. It was a necessary incubation, and this writing challenge helped me to emerge from the cocoon.

What is now possible is another layer of life. As I’ve peeled back the membranes of my perspectives and experiences over the past month, parts of me have solidified. Become more real. Gained footing. These parts can now sing their own song as part of a symphony.

  • When I tell you I am flabbergasted that I actually ran this thing through to the end without missing a day, it cannot be over-emphasized. Flabbergasted. I cannot remember the last time I did something for 31 days straight. Thank you Ally for creating this. My soul needed it. It’s so amazing that the simple act of talking out some words on a screen can create such aliveness, such groundedness, such freshness.

    (This is actually what Ally’s latest book is about, which I highly recommend: The Power of Writing it Down)