True Selveseses.

Ever hear that (author unknown) quote, “Character is who you are when no one is watching”?

The minute my pre-teen self was home alone, I’d throw on some bright red lipstick, find my sparkly, glow-in-the-dark hairbrush, and grab my Disney soundtrack cassette tapes. While kids my age listened to their older sibling’s “cool” music like NKOTB, I’d push the play button on my portable tape player, and passionately belt “A Whole New World” with Aladdin and Jasmine at the top of my lungs. Later on, my as my taste matured, I sang along with Jean Valjean, Inspector Javert, and Fantine from the Les Miserable soundtrack, and Erik and Christine from the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack. 

Despite being alone in front of a full-length mirror, there were no killer dance moves. My adolescent self didn’t even pretend to be rhythmically gifted. I suppose it didn’t help that my religion wasn’t keen on dancing. No Senior Proms in my history, although, considering my white girl dancing skills, that was probably a blessing from God. Even now, I can barely hang with the Inflatable Tube Man at car dealerships.

“Identity is gradual, cumulative; because there is no need for it to manifest itself, it shows itself intermittently, the way a star hints at the pulse of its being by means of its flickering light. But at what moment in this oscillation is our true self manifested? In the darkness or the twinkle?” 

― Sergio Chejfec, The Planets

So, instead of making up sweet Janet Jackson dance routines, I chose to make sure my voice sounded exactly how the singer sang. I took note (thanks to my radically red lips emphasizing the shape my mouth made) when my tones matched the singer’s tones. I sang the songs over and over until the cassette tape would wear or get stuck like a kitten with a ball of yarn. So, I decided to painstakingly figure out how to sight read music so I could accompany myself. Once the family was out for the afternoon, I’d hop on the piano and make as much noise to my heart’s content.

Later, I went off to a boarding school where it was almost impossible to be alone and enjoy my private pastime. I took piano lessons, joined the choirs, and sang where ever and when ever I could.

But, I gotta say, it’s one thing to enjoy your favorite pastime in the comforts and privacy of your own home (cooking for yourself, making your own model cars from scratch, knitting or quilting, etc.) but trying doing those things for a crowd, in front of strangers, with other people… it becomes a whole new bag of beans. Now it’s an out in the open thing, vulnerable to scrutiny, opinions, dislikes, and judgement. Ugh. <cringe>

“We can’t turn our true selves off and on situationally and expect them to carry and sustain us. Rationing creativity results in bipolarism of the spirit. Our creativity is also our life force. When we turn it off and on like a spigot, we start to become less and less able to control the valve.” 

― S. Kelley Harrell

“Do your fears warn of external dangers? Or, are they the kind that keep you from becoming more of your true self?” 

― Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road

My fears when sharing my passion for singing (and writing!) have always been challenging, and yes, I am now realizing it has kept me from being my true self. Being so openly real and visible to others has always made me uncomfortable. However, I’m more uncomfortable when I’m not doing what I was created to do. I’m finding I’d rather pick the lesser of two evils. 

“The figure calling to me all those years was, I believe, what Thomas Merton calls "true self." This is not the ego self that wants to inflate us (or deflate us, another from of self-distortion), not the intellectual self that wants to hover above the mess of life in clear but ungrounded ideas, not the ethical self that wants to live by some abstract moral code. It is the self-planted in us by the God who made us in God's own image-- the self that wants nothing more, or less, than for us to be who we were created to be.  - ― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

“Showing your true self sometimes don't give you any benefit, but at least you do honest to your self and God.” ― Olivia Sinaga

I got so lost in being a mom that I forgot what it was like to be me. I sometimes get lost in being a wife, or friend, or daughter, or sister that I forget about all these other parts collectively that need to talk to each other. (Apparently, it’s all about balance.)

So I’m on the journey of rediscovering what I lost… starting with this blog (that I’m having fun writing for), and hopefully I’ll be doing some more singing soon! I’m going to be doing some choir directing at my church (with a talented mentor) which I’m super silly excited about. 

“Your true self is never so lost that you can’t find it again.” 

― Elaina Marie, Happiness is Overrated - Live the Inspired Life Instead

So, what do you do when no one is watching? :)

Bring it.

“Look ahead. Look ahead!” 

That is a phrase that is forever tattooed on my brain by my harp teacher. When I was 13, I would go to Ms. Tepper’s house once a week for harp lessons. (She was the lady who played at my wedding ceremony 7 years ago.)  She had more folk lore and guinea pigs in one room than China in a China shop. Every week, the first ten minutes of the lesson would be drills. With clammy hands, I’d run scales and arpeggios up and down the harp in time with the ticking of a metronome. Then we’d try some sight reading on songs I had never played before. “Look ahead,” meant to figure out where my fingers would go next on the strings. That meant, to not only read the next notes I was to play, but to somehow take in the ones after them, too. It was challenging, frustrating, and felt impossible.  

Now, almost 20 years later, as I dust off and sit at my harp… “look ahead” is all I hear. I go over and over arpeggios, and I feel Ms. Tepper’s eyes watching me as I remember to “look ahead” to place my fingers immediately where they should go next. 

I realized two things: 

1. Our brains are incredible. 

2. The past never really goes away. 

I didn’t try to forget how to play the harp, I just easily avoided it (it was hiding at my mom’s house) or just didn’t think about it. And yet, after not touching it for 20 years, it all came back to me (um, though obviously, not as practiced) within 30 minutes. 

You can try to forget or block certain memories, knowledge, experiences, etc. You can stuff them into tiny little boxes in your brain, you can bury them and hope that by becoming busy they won’t have room to resurface, you can oversimplify them and declare them “dealt with,” but it isn’t that easy. Unfortunately for Elsa (from Disney's movie Frozen), the past isn’t always in the past. In some way or another, it will always be there and influence who you are today.

The pain you feel from the loss of a loved one, the pride you feel from winning a contest or from buying your first home, the joy you feel landing your dream job, the vulnerable-ness you feel your first night living alone or going to college, the embarrassment you feel when you make a mistake… let's face it, that stuff - those feelings, emotions, experiences - aren’t going to magically dissolve like snowflakes (yeah, Elsa, geez.). 

Sometimes the past will creep up on you like a spider in the summer. For instance:

 - Any time I talk about science-y stuff, I am forced to recall from my 4th grade class: “Mass is anything that has matter and takes up space.” 

- Whenever the smell of honeysuckles wafts up my nostrils, I’m immediately transported to a blissful July 4th weekend on Block Island when I was 5 years old. 

- Turquoise jewelry reminds me of the time my late Auntie Gabe promised to let me live with her when I was 18 so I could get my ears pierced. 

- Whenever I smell hot rubber, I remember how much fun it was to be picked up from elementary school in Bermuda with our bathing suits and huge, black rubber inner tubes in the back of the car, ready to go to the beach. 

- When I see a wooden ruler, I remember what it felt like to get in trouble at school and get my palm smacked with one by a teacher. 

- Occasionally, I have dreams about people who are no longer in my life, and I wake up remembering what it was like to hurt people and be hurt by them. 

- Songs I listen to bring up memories of the pain and sadness I felt when close friends and loved ones passed away. 

- Visiting with friends and family members often reminds me of the joy I felt as they got married and grew their families.

Not all of these are things I would like to experience again. Often, I find myself fighting against reviving the past. I want to never talk about it again so that it disappears or seems like it never happened. Or avoid it by squishing all the feelings into a glass jar and then throwing it over a bridge where it smashes against the rocks below. How satisfying. 

I fear that by thinking about the past, I’ll be forced to experience it again in all it's glory (even if in a less amplified way). And guys, I’ll just say from experience, fighting it is not healthy for the body. (Oh hello, stomach pain, there you are.) The body is not meant to handle all that anguish on it’s own. 

What seems to make these experiences either less burdensome or more joyful, is to share them. I’m not saying to keep dredging things up and dwelling on the past, and I'm also not saying to keep trying or pretending to “let it go.” If that works for you, fine. However, my suggestion is to learn from it, and share it. To me, sharing with others seems to take the energy and power of the experience and disperse it. Funeral services, memorial services, and wakes help people with the pain of their loss by sharing it with each other. If you win a race, how much less fun is that victory if no one is there to celebrate with you or gets to see your trophy? Laughing with your friends about your most embarrassing moment makes it seem less embarrassing. 

So, brace yourselves, as I continue to “look ahead” and share with you my past, present, and future. For the record, I love when people share with me as well! 
Bring it.

(Remember folks, sharing is caring.)

Do it. Do it.

We were standing at the bathroom sink, brushing our teeth. My 4 year old looked at the index card taped to the mirror and spelled out the largest word she saw: “B - O - L - D. What does that say, mommy?” So we phonetically sounded it out. And than I told her that “bold” is another way of saying “brave,” and read her the whole verse: “In the day when I cried out, You answered me, and made me bold, with strength in my soul.” (Psalm 138:3) I looked at her and asked, “Are you bold or brave?” 

She answered: “Yes.” 

I saw an Oprah magazine last month (Sept. issue?) that had the headline “Your Comfort Zone.” The magazine as a whole did little to encourage you on how to find your own comfort zone. The main article was more about comfortable things (cashmere scarves, woolly slippers, etc.). However, in her small column “What Oprah Knows For Sure” Oprah talked about getting out of your comfort zone with Shonda Rhimes (creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, etc.) Shonda decided to embark on a year of saying yes to things normally out of her comfort zone, and:

“Result number one: Shonda's first book, Year of Yes. Result number two (the way more important one!): pure transformation. Shonda neither looks nor is the same as she was a year ago. She's lost 110 pounds. She's so much more engaged. As her book chronicles, saying yes to heretofore anxiety-making experiences like speeches, parties and media appearances opened up the world to her. Blowing out your comfort zone can be life changing.”

I’m not sure where my comfort zone is. Does any one know where their comfort zone is? Or mine, for that matter? I definitely couldn’t Google map it. It would be all like… Destination Not Found. However, thanks to our recent trip to Hawaii, I can google map a few places (the North Shore!) where I definitely wasn’t in any sort of comfort zone… so I created one! 

“Great things never come from comfort zones.” 

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” 

“A ship is always safe at shore, but that’s not what it is built for.”

“No risks, no rewards.” - Eccelesiastes 11:1-6

“Do not resist chances. Take them like vitamins.”

I intentionally spent the week in Oahu doing things that reached deeply into my storehouses of boldness and bravery. Not just for the adrenaline rush, but to remember what courage feels like. Really, I spent the week stretching, working out, and strengthening my risk taking muscles. 

I got on airplanes, I learned to surf from famous, professional surfers, I got my first tattoo(s!), and I ate and tasted local, interesting food I’d never had before. I explored a foreign land on my own. I rode in a tiny helicopter with no doors. I listened to pro surfers (and successful web professionals) who told amazing stories and talked about about taking risks.

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and think of what could go right.”

“The trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk more.”

“What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?” - E.H.

“If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it.”

“You are far too smart to be the only things standing in your way.”

“Say yes, and you’ll figure it out afterwards.” - Tina Fey

“Every thing you want is on the other side of fear.” - Jack Canfield 

“The biggest mistake you could ever make is being too afraid to make one.”

“Thinking here goes nothing could be the start of everything.” - Drew Wagner

“If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.” - Seth Godin

“Sometimes what you’re most afraid of doing is the very thing that will set you free.” 

“Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.” 

“You have this one life. How do you wanna spend it? Apologizing? Regretting? Questioning? Hating yourself? Dieting? Running after people who don’t see you? Be brave. Believe in yourself. Do what feels good. Take risks. You have this one life. Make yourself proud.” - Beardsley Jones

It was incredible. My risk taking muscles feel strong and empowered. Maybe it was just a bit of my pre-kids personality peeking out, but I felt more like myself. I remembered what it felt like to take risks and see the rewards, whether good or bad. (Um, it was much easier when I was a teenager and seemingly invincible). 

“It’s better to cross the line and suffer the consequences than to just stare at that line for the rest of your life.”

“If you are not willing to look stupid, nothing great is ever going to happen to you.” - Dr. Gregory House

There was the bad, but then… there was the gooood. After surfing, I had bruises on my ribs that made breathing painful, cuts on my feet that made me hobble for three days, and board burns on my knees that required aloe. But I learned to surf (!) and fell deeper in love with the ocean. After every wave, whether I stood up on the board or not, I went back for more till my arms screamed to stop. I rode into the waves, through them, and over them. I got attacked by them, beat by them, and then intentionally fell into them and let them hug me. I definitely plan on going back again soon and doing it all over again. 

“Take into account that great love and great achievement involve great risks.” - Dalai Lama

“With courage you will dare to take the risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.” - Mark Twain 

“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.” - Ernest Hemingway

“I want to dare to exist and, more than that, to live audaciously, in all my imperfect, lumpy, scarred glory, because the alternative is letting shame win.” - Shauna Niequist

“What a terrible waste of life it is, to always take the easy path, to never know what it is to risk everything for what you love.” - Beau Taplin

As a now experienced risk taker, I highly recommend - no, I give you permission - to take some risks. It still counts if they are calculated. That’s totally fine. But take them. They make for better stories and better lives! The risks you take are the things you are going to look back on when you are older (and possibly unable to do so anymore). 

Of all these quotes I found on Pinterest, (sorry for the ones I couldn’t site or find the source), Eleanor Roosevelt’s is my favorite: 

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.” 

Word, Eleanor. 

Leave Me Alone, Pinterest

Pinterest makes my eyes roll back into my head so far that I can see my kids misbehaving behind me. I hate to love it. Admittedly, it has caused pools of drool to dribble down my chin while my eyeballs hungrily eat the tantalizing food and dreamy leather bags. Other times it has caused me to get so lost, like 10 pins deep, that I come out of it feeling dizzy like those kids in Inception when they wake up. Curiosity never has to end… well… at least until you see the same dumb pins over and over, and you “wake up.” 

Initially, in its early days, Pinterest got me so inspired and excited with its DIY-ness. Want to learn how to sew? Want to build your kids a play house? Want to cook a 5 course meal? Want to put together an outfit in 2 minutes? Oh my God! You can do it all in one place! If someone else can do it, and make it look so easy and good, why can’t you? Everyone and their kid looks so happy. Even the food looks happy.

I got trapped in what I like to call, “Pin-ception.” Or Deception. Whatevs. 

Here’s what happened:

1. Pinterest lead me to believe that a kid’s birthday party was only worth having if you had an elaborate Disney themed table, covered completely with glass jars of all different kinds of vintage candy, a creative photo booth backdrop to take pictures with all your J. Crew-ly dressed children, at least two decorative tiers of show-stopping cupcakes, and one exquisite, professionally made birthday cake that Mariah Carey would showcase at her twins’ party. And I was like, um, that’s a lie.

2. Pinterest lead me to believe that the only way my house was worthy of photographing (or uh, living in), was only if there was absolutely nothing in it, except for maaaybe: a sleek couch with coordinating-but-mismatched patterned pillows and newly painted walls in Pantone’s Color of the Year. Oh, and an chic, modern, probably moroccan rug, and a lamp that not only gives off environmentally correct light but was once a bell jar or has been bent by Arnold Schwarchengger to arch over a lux, cashmere blanket on that stupid uncomfortable couch. If you don’t have fresh flowers placed perfectly on top of design-y books that you never read, a giant plant, or some sort of cut branches in an oddly shaped clay vase, forget it. Do not take a picture of your lived in living space. No one wants to see it. 

God forbid, a picture of your living room with your kids tower of diapers in the corner shows up in someone’s “Dream Home!” board. Really? I mean, no one wants a picture of my living room with the holes and scratches on the walls, gouges in my floors, wrinkled drapes, day-old dishes, or scattered remote controls? ‘Cause that’s how we live, bitches. That’s how we all live. 

(Sorry for the profanity… I got a bit emotional there.) 

3. Pinterest lead me to believe that in order to be in “style,” I have to wear chevron infinity scarves with a blazer and it’s sleeves rolled up like I’m in denial about how warm I actually am. If my outfit can’t lay flat on the floor, turned up at odd angles (seriously, no ones body can bend like that, not even Beckham’s or Gumby’s), with matching accessories that somehow fell perfectly next to them, then I shouldn’t leave the house.  All hell will break lose if my thighs actually touch and I don’t wear sky high heels with my baggy boyfriend jeans. If my hair isn’t coifed, with the perfect beach wave and doesn’t touch my butt, and my makeup isn’t sprayed on my face perfectly like a clown at a kids birthday party, then clearly, I am not doing something right. If my nails aren’t beautiful masterpieces that deserve to be displayed in museum exhibits, and my purses didn’t cost as much as a car, then I am definitely not a woman. What. Is. Going. On. 

Ugh. And oh man, with the advertising now… If I’m not wearing frumpy Uggs with black tights and a North Face jacket with a plastic looking Michael Kors bag hanging from my shoulder, while Coach sunglasses precariously pretend to my be headband, I’m not worthy of anyone’s acceptance. I know I may be touching a nerve with some of you on that last one, but guys, let’s work on originality! Myself, included for sure. 

4. Don’t get me started on all the food pins that glisten with their own foody sweatiness and microscopic grains. OMG. Deliciousness. Stay away from Pinterest if you are hungry. 

5. Or how about the “1000 ways to keep a toddler busy.” I can’t. I refuse. You guys. You know we are on Pinterest to entertain ourselves. How about “1000 Ways To Entertain Yourself and Your Kids When You Are Sick Of Each Other” or “How Not To Feel Guilty When Your Kid Plays With An Ipad All Day.” 

6. All the DIY stuff? We’ve all seen the “Epic Pinterest Fails.” So good and entertaining…

Which lead me to this: I created a secret board called “I Tried It and It Sucked” with detailed descriptions of pins I’ve tried, what went wrong, and just how much it sucked. And after quite a few of those, I gave up on Pinterest. Or really, I got what we shall henceforth call… Pin-Burn. Some straight up Pinterest burn out for the average American Pinterest addict. We’ve all been there with internet stuff (oh Facebook…) at some point. And we’ve probably all just shut it down with a heavy sigh, and walked away for a while.

I love Pinterest for the creativity it ignites, and the for the empowering feeling that I too, can make and have whatever I dream up. However, there are times for me that it creates a world of jealousy like no place else, and I get sucked in so easily. It opens the doors to envy and greed. It allows me to virtually hoard and collect. Pinterest is a door that, man, it’s hard to close, because it’s all just so sparkly, and shiny, and glittery… and wait, was that a unicorn?

I want to boycott it, really I do. I’m often guilty of all that stuff I mentioned earlier. But I can’t, so for now I can appreciate and be aware of Pinterest for what it is: A form of entertainment. And also, as a really great way to send hints to my husband around anniversaries, holidays, birthdays.

Plus, I have Pinterest to thank for all the things I can now make with Rice Krispies.