A dream is hard to follow, but those who do walk in stardust.
~ Anne Lamott, author
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2020 is a week old. Oh, my, what the turning of a year can do to your head.

For 8 years I chose a word for the year. An internal compass, so to speak. You may have heard of this. It’s quite the rage these days. Until an awakening last year that I forget my word so fast, I can’t even tell you how fast. Despite posting it on the wall!

Before that I’d choose three new things to learn. I got this one from a friend who chose cool things, like juggling, and learning to play the ukulele. I forgot about those I chose, too. Life invariably took over. I learned other things, such as places on earth, wonders of the mind & nature, things to experience, the depths of story and culture. Heart interests. 

Positive I was missing some key element to declaring new starts, I gave up all thought of finding a yearly compass.

And just as I did, two things flipped my head around. A total reframe. A forever compass!

The first. . .We all have our own unique way of manifesting that works for us. Identify what it is, and use it.

This countered everything I’d learned. All the exact sciences of the right ways. I had to wonder, what if my way of manifesting is enough. Could I lean into it with confidence. See is as a personal energetic amalgam and reconfiguration of the principles in the famous systems! 

The second insight came from reading a post saying nature’s year begins in the fall, not January.

It made perfect sense. On the heels of the hot cycle of tender flowers, after the harvest. When the duff of leaves and seeds drop more like possibilities than promises. Even in the tropics.

Like a school year that starts in September, after the flare & fury of summer. Or big government’s fiscal year beginning in October.

A total new way of looking at Winter, too. Not as a time of death or sleep, as some see. More a pregnant pause, or invitation to dig into something already imagined. A time for fertile creativity.

I turned back to action, holding both thoughts as a personal compass. 

I know things come together, manifest, when I commit. The kind of commitment that’s more than intention. That comes after feeling it true, and deciding. I can’t deny it. I’ve seen doors open time & again after a commitment, and support come from unexpected sources. Even in the challenges that seem to crop up afterwards. As if the Universe asks do I mean it, or perhaps there’s other options. Forcing me to re-commit if it’s true.

Looking back to last September, I see how my intentions pivoted fully to working with heart-centered people with a big Vision. In a way so they see themselves and their place in the world. In a way they can be the leader of their passion & vision, make an impact. Holding space for them to do it.

In her book What’s the Story: Essays about art, theater and storytelling, Anne Bogart talks about reading Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse as a teen, and how after struggling through the first half, she suddenly falls through:

“I remember the sense of free fall. Spaciousness. Freedom. The book had led to a release and a sensation of timelessness. And this free-fall experience of spaciousness is what I strive to recreate in my work for audiences in the theatre. . .Each and every moment of existence, no matter how stressful or how fleeting, contains the potential for spaciousness.”

I take people to a sense of spaciousness, too. My work has always been about mindset, connection, and transformation. And spaciousness. Freedom. (ahhhh deep breath)

The past is always part of moving forward. A wise person always looks at the ground she’s covered, learns from it. Creates from it.

I’ll be speaking from more stages in 2020. Opening doors for folks to manifest their big visions, guiding them as they walk thru. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, tell me in the comments below

• What’s your way of manifesting your desires?
• What might have started for you in the fall – a thought, intention, course of work or personal development, name it – that you’re considering now?

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Whatever’s happening out there in the world, add good stuff to the mix.
Happy New Year.

You may also enjoy
a different kind of holiday letter here.

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I just got my mind blown. An awakening, actually. As I wrote an application for a TedX event, the secret to our superpowers smacked me between the eyes. As much as I see the multi-layers of story, and see every single person has a superpower, I was stunned with this simple truth: 

Our Superpowers = sum of our stories. 

I’m talking stories about our lived experiences, from the messages we receive (family, friends, media, name it). And, most importantly, stories we tell ourselves in response to those messages and experiences, including the meaning we make of them all.

Let’s face it, things come at us starting when we’re tiny and don’t have a clue how to make sense of much. What happens can color our lives for years. We go on, and stuff happens that holds shame, or makes us shy of judgement. We may push them in the background, or fluff over the layers when we tell it. (Ask me how I know) For me, it was a huge story in my life that lasted 8 years.

Now I’m giving it to you, full on without writing a book. And telling why this gal who sees webs & connections in everything she hears, sees, and reads missed it.

Note, I am not a confessional writer. I write in response to my current experience. And this is a confession. I’ll start at the beginning so you know I was always a bit ‘different.’

I arrived on earth with a sixth sense and desire for connection. Sensitive, observant, curious, full of questions & wonder with the world. Intensely present, artistic, and smart. A tiny mystic who internalized everything. Including messages of my difference.  

My earliest memory is sitting in the stairwell at my Grandma’s home. It’s dark where I sit. I can see the kitchen across the dark hallway below me thru the railings. The window at the foot of the stairs a blurred blaze of light. I’m alone. My Grandma wasn’t a warm cuddly one for little girls

I was 42 before my father shed light on this memory. My mother sent me away at 18 mos. old, he said. My sister’s birth was difficult, and she felt I was ‘too much.’ He came for me after 8 weeks (a lifetime for a tiny girl) because he ‘didn’t know when she would.’

Now I can understand, in a way, with compassion for my mother. She was born to Armenian immigrants who lived thru unspeakable horrors & fled the first holocaust of the 20th century. They’d worked hard, made good in America. And she was raised the old world way, caught between two cultures. I was ‘too much’ for her. As she told my husband late in her life, she never understood me.

My gosh, tho, that message ‘too much’ echoed through my growing-up, said in a dozen ways. I accepted the story, and decided early I had to do things myself, because help wasn’t something to ask for.

It bled on for years. I played small. 70% of full Me. And tried to change to what others wanted so not be seen as different, weird, intense.

At 17, I left home. At 19, I grabbed the dream of marriage to the man I loved. And this is the story I’ve hidden for decades. Because tho I hold a no shame-no judgement zone for others, know all the good things from this period of my life, processed it all and know the layers of reasons why, I felt shamed by this story of mine. And didn’t want to be labeled. I access the wisdom & compassion garnered from it, and kept quiet on the source . . .that for 8 years I accepted the rejection my then-husband beat into me with his fists.

Until I realized my life wouldn’t change unless I changed myself for myself. Not anyone else. And took the first step to make it happen, despite no assistance. Because domestic violence wasn’t talked about then. Psychologists blinked, said little, when I sought help. My best friends made it clear, too. In hindsight, what I did was courageous. Navigating my head & emotions alone, making provisions & leaving, then enduring the fear each night alone that left me feeling I couldn’t breathe.

Leaving didn’t magically shed the stories in my head. That picture above. . .that’s Me at 33, six years later. She didn’t have a clue she was pretty. Rejection and trauma were still in her cells. Everything she did was to prove what he said about her wasn’t true. 

Six years after that picture, in University for the fifth time to get my bachelor’s degree, I heard two young women say date rape was an accepted risk. My heart began to pound. My ears buzzed as blood rushed to my head. I knew violence to the body. Knew how they’d finch when blindsided. Breathe free when it didn’t happen. Perhaps even hide it inside themselves, too. 

A passion like fire ignited inside me. My goal, a Women’s Center on that huge university campus. A place women could gather, tell their stories, find allies & support, and be safe.

I used my Voice as a fierce advocate to connect with students, faculty, & administration. I discovered I knew how to listen so people felt heard, and how to speak to where we connect. The Women’s Center, something everyone said was impossible, opened on the eve of my graduation 18 months later. It’s since served tens of thousands of women.

And here’s the weird part. Telling this story now about those eight years, I see clearly the buried gold.

Because IF I hadn’t repeatedly gotten the message I’m too much, or told myself the story I have to do things myself, and hadn’t internalized both,

I probably wouldn’t have lived eight years being battered. OR realized I had to change for myself to have a different life. Which took me to believing I could create what I needed to put it in place.

And IF I hadn’t tried so hard to prove what my former husband said about me wasn’t true,

I probably wouldn’t have been so determined to get my bachelor’s degree & play 100%. Because by then I was living comfortably with a good job and a kind husband.

And IF I hadn’t been battered,

I wouldn’t have understood what it meant when I heard those two young women, nor felt the passion & determination to establish the ‘impossible.’

And IF I hadn’t decided to own this story now, let my secret out,

I wouldn’t have seen how every single story here links like a chain to that legacy I left.

Here’s the kicker, that story about the Woman’s Center has been a mere few words on resumes and random sidebar in telling my life. Dear peeps, it was HUGE.

The sum of our stories is the secret to our Superpowers. Not experiences or messages, or anything else we’re told. Own your stories. Don’t just tell them. Feel them. See the chain. It’s what you do with them that counts. Every one is in your cells.

It can be hard, and hurt. Can take a while. It’s taken decades for me. And what we do with those stories. . .why, it’s Gold. Can even take you to owning and creating your BIG dreams.

Another small journey getting to wise.
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I’ve has some weird-ass days lately. Nerves jangled. Going in circles. One day my brain couldn’t calibrate with the physical clock. I mean, my 9:30 call  clocked into my brain as 10am. And my 11:15 call clocked in as 11:30. Fortunately, I was saved. Both people called me.

The one that takes the peach, tho, was when I hopped back in my car for Natural Grocers. To arrive exactly at 6pm, the designated (and most inconvenient) time for a $2 discount on my fav bacon. (I’m going ’cause my husband likes bacon.) When I arrive, I discover I’m a day early.

In front of the store a scruffy guy glances my way as he passes. He turns, cocks his head to the side just a tad, lifts & cups his hands softly, close to his chest. So non-invasive, his barely inaudible ‘Change?’ barely registers on me. I look down as I dig in my purse. I carry a small wad of bills for asks, pull out what my heart feels. I know a tiny sigh bordering a tiny huff escapes my lips. I hand him a dollar with the words ‘Take care of yourself.

It’s then I truly see the abscess in his lower eye, how it follows a line like a bulging vein partway down his cheek. I repeat the useless words as he walks away.

A few steps toward my car, I turn and watch him. His legs were like two straight sticks. Little flesh covering them. So skinny. His clothes & backpack so dirty. His dreads in disarray. And that eye. What was I thinking. . .or rather, not thinking!  My God, I said ‘Take care of yourself.’ 

He turned the corner and I got in my car, backed out. As I creep along waiting for cars in front of me to do their thing, I think of my vow I’d buy food for anyone who says they’re hungry. He hadn’t said that, and still, I know there’s something else I need to give. He’s coming back by the front of the store as I park.

‘Excuse me. Are you trying to buy food. Maybe this will help a little more.’  Standing face to face, I notice the gap in his mouth where four front teeth used to be, and how bad his eye really is. And how much I want to look into that face, and into those eyes, and how easy it is. 

I notice how young his voice sounds. And he doesn’t look old, or young. And I know I don’t need to know his story, and when I hand him only 2 more dollars, I know it’s right.

He peers at the money, like he can’t see well. ‘I think I almost have enough,’ he says & smiles wide. I tell him there’s reasonably priced turkey inside….I’m always thinking hungry people need protein. He’s a vegetarian, he says, and wants to get a veggie pizza. I learn he has a wife. That he likes  mushroom & green chile pizza best. Filling bread, cheese protein, I think. ‘Pizza can carry you a long way,’ I say. 

When I get home, I remember how I wrestled going out again, thinking how silly it was to save $5, even if the store was close. Then thinking I should go, it’s for my husband. And in the end, it wasn’t about me or my husband. It was about that guy, and me. I like to think it was about someone who looks into his face and doesn’t look away, and speaks more than a sentence to him. I like to think it was about a moment of deep presence with another person. I have God Bumps as I type this. The Universe says Yes.

What’s an unexpected moment you’ve had with a stranger?  Share in the comments below.

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