Posted on

Party of One: Going Solo Into The New Year

Tonight we on the Gregorian calendar say farewell to 2023 and hello 2024 … a welcome often given with much food, drink, sparkle and noise. This year, I may do all of these things. The difference will be that I’ll be doing them solo, my first time in 57 New Year’s Eves that I will be by myself.

Why? Curiosity, first and foremost, and behind that, a desire to reclaim and reframe that whole notion of what it means to ‘be alone.’

New Year’s Eve as a kid was the celebration I leaped into with an undercurrent of dread. It meant staying up late, lots of food, sometimes lots of people in the house with talking and music and so much energy … the next morning, it meant cleanup, taking down the tree, and bracing for back to school. The giant letdown after the Christmas season. With university and then my own place, New Year’s became the not-miss celebration with Boyfriend and friends. Then the celebration as newlyweds, and as new parents. On the eve of Y2K my husband and I spent New Year’s Eve watching our year-old son sleep in his crib, ready for whatever the world would sling at us as long as we were together. We spent New Year’s Day watching a Star Trek marathon on the Space Channel (Original series of course), our son taking his meals in his high chair in front of the TV while Captain Kirk saved the universe and wooed assorted lovely aliens all without spilling his coffee. Then, as our brood grew in number and age, New Year’s become a ‘get out of the house’ night for adult company at a restaurant with cloth napkins and no chicken nuggets anywhere on the menu. As the brood left for their own schools and nests, New Year’s again took on the mantle of sadness, heralding an end to the Christmas togetherness, a creeping silence as one by one the rooms emptied and the tree stood bare. Time for another marathon, this time the Annual New Year’s Day Movie Musical Marathon. Starting at 8 am, a stellar lineup of musicals new and vintage, always ending 9-midnight with The Sound of Music. For four years, bleary-eyed, brood and I rose early and gathered upstairs for musicals, while the Die Hard marathon ran in the basement for those drawn to both to float between. Good times, fond memories, creations I am now conscious of evolved to escape, slow down time until a new year beckoned my beloved children back to their own lives and left me to mine and perpetual unanswered questions. Who am I? Who am I choosing to become?

Books. Characters. Stories. Sentences. All layers of creation. What feeds those layers? Space. Movement. Flow of energy as ideas, motivation, inspiration, knowledge. An infinite playground made as small, exclusive, or confining as we choose. This year, in my cottage that is now my home, New Year’s Eve emerged on a choice point: choose down, mourn the fact that my children will all be in their own homes and with their own partners/friends this year, label myself a loser for being alone in a world that conditions me to believe I’m undesireable or otherwise incomplete without a man/woman/intimate partner. No date for the prom. No date for New Year’s. Would be sad if my life was a Hallmark movie. What feels sad to me is the number of people who numb themselves to the pain of their lives created at the denial of themselves to match the conditions, attain the ideal laid out by screenwriters and romance novelists and corporations making money from self-improvement, self-help, and retail therapy. What breaks my heart in this moment are the number of awesome, inspiring people who I would love to spend time with locked in their own stories, their playground now narrow and too small for anyone but those who can perpetuate their illusion of life, playing by the rules that life is something to give over to others’ beliefs and rules, to get through, to sacrifice.

In the past decade of conversing with awesome aware women, of expanding my playground to invite humans like me who know little and feel a lot to rediscover who we are, why we’re here, and what we’re listening to: the voices of others or our own divine voice, I’ve come to realize that the world’s belief of being incomplete without an intimate partner is not wrong … it’s just not the whole truth. Needing a date/boyfriend/girlfriend/partner/significant other or whatever term is preferred to be complete is pitched as that person being a separate individual. In fact, the statement is true when we see that the intimate partner we need and desire is OURSELVES. Intimacy with self: often mentioned right before the pitch to sell this book or that course or this set of inspirational cards with bonus candle. In fact, intimacy with self is both the easiest and toughest thing I have encountered. Try to understand it and my brain ties in knots. Let go and float into the emptiness that is I Don’t Know, that is the fallow field ready for creation, then it is the most powerful place in my universe.

And that is why tonight I am spending the last day of 2023 in my own good company. As I bid farewell to this year of peaks and valleys and challenges and joys, I bid farewell to the voices and stories that keep me cycling down into the past. As the clock strikes midnight I raise my glass in a warm welcome to a new moment where I live, create, and know I am, and am more than I know. Mourning the past, fearing the future, is no fun, and not a way I can live any longer. Being in the present, feeling my feet on the ground, the warmth on my face, the tingles that is me moving through the body that carries me and senses my world … that is what I will be doing tonight, tomorrow, and the day after that.

In performance, solos are the sought-after position, the opportunity to share in your own way, with the backing of your peers in the choir and orchestra. in life, ‘soloists’ draw hissed whispers of being selfish, arrogant showoffs; those living alone are pitied, viewed as victims of circumstance or in need of matchmaking and sadly, too many of us single folk begin to hum along to the tune of victimhood until it becomes familiar. We cling to loss as a trophy, treat space as a prison … accept a date or stay with someone who invites only a small piece of yourself, who you use to deny your full expression of self, because it’s better than being alone. I’ve learned that there is no lonelier place than that where I am separate from myself … my body living a life not of my choosing, while the essence that is me is buried under the static of others’ expectations and beliefs that no longer serve me.

Am I stepping into tonight fearlessly? Hell no … I have no idea what the next moment will bring, or how I will feel when darkness begins to fall, or when I awaken next morning, still solo and my home still quiet. What I know is in the moment I feel me, I feel space, and I cannot get this wrong.

Happy New Year! For all of you I have journeyed with these past months, years and decades: thank you. Your presence continues to enrich my life and the world. For all of you and those I have yet to meet … what awesome experiences might we co-create in 2024? There’s a perpetual question I don’t mind sitting with.

Thank you, for being here, for being you.

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

To learn more about Decloaking and Living Authentically and other offerings in the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge,
visit https://wel-systems.com/
the brilliant website of its founder, Louise LeBrun, https://louiselebrun.ca/)
and the powerful offerings of CODE Model Coaches™ Stela Murrizi, https://sparkingthesacred.com/
and Sheila Winter Wallace, http://bodygateways.com/

Posted on

Inviting Light Through Wordplay

Ah .. November, month of Remembrance and growing darkness, an end to Daylight Savings and the final march to the shortest day of winter solstice. It invites hibernation in fuzzy sweaters under cozy quilts with steaming mugs of spiced whatevers. It’s also the perfect month to play.

November in the writing world is National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known as NaNoWriMo, the annual invitation to write a minimum of 50,000 words (about 1,700 words a day): rough draft, selected scenes, whatever, as long as it’s your original writing, written during the month. It’s self-directed and self-monitored, so the only one hurt by your cheating is you. The idea is to get you writing, butt in the seat, words on the page, through incentives like virtual badges, online forums, opportunities for in-person write-ins in your community and, of course, bragging rights if you hit the target. It’s a virtual community shouting Woo Hoo, You Got This! As the year grinds to an end and darkness descends, working alone and facing another year without that book started can be more depressing than usual. NaNoWriMo is that virtual community shouting Woo Hoo! You Got This!  

The power of community is infinite, just as each of us stepping into it is infinite. Writing can help us rediscover that, especially in the darkness.

Speaking of community, a writing retreat I was privileged to be part of this past summer has evolved into a monthly online gathering where with a monthly prompt we each craft a piece of our choice to share and discuss with the group.  October’s prompt was working moms. Wow, the scenario that unleashed for me! I dove in with the enthusiasm of a cooped-up grade schooler released into the fresh air of a new playground. Here is the result: part fiction, part memoir, all me. Enjoy!

–

I remember the first time I was asked: ‘Are you a working mom?’

It was a school committee meeting. Annual fundraiser, the first meeting of the year, my first with a school-aged child. Assignment sheets are circulating, ground rules are being laid down by those more experienced members of the group, moms of fourth and fifth graders. As the sheet rounded the turn toward me, the question.

‘Are you a working mom?’

Then the silence, waiting my response.

“Is there any other kind? I replied, genuinely puzzled.

Polite laughter, strained over the growing seeds of impatience. The question is reworded.

“I mean, do you work outside the home?”

And there is was. The battle line. Was I a mother who held a career, earned a paycheque, and otherwise fulfilled herself by having others raise her children during office hours?

Or, was I a mother engaged in daily routines of carpools, domestic duties, crafts after school, homemade dessert every night and volunteering as her ultimate lot in life, grasped as fiercely as the schedule for hall monitor and key to the costume closet for the annual school play?

Today’s me would have sighed, set down my pen, cleared my throat, and replied evenly …

For the love of God, can we as women STOP it already? I mean seriously, can we press pause on the consistent teardown of each other and just work together respecting each of us for the awesome beings we are? Why does it matter where I work, if I get paid, and what I do with my day? I chose to be here …  and granted, in this moment, not one of my best choices but hey, we’re all human, right? Now what is it I can help with? Or can I best help by getting the hell out of your way and letting your little hate fest continue unabated?-

However, today’s me at this juncture of my life was more deeply buried than the Oak Island treasure. In fact, in the moment I was asked, I didn’t know what to say. I did both. I was a full-time freelance writer, at times earning as much take-home pay as my government-employed husband,  working with clients from coast to coast. At the same time, I never left the house, phone cradled to my ear with one or more younglings clustered about awaiting snacks or facewashing or buttons done up.  I fit the world’s definition of a working mom. I was also an at-home mom. Straddlng the line. A stupid line at that.

But the then me also straddled the line of independence and fitting in. Knowing who I was and what I wanted, but not wanting to stand out. You know what happens to the tall poppy, some well-meaning person whispered to me once. It gets picked first.

So I shrugged and said, I work from home … letting my voice trail off hoping this was enough to satisfy the waiting panel.

“What we mean is, do you bake? Or do you get storebought? We understand some people just do not have the time or talent to bake, and we try to balance out the bake sale table with both.”

Of course. I should have known. “I do bake,’ I offered, hesitant on the brink of a realm unknown. Could I measure up to what was clearly impeccable standards?”

‘Wonderful! Came the reply. Smarties or sprinkles?’

Pardon me?

“Smarties or sprinkles? It’s nice to have a variety. What do you use to decorate your cupcakes?”

The world went black.

From the moment the line on my pee stick turned blue, I embraced the realm of motherhood and the choices that came with it. Breast or bottle, cloth or disposable, TV or no, solids sooner or later … I bobbed and weaved between what the experts claimed, what my baby demanded, and what I felt was right. I soon learned there was a fourth expectation to meet: that of the women collective who built their kingdoms upon the judgement of others, creating intricate mazes of decisions and options that left most in pits of condemnation while they ruled, smiling, from on high.

You bottle fed? So sad. Work outside the home? Must be so stressful for you and for your child.

Meanwhile, in another castle, being at home with your child is sniffed at as letting go, giving in, giving up … and what DO you do all day? Straddling the line, I absorbed all the criticism while consciously pursuing the ideal that we can do it all. Homemade treats for the bake sale! You got it. Client meeting at noon and deadline by the end of the day? Sure. Do handcrafted Valentine cards after school with eldest child while baby and toddler nap? Was going to scrub the bathroom then but no worries, will do that after they all go to bed.

Smarties or sprinkles, though, were the proverbial straw. The condemnation, the demands, the nitpicking were infinite, would never stop, unless I claimed the infinity that was me and allowed my inner truth to surface, unapologetically, and unfuckwithable.

When the blackness lifted and my vision cleared, the conversation had resumed without me. Maybe a second or two had gone by. The assignment sheet was still in front of me. I looked at the pen, then reached for my phone. “So sorry,” I murmured, fake texting my dead aunt’s number, “I have a work emergency.” Half the table nodded. “And my kombucha needs bottling … you know what happens when you miss the window …” The other half of the table murmured assent.

I drove first to the liquor store, then home, where in the silence of a house with a child in school, two in daycare and a ‘vacation day’ notice on my email I popped the cork on a glorious red. Raising my glass as a middle finger to every judgement on the planet, I owned my place … belonging nowhere in a battlefield full of lines … completely at home in a world of my creation, where my children were thriving … whether because of my choices or despite them, well, that they can explore with Oprah when they’re older and I’m dead. For now, I choose life and a good Chianti and savour every second.

That night, I dreamed I was back in the school library, huddled around the committee table, eyes on me as I contemplated … Smarties or sprinkles? In my dream I rise slowly, survey my inquisitors demurely, reply calmly…

Who gives a fuck?

Then I wrap myself in my cape and glide to the door, off to meet my fellow witchy bitchy moms for caffeine and sugar and a good laugh under the light of our awareness and a rare full moon.

I mean, really, Smarties or sprinkles? It would be gummy worms, all the way.

—

May this November invite you to a rediscovery of play, in words or whatever play feels like to you in the moment. Who knows what awaits?

Thanks for reading,

  • Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

To learn more about Decloaking and Living Authentically and other offerings in the WEL-Systems® body of knowledge,
visit https://wel-systems.com/
the brilliant website of its founder, Louise LeBrun, https://louiselebrun.ca/)
and the powerful offerings of CODE Model Coaches™ Stela Murrizi, https://sparkingthesacred.com/
and Sheila Winter Wallace, http://bodygateways.com/

Posted on

When ‘it’s too soon’ becomes “it’s time”

My labour this long weekend was in my basil patch, surrounded by my most favourite aroma in the world harvesting glossy emerald leaves for pesto and fresh basil lemonade. In the moment there was glorious peace and flow of creation.

Just behind it, though, was the energy straining to move, that would not be denied despite my best efforts to avoid it.  Back to school, back to work, back to autumn …  such sadness it evokes, yet to be grieving, angry, hopeless on such an abundant day seems wrong.  ‘Back to …’anything feels constricting, counterintuitive to me, to anyone knowing they were born to evolve, yet there is a sense of comfort, an image of safety, in returning to what was, even if only in the mind. An avoidance of loss, of danger of death.

And there it is. The pressure in my body, telling me it’s exactly the right time to pause, breathe, and dive straight in to how I hold death.

Labour Day weekend this year doesn’t just bring up my perennial grief at the end of a summer gone too soon. It also marks the 10th anniversary of our purchase of the cottage, a family play space with the ulterior motive of serving as a second address, heralding the slow dissolution of our marriage about to begin. It’s the first weekend of this ‘second address’ being mine, and an ongoing reminder that the card games and beach walks and rainy days spent building Lego are gone in a flurry of children evolving into young adults, with university and careers and their own relationships to play in. Who am I if I am not the mom with a houseful of kids, or even a house?

It’s also been a week of grieving other people’s children, sudden deaths of young adults in their 20s and 30s. There was a time when I would have felt the sadness just enough to fuel a prayer and condolences and a slight curiosity as to how these things happen. Now I find myself on a teeter totter of energy intense and active, on one side grief and fury that rages against a world claiming evolution yet killing our children before it is time, on the other the complete absence of feeling, numb and mutely watching all going on around me as a movie, not engaging, separate from it all.

It’s a choice point of separation that exists only in my mind, that my body says ‘no more.’

Who am I, and who do I become when I get off the teeter totter, the merry-go-round, out of the hellish playground altogether and own all that I feel, everything, nothing, and all in between, to drop the labels and live from what I know rather than what I ‘should’ do, or what is the norm?

I become someone comfortable with death as a part of life, life as a part of death, knowing that life, death and everything in between are labels for the experiences we as divine energy have in human bodies. I become someone who sees life and death becoming currency in the hands of those wanting our trust and our cash for their own selfish uses, terrifying us with stories to sell us products to defy aging, protect us from evil, or earn us a place in eternal life. We come from infinite energy into a human body for an experience on Earth, we return to infinite energy when time on Earth is done. Who would each of us become, what would our world become, if we owned and trusted that there is nothing to earn, no space to buy, no need to measure up, no fears to push down? All we have and all we need is breath, awareness, and the moment we are in to choose, create, and own our creation.

Death is all around us, when I choose to see it. My basil plants, harvested of their leaves, will die, their stalks and roots and the soil that sustained them composted back to the earth. My children will leave this Earth someday. For generations we have been taught how wrong it is, how devastating that children die before their parents. Absolutely it is. But at what age and what stage does loss of a loved one from Earth feel okay? My grandmother was 96 when she died; her death did not feel easy because ‘she lived a good long life’ and it was the ‘natural order of things.’ I miss her keenly, memories slicing like the edge of a knife, until I choose to open to another way to hold death. Not loss, but transition. Her essence returned to the infinity of the divine, still with me and a part of me, as energy rather than her voice and body tangible in front of me. So comforting, soothing as one of her crocheted blankets.

Who wouldn’t choose a blanket to curl up with rather than a knife? Or the scent of basil?

When I forget who I am, a divine signal able to create safety within myself, the only safety there is, I choose the knife, keeping the hurts fresh and the rage on standby. I tell myself stories and cling to memories for fear of allowing energy to move, light to shine, joy to enter, life to expand, for expansion brings me closer to my signal, myself, something I and generations before me was taught to hide, lest we behave dangerously, destroy something or be destroyed.

In the sunshine of awareness, grounded in the moment we’re in, the choice is clear.

Our power is in the moment, in ourselves, lived in the choices we make. I choose to allow the moments of sadness, the moments of fear, knowing that they cannot hurt me, and allowing them to move will free me. I choose to set down the knife and allow the world to shift, to change around me. To smell the basil and smile, not because it grew, but because of what I learn in the letting go.

Posted on

Tap Dancing in the Minefield of the Heart

It’s a conversation that’s been a long time coming.  On the outside things look fine; on the inside something is missing, feels off, irritates or just plain hurts. For years, explaining things away, rationalizing that things are great, good enough, okay, as much as we deserve since others have it a lot worse. Until either the body gives out or refuses to carry the lies any more. We have been taught to tell the truth, that the truth will set you free. We have also been taught that the truth can topple carefully-constructed lives and cause pain and chaos, that some truths are better kept as secrets. How others feel, keeping their secrets and lies, is more important than our own health and well-being.  That betrayal of self is okay, celebrated, even, in the preservation of a system, institution, or life crafted to maintain or control rather than evolve and grow.

Well, in plain language, time to call bullshit on all of that.

Be yourself and tell the truth. How simple and rich an existence would we each have, how powerful and awesome the lives we would create,  adhering to that clear and natural law of engagement.  Never has this been more obvious and more unsettling. Knowing clearly who we are, owning clearly our truth, enables us to weather storms of confusion and create our path to the life we want for us and for the people we love. It begins with honouring our own knowledge and instincts, listening and learning when something feels off or catches our attention. It begins with choosing different for yourself, choosing authenticity every time, even when it hurts.

It means examining what we consider healthy relationships, and owning how we may sell ourselves – and by extension those we care about – short, claiming to be honest when we are hiding secrets and spinning stories to ‘keep the peace’ or to remain okay with ‘good enough.’

It means having that conversation that’s been a long time coming.

Many people will refuse to believe in their own power to transform the world because their own created world is ‘okay the way it is.’ Everything is a choice, and I get this one. I lived this way for years, until it was time that I couldn’t any more. Years after I awakened to new possibilities, I fought like hell to keep everything balanced and smooth, the world I had created based on what I learned as a child and young adult, and the new emerging world that I knew in my cells was my present and future. The thing is, the two worlds were in direct opposition. What I created I based on what I knew, my history, my need to be productive according to the standards of others and protected from the outside, a protection that manifested as isolation and that really never works. My emerging world is based on who I am, the divine signal here on Earth with a purpose, emerging choice by choice and moment by moment, safety  and referencing internal, being and living my authentic self and giving space for that to change as I learn more and choose differently, a constant flow of energy within and without, creating rather than replicating, evolving rather than protecting. Running both scenarios is akin to driving while stomping the gas and the brake at the same time. It’s a choice that seems safe in the moment, but will kill you over time, and it very nearly did, a couple of times. If disease or body wear doesn’t get you, the suppressed rage does.

The more I awaken the more I know that an inauthentic life will kill me, that spinning stories based on beliefs of others that hold little meaning or sense for me will only keep me churning in circles and detached from my life, and from those in it. Keeping secrets and telling lies, especially to myself, keeps no peace – it creates a barrier to a deeper more fulfilling relationship, creates an illusion that can never grow or be enjoyed. When is the last time an illusion hugged you warmly, wrapping you in scent and heartbeats and the soft warmness of someone you love? Those choosing illusion may not know what they choose, or that there is another way, but the body knows when the warmth it feels is authentic and when it is a story spun by a mind too invested in control to allow the truth.

Then there is the R word: risk. Better to have an illusion than nothing at all. Better to have ‘okay’ than zero. How long, though, can an awakening evolving infinite spirit survive on ‘okay’? When you love someone, feel the depth of connection, know there is so much more to experience and create and live, how long can ‘okay’ sustain the excitement, the promise, the joy?

Exactly. Which is why I chose to have a conversation, the toughest I have had to date, to look into those trusting blue eyes and speak my truth, which was to own that I was  being lied to because he was lying to himself, and that was no longer okay with me. I know his stories, I know they lie in wait as his source of protection against a world that has demonstrated over and over his heart and feelings are not safe unless he hides and controls the arena where they are revealed in tiny glimpses. For years I skirted the mines as my way of loving him, protecting him, conveniently protecting my stories and strategies as well. Getting close but not too close. Controlling access through clever wordplay. But skirting the mines gradually reduced my playing field to a space too small, no room for words or imagination or hope. I was lying to myself and my world of expansion was in limbo. I had to stand up for me, stop playing the victim in my own story and the peacemaker in his. It hurt. It was frustrating to feel him in the moment choosing strategy over truth. It felt, well, shitty, which makes sense. I was calling bullshit on stories that have run for decades, his and mine. Of course there is pushback, denial, defence. From both of us.

There is also promise and space that didn’t exist before. When the stench of manure drifted away, we were still standing, still talking, his eyes still held mine and were still that gorgeous shade of blue which told me I was seeing him – not his stories or that arrogant veneer of a soldier that runs the minefield – but his authentic self. A separate and equally powerful godforce that deserves space and time to own and make his choices, the space and time granted to me over the years by my awesome tribe of enlightened women who ensure I don’t have to navigate my minefield alone. It is time for me to be that presence for another, without expectation or demand. A few of my mines have just disappeared.

Conversations are like potato chips – you can’t have just one.  Reclamation is in layers, evolution is ongoing. My conversation was like removing the topsoil from the minefield.  We see the stories now. We can avoid them. We can take agonizing painstaking hours to diffuse them. Or we can simply choose in the moment to let go of the story and the mine disappears. Choice by choice. Conversation by conversation. Each authentic to self, creating something authentic and awesome when combined. That’s the life that creates, that we were born to lead. In my world, anyway.

—

The unique and comprehensive WEL-Systems® body of knowledge offers a powerful new context for personal evolution and change, including articles and audio clips available free of charge to pique your curiosity and invite your exploration of self.

Decloaking and Living Authentically is a conversation that will take you into the much deeper dive of who you are, as the thinker behind it all.
Listen to a free sample here.

As a CODE Model Coach™ I welcome your comments, inquiries and conversations: contact me for an introductory chat

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, story doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

 

Posted on

Decloaking the Emperor

Decloaking The Emperor

The Emperor’s New Clothes: you know the fable … an emperor in a far-off land pays a handsome sum to a travelling tailor promising to make the monarch the most beautiful clothing in the world. After much anticipation the emperor dons his new duds and parades through his kingdom, dressed in what he is told by the gleeful (and now rich) tailor that he looks wonderful. He also looks naked, because he is naked.His ‘new clothes’ are in fact non-existent but deep in his story that wealth can buy anything and no one would dare con an emperor, he sees nothing but his own imagination and the adoring faces of his subjects who not wanting to upset the Emperor buy into his narrative, push down their own truth for the sake of external safety, yes, sir, beautiful clothing, sir …

Ridiculous, eh? And just a fairy tale from long ago.
Or is it?

How many times have we nodded and smiled as someone parades in front of us in the most hideous outfit/haircut/makeup job and we say you go, girl, you look great even though we see a woman pretending to be something she’s not. How many times have we looked in the mirror and refused to see what is really looking back at us, focusing on things we deem ugly, not seeing the beauty of our existence. How many times have we watched friends move in together or get married knowing the relationship is a disaster waiting to happen, yet saying nothing because you don’t want to upset them or ‘be a downer.’ How many times have you watched an employee consistently muddle through their tasks and then in their performance evaluation give a smile and thumbs up to avoid hard feelings and potential action from human resources? How many times have you stalked away or unfriended a person who told you what they believed you needed to hear, and they were right, you just don’t want to go there?

To lie to yourself is the greatest inauthenticity there is, the deepest betrayal.
When we feel betrayed by the words or actions of another, often it is our own betrayal of self that is at the root of our rage, and at the root of that, shame at having created or at least allowed the betrayal to happen.

What did the emperor’s subjects do?

They agreed to not disagree. Keep the peace. Protecting the emperor’s ridiculous hold on his version of reality while his very essence swung unprotected in the breeze, while protecting themselves from his wrath at hearing what he didn’t want to know. Not a healthy environment for anyone, on any level.  Everyone asleep while life drifted toward an inevitable crash when the emperor eventually realized he had been, well, had and everyone around him allowed it to continue.

It took a child to speak the truth: the emperor hadn’t a stitch on. The tailor robbed him, literally bamboozled him out of the shirt on his back.

We are each that child. We as our authentic selves know the truth and are not afraid of speaking it. We know inherently that we need that authenticity, we deserve it … it is life.

Dr. Gabor Mate has said science proves humans need two fundamental things to survive: attachment and authenticity. Attachment is something most of us struggled with to some degree: even the most caring of parents ‘back in the day’ were taught to train their children rather than heed their cues, to not cuddle or console their crying child to avoid spoiling them, to work hard for money to give them all they need and want rather than simply spend time with them ….  And that’s not counting those of us who grow up without one or either of our parents, or cared for by institutions, or exposed to horrific emotional and physical abuse. The result we have attached to our ideals, to people who mirror what we wanted as children … people who remind us of our parents, who promise to care for and protect us. The thing is, a mirror reflects all and inevitably as we are drawn to what we want we attract what we know, and that is someone who promises what we want then falls short. We feel their betrayal of us when in fact what hurts is the awareness that we have already betrayed ourselves.

To that we should say NO … no more betrayal, no more ‘agreeing to not disagreeing’, no more keeping the peace and maintaining a lie for the benefit of others staying asleep in their lives.

There needs to also be YES … learning to say YES to our authentic voice, to our truth, to the moment as it presents, to the next moment we create, to being awake, to staying awake, to keeping our child self close and trusted, to remind us when we are drifting off into habitual programming rather than engaging fully awake and aware.

It may be as simple as ‘you know what, you’re naked.’

It may be as layered as ‘I feel our relationship is shrinking our world rather than expanding it … could we have a conversation about that?’ Either way, say YES to speaking up, and NO to keeping the peace. The Emperor may sputter and swear but in the end, if he’s human at all, he’ll be grateful for the heads up about his bare behind. I know I would.

Be yourself and tell the truth. How many bare butts and embarrassing moments and illnesses and agonies would be we spared as a result? That’s the world I want to live in and am choosing to create. You can, too. Be awake, be aware, and be honest and if you struggle with that, reach out to someone who mirrors your struggle unapologetically and listen, even if it makes you squirm. Relax into the chaos and allow yourself to learn what you’ve been carrying deeply for years, generations. Reach inward and invite forward the child you, when you knew what you knew and didn’t care who heard it. These are your allies. It takes a community to build a world.

Choose your community mindfully, authentically, honestly, and a new world will emerge as you emerge more fully yourself. Once you have made this choice, know there are people and resources to support you on your journey.

The unique and comprehensive WEL-Systems® body of knowledge offers a powerful new context for personal evolution and change, including articles and audio clips available free of charge to pique your curiosity and invite your exploration of self.

Decloaking and Living Authentically is a conversation that will take you into the much deeper dive of who you are, as the thinker behind it all.
Listen to a free sample here.

As a CODE Model Coach™ I welcome your comments, inquiries and conversations: contact me for an introductory chat

Thanks for reading,

Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is an author, communications consultant, publishing doula and CODE Model Coach™ .
ownyourstorynow.com

Posted on

The Longest Day of the Year

I love lilacs. The scent, their simple elegance, their tenacity … every May and June, they brighten my world and remind me to stop, smell, and just BE.

The longest day of the year, the summer solstice … that’s a powerful invitation too and this year the lilacs were a bit late, leaving a few hardy blooms around in time for this special transition that only recently I am coming to fully appreciate.

It was on the longest day of the year that someone I care about became a widower, and it was on the longest day of the year five years later that I awoke with a story too vivid to ignore, a story so urgent in my body that I sat and wrote for a day until it was finished. It was a story of how they met, this man and his wife, the story of the longest day decades before. It was a tale of shy attractions and veiled hopes, of a watch that suddenly stopped telling time and a moonlight dash for forbidden lilacs from a cranky neighbour’s yard, shared with me in wisps and phrases. I wrote a story and created something new. At the time, it was something I couldn’t NOT do. After I worked up the courage to share it with him, it became a story we both were called to tell.

It was on that longest day that the Finding Maria series was born.  His story in four books. I knew not then the power of what I was writing, just that I could feel an expansion, a light, with every new chapter and I could see in him the courageous evolution he invited in sharing his story to process life choices and heal the grief. What has taken considerably longer is for me to sit with what writing the series did, and continues to do for me.

I offered him a powerful creation and wanted nothing in return. He stood firm and offered me an invitation – to step into the creator that I am, the writer that I am, the I AM that I am. And that is an invitation for which I have not always been grateful. After years of allowing my intellect to form my tiny controlled world, it became difficult to separate fact from fiction, the who I AM compared to the who I was trained to be.  After four books of another’s story, the fifth book rests squarely with me and I know in my body, as I did with that short story so many years ago, that this next book is mine: no fiction, no hiding. What has been buried in the fog of battle between ME as signal and the world my intellect is protecting are the words I choose to share, the story I want to tell. For years, what has percolated through the various shoulds and can’ts and musts and don’ts has been prose that to me feels wilted, crushed, unrecognizable. I have had to relearn how to write: not on demand and without thinking, as I have always done, not plucking the words and setting them down but releasing into the flow of energy that I am and allowing the words to surface. Sounds easy. Too easy, my brain hisses. And so I make it difficult, distracting myself, becoming insanely busy so I don’t have time to know I’m distracting myself … and all the while, my words, like the lilacs, fragrant and tenacious, wait for me to BE and notice.

I did that today. On this longest day of the year, and what has turned out to be one of the hottest days of the year so far, I spent the afternoon relaxing, listening inward, waiting for the physical cue saying Yes, it’s time, let’s write this. It may not read differently than anything else I’ve written. It may read worse. It felt good to write, and in all honesty, it has been a long time since I could say that. Writing had been at best a means to survival. I had never allowed myself to want it, to love it, to grow with and because of it. Just like with the man who inspired this writing journey, the man I call my Muse. I never allowed myself to own the power of our co-creations, the power of our interactions, the power of us just being in each other’s presence. It seemed too much, too unattainable, too good to be true. As I backed away, my words backed up and the book I meant to release five years ago remains raw, in pieces, and parts unwritten.

Today as I sat with my manuscript in progress, I found I had written about that, a massive metaphor.  Here’s a sneek peak at what I’m working on, shared here today in gratitude for my Muse:

With him I felt that I could not just write but feel beyond places and dates to the dance of the ocean, warmth of the sky, the aroma of joy itself. In his presence I awakened to the possibilities of a creative life, a connected life, feeling for the first time the essence of another, and being felt completely in return. And it was in his presence that for the first time, words failed me. We had been given a blank page for our co-existence upon which to create whatever we wished. I wanted to fill the page with adventures, experiences, memories. I didn’t want labels or constructs or obligations. But I had no words to explain, and when he would ask What do you want? I would mumble, repeat some well-worn story of ‘whatever was needed from me’ or ‘whatever I was meant to have’ with no insight, no hint even, of the person giving the answer.  So the page remained blank. Stuck, like the book I now struggle to write.

It hasn’t been easy for either of us in this world strange yet familiar, expansive yet fitting in nowhere and I’ve allowed my fear to govern my choices and reactions. Yet like the lilacs, we remain tenacious, coming back into each other’s presence and conversations, continuing to connect amid storms and stories that draw us in different directions.

Releasing into the chaos  means there is no fear, only awareness. Writing for me is no longer a means of survival. It is a key to evolution. It is a key to the life I want. It is the key to me being ME, because until I can be my full self I cannot have what I want with others. When I am ME, words never fail. 

The Finding Maria series produced, among other things, lilacs that will never fade 🙂

My creation from that first short story, in print and in life, is still revealing itself when I pause and ask to know more.  The blank page – of my story and in my life – no longer frightens. It does irritate now and then, which is a great invitation to embrace the fire of creative energy and get to it or, as my Muse has been saying for more than a decade, ‘get ‘er done.’

The lilacs have faded and light on the longest day is dimming. A new season and a new chapter has just begun.

 

Posted on

The Brilliance of Being Sideswiped

It was over in a split second. But the memory lingered like a scratched LP, playing over and over,  chafing annoyance to indignation that could be dismissed only a moment until the replay. There was wisdom itching to be heard, if I paused and allowed it.

Would I dare let myself do that?

And so began my Saturday morning, one like so many others made revolutionary by the engagement of quantum processing.

I was leaving my mom’s place in the city, headed home as I have done hundreds of times in the 10 years she’s lived there.  A shiny silver Civic whirled past me in the roundabout and ended up ahead of me on the ramp leading to the highway away from the city.  The irritation began as a mild annoyance – as swift as it was in the roundabout,  the Civic was now taking a nap when speed was of the essence, holding at 80 clicks when at least 100 was needed to merge into the double lanes choked with weekend traffic. We weave into the lineup and I pass the Civic, gliding among the slow-movers and the serious speeders to find my own space and settle into my 90-minute commute. But there was too much traffic to find my rhythm,  and a slow-mover hogged the passing lane while each new on-ramp pumped more cars into the fray. I braked and held my space in the thru-lane, watching for the passing lane to clear. I checked my shoulder, my side mirror, and the light on my mirror that blinks to warn of cars in my blind spot.  A car approaching beside me. And another. And another. The car ahead of me brakes suddenly and I did another quick check. Finally all clear and I pulled out to get around the halting lineup ahead of me.

And there it was. A blur of silver directly beside me, out of nowhere. I did everything right, everything I always did to drive safely and I was about to sideswipe a car in the lane beside me. And not just any car. That silver Civic.

I yanked my wheel to the right, pulling me back in my lane until the car went by and I pulled out behind. It braked hard, I matched and hung behind until it completed its passing and pulled back into the slower lane and I passed, kept passing,  glancing back only to ensure the way was clear and the Civic was well behind me, before pacing my speed to the fastest cars ahead, feeling nothing but the need to get home, as fast as possible.

Then I took a breath, and felt everything. The heat of the past few seconds – or minutes, maybe? – swept over me, through me like a firestorm. The horror that I had nearly caused an accident. The surprise: I checked for cars and there weren’t any. Where did it come from? The indignation: I looked and signaled, they should have seen me coming and waited. Another breath, and it surfaced, underneath it all, churning and festering: The Shame.  A sensation I knew all too well, had felt most of my life about anything I did or said, too loudly, too quickly, against the rules or against the grain, any time I ‘stepped out of line’ or ‘crossed the line.’ according to those scolding me. And here I did it to myself. I crossed the line into a lane I thought was ready for me and did something wrong. I nearly caused an accident, could have injured or killed someone, and it was my fault. How could I.

I glance in my rearview mirror, stomach clenched at the sight of every grey and silver vehicle gliding behind me as the darkened air filled with light rain.  I had not seen the driver of the Civic, didn’t know if there were passengers, knew nothing of their reaction to my inadvertent lane change other than the braking after I pulled behind them, braking that could have been their scolding, their retribution, or a simple compensation for the steep hill we had just descended. In the vacuum of facts, my imagination spun wildly,  replaying the flash of silver beside me over and over as the driver, also imagined, shouts obscenities, calls the police, is the police, flips me the bird, grabs a gun. I contemplate not stopping for gas, for fear the Civic behind me would follow me off the highway and confront me at the pumps. But letting my body lead, as it did when I avoided the crash, I pulled off at my usual station and coasted to the pump with the yellow stripe, the one that with every use provides a donation to the children’s hospital. Giving to sick kids brought a moment’s relief from the relentless harangue in my head, the yellow strip reminding me I wasn’t that bad a person as my inner voice punished me more than any irate driver or highway patrol officer ever could.

I breathed as I turned off the car and glanced around. A few cars at the pumps, scattered pedestrians entering and exiting the restaurant, going about their Saturday, not paying any attention to me at all. I breathed again, opened the car door and prepared to face whatever awaited me outside the safety of my tiny metal cocoon. Still nothing except my beating heart and the scenario running in my head. As I stood there, nozzle in hand, filling my tank, I chose to empty my head and let the scenario take form. I imagined the Civic driver,  not in appearance but in behavior. I saw no gender or hair color or outfits; I only heard the heat of their words, words I would have said if I were them. You fucking idiot! You nearly killed me! Where did you get your licence, in a Cracker Jack box?  How dare you risk my life like that! You don’t deserve to be on the road! 

As my tank slowly filled with gas, I allowed the words to be real, allowed the ghostly image of the driver to pace in front of me, furiously awaiting a response. I invited myself to stand my ground, feel the heat, and let words slowly flow from my heart, authentic and sincere. I’m sorry, was my response. I honestly didn’t see you, but my actions no doubt scared you.  I am sorry for that and grateful you’re not hurt. 

I breathed, watching the numbers on the pump spin slowly upward, feeling the heat in my body inching downward to the base of my spine .  There was more to say.

I know it seems like I’m a crappy driver because I almost hit you, but it also seems it’s because I’m a good driver that I didn’t. 

The numbers on the pump stop spinning. The image of the silver car looming out of nowhere in my side window stops its replay. It’s because I’m a good driver that I had the reflexes and presence of self to pull back in my lane without hitting cars ahead and behind, safely out of the way of  your car beside me, all in a split second. 

I don’t believe I’m  a crappy driver. I’m a good driver who is human. I make mistakes. Thank you for enabling me to learn today from my mistake. 

Heat flowed downward, following tissue and nerves into the ground as the ghostly figure melted into the damp rainy air. I created the entire situation, as clearly as I created the scenario playing out in my mind. The early irritation with the silver car. The near-miss that shocked my system but caused no harm. I needed to allow that being ‘good’ does not always mean being ‘right,’ that my capacity for reaction is an equally powerful tool of creation in a world that we are not of, but in.  On the highway of life, cars will come out of nowhere. The fact that we don’t see them is neither right or wrong, it just is. How we react and move forward is our choice, our creation, our gift, whether it looks that way to others or not.

When in danger, I let my body choose and my body chose not to die, crash or break anything. My body chose to do the next thing I needed and avoid an accident, and then chose to keep reminding me to learn the lesson, all while my intellect remained frozen in the moment of near-impact,  The lesson I needed to learn took not a literal smack to the head, just a proverbial one.  I allowed that the encounter on the highway was not one of incompetence, but of brilliance.

I pulled back on the highway as the light mist intensified to heavy rain. I merged into traffic, found my spot, and felt my rhythm.  During the drive home, the flash of silver would appear on occasion in the corner of my minds’s eye and catch the breath in my throat. Then I would breathe and rerun my new  scenario. I’m a good driver who is human. Good by my standards, because the word ‘good’ in this moment still holds some lessons for me. A good driver.  Of my car, of my life. Exactly where I want to go, not always recognizable, but always what I need to follow my signal and live authentically in the moment.

 

Posted on

The surprise of old cold love

Every year it happens. I breathe deeply of the last days of Christmas, smile warmly and embrace the promise of a new year, vow to write and clean and sing and play through the dark days of winter into spring’s warming light. You know the feeling, the zing and glow of a new relationship, the ecstacy of snuggling with a love both new and familiar, the letting go into a sparkling river of hope and joy that carries you forward in a million dots of delight that nothing can touch or tame.

Until it happens. By the second week of January and the second snowstorm, irritable from lack of sunlight and frozen in the grey reality that is an east coast winter, life officially sucks. Why? Why after living my entire life in the same cycle of seasons does this take me by surprise every year, and why do I end up feeling the same way every time? It’s like being in a bad relationship, one that no longer supports or serves but its parties are too tired, too indifferent, too detached to care enough to end it.

And there was my green dot moment, a point of awareness in the gloom. It hit me the other morning as I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, debating whether to get up or stay put. I rolled over and heard the words in my head as clearly as if I had said it out loud.

“Oh, you’re still here …”

You’ve been there, cozy in bed, then you roll over and eye the snoring lump beside you, slammed back to reality. “Oh, you’re still here,” you mutter, in that moment wanting them and all the baggage attached to the relationship gone, but too mired in self-doubt, self-pity, or fear of being alone to say the words, set the plan, make it real. I promise to love January then wish it was July. I promise to love me, then wish I was someone somewhere else.

That morning, I said it, but the only snoring lump in bed was me. I was still here. I was promising for months to love myself but in reality, there were times when I really couldn’t stand myself. I wanted me and all my baggage gone, but then again, I wanted to be healthy and whole. Deep down I do love myself, but rarely do I let myself feel it like I feel the love I have for others. I simply don’t allow it. And when I don’t allow my love for myself, the love I have for others comes out filtered through my own loathing, feeling to them strained, arduous, inauthentic, not always identified, but sensed in a way that can be uncomfortable, unsettling. There can be no intimacy with that sort of chill underlying every breath and action, perpetuating the loneliness, inviting the frustration and then subduing it in a cloud of ‘who cares, there’s no point.’

I want to love January like I love July, for no reason than it is January, just January, with all its storms and cold and wind and darkness and greyness and isolation.  I want to love me like I love others in my life, for no reason other than I’m me, just me. No changes or fixing. Just me. My appearance, my talents, my fears, my stubborn habits, my restlessness, my desires, my crankiness, my joy. I need to embrace it all, stand firm in the things I find painful, allow joy where it beckons. A January nor-easter can freeze you to the bone and bury you in snow. It can also  make your skin tingle, blow the cobwebs from your brain, and coat your world in a powdery cocoon that invites indoor snuggling with cozy blankets, hot tea, and a fresh journal. July with all its warmth and beachy splendour cannot do that. Likewise, I am no beauty in the morning – or any other time of day for that matter – but I am who I want to be in this moment, and have the parts and pride to create what I want in the next moment.

“Oh, you’re still here.” Me speaking is the part of me stuck in the world that is ‘good enough’, safe and cozy by being inert and hidden because nothing is ever good enough or possible. Me listening, that snoring lump in the bed, is me cocooned, ready to toss off the covers and take on another day, with each footstep, each pile of laundry washed and deadline met is another step into a life I am creating.

You bet I’m still here. So is January. And thank God for it all. I don’t want it to be July, not yet. There’s much to do and love right now.

Thanks for being here.

Posted on

View from the Depths: a Mermaid’s ode to a book club

We are warmly welcomed into a room lined with books – on shelves, tucked under the coffee table, footing the window seat, surrounded by a view of water glinting defiantly under clouds leaden with the last of a rare summer rain. High on an island hilltop, it was a space by and for book lovers but at first glance no place for a mermaid.

“I must be a mermaid … I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living,” Anais Nin once wrote and by no coincidence I am drawn to the image of mermaids and the murky depths they call home. On this day, however, I surface in response to the generous invitation of Tuesdays at Two. This book club of gracious and well-read women has been meeting for a decade, longer than I’ve been writing books, and devote an annual afternoon to hosting a writer in the flesh. They list of a who’s who of local and CanLit guests of the past and I hear the tune ‘One of These Things is Not Like the Other,” from my childhood formed by Sesame Street.

Yet they have invited me here as part of this distinguished list to talk about Orchids for Billie and the little boy I created. In spontaneous acknowledgement of the unique story behind the story, they have widened their invitation to include the man whose life inspired the Finding Maria series, the real ‘little Jack,’ to speak to the experience of having one’s memories and experience crafted into a story and shared with the world. Even more rare than this day of rain during our dry summer is the opportunity for the two of us to speak together on this story we created. For more than a decade we have worked, explored and collaborated as a team, yet usually in the privacy of a one-on-one meeting or solitary reflection and response. This was a test: could I let go of my creation enough to let the person speak for himself? Would I hold my own in conversation or revert to detached observer and slip off into the depths? Would this public airing of our unseen connection be appreciated or painful?

In a word, it was brilliant.

In the years since I began writing the Finding Maria series I’ve come to own my desire for intense conversations, with no question too deep or topic too touchy to explore. Yet the art and beauty of conversation is too often lost in the world of tweets, sound bytes and fear: of offending, of intruding, of being nosy. The group gathered on the hilltop this silvery summer day was none of those things, nor could they ever be. They are informed, sincere, and genuinely interested in the story and the people who inspired it, and in that environment, there is no greater safety to explore, dive, and peer into darkened corners and blink at the revelations. It is the environment I first discovered in conversation with the man who quietly became my partner in business and creation and today sits next to me, sharing his story in a clarity of voice that our creation helped reveal. As one book became two, then three and four and the demands of our commercial venture took over, I had forgotten the beauty of revelation in the written word. I had forgotten how insightful and engaging that little boy could be.

Why?

While writing as a vocation is intensely rewarding and deeply revealing, it to me is wholly unattractive. Painters, potters and weavers, for example, are a joy to watch, their deft movements giving rise to a creation that takes shape before your eyes. Most days I feel like a human seive, absorbing all of life’s gobs and bits and chunks, then tasked with the process of straining our a clear, refined stream of consciousness ready to be sipped and savoured. Who on Earth wants to watch that?

For the longest time, not me and for years, I could do it without watching, thinking, or above all feeling as I quickly sifted through facts for the assignment at hand. Writing the Finding Maria series for the first time kept me in place, immersed in the chunks and bits, and I’ve too often responded in panic or rebellion. Now called to write my own story in the series, I am up to my eyeballs in the mess, the pulp, the unwanted and long-forgotten scraps, and it is easy to look away and pretend to be elsewhere, in a world too busy for such straining and sorting, in a life too full for new possibilities, in a space where feelings are to be toned down or ignored.

Tuesday’s conversation didn’t cut through the mess, but embraced it. Orchids for Billie emerged from chaos to offer a story of hope. It invited readers from many places, spaces and perspectives to a single room, on a single day, to add their own layers and colours to the words on the page. I sat in the presence of many wonderful stories by sharing the one I wrote, steeped in courage from the only man in the room, seated next to me, who outwardly chose none of this bizarre journey that is writing and publishing but is both allowing the unseen to take us where it will and permitting his story to be the interface.

A business coach and dear friend once told me I overthink my blogs. They don’t need to be so deep. They can be superficial, lighter, how-to hints or top 10 lists, and search rankings would prove her right. But I have floated in the shallow end for too long. This is deep and I like it there. Granted, it’s a great place to hide. But there is also great safety in knowing someone will invite you to surface every now and then and connect with those who would support and be supported by discoveries from the depths.

On a hilltop, on an island, there is no place to hide and in such a place, who would want to? To the ladies of Tuesdays at Two, may you go on to discuss hundreds of books and treat more lucky authors to an afternoon of your caring conversation. To those of you book lovers not in a club, start one. And to my partner in creation, thank you for your quiet yet unshakeable presence that invites me to shine a little bit more, added light by which to sort the flotsam from the jetsam as the quest for Book Five continues.

Thanks for reading.

– Jennifer

Jennifer Hatt is author of the Finding Maria series and partner in publishing company Marechal Media Inc.