It’s Been Two Years
It's been over two years since I last wrote a blog.
Two years.
Why has it been that long?
"How do you think this will land with your corporate clients?" My husband said.
We had just finished listening to a podcast I was a guest on. I was lying on a dark green couch in the family room of our new home. My arm was tucked behind my head. A soft, cream blanket was pulled over me. I stared straight ahead, taking in every detail of the stone fireplace in this vast, empty house. The walls were stark white, the ceilings high, and the windows so low that the fireplace seemed like a giant.
My husband sat on the end of the sofa on the other side of the room. He wore his striped blue pajama bottoms, slippers, and a white bed t-shirt. He didn't look at me as he spoke; he stared past me out the window. His face and eyes were fixed. His body was still as a rock. A single white feather lay on the bare, dark brown wooden floor that ran the length of the room.
"I don't know," I said.
My heart contracted. I had been too spiritual, too honest. I had spoken from the heart, a place I had always trusted, but it had jarred with him, and in that moment it felt like it had let me down. So I stopped publishing.
It's not that I haven't wanted to write. I have. I even started a writing class last year, and it's been a moving experience to dig deep and show up with nothing on my mind as words fill the page. But publishing something felt different. It felt like I needed a framework first. My mind needed clarity; it needed to know it would be safe to let my heart shine on the page.
I joined a mastermind group two weeks ago. Six women exploring middle age together, who we are and who we want to be in this phase of our lives. When I considered what I wanted to get out of the mastermind, an image of me became clear; hair loose, curls wild and free, running with my arms open wide, smiling and letting life live through me.
On the first call with the coach, she told me point blank that I need to stop looking for mental clarity. I will never find it. It's a distraction, an unconscious blanket of protection. I am an experimenter by nature; it's innate. I learn through doing. My body knows, but it needs to feel something to know if it's right or wrong for me. And so, on the first group call, I made a declaration: "I will write something and publish it in the next two weeks!" My coach tempered my enthusiasm and invited me to keep it simple.
It was fair and logical of my husband to ask how the podcast would land with my corporate clients; I had put a part of me out into the public domain, and it didn't jibe with the insurance world where so many of my clients came from. But what I appreciate now is how important it is for me to speak from the heart, to share the truth of my experience; I don't want to shy away from that. I don't want to squeeze my heart into a corporate-shaped container, hoping for their acceptance. I did that for 20 years. I want to be free.
So this is me, keeping it simple: an email to my email list, a short blog, to say hello. To rip the band-aid off and pull my head out from the mental rock it's been hiding under and say, I am still here. I am still coaching. I am still writing. I am still learning to trust my heart.
I hope this email finds you happy, fulfilled, and well.
Until next time
Mel
