A Beautiful Thing Will Grow Out of This Very Hard Thing

Sometimes beautiful things live inside the very hardest of things.



Yesterday, for the first time in a very long while, I ventured outside alone to go to the corner store. I wanted to see if it was open so that I could buy something cheap and sweet, but the store was closed. It was only a short block I had to walk to get there, but I felt so exposed, so far from my nest of safety, that my collar bones ached with the tightness in my throat and chest.

I am sometimes afraid to leave my home.



This fear happens when I am shifting, when I am changing my patterns of thought or behaviour. I panic, and my panic turns inward, where I question all the good of which I am capable. I have spent a week sure that I cannot write or make or do valuable things, that my faultiness far outweighs my abilities.

This insecurity is usually followed by the hatred of my own appearance, and this week was no exception. I became convinced that my own appearance was so terrible, so below acceptable standards, that I did not want to be seen by strangers who did not already love me.

"I can't go out," I sometimes say. "Strangers will see my face, and I can't have that."



I came home from my harrowing trip to the corner store with that familiar burn of shame running up the back of my neck while I tried to catch my breath, and I immediately asked the Palinode to come for another, slightly longer walk with me. I knew that my well-being depended on killing this thing in the moment.

I know my mind. If I let leaving be so terrible that it scares me back, and then rest into my safe spot on the couch again, I will more deeply train a pathway in my brain that confirms the messages that Leaving Is Bad and Staying Is Good. I imagined myself in the future on a talk show saying "I don't know how it happened, but one day I just stopped leaving, and now it's been 17 years since I walked out my front door."



The Palinode and I walked to another drugstore further away, and as we chatted about things like whether grease is wet or dry¹ and what the actual elements of moisture are, my chest loosened. The stuck feeling in my throat eased up.

That pathway in my brain, one that could have so easily become a deeper groove, unkinked itself a little bit. I bought myself some more time with freedom.



I haven't said much about my depression, anxiety, or addiction issues over recent months. As much as I've written about them before and talked about them in front of audiences across two countries, I am afraid to write about them here.

I am afraid that no one will believe me anymore that shame can be used to see rather than punish yourself, that your courage is bigger than you know, and that fear is surmountable. I am afraid that I don't have what it takes to stay on this path I have fought so hard to find and bushwhack my way through. I am afraid that people will second-guess hiring me, thinking that I am not up to the job.

Part of my job on this earth, though, and I deeply hold this to be true, is to be very publicly human.

I do have the strength, though. We all do. This is a bones deep knowledge I can't shake.

I'm just experiencing retreat after battle, or, as Brené Brown calls it in I Thought It Was Just Me, a "vulnerability hangover". You shouldn't trust someone who hasn't lived their subject, and so I'm treating this phase of change as intensive study. I'm diving in.

In the end, Ghandi said it most succinctly²:

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.

This course I take repeatedly through anxiety, depression, and the hard work of sobriety is difficult and terrible at times, but the most beautiful parts of my whole life grow out of the soil it helps me to turn over.

Fear is gripping, but love and belief birth hope, growing capital-c Courage larger than the self.

And, so, a beautiful thing will grow out of this very hard thing, and you will not see me on a show in 17 years wondering why I never left my home again in all that time. This, I can promise you.

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<sup>1. It turns out that grease is a non-Newtonian fluid that can be both wet and dry. Thanks goes to brainiac @jannymarie for the information. ↩

2. This paragraph is often paraphrased as "be the change you want to see in the world", which is an unverified misquote that Ghandi never actually said, because he didn't speak Bumper Sticker. ↩</sup>

101 Things We Love (aka Grace in Small Things: Sunday Edition #134)

My kitty, Onion, is pretty darn lovely.

I asked the people on Twitter to tell me what they loved, and it turns out that they love a lot of things. They love more than a hundred of them, in fact, so I curated and edited the following compilation of our loves to spread it around a little:

1. the sound of snapping open a fresh can of something fizzy
2. coffee
3. the smell of freshly cut grass
4. reading
5. friends who get it
6. a fluffy cat curled up next to me and cooing like a happy pigeon while he sleeps
7. having written
8. a good toilet flange
9. my husband's hands
10. yoghurt, specifically spelled with the H in the middle
11. holding my hand out the window of a car while going down the highway in summer
12. a good latte
13. great writing
14. avocados
15. callouses on my fingertips from playing guitar
16. lavender
17. my kid snoring
18. darjeeling tea with coconut flavouring and milk
19. the ukulele
20. ice cold water
21. the feel of suede
22. new book smell
23. the way I get goosebumps when my husband looks at me
24. that moment in a movie you've seen a hundred times before that still takes your breath away and paralyzes you as you wait for it
25. Hendrick's gin
26. new jammies
27. performing
28. laughing
29. hot buttery popcorn with garlic powder and hot sauce
30. connecting again with a person you love but thought you'd lost
31. kitties
32. happy hour with friends
33. cooking a good meal
34. discovering new music
35. British miniseries
36. Sunday afternoon naps
37. watermelon
38. a clean house
39. chosen families
40. that kids wear costumes just because they can
41. kissing
42. almond biscotti drizzled with chocolate
43. rainy days
44. smoked swiss cheese
45. singing loudly
46. cheesy dance moves
47. my dog
48. green buds on trees
49. thunderstorms
50. fuzzy kitty bellies
51. popsicles
52. the power of music to connect people
53. surprising my stepson
54. pizza
55. rain drumming on the roof late at night
56. pedicures
57. feeling like I belong
58. love
59. crunching through ice cubes
60. cats purring
61. burritos
62. listening to a tone deaf person who loves to sing butcher their favourite song
63. finding a bra that fits just so
64. chocolate cake
65. the first night you notice the fireflies have come back for the summer
66. summery days with thunder clouds off in the distance
67. peppermint
68. street fairs
69. pesto
70. listening to wild birds outside
71. Mad Men
72. going out for brunch on the weekend
73. crafting
74. swimming
75. the colour of the light at golden hour
76. grapefruits
77. being read to
78. Scully and Mulder's dedication to bringing out the best in each other in The X-Files
79. sushi
80. photography
81. random acts of kindness from strangers
82. the cool side of the pillow
83. kisses from my son
84. drinking iced tea in the shade on a hot day
85. finishing a creative project I feel really good about
86. Sam Cooke
87. cracking through the shell on crème brûlée
88. poetry
89. learning
90. time travel
91. how excited my dog gets every time he sees me
92. dulce de leche ice cream
93. the sound of my kids laughing
94. clean sheets fresh from the line
95. roasted Brussels sprouts
96. old school rotary telephones
97. dancing until my body hurts
98. bowties
99. warm sunshine with a slight breeze
100. sleeping in
101. long lists of things people love

Thanks to all the good people who answered my call!

What do you love?

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace in Small Things.

I Spoke, I Saw, I Re-evaluated What I Love: Mom 2.0 Summit

I was in Laguna Niguel, California at the Mom 2.0 Summit from May 2nd to May 5th.

Now, before you worry that this is one of those annoying conference posts that cheers RAH! RAH! while telling you nothing of import, I swear this is not one of those. Unless you don't give a fig for the state of women, social media, and the health of Us. I hope you do, because this is the future we're in, baby, and the water's fine.

Also, this might be long-ish. Get coffee.



The conference was held at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel, which was undeniably ritzy.

I am one of those people who opens her suitcase, pulls out every last item, and then proceeds to throw each article across different pieces of furniture. My brain calls this "organizing my outfits", which is hilarious, because I don't have outfits. I have black, black, and more black occasionally broken up by a pattern on black or a brown shirt. Aaanywaaay, I exploded my suitcase, left the room, and when I came back, everything was folded square and placed neatly back in my suitcase.

The staff at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel are incredible. They are beautiful and friendly and will hang your thong underwear delicately from the bathroom doorknob if you are the kind of blogger who might indelicately leave your thong underwear out in the middle of the bathroom for your roommate's enjoyment.

Which I am not. Okay, I so am. I miss Suebob already. She was the best roommate.



You maybe don't know this, but I'm afraid of flying, so I distracted myself on the way to the conference by making fun of a giant children's toy at the Calgary airport. Who couldn't, though?

As you can see from its plaque above, the toy is in memory of Punch Dickins, a bush pilot who flew a Fokker through Regina. The jokes just write themselves, and I'm sure that that toy must defile the minds of thousands of children every year.

I apologize for my immaturity if Punch was your uncle or something. I'm sure he was a lovely man.



Anyway, I got on the plane, I made my peace with my place in the universe and the things I have done in it, and then I survived again, as usual.

My mind, it brings on the drama.



The conference was a string of gorgeous events from the opening party to the last,



with meals under palm fronds in sunny, oceanside courtyards,



and, well, the OCEAN was there, but all of that natural beauty and the posh environs were not what made Mom 2.0 Summit a success.


Whirlpool made me lusty after appliances and avocado pesto over pasta.

What made Mom 2.0 Summit such a success was the dedication of both its founders — Laura Mayes and Carrie Pacini — and the conference sponsors — Dove, Honda, and Lowe's, to name a few — not only to the social media and marketing end of things but also to truly meaningful engagement and social good.

This was what I found in my conversations with the attendees, as well. While we had honest discussions about our desire for professional growth in social media, most of those discussions also included ideas about how we can incorporate social good into the work we do. Sure, it was nice to get free gift bags of a company's product, but we also wanted to know how that product, that company, or our relationship with that company would work towards bettering the world we live in.


Jessica Ashley and Meagan Francis getting manicures

I've watched blogging and social media grow and change over the last ten years, and, at least in the parent blogging communities of which I am part, all childlessness aside, it is growing up into a fine, fine thing. The people I met were mindful and focused and inspired to contribute both to the communities they inhabit and the world at large.

Gone was the childish elbowing for swag for which bloggers have been criticized. At Mom 2.0, I saw attendees, sponsors, and film and television personalities, such as Kyra Phillips and Amanda Peet, engaging with one another on more equal footing, watching and listening and figuring out the next steps through this medium together. There was an equality and a shared purpose that I had not seen before.

I say all this as someone who does not focus on sponsored content in my own work but who believes that the blogging and social media community's health depends, at least in part, on its ability to handle its connections with marketing not only well but also meaningfully.

Women bloggers are smart, focused, and generous, contrary to The Wall Street Journal's take on us.

I did have a low point, though. I'm not going to lie. Conferences tend to overwhelm me, because, despite the fact that I get on stage to speak, and I travel the halls hugging people and trading business cards, I am a fairly extreme introvert.

I finally broke on Saturday afternoon — too much socializing coupled with a vulnerability hangover from the "Fear and Becoming Known" talk I delivered to a couple hundred people on Friday afternoon — and so I took some time to go for a walk on the beach alone and reconsider my entire life up until that point and going forward, because why not reassess your place in the universe and freak out about middle age and feel completely lost and more than a little hopeless in the middle of one of the most beautiful places on earth?

Again: my mind, it brings on the drama.



By the time I made it back to the hotel, though, I felt like I had been set aright again. Sometimes, all I need is a little bit of a realignment. Call it soul chiropracty, if you will.

I looked around at my community, and I was proud of what I saw. The entire community down to the last blogger is not always a stellar example representing the whole, but, by and large, this is the kind of community I have been trying to build up, hoping for, the kind of community that strives for quality, creativity, and meaningful action.

That's why getting together with my peers in the field is so important. I learn, change, go through the ridiculous process of freaking out about said change, because even good change can mean a difficult adjustment, and then I grow again, both personally and professionally.

It's a little like moulting, only less reptilian and more with the crying on the most beautiful beach in California.


This is Polly, me, and Jim. I win in a hair fight.

In short, if anyone tells you that women in blogging and social media are just a pile of over-sharing narcissists who need to get real lives, what they're really telling you is that they have no idea whatsoever about what is actually going on.

I admit it, I was doubting the health and future of our group of early adopters a couple of years ago, but no more. There is a sea change afoot, and we're just getting started.

Dear everyone I met at Mom 2.0 Summit in Laguna Niguel, you rocked it out. Love, me.

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And, last but not least, if you would like to see the slides from my Mom 2.0 Summit talk, "Fear and Becoming Known: Connection and Growth Through Selfish Acts", you can see them in the slideshow below.

Fear & Becoming Known: Connection and Growth Through Selfish Acts
from Elan Morgan