Play to Your Strengths

This weekend, I journeyed up to Liverpool, NY, to visit with the hearts and minds behind Ophelia’s Place (http://opheliasplace.org/) and their newest business that helps to foot the non-profit’s bill, Café at 407. As I’ve mentioned before, I long to create a community space where creativity, community, love, and spirit are nourished. Ophelia’s Place certainly does that! And I want to learn from the best.

With a front coffee/café area homey enough to make you want to stay and sip mocha for a week and a private room anyone in the nearby area would want to rent, Café at 407 welcomes the community into a space built for conversation. “Conversation about what?” some might ask. According to founder Mary Ellen Clausen, Café at 407 provides a venue to move discussions about calories and “good” and “bad” food choices toward true, authentic sharing about loving oneself and body.

I was able to take part in the annual fashion show Ophelia’s Place puts on as a fundraiser each year. It thrilled me to see models of all shapes and sizes take the stage, along with looks from superb local designer Cheryl Geiger (http://cherylgcollection.com/ - AMAZING!) as well as the local thrift store. Beauty is everywhere, and this show celebrated that.

I took the brief weekend trip to investigate what it takes to put on an event like the fashion show and to see how Ophelia’s Place operates in person. I was truly impressed. Ophelia’s Place is the non-profit foundation behind the physical space of Café at 407. Eating disorder recovery support groups meet there during the week, in the community room and in a special area in back. Comfy chairs, warm colors, quotes painted on the walls, and inviting and accessible recovery information speak the message of hope and healing loud and clear while welcoming people of all backgrounds. The fabulous food doesn’t hurt, either!

Behind the café, offices and additional rooms have been decorated and designated for therapeutic and administrative purposes. Ophelia’s Place partners with The Nutrition Clinic of Elmira, NY, (http://www.solstonecenter.com/) to provide nutritional counseling and support groups to those in need of professional recovery resources. The Nutrition Clinic itself offers unique care for people in transition from hospitalization to every-day life. By working together, both organizations are able to reach more people in the places where they need help.

I am truly amazed at what Mary Ellen Clausen and a bevy of other contributors have built, and this trip definitely gave me some perspective about what I want. The main thing I learned from the team that makes Ophelia’s Place so strong:

Play to your strengths.

This is one of many lessons from this weekend. Can I be a Mary Ellen Clausen, networking and planning and executing and go-go-going? No. But can I be Michelle Cowan and make things happen? Yes.

I was reminded of my personal stamina and the pace at which I like to operate. One of the other successful women there pointed out the disparity between the energies of some of the people around and her own. I couldn’t help but commiserate. We both get tired. We both want to get back to the creative stuff and out of the business end. We can make things happen and start balls rolling. We can network and travel and do anything necessary to make a splash in the world, but we’re exhausted at the end of it! We want to enjoy life, not live in a continual stress bubble. What is, for me, a strenuous pace is nothing to some other people. The key is knowing myself.

By seeing the work at Ophelia’s Place, I understand what I want a little better. I want to share my creative fruits with the world, and I want that sharing to stimulate others to create and connect. I don’t have to have a physical space for that yet—even though I hope to have one someday.

I can commit to fleshing out my online presence and selling a few songs. I have other ideas and ways to connect in mind, but I definitely see where my vision is headed. If I do open a café or community center of some sort, it will have a slightly broader scope than eating disorders alone. It will center around healthy body image, authentic living, community, and love.

I want to follow the “change the conversation” message of Ophelia’s Place. Wherever I am, I can create that space I envision. For now, I am gathering information on how different powerful people have grown their businesses and brought their ideas to fruition. I’m learning so much from the people I’m talking to, and I’m gaining a new appreciation for my creative and organizational skills. When I choose to put them into practice (and I emphasize that it is a choice utilization on my part), things happen—more than things, miracles.

For now, I’m getting some rest from a slightly harrowing but incredibly enlightening trip to and from New York, and I’m focusing on my own best qualities. How can I bring what I have into the world? And where do I need to ask for help?

I could leave off there, but that leads me into another lesson learned. Ophelia’s Place takes a village to thrive. Countless volunteers showed up for this event, and Mary Ellen works with a team to guide, direct, and grow Ophelia’s Place. She certainly has the vision and the powers of coordination, but others flesh out those visions with their unique blends of creative, logistical, and emotional talents.

I often forget that my weaknesses can be supplemented by the strengths of others. I don’t excel in every area, but I can find people who would love to give of themselves in ways I never could.

So, I continue to rest, evaluate what I have to offer, and search for comrades. Not a bad way to start the week!

Miss Independent

What happens when a woman, surrounded by reminders of her strength as an individual and who highly values her sense of independence, realizes that she doesn’t want to be quite so independent anymore?

Answer: A wrestling match.

Two sides of me are wrestling, battling it out. Although independence is one thing everyone can depend on me for, I want something else. I want to share, too. I don’t want to lose my individuality, but I want to experience the joys of merging more with the people I care about. I want to feel engrained in the lives of others, or at least one other person, and for them to feel a part of mine. Perspectives broaden when moments are shared, when visions are exchanged, when authenticity reigns supreme.

I want more of that joy, yet I want to grow in my own way. I don’t want to get caught up solely in the interests of another human being or for people to cling to me and ride my coat tails. I want to branch out freely according to my own path and let my deepest seed spring to life.

But I also want to experience that kind of growth with someone else. I want to get a little wrapped up in the cares and concerns of someone else. I want to tell someone about my journey and hear about hers or his, too. That would broaden me.

So I wrestle. I try to hang on to my free time and try to do things that stretch me while holding the deep desire to be with someone else and participate in life with him or her. I spend time with other people while making sure to assert my own opinions and ask if we can together share the growth experiences I could engage in solo.

Until I find a balance, I’ll feel the tension. There must be tension to build up new parts of me. Until harmony is achieved, I’ll simply be grateful to experience something I haven’t ever really had in my life.

I suddenly want to share my life, in a genuine, actionable way. The notion of sharing a life is no longer, for me, a hypothetical exercise. I honestly desire a kind of merge. I don’t want to jump into foolhardy codependency, but neither do I want to remain at arm’s length. I’ve experienced much of the world alone. What would it be like to experience it with a second set of eyes, or at least with someone to tell the story to at the end of the day?

Just As I Am

As I sit down to write this entry about the importance of being okay with where I am right now, the only sentence that flies to my mind is: Am I okay with where I am?

I don’t think that I am completely okay with me. I feel perpetually in-between. I’m never perfect but never in the gutter. I’m doing some of the things I want to do and not others. I want to be doing better than I am.

This reflects my consistent inability to stay in the moment. I’m always a few steps ahead, to the career, the love, the vacation, the success, the serenity, or the wisdom I will have “one day.” Shortly after I picture that imaginary future, all the things I have to do to get there pop into my head. The moment is interrupted by a barrage of things I need to do. I’ll have to write this many songs and meet this many people and go to this many places and wear these sorts of things and look this sort of way and learn these types of things and become, become, become…until I can’t remember who I am right now.

Am I okay right now? Is it okay to accept myself, even though I don’t measure up to so many standards I created along the way? Can I erase the potential futures from my mind and enjoy what I do have and, most importantly, who I am.

If I stop fixating on images of the person I foresee myself being, I may discover that I am not the sort of woman who really wants to match those images—or who even could match them if she tried. I may grow in a different direction. By accepting myself now, as I am, I open up the possibility that I could be completely successful in this very moment. Instead of dictating to myself who I should be and laying out maps to where I will go, I can discover who I actually am and let my feet do the walking.

It troubles me that I dislike so many of my behaviors. I like myself, but I don’t always understand the things I do. I seem so strange at times, so contradictory. When my behavior doesn’t synch with who I am, maybe instead of focusing on the behavior, I can focus on looking into myself. Maybe I have misconceived of myself somehow. I’m not saying that I’m not who I think I am, but there may be an additional part of myself in conflict with my current self-image. There may be something in me I have not explored.

I’m sure there are vast regions of yourself that you may have neglected, intentionally or not. I hope we all slow down and make it into a conversation with the people we really are, so that those selves can come out and live life. I bet that reality is far better than the ideals we strive so hard to attain.

We All Have It

“Every man has his own courage, but is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

This quote struck me today. We are all more courageous than we think. And we all contain much more of many other things than we think. What I have is not what you have. What you have does not belong to me. Each person is gifted with a unique blend of talents, propensities, and traits. In each person, the combination is perfectly balanced to complement the best life he or she could lead. We struggle many times because we refuse to believe that what we have is perfect, oftentimes looking at the tiny bit we see in others and believing that we fall short.

Number one, no one has it all together. We are all doing this life thing, figuring it out piece by piece. When someone sells him/herself short, it saddens me. None of us is doing all that much better than the next person. We see so little of other people, in fact, from the outside.

Number two, each of our unique make-ups work exactly as they should. If we don’t think we’re working correctly, perhaps we need to more closely examine who we are. We so often cover our true selves up with images of what we think we should be or what we think other people want. With the barrage of images and social connections available to us these days, it’s so easy to bury ourselves in stimuli. We then start replacing the reality of who we are with that stimuli, as if the doings and representations of our life reflect our essence.

Essence has little to nothing to do with our actions. Behaviors reflect inner goings-on, but they don’t spell out who we are. We may behave in ways contrary to our natural beings because another part of us is denying the true self.

~

At this point, I want to dig myself out of this all too heady blog. It’s a brain-full. Let’s return to the quote.

First, I want to believe in my own courage. I demonstrate it every day and want to hold on to the strength that is within me. Second, comparing myself to others never does a lick of good. Comparison is a slippery slope.

Please don’t compare yourself to me. People only see a tiny bit of me. They don’t know the truth of my struggles and triumphs. When I appear to be having a hard time, there are usually many great things also happening in my life. When I look like I’m on top of the world, don’t doubt for a moment that I’m battling something in my quiet hours or that I cry most nights of the week. That’s my life, a life of both.

I can hold both—sadness and happiness, hope and discouragement, love and hate, fear and courage—at the same time. As a human, I can. And I do it in my own special way.

I hope that you, too, can recognize the unique wonder you carry, the special balance that makes you who you are. I have yet to meet someone who I didn’t think had numerous treasures to give the world. The saddest thing for me is when someone does not believe he or she has those treasures. When someone says, “I’m a terrible person,” I never know how to respond. I simply get a terrible feeling. I know that the statement isn’t true, but by asserting that there isn’t anything good inside to share, that person blocks the potential outward transmission of the goodness that does exist within him/her. It’s sad. And I always know I’m missing out on something when a person makes a comment like that.

So, own your courage. Own who you are! Believe in your own potential. The rest of us believe in it. I guarantee you. Just because who you are doesn’t look like the success story down the street doesn’t mean you aren’t equally successful.

For today, I am confident in who I am, no matter what I think of it, and I seek to help others strip away whatever hides who they are. I’m anxious to see people throw away caution and speak from their hearts.