As always, my heart is to share so you don’t feel so alone. And, to show you my bumble bee in the salvia flowers, and in doing so I remember that I am enough in this moment. So are you.

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Today is one of those days when all the dots connect, and I can see how the past has led me to now. My now is ordinary; there is no monumental milestone or achievement. There is nothing to brag about, nothing you will admire as fabulous.

Unlearning isn’t a popular or particularly pleasing journey. It’s often heavy and certainly not inspirational low-hanging fruit to sell in a coaching program. “I can help you make more money.”

If I were really brave, I would share more of my unlearning with you out loud, but I am still sensitive to what you think about me.

Still.

Most of all, if I weren’t afraid of being so “negative.” There’s some programming and “not truth.”

Do you think nature says, “I shouldn’t be so negative#8221; or even God? Buahahahah. Nope.

We can not escape life’s difficulties even if we do everything we can to escape them. But we can learn to access our own SELFSOUL to be with ourselves and others in the difficulties (and the delights).

Unlearning IS a valid path to SELFSOUL trust. I added SOUL because the SELF-TRUST I am teaching in my work, and living in my life is trust in the INFINITE SOUL within you. The GOD inside of you that you are.

It was always calling, even from way back in 3rd grade, when at HP Elementary, I was compelled to say a prayer in chapel because I was tired of hearing the shame, fire, and brimstone messages about avoiding hell. My little 3rd-grade SOUL knew back then that it was CONNECTION and relationship, not control. And here we are at 52—seeing it all led me to this ordinary moment—where it is more than a theory; it just is.

Alli, you asked for a SOUL-full life for many years, and you’ve been living it all along and are living it here in this moment. You found it by not trying to escape your humanity but by exploring it all the way to the wild edges.

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From an IFS lens:

all parts have benevolent intent managers are trying to control life so we don’t feel pain

they run daily life and give us the illusion of safety and control.

 

Many of my thinking parts are managers scrambling for certainty in an uncertain world. It’s been said that “all thinking is parts.” We must remember that the goal is not to eliminate parts but lead them with attuned love.

 

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Photos: The ACA Bill of Rights. The photos are of my handwritten version, and you can find the pdf version on the ACA website. The second photo is my visual reminder to be clear on what is mine and what is not.

The problem with BE LOVE for recovering people pleasers.
Asking a recovering people pleaser and recovering over -functioner- to BE LOVE for other people is like asking an alcoholic to drink. An alcoholic uses alcohol to cope, but the people pleaser uses fawning, over-functioning, high achievement, and being pleasing to cope. We do this subconsciously to manipulate our experience of the world…and are rewarded for it in many ways. Many of us have lost out authentic selves in service of BE LOVE.

When a beloved recently shared with me the ACA Bill of Rights – It was all there so clearly – it struck me deeply as rights I would like to internalize and embody. Most of these rights I never gave myself – because people-pleasing worked for me from a very young age. Being the “good girl” worked for me. These were my unconscious coping skills.

These coping skills worked until they didn’t. The unbecoming and unlearning is a process. Becoming the sovereign and boundaried me is a process. I share because many of my clients and many of you are in the unbecoming of old patterns and finding your sovereignty and authentic SELF.

And the TRUEST way for recovering people pleasers to contribute love to the world, is to turn the LOVE inward – to all of our parts. This is a skill we need to develop and practice – insight is not enough.

I call this SELF-CENTERED (the exact thing many of us were told not to be). When I am centered in the love and SELF-leadership of all my parts, then my being contributes love to everyone in my orbit.

I hope this helps.
I know seeing it clearly spelled out helps me.

💛 Allison

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Grief does not feel like the wisest business strategy lately – Especially as a coach – A small protector part of me -influenced by “perfection only” past mentors, feels this deep obligation to be cheery and “positive.” (Those same mentors always “shoulded” that concise was imperative. Buahahah. This is not concise. NOTHING I do is concise).

 

I know that is just a part of me – a part that wants to be accepted and not rejected. I also know that humans need human leaders and public people who hold space and compassion for the wild edges of being human. This is the work I came to do in myself and for the world.

 

It’s a breeze to hold the pretty center – it’s another thing to lead and BE in the wild edges. Grief, my friends, is not in the shiny center; it is the definition of the wildest and most unpredictable of edges.

 

The grief of losing Leroy is the easiest of grief. I feel more familiar with some versions of this heartbreaking experience. Francis Weller speaks of the 5 Gates of Grief in his book The Wild Edge Of Sorrow(see image).

 

The Grief that is asking for my presence is the 4th Gate. Three recent moments helped me come to this awareness – gifts through connection with others (not with my head in a book of information but through relationships) have helped me SEE clearly.

 

• The first was my ADHD diagnosis 11 months ago and how the symptoms have impacted me + and that I harshly judged and hated parts of me – incessantly trying to FIX these defaults for 49 years. It is wobbly holding those as ISness and considering a path forward where I create accessibility for myself instead of trying to fix something that isn’t broken, only different. 

• The 2nd was the ACA Adult Children of Alcoholics Bill of Rights, a beloved shared with me. Already coming into my own awareness of and recovering from people pleasing, over-functioning, over-achieving + boundaries – this document spelled out losses so clearly – in 20 distinct and familiar points. A gut punch…but also a re-set point. And so much grief in my body. My head already gets it, but my body is coming online and integrating, feeling, and releasing. And my thinking parts have a hay day with the discomfort.

• The third was in a session with my new coach yesterday: I remembered the 18-year-old me – so full of hope and faith, innocence, and ignorance -and physically strong and athletic. Joyful because she didn’t know. She didn’t know because she was young and privileged, and protected. She had so many dreams and so much belief. She was sourced in religion and brainwashed in privilege and ableism. I felt both sorry for her and jealous. I have been beaten down by what has not happened that I had so much faith would in life and work. I’ve been timid around desire and goals. I’ve been too tired to want as I chopped wood and carried water in this last season of ailing parents, ailing dogs, other private family matters never mentioned here, and caring for my business, marriage, mental health, and heart attack.

 

As I compassionately sit with this – and allow myself to be held in the presence of this grief and validation- my body acclimates to the discomfort, and I remember that I am safe- struggling but not broken. And that it is just moments of struggle. It is not my I AMness.

 

And then hope comes back in. There is a way to have hope and faith. I don’t have to go back to being the 18-year-old (or any other version of my joyful-faith-filled selves), but I can cultivate the hope and faith, and strong body of the 51-year-old woman I am. This feels both exciting and crushing to be a beginner all over again.

If you read UNARMORED all the way to the end… you’ll have read the part where the HUMANness reconnects with the spark of Spiritual again, followed by a heart attack; that, for me, was a metaphor for restarting my heart with the electricity of SPIRIT.

 

That’s where I stand today.

Comfortable in my humanness, holding others in theirs, and now ready to build both my physical strength and my faith and prayer – in my own unique way. And ‘strong ankles”. I’ll share that story another day.

 

AC

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Your leaders, whether they show it or not, are human.

After my heart attack – one of my former clients sent me a message saying, “I love you, and your heart attack scared the shit out of me because I relate to you & can’t stand the thought of you being scared….and MORTAL.”

I spent the first 46 years of my life escaping my mortality and humanness, and boy, did it please other people. The “positivity.”

The full of hot air promises to manifest with thought alone. A pretty pollyanna package with tons of mental information, but also hiding disassociation from my own body. I was wearing the masks society conditioned me to wear in exchange for validation and acceptance.

 

I note the people who, the moment I let any humanness slip – even with humility and an attempt to repair – REJECTED me and LEFT. They only wanted to plastic and polished version of my leadership. But their ability to hold my humanness was never their responsibility; it was always, only ever mine.

I know that when I don’t have the capacity for the messy and uncomfortable parts of being human in others – it is only ever a reflection of the lack of love and compassion I have for myself.

 

I would rather be rejected for showing pieces of the wild edges of my humanness than be adored for being a masked and performative me.

This may not make for popular or feel-good leadership. Last night the thought “Leadership is a LIE” crossed my mind. It only serves to create an above or below status, and traditionally it requires one to present their masked and plastic performing selves in service of shareholders to the front-facing world, thus leaving an impossible standard of measurement that followers will no doubt, consciously or subconsciously, hold themselves to.

 

For me, Leadership is horizontal and circularish – I am the other you – I just might be willing to go first. Let’s go together – I’ll be there right by your side.

Yes, dear J, I am mortal, and you can relate to me because I will tell you the truth, and I will tell you the truth is OK – even if it doesn’t feel comfortable.

 

You are mortal too. It’s not a failure to be mortal. It’s not a moral failure to have a heart attack, or to experience anxiety, or overthinking, or be out of alignment, or to be in the whiplash of grief. Enlightenment isn’t escaping our humanness; it’s loving it fiercely. Stop fighting and harshly judging something that doesn’t need to be FIXED.

 

What if we put the energy we spend into bypassing, disassociating, shaming, judging, and ignoring our humanity ~into holding it with compassion This requires entirely new “programming” and muscle memory. It takes practice. It takes repetition. It requires choice, over and over and over – as we are undoing the “you’re doing it wrong” that has become a part of every cell in our bodies and bones.

 

Most days (I’m still practicing), I no longer need it to be easy; I just need it to be real.

I notice that when I can LET myself be REAL with myself – which means breathing self-compassion and self-acknowledgment for the most uncomfortable states, I experience – when I can gently welcome all parts of me (without the intent to fix or heal or change those parts) – THAT is when my heart softens, and I remember that I am ok.

 

• Another benefit is I don’t buy as much shit I don’t need.

• Another benefit is that I want to punch other people in the face WAY less.

 

Some will see my willingness to meet my own suffering as indulging complaints – that I am in a victim mindset.

 

Who are the victims, really Is it the ones willing to belong to their own sweet selves with compassion and enoughness, even and especially when it is a tad messy & extremely uncomfortable Or those jumping through plastic masked hoops to pretend they aren’t exactly what they are?

 

Make no mistake, this path of self-compassion and choosing the holiness of humanness is NOT EASY. But this is the hard I choose.

 

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When I step into my creative practices, my Soul awareness is activated. My Soul is jealous of the time I waste consuming and allowing my head to get sucked into the blue light flicker. The more my head is tucked into a screen, the more disconnected my heart’s electromagnetic field is, and the more my soul gets dehydrated.

Parts of me, at times, want to escape the “world” we live in. And then I rest, and I remember that, YES, the world is changing fast. The information and digital ages have us shifting as humanity perhaps faster than we ever have.

When I go the speed of the world, I suffer. When I slow down, when I am willing to be deliBErate, I am able to BE in the world and contribute even to the smallest of soulfulness and connection with humanity. I am determined, called even, to live in the both/and.

And when I tend to my Soul, I am again able to do my work and love on my people.

The world is suffering some serious breakdowns. I am not above them or beneath them. I certainly can’t escape or fix them. But I can consider who I want to be in this one life, at this time, that I have been given.

I choose fully, and to the wild edges, Soul-Full Human…

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Special thanks to Donna Fromm whose art in my feed planted a seed that helped me rememBEr.

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