Sunday, June 1, 2014
Monday, October 22, 2012
OctoNovemCember: Early Christmas and Holiday Burnout
Have you heard about OctoNovemCember and do you know about the Pumpkin Headed Turkey Claus?
Bah Humbug!
According to this article from NBC News, Christmas is starting a whole lot earlier this year, and I’m not too happy about it. In my opinion, October (or before) is too soon for the holiday season to be in full swing.
The OctoNovemCember craze is an economic push to ensure that retailers make the most money in a down economy and consumers get a break on prices, scoring amazing deals that help them fulfill their holiday shopping lists during the recession. Seems like a win-win proposition doesn’t it?
But if you look deeper, you’ll see how this cultural phenomenon cheapens Christmas and detracts from the meaning of the holidays. When Christmas comes so early, it’s reduced to something far too commercialized. When I see so much Christmas surrounding me months and months in advance, by the time the day after Thanksgiving rolls around, my eyes start to glaze over and I don’t even notice the holiday decorations anymore, ones that have been assaulting my senses for months.
Is it authentic to begin Christmas in late September or early October when people are still wearing shorts and flip flops during warm early fall days? To declare the winter holidays in full swing when the Halloween pumpkins are still on the ground and we haven’t even thought about Thanksgiving dinner?
Next thing you know, they’ll be declaring “Christmas in July” as the true start of the holiday season, and we’ll all feel pressure to put up a holiday tree in red and green at our next backyard barbeque! Or we’ll have Christmas trees and tinsel on the beach, giving in to media pressure, as ads declare less than 6 months of shopping days til Christmas!
Better hurry up before all the good deals are gone! Perhaps we can all get the jump on the season by leaving all our holiday decorations up and never taking them down as the holidays are surely coming earlier and earlier with frightening speed...
I don’t want the Christmas holidays reduced to a unique sales pitch, but that’s what culture is giving us this year. I intend to fight back by finding ways to honor the true sentiment behind the holiday season.
I noticed this trend of Christmas coming earlier and earlier a few years ago; in fact, I wrote an article that shared some thoughts about how I am coping with the early Christmas season and holiday burnout:
Christmas Season Starting Earlier: Does It Lead to Holiday Burnout? by Allison West Published on Socyberty
The Christmas shopping season is starting super early this year. Being surrounded by Christmas trees and holiday lights is already giving me burnout, and it’s only early November!
I’ll admit it: I’m not always a Christmas person. In the past I’ve had my moments of seasonal depression, and as much as I promise myself I’ll feel sunny and upbeat over the holidays, Christmas sometimes makes me feel a little blue. Even when nothing’s wrong, and I should feel on top of the world, there gets to be a point over the holidays when the rows and rows of Christmas merchandise and glittering Christmas trees start to close in on me and I can’t even breathe. Read on...
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Embracing the Shadow Self Through Memoir Writing
“Creation I considered a danger to my loves, my human relationships. In creation I would reveal what I was, in opposition to the roles I played to be whatever anyone needed.” -- Anais Nin
The above photo is one of the self portraits I shot while writing my memoir “Soul Tripper.”
This summer I watched Nik Wallenda walk a wire high over Niagara Falls. What a risky feat! It was so inspiring, the power of his total focus. It made me believe anything is possible.
In my opinion, engaging in memoir writing could be one of the riskiest endeavors you’ll ever undertake. It’s a life-altering, high-wire act. First, you must summon the courage to expose yourself and your life through this type of writing. Many well meaning memoir writers are unable to take this leap of faith and work on their projects, paralyzed with fear about the possible repercussions of such unbridled honesty.
Then, you might become consumed with worry about the effects such truthful writing will have on your life and relationships. Pondering memoir writing, it often becomes very clear how big the divide is between our private authentic selves and the public self we share with others. Finally, you have to actually sit down and write your story, pushing past all the distractions and excuses to organize your thoughts and experiences and turn them into words through the creative art of memoir writing. This demands total focus.
I think this is why so many people aspire to write memoir, but so few actually do get their projects completed and published. There is a price tag attached to memoir writing, and that is: relinquishing the public persona or inauthentic self that is a mask we are often all too comfortable wearing. Our masks help us get along or get ahead in life and win love and approval, and we’ll take that love, approval and success, even if we have to trade off feeling loved and accepted for our real self.
Memoir writing that exposes the shadow or “dark side” reveals our truest selves to others, with no room to be phony, adopt a facade, or conceal the authentic self. That can be very satisfying and fulfilling while at the same time, it’s truly terrifying and risky. Suppose we reveal the fullness of our humanity to others by showing them our true identity, shadows and the light, and we are not loved? Suppose we are rejected for not being who they want us to be?
It’s a risk we all must take. We all want to be loved for our authentic self. But while others can play the game, altering and giving away parts of their true selves in order to please others and win their love, memoir writers dance along the edge, boldly requiring other people to love us for our truest, unmasked selves. When you’ve opened up and exposed the Self in memoir writing, you can’t hide. It’s all out there, all your frailties, failures, personal history, and darker impulses exposed on the page.
If you’re meeting new people, dating or forming a new relationship, making friends, relating to relatives, the authentic “you” is out there if you’re a memoir writer. As people discover and read your memoir, it can be a real game changer in your life. Relationships could possibly break up, friends may come and go, and family ties may be renegotiated as people in the memoir writer’s life adjust to such a blatant assertion of authenticity.
So that really levels the playing field. As you go deeper into memoir writing, you could get some responses that are negative, like “I didn’t know you were like that.” Or maybe family, friends, dates or acquaintances will be confused or angry when you no longer play a role for them that they are comfortable with. They might even ask: “Who are you?” or insist that the person illuminated in memoir is “not the real you.”
The gift in all that memoir writing is: the miracle of truly knowing who YOU are.
When you have that through your memoir writing, once you have that, you’ll never look back. You won’t be so willing to be inauthentic, to trade away pieces of your true self just to please another person, to win their love. You won’t need or want to because embracing the shadow, making peace with those parts of yourself you thought were scary, unworthy or unacceptable, you’ll come to a place of radical self acceptance and unshakable self love.
Once you feel that sense of wholeness and identity, inner peace and authentic self love, you’ll draw a sacred circle around your world to protect it. You’ll start to make healthier choices that honor self love, and you’ll naturally repel anything that seeks to violate the boundaries of the healthy authentic self.
That has been my experience, writing and publishing my memoir called “Soul Tripper: A Journey of Awakening.” It opened me up to embracing the shadow sides of me I used to feel were shameful, as well as the more socially acceptable sides of myself I present to the outside world.
So you may think you’ll lose everything writing memoir, but there’s so much more to be gained. I’ve known writers who tell me they want to write memoir but they are scared; perhaps they’ll just write their stories as fiction, because they are just not ready to expose the Shadow Self, to shake up their comfortable existence by revealing their truth.
To those writers I say, I truly understand your conflicts, but by hanging back and repressing your impulses to share the true self through memoir writing, you are being shortchanged. If you don’t embrace your shadow self or dark side and integrate all aspects of yourself through memoir, you’ll never embrace this glittering jewel known as true authenticity.
Embracing the shadow self through memoir writing has changed my life like nothing else has. I feel a deep sense of knowing about my true Self. I’ve been able to make peace with aspects of my past and experience a profound healing by writing memoir. I finally feel like I know who I really am, and I am able to love and embrace this authentic self for the first time in my life. Now that I have experienced that breakthrough feeling of deep self love, inner knowledge and wholeness, I know it’s something no one can ever take away from me.
So if you’re ready to take the big leap and be the high-wire walking Wallenda of your own life, find the courage to sit down and write that memoir (then publish it!) You won’t regret it!
Friday, July 20, 2012
Recovering a Sense of Wonder: Find the Magic in Ordinary Days
I snapped a picture of beautiful red roses blooming in the garden on just another ordinary day. Roses like these are hardy and have survived to bloom for years without any special care. The rose bush comes into glorious bloom for only a few days before its youthful flowers turn brown, so I wanted to capture the lush colors and radiant fullness by taking a photo.
I have to confess I leave my driveway many times over the course of the summer and look but rarely see the roses. I’m glad I had the mindfulness to seize the moment.
I’m finding more and more that colorful flowers and the natural things we often take for granted bring beauty and joy to the every day. Too bad we can’t tear ourselves away from a million other distractions, obligations and concerns to actually notice them.
I’ve heard it said we live in a “microwave society.” We want it now, we never want to wait. Whatever happened to the concept of stopping to smell the roses? That seems a bit retro and outmoded in this relentlessly digital age.
Technology has spoiled us; we are fast moving and industrialized. In the march of the machines many of us have become subtly addicted to electronic devices. I read an online poll that revealed some people would be more upset to lose their mobile phone than their wedding ring!
Maybe because I read and write about Jane Austen, I long for simpler times unburdened by rapidly changing technology. I remember a time many years ago when I was working my first real corporate job after college. I came home after work to sit on my balcony in the old Victorian house where I rented my first apartment. I felt like such a grownup!
I had no microwave; I had no air conditioning. I wasn’t a cook by any means so dinner often meant heating up a frozen chicken and mashed potato dinner in a hot oven on an even hotter night, to be eaten on my little balcony. This was years before personal computers, email, smartphones, tablets and notebooks. I was fully unplugged as the moon hung low in the night sky over my balcony and the crickets played a soundtrack for the little Norman Rockwell-like village I called home.
We are so much more advanced now, and life seems to hold so many possibilities with the new breakthroughs in technology that arrive every day, but I often find my heart aches with nostalgia for that simpler time. My eyes fill with tears thinking about its simplicity and its grace.
I would like to rewind to find the magic in those mundane, ordinary days. But of course, despite my misty nostalgia, you really can’t go back. All we really have to work with is here, in the NOW.
In the present, I reached a point where I felt a bit oppressed by technology, and the burden it creates. How it distracts from important things and separates us from the organic, natural world. In the old days, you could pick up a phone and call or hand write a note to let someone know you are thinking of them. In modern times, social media creates pressure to connect with everyone you’ve ever known who is somehow added to your network. If you don’t respond to an email or online update it affects friendships and then there is the overwhelming pressure to keep up with many different internet accounts at once.
Add to that the very adult pressures of making a living and keeping a freelance career afloat in a dismal economy, and you have the recipe for a whopping migraine headache, just like the one I experienced one week this summer during one of the worst heat waves in recent memory. I woke up one humid day with a pain in my neck and head that fit the pattern of a migraine; sure enough, by evening I felt an excruciating, throbbing pain localized behind my left eye.
Since it was around the Fourth of July holiday, I didn’t feel so guilty unplugging. After all, this was a vacation time, and didn’t I need a period of rest? I maintain an online presence as a writer and usually I’m itching to log on and check my accounts, look at my earnings and page views, but my severe headache made the thought of staring at a computer screen impossible.
So began my languid days of unplugging, which brought back those blissful summer memories of lazy days on my little balcony in Upstate New York, a period where I felt blissfully unburdened from the time pressures of technology. I napped. I emptied my mind. I felt something inside me release all the pent up tension of racing against an oppressive and much too ambitious To-Do List.
I also felt grateful simply to be alive.
You see, a few days earlier we had experienced the PERFECT STORM. This severe thunderstorm showed up without warning. It felt scarier and more violent than even the maelstrom that was Hurricane Irene.
As the surprise afternoon thunderstorm gathered force and speed that summer day, I felt terror rising within me. The news often spoke of tragic deaths and damage from these types of summer storms but the line of showers often went east and missed my area of the county.
But today it was here.
I looked out the window and I couldn’t see. Rain made visibility impossible and the hail beat the side of our house and the sound of the wind and force of this storm was sickening. I ran to gather my purse, cell phone, cat carriers and some important papers, all set to evacuate. As the violence reached a crescendo I heard a crash as the neighbor’s weeping willow tree came thudding down with great force...
My mind raced: If a tree comes down closer to the house will we be hurt or killed?
In my hysteria, a thousand thoughts hurtled through my mind. God let me get through this. Please protect my animals. Please will no one get hurt today? Please let me have my life.
Suddenly, ordinary life, on an ordinary day, just the mundane little stuff, seemed HUGELY appealing.
Then just as suddenly as it appeared, the storm was gone. We survived. But I felt somehow changed by the experience. I have been more compelled to appreciate the smaller ordinary moments we take for granted. I’ve been more mindful. I’ve been out photographing things that have meaning to me, taking it all in, capturing fleeting moments, with an awareness of how suddenly it could all be ripped away from me.
Time seems more precious, so I’m less likely to invest it in online pursuits. I have relished my time of unplugging. It did wonders for my headache! And it made me get in touch with my childhood...
The Joy of Unplugging
If you live in the country, turn off all the lights and look out a window. Chances are you’ll see the rural nightlife, truly experiencing the sights and sounds of nature. On the Fourth of July, I noticed a wall of fireflies lighting up the night in the wooded area that borders our property; that sweltering summer evening it felt more like the holidays as the fireflies glowed at dusk, illuminating the tall grass right up to the high trees with a dazzling array of what looked like hundreds of blinking Christmas tree lights.
I gazed on this glowy, radiant scene with a childlike sense of wonder. I hadn’t actually seen fireflies in years. It occurred to me, I’m probably missing a lot. The fireflies and other natural and manmade wonders of life have been here all along, it’s just me who drifted away from them. After all, I’m an adult now who’s dealing with very serious grownup things like the recession, and making a living and a lousy economy. I recall hearing as a young adult we must: “Give up the childish things of youth.”
But what if those childish things, which turned out to be very ordinary things like simple, innocent pleasures, are really the stuff of life and the keys to authentic happiness? That’s what I realized one ordinary July evening when I finally unplugged, discovered the magic wall of fireflies and recovered my childlike sense of wonder.
I vowed from that moment on to stop and smell the roses. Not to be so influenced by my adult peers and media and a culture that defines me by how much I spend, what car I drive, how quickly I respond to email and how fat is the size of my paycheck.
I vow to stay more connected to the natural world and in turn, to the voice of my soul. To those of you diving deep into your electronic devices after work, feverishly maintaining your online presence, afraid you’ll miss an update as the internet hurtles by at warp speed, I must say goodnight as I go offline to seek something more organic and natural.
I need balance. The only thing on my mind is what waits for me in the fields as the sun slides behind the trees and darkness descends on another summer night.
It feels really good to be in touch with that little girl within who wonders if there’ll be more fireflies tonight.
Soul Tripper Exercise:
Unplug from mobile devices and computers; take in the magic in an ordinary day. Do this for a day or long weekend. Pay attention. Breathe. Enjoy the insights and inner peace this brings you. As you look at what is around you and perhaps for the first time, really see. Practice some “mindful photography” by snapping pictures of things, perhaps fleeting things or objects in the natural world you find meaningful. Then strive to take this centered feeling back into the modern, techno world.
Can you maintain your sense of balance and the perspective that comes from being unplugged as you reenter the digital landscape? Will you be able to balance online and offline pursuits against technological peer pressure, in a world where it seems like everyone is constantly online?
If you can recover a sense of childlike wonder for the natural world, the rewards are immeasurable.
Go ahead, be brave. Unplug for a while. I’ll race you to the ice cream truck. Go on, I dare you!
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Personal Mission Statement and Life’s Work
A few years ago, I went through a time when I was really into books about personal growth. My life was really in flux during that period; I find that during times of pain and upheaval, in those transitional times I have also experienced a lot of forward movement in my life, and growth too. At the time I was reading those books, I was transforming and needed to go deeper in many areas of my life, to find a deeper sense of meaning and truth. The same old stuff wasn’t working so I was ready to embrace new ways of thinking.
Some books talked about asking yourself the question: “What is my contribution to the world?” This means developing your personal vision to be an agent for growth and change. What do you want to accomplish in your life in the bigger picture? How would you like your gifts to impact the world, and what is your legacy?
Crafting Your Personal Mission Statement: Purpose and Vision
I thought about this for a long while. I even recorded it in a journal I have been keeping on and off for a few years. I came up with what I called my “personal mission statement.” In the winter of 2006 I wrote it:
“To inform, entertain, uplift and inspire through the full use of my creative gifts and artistic abilities.”
This personal mission statement really encapsulates my purpose in life, the reason I am here and why I feel I was given my Divine creative gifts in the first place: to positively impact others. You’ll sometimes hear people talk about the concept of finding “purpose and vision” and often the definition of the terms vary and overlap. For me, my purpose is to use my creative gifts for the highest good. I expand on my purpose to create a vision of what’s possible if I use my gifts effectively: I contribute to the world by educating, uplifting, inspiring change and transforming others through the use of my art and creativity.
It sounds lofty, but when you recognize yourself to be a Divine entity, you’ll see how we are all interconnected, and how our actions and work truly matter in the world.
Finding Your Life’s Work
I come from a rather small family and as the youngest or “baby” of the family, growing up I didn’t always give a lot of thought to my contribution to the world. I didn’t think much of my place in the world from a larger perspective. I didn’t think I could make an impact. It was all about me. I also had such low self esteem that I never imagined having an impact on the greater good. I was rather immature and didn’t want to assume that kind of responsibility for my actions! As Marianne Williamson would say, my “playing small does not serve the world.”
As I’ve grown older and developed as an artist and creative person, I think more and more about how my work impacts humanity, animals, and the environment. How can I give back? How can I make the world a better place through the use of my talents, my gifts?
I’ve broadened the scope of that personal mission statement, which involved using my creative gifts for the highest good, to include the concept of my “life’s work.” All my life, I wanted to become an actor and achieve professional success in that field. So years ago, I would have automatically said my life’s work would be performing and theatre. Definitely, through the careful choice of roles that illuminate something about the human condition, it is possible to have an impact on the world through the art of acting. However, in the world of professional acting or “show business” it’s often more about making money than it is about artistry.
Acting is in my heart and soul and I love it, but I believe writing is my true calling. It is writing that has helped me grow leaps and bounds as a human being while also helping me heal from past traumas. It is by writing that I feel I can really make a contribution to the world. Through the craft of writing, I can raise awareness about issues I am passionate about, like ovarian cancer and animal welfare. As I continue to share my experiences through personal essay and memoir writing, it is my hope that readers will find something universal in my story that they can connect with, that will hopefully allow them to make discoveries about their own life and experiences.
As I consider my life’s work, I plan to bring my two loves together (acting and writing) by creating my own material to perform that reflects my purpose and vision: my published memoir “Soul Tripper” is definitely a reflection of my life’s work.
Soul Tripper Exercise:
Schedule some personal time for reflection and contemplation. When you are alone and relaxed, perhaps after some quiet time or meditation, consider crafting a personal mission statement, then take out a journal and write whatever comes to mind. Do not over think this process; allow your subconscious impulses to emerge.
Consider this mission statement a guideline, not an absolute. As you transform during your soul tripping journey, this mission statement may grow and evolve with you also. As your mission statement lingers in the back of your mind, wait for subtle (or more conscious) feelings of rightness. If something feels a little “off” then go back and refine your mission statement.
Questions to ask yourself: Why am I here? What do I want for other people, living things, the planet? How can I best make a positive impact? What will be my contribution to the world? What will I leave behind through my work? What is my legacy? Am I truly living “on purpose” or just marking time through this life? If you are patient with yourself, and allow your truest purest impulses to surface, a life direction will emerge in time.
Then enlarge that personal mission statement into your true calling, or life’s work. As an example, my personal mission statement can be paraphrased as: “The full use of my creative gifts for the highest good.” I realized my true calling is my writing; my life’s work is affecting others positively and changing the world for the better through the written word.
Once you have determined your unique place in the world through creating your personal mission statement and identifying your calling, you may experience a greater feeling of peace, a deeper sense of things feeling “right” and a profound sense of wholeness. Start to center your life on these choices, your purpose, vision and life’s work. Then your actions will come from your deepest values, and what you say and do will be aligned with who you really are and how you truly feel.
And that, my friends, is AUTHENTICITY.
Namaste,
Allison
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Skin Cancer Awareness: Why I Won’t Tan This Summer
When I was young, tanning was quite a cultural craze and I grew up in the era of “sun worshippers.” In fact, if you weren’t tan, it could make you a target of ridicule or bullying. I heard the actress and comedian Kathy Griffin talk about being bullied as a child for being very pale, and she was asked if she put talcum powder on her legs to make them so white! I recall my fair skinned sister being bullied and called “tuna fish” or “mayonnaise” for her pale skin; I am also extremely pale and I was belittled for my white legs and urged to get a tan, as it would make me look “healthier.”
So women and girls back in the day, we tried everything to get a tan, and boy, did some of us suffer in the process. The pressure to tan began early in a girl’s life. Pre-teen girls in my school covered the snow banks with tinfoil and baked in the sun during the rare warm days in February, so they could get an early start and become tan by spring. When my family made annual summer trips to Lake George in the Adirondacks, we always lounged by the pool at our hotel and I prayed I would get some color, but I always got burnt to a crisp. I remember one especially bad burn that resulted in chills, fever and the skin on my arms and nose radiating fire, charred like a baked potato!
Then I grew into a young woman and the pressure intensified. I felt hurt and shame when an older man I thought I loved told me I had nice legs, but they were too white for his taste (I wore jeans the rest of that summer). All through college and my early working years, I purchased tube tops and short shorts and sun tan oil from Coppertone to Bain de Soleil to engage in the sun worship that was expected.
I desperately wanted to please, to be liked and accepted, to fit into mass culture. I didn’t have a strong enough sense of self to do what was best for me, to risk being too different. I would sometimes hear this phrase in my youth: “Beauty knows no pain.” In other words, to live up to a cultural standard of beauty, a woman needed to be willing to suffer by engaging in potentially harmful beauty rituals.
I have to confess, I tried to get rid of my pale skin and do what was expected of me, but I didn’t enjoy baking in the sun. I attempted to get fashionably tan, but I’d always burn painfully or if I did eventually tan, it wouldn’t be even. Then after a summer of spreading on the tanning oil, I noticed I developed a few dark spots on my stomach; I wasn’t sure what they were and that concerned me.
Still, I kept getting messages from culture that I needed to tan. Magazines were filled with images of bronze colored bodies wearing expensive bikinis, dripping in diamonds and gold jewelry, always pictured on a beautiful beach or a fancy yacht. The implication was that tanning made us younger, thinner, richer and more desirable.
What they didn’t tell us was that tanning can kill you.
I never heard much about skin cancer awareness when I was growing up. It took my Dad’s bouts with skin cancer to make me sit up and take notice about the dangers of tanning. My father has light eyes and paler skin like me (we’re of German and Dutch descent) and all those hours Dad spent working outdoors without sun protection took its toll on his skin. When I saw the bandages covering Dad’s face and other parts of his body, I vowed to never again give in to cultural pressures to be tan.
Now I embrace my pale skin, and I never let anyone shame me for simply being myself, someone with a lighter complexion. Fortunately, our culture seems to be catching up a bit, and now you hear a lot about the dangers of tanning beds and baking in the sun. However, we’re still crazed about bronzers and self tanners. As I strive to live a more natural, holistic life, I wonder about what kinds of chemicals are in all those supposedly harmless self tanners. Each summer, I say I’ll try a “tanning towel” to give my legs a little color, but I haven’t so far, because I’m sensitive and lots of self tanners have unpleasant odors.
If you’d like to raise your skin cancer awareness, Neutrogena has a website that offers a free self exam kit and more information about skin health:
http://www.chooseskinhealth.com
I believe it’s an act of radical self acceptance and authenticity to embrace your natural skin, whatever its color. For more on my journey to skin cancer awareness and why I won’t tan, read my article:
Why I Won’t Tan This Summer by Allison West Published on BeyondJane
As I walk down the sultry streets of my small town in New York’s Hudson Valley this summer, I’m aware that I’m a little different. In fact, I feel a little bit like a rebel of sorts. I feel like I’ve committed an outrageous act that doesn’t fit into the norm here.
What have I done that so goes against the grain of my sleepy little upstate community?
I refuse to tan.
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