Lisa for Real

275. To selfie or not to selfie

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Back in 2019, I took a business and marketing course. There was a challenge to post selfie’s on Instagram because people connect with people.

I cringed so hard.

I did not like the idea of selfie’s at all. I thought they were self-centered, superficial and fake – everything I didn’t want to be.

But being the good student I am, I started posting selfie’s as part of the assignment.

It was wildly uncomfortable. It felt scary and vulnerable. But it did not feel self-centered or superficial or fake.

I realized that I had a fear of being perceived as such but I have not received that feedback. In fact, I found it to be another great medium of self-expression, like writing.

I no longer cringe at the idea of selfie’s but embrace it as another way to explore who I am because like everything else, it is about making it your own.

274. Like a good puff pastry

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Today I healed an intergenerational trauma I have been carrying about my maternal grandmother my entire life. This is not the first time I have received/done a healing around my grandmother, a woman whom I have never met and whom my mom has no recollection of, and I know it will not be the last.

Some people say healing is like peeling an onion and its many layers. While my version of healing has many tears, I’d like to think of trauma to be layered like a good puff pastry. Some layers are distinct while some are completely indistinguishable from the other. The delayering process is not quite so neat but it is doable when the circumstances are right.

These layers are created over a lifetime and in this particular case, a couple of lifetimes. The trauma isn’t the original experience but the resurfacing of the memory/feeling/sensation and reaction of my nervous system to that resurfacing. That’s why it is many layers deep, not just a wham-bam, one time and I’m healed.

I’ve often wondered what is the point of all this healing. Will I ever get to a point where I am trauma free? What would that even look like? I’m learning that healing helps me release those incomplete cycles within me and my lineage. It won’t make me trauma free but it will make me more me. While I have been shaped by the trauma, it doesn’t have to engulf and control me. I’m not sure if the puff pastry will ever be gone but it feels good to slowly peel off the layers.

273. Not either/or, it’s both/and

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Our brains default to either/or thinking because that is the culture we currently live in. Our parents taught us we can have one thing in a choice of two (it’s always seems to be a choice of two) but not both! Having love withheld because we have been “bad”, picking favorites and labeling a child as the “smart/fast/needy/etc” one are all examples of contributing to this binary way of looking at the world that we carry with us into adulthood and into how we approach life.

But what if it’s not an either/or world?

What if it’s both/and?

What if we can be both a good and bad mother at the same time and give ourselves grace and compassion? What if we could both disagree with a friend about something they are doing and still love them? What if we can be both the oppressor and the oppressed at the same time?

What if we can hold two opposing truths in both hands and see all the links of the two in between?

All of those links in between all of our truths are connected and interwoven like a net. It is contained but where one string starts and ends is impossible to discern.

Maybe it’s not only both/and but all the things.

272. Living the Agile life

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The concept of “building a plane while flying” was never meant to be the most effective or efficient approach. In reality, it is messy, requires constant tinkering, and feels repetitive and slow with its incremental gains.

I’ve heard this phrase many times in my corporate life, and at first, it took me a while to grasp this seemingly impossible concept because aren’t products and projects supposed to have a defined start and finish? Aren’t we supposed to stow away with an amazing idea, create it and then release it out into the world and make millions?

With more finicky consumers and the increasing speed of technology, more and more companies are using the “Agile” approach to manage their projects which precisely follows this idea of building the plane while flying. The projects I have been involved in using this approach have seemed inefficient and a bit forced, but it gets the project progressing at a pace that a linear process would not, so the messiness of it is worth it to its stakeholders.

As humans, you and I are constantly building the plane while flying. We are always a work in progress while out in the world doing the things. And really there is no other way to live. “Flying” (living life) actually helps inform “building” (develop) who we are. We have to be building while flying or we come to a dead stop. We have to follow this process because life is an iterative process – it isn’t linear. We can’t start at point A, create an amazing version of ourselves while in hiding and then release ‘Me version 3.0’ in the world after 3 years. How do we create a new, amazing version of ourselves without living, making mistakes and trying new approaches?

Maybe this is why life feels like an impossible, scary task at times. A linear approach would be so comforting for the nervous system – direct, predictable, and safe. But life isn’t like that!

For someone who wants to “make something of myself,” it can feel like a very messy, frustrating and incomplete process. But maybe we are never meant to “release” ourselves out in the world. Maybe we are always meant to keep building while flying.

271. Finding my way home

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What if everyone is just trying to find their way home?

To a place where they can feel a sense of belonging, safety and familiarity?

What if we are just trying to find our way home?

To where we feel like we are with the tide, not against it? To where we feel safe? To what is familiar?

What if I am just trying to find my way home?

To where I can feel accepted and part of something bigger? To where I can let my guard down? To where I can settle into who I am?

It seems like it’d explain a lot.

Don’t you think?