I remember talking out loud when I was young, in imaginary and practice conversations. I still do that, practice talking to the people who matter or the stories that are important to tell. I remember talking to God at five years old and I distinctly remember not talking to God for a while when I was eleven.
The first onstage performance I can remember, I was about 6 or 7 and all I had to do was deliver three simple lines. But I walked onto the stage and the microphone set up for me to speak them into was about a foot over my head. That was my first break into comedy.
I remember singing, no – I can’t remember ever not singing. And talking. I remember debating politics age eleven on the phone to my friend Sarah. We were both planning to be journalists; she wanted to write about sport and I wanted to write about politics and how to change the world. Sometimes I got confused as to whether I wanted to write about changing the country or just change the country.
I remember the warm hum of a microphone and the precise, obnoxious sibilance they bring to every word. I remember my voice in that microphone through a headset on my first radio show and then my second. I remember the sound of my voice on cassette tape as I listened to air check tapes. It requires stoicism to learn to appreciate your own voice instead of hearing everything that falters.
I remember the first time I read an advertisement and nailed it in two read-throughs and when the audio engineer said ‘can you give me something a little sexier?’, and I realised, listening back to the take, that I could. I could read it sexy or funny or smart. I remember the first time and the last time I walked onstage to a crowd of 5000 people and caught their attention with my words and how to still a room using timbre and tone.
It’s not the notes alone but the silences between the notes that make the music. I remember the first time I felt silenced and unheard. I can picture the look on his face when I saw my words fly past his ears. I remember the feeling of words flying but mine being powerless. How it felt as my voice shrank inside me. For a while, I didn’t have words for conversations between friends or even a phone call. I couldn’t read it sexy or smart or even half-alive for a while there.
It felt like a tearing and stretching burn when I started to use it again. It was like my trachea was still recovering from how searing my words had been the last time I spoke up. My tongue was heavy and soft, it had lost all it’s sharpness and dexterity. Like learning to walk again, it hurt at first.
Eventually someone asked and I walked up to the microphone again. I said yes out of muscle memory but I wasn’t sure muscle memory was going to be enough to get me through. But they liked it, the sound I made and the words I gave were hopeful, they said. Sharp but bright and hopeful. It sounded good to them. So I did it again, then one more time and another time after that. Until I was back to myself and perhaps better than that.
It’s my voice, you see. The sound I’ve been listening to my whole life. It doesn’t make sense when it goes away or if I shut it down. It can be sexy and sad and smart and funny and brave. And that’s the soundtrack of my life, the one I’m getting ready to turn up.
Emotions are like the ocean and pain can be like a tsunami wave. It’s a collective bundle of grief, loss, sadness, hopelessness, frustration, gratitude. You can’t feel pain without knowing something is wrong.
But like all feelings, pain is a messenger. When it comes, I like to lean in.
Sometimes I am a witness, sometimes I am the mess. But I am in it all wholeheartedly.
I don’t want to miss a single lesson pain has to whisper to me. Sometimes learning through loss is like a woman giving birth. The more you resist, the more painful labour can be. You have to open yourself in the very places your body tries to resist to be closer to birth.
Pain is the pathway to growth because it shows us where something is wrong and gives us a chance to reset the bones. And pain is the pathway to healing too. Therefore I do not, cannot regret being wholehearted and willing to engage in the gritty and the great aspects of life.
I have an unfair advantage here – I’m wired to see this as the marrow of life, that authenticity and getting to the heart of any matter whether spiritual, intellectual or emotional will always be the place where truth empowers us to move forward. I go to the depths of the ocean all the time. It’s my playground. But don’t imagine for a minute that means pain is any less painful for me. No, it’s brutal and heart-wrenching and grinds my world to a halt.
But if you get to know me, behind the layers and the writing and really get into my soul – if I let you in, there is a gift there beyond worth. It’s taken me a long time to believe it, but I see it now more clearly. I see things all day long and connect the patterns of the universe. I understand music and magic in ways you long for in your everyday life. I’ve learned to see joy and sorrow in the same breath. I am a seer. A seer of possibilities, a seer of truth and a seer of hopefulness. That’s why I long to help others learn to see. Not necessarily what I see – the depths of the ocean is often dark, but to see in their unique way.
Many times in talking to someone, even strangers at a bar, we will end up in the depths of their dark wounds or the questions they wrestle with. I struggle with small talk, I’d rather peel back your layers and understand the real you. That means being prepared for the gritty. The bad ideas, the messiness of human living and relationships laid bare. Sometimes I am a witness, sometimes I am the mess. But I am in it all wholeheartedly.
For me, there is no other way to be. There is no deep enough until we hit the ocean floors. Me, wholly myself celebrating you, wholly yourself.
We spend so much time pretending to each other, when our healing is so often found in disclosing the vulnerabilities that allow us to see each other whole and hopeful. If we could do away with pretending, how much healing might we find in the world?
But instead, we hide our true selves so often behind our fear of being seen for our messy selves. In our hiding we hurt each other, in our hiding we resist the pain of vulnerability and miss the gift of intimacy that comes from it.
Yesterday I was given a good piece of advice, and because it’s never too soon to share what we learn, I’ll pass it on.
In the midst of the pain, don’t lose your shape. Lean into your shape, the unique vocation of who you are. Your vocation isn’t a job but your calling on the earth. Mine is to bring wisdom and beauty into the world, through my stories and my experiences. So I have to write, share, talk, speak and show you what I see in the depths of the ocean. What I’ve learned looking into the depths of a thousand pairs of eyes, all hoping to found safe and sound so they can come out from their hiding places.
So today, writer, heal thyself. (speak to yourself firmly and kindly)
Tell the truth of what you see.
Remind yourself of the beauty in the world, the beauty in you.
Remember what you sought in your youth – wisdom, understanding and grace before vanity.
Remind yourself – your natural-born ability to emerge through pain and show beauty to others is your gift, your vocation and offering to the world.
Remind yourself that your heart is bigger than oceans and you fear no feeling.
When waves of unworthiness come, you plant your feet on ocean rocks and bathe until clean.
You rejoice in joy and see that sorrow and joy grow best together.
You are wholehearted like no other, you are a gift for those who need beauty and wisdom in the world.
My whole life, I have thrived in front of an audience. I am a communicator. I have delivered my best work in front of a microphone, in front of an audience and on the published page.
Ask me to write or speak to a room of thousands and I cannot hide the sparkle in my eye. But there is truth in what a wise person once told me – that we craft the skills to communicate well long before we have anything to say. So I spent the last twenty years learning how to say it.
And now I think I have something to say, at last. Several somethings, actually.
Early in life I was labelled a ‘bossy girl’. My mother tells the story of a family friend dragging me home from a playdate exclaiming ‘I will not be told what to do by a five year old!’.
For most of my teens and twenties, I made a reputation for myself as opinionated. I wanted to change the way people think (still do) and therefore think and live differently. The world has a way of disqualifying the young from being able to lead thought revolution. I think it has to do with the idea you have to earn your stripes and pay your dues, both of which really just mean ‘do the time’. Actually I knew who I wanted to be – a person of insight and wisdom and I was practicing my voice, learning how to say what I thought.
Experience ≠ Wisdom
Experience and the sheer passing of time may lead to observational wisdom, the accrual of shared wisdom, but wisdom and insight stands alone. I set out at a young age, inspired by the ancient thinker Solomon, to pursue wisdom. The ability to perceive and understand situations differently. Thinking differently will always lead to living differently.
Being opinionated has led me to broken-ish relationships, getting fired and lots of meetings where I was expected to apologise. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I did not.
My strength has also been one of my greatest insecurities – a fear that if I speak my mind or say the ‘wrong’ thing, I will inevitably push people away or lose those I love. It has terrible implications for my most precious interpersonal relationships when I want to be vulnerable.
But it has also led me to the greatest learning of my life and some of my very best ‘being’.
Being a person who can tell the truth in love when no one wants to hear it. One who sticks it out on the side of the miserable. The one who tackles tough subjects, suggests alternative perspectives and facilitates conversation, not just lectures. And occasionally still the one who digs her heels in to get her way. I have learned when not to say I told you so and when to say it with grace.
The toughness of it – the sheer bloody hard work of this ‘think differently’ life has taught me to be a better communicator, a better writer and a better thinker. You have to learn over and over again how to say what you think and how to think better and better.*
A good friend of mine recently offered some words of encouragement, in her blunt and direct way. “You’re a bit of a powerhouse of opinion. You have insight.”
She also reassured me that giving thoughtful opinion and insight delivered with love isn’t the same as the bossy, stroppy twenty-something girl I fear being known as.
There’s no need to worry so much about whether my opinion or insight is right or wrong, or whether it’s ready to be said. I need to trust my gut more often and listen to my body. Perhaps it is more important that I say it in such a way, my love is unmistakable regardless of whether I’m talking to my friends, my readers or my clients.
In my opinion, with love.
*I am incredibly blessed to have worked with some of the best thinkers I’ve encountered, who have taught me to refine and practice the art of thinking in a variety of contexts. I’m forever grateful and will continue to learn and practice.
I didn’t feel very brave. I’d just confessed that I hadn’t done the job I was meant to do and more importantly, why I hadn’t done it. I thought it was morally wrong as well as a waste of time. So I hadn’t done what I’d been asked to do and now I was paying the price for pretending. But I have always been brave in the art of honesty and confessing.
‘Brave would have been saying no and what I thought in the beginning, I think,’ I replied ‘instead of pretending like I was sometime going to get around to it.’
‘Maybe. But it doesn’t change how brave you were in the last five minutes. You just faced it head on. I couldn’t do that, whether I was in the right or the wrong.’
Maybe it was that I thought I had nothing left to lose but she was right, I was brave. I am brave.
Brave is not all of me, but it is a significant part. And when she said it, I recognised myself in a dozen different instances from age 4 to 19 years old. The brave girl who has learned to say what she thinks.
If your True Self is a muscle that flexes at a mere trigger, you feel the energy that displaces as soon as that muscle engages. Recognition. You recognise yourself in the moments you think and act out of your Truest nature. Our most True Self is the one who emerges when we are free to form our own shape instead of pushing ourselves into other shaped boxes.
Important side note: there is a difference between what feels familiar and what we recognise. We are drawn to the familiar because it feels known, we see patterns we know and out of habit, we understand how to respond and operate within that system or construct. Often these patterns of familiarity draw us back towards what has been, rather than what might be.
Recognition is as precise and distinct as a puzzle piece, with only one place that precise shape and colour way can fit. A distinct and necessary part of the puzzle that is you. Your life is the same – the tasks and situations that my hands were made for, where my voice has the most resonance, where my words make sense.
rec·og·ni·tion ˌrekəɡˈniSH(ə)n/ noun
the action or process of recognising or being recognised, in particular. synonyms: identification, recollection, remembrance
identification of a thing or person from previous encounters or knowledge.
acknowledgment of something’s existence, validity, or legality. synonyms: acknowledgement, acceptance, admission
Lately, I’ve been recognising myself again. In moments of a little freedom or when back in wide open spaces – the brave, courageous girl comes rushing back out. I have to be brave again, because being my brave self is key to getting back on the path to my life.
The girl who wants to change the world. She is fully connected to her wisdom and knows that her voice resonates and travels on the wind to the far corners of the earth. She feels the permission of the universe to be Other and her otherness is empowering. She feels engaged to her sensual, epicurean self. She has been leaning into her True Self wherever she recognises her and remarkably, it feels like the world is leaning in towards her too.
I’ve gone on a journey the last few years of trying to follow a script that isn’t my own. Granted, I’ve followed it in my own weird way but here I am, with a list of lessons and skills I’ve learned and an aching heart to get back to being myself.
The Brave within me is relentlessly hammering at the cage of my skeleton, the muscles flexing to make themselves known.. there is more. Not more success or more fame, more fortune (in fact, that is the least likely outcome) but more of ME. There is more of myself waiting to come out and be useful, meaningful and beautiful in the world.
Perhaps it was Mother Superior in The Sound of Music who said it best: ‘You have to live the life you were born to live.’
So I’m listening to myself, recognising the Brave and letting her be, Myself. True Self. Steve Jobs once said ‘Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.’ I think Steve was right. I know who I want to become and I have some ideas about the how and what and the why.
Embracing again, a truth I have always known and recognised a dozen times as it has come to me – I’ll make my own way through this world, not bound to follow a path or a script written by anyone else.
That’s how you know you’re recognising it – because your instinct is to lean into the spaces your True Self fills. And the more of your True Self you lean into, the more of your False Self you fall out of.
That is the life I recognise. The one my heart and intuition knows. Once you begin to recognise yourself and give voice and space to that person, you begin to recognise your life. It happens all at once; a collusion of what is happening within us and around us and all we have to do is pay attention to what we recognise.
My body knows. There are some people I am naturally drawn towards. It’s easy to share affection or to want to be close. There are others I don’t want to touch me at all. My body knows who belongs and who doesn’t and I let my body tell me, all the time. I follow her instincts and she does not let me down.
My heart knows what matters most and if I’m not paying attention, it will bang away inside my heart cage of rib & lung until I listen and spend some time there.
My spirit and soul know when I am my True Self and when I am not. They war against me when I stay too long inside a box that’s not for me. They stretch out for the open spaces constantly. They have been warriors within me and for me these last few years as I have been learning. Now they are clamouring and dragging my attention back to the path.
The body knows. The heart knows. The spirit and the soul knows. Recognition has us instinctively leaning in. Our self whispers ‘more of that, more of that, more of that’.
You recognise your life sometimes before you know you have it; reaching effortlessly for the pieces that belong. The places and the people who fit just so into your puzzle pieces and before you can blink, you are living and fully alive.
That’s how you know you’re recognising it – because your instinct is to lean into the spaces your True Self fills. And the more of your True Self you lean into, the more of your False Self you fall out of.
I have recognised fragments of my life a dozen times over. Places, moments and people who have fit into the puzzle, tasks that have been my truest self, lessons that have refined me not restrained me. I hold on to them, I’ve let them become anchors because I know they fit. I haven’t always known how and I don’t pretend to now. But I know they belong.. I recognise my life when I see it.
There are times I’ve mistaken familiarity for recognition.. but those things have just been a shadow, a watercolour of my true life. I’ve quickly learned to let them go but not without pain. It’s the dream we chase because we know we need to chase it, even though the first, third and fifth attempts might fail. We persevere and strive towards the life we recognise, the one we are writing for ourselves.
So here is the lesson, here is the big Brave of this next step in the journey. Recognising my true life and when I see it, leaning into it.
(the opening image credit belongs to David Hayward, whose art has been a constant companion and source of wisdom in my journey)
If you want to build resilience into your character, visit a bar. Put on your favourite clothes, wear your best scent. Promise yourself to be exactly who you are in every moment, because there are things that sometimes happen in a bar that can make you strong. They won’t feel good but they will stretch you, assure you, reaffirm you. You will feel your heart swell and your spine grow tall like an oak tree. Visit a bar and listen, learn the difference between what people say and what they mean. Hold nothing tightly but yourself and remember always to rise.
This story has happened more than once so I have had to learn to let it empower me but it sits in memory. Last night, two phenomenal women in their 50’s sat alongside me and asked if I was fine drinking alone. It was joy to tell them yes, I am happy to sit alone and listen, or not alone and still listen. Then I thought of a night with two other phenomenal friends, women of great beauty and I remembered why sometimes it is not so easy.
Amazing.
‘Hello,’ and you swagger into the midst
of a conversation you were not invited to,
but discretion is powerful and so
I am not rude. I give you leave to
make a case or entertain and then you say it –
‘You two are amazing girls.’
So then I had to look you in the eye and
consider what happens sometimes in a bar
and what a woman does.
I’m certain your mother loves you
but I am equally certain she did not raise you
to be defined by the weight of your purse
or the length of your stride.
Nor did mine raise me to be defined or dictated
by the weight of where your gaze rests
Or how the word beautiful drops off your tongue
I taught myself to raise my head and
keep my words inside my lips; fool, jerk, dick.
Tonight, you looked at the woman to my left
and the woman on my right and said ‘You two are amazing girls.’
Your pronunciation pointed
in any direction but mine.
So I raised my head
and brought up my pride
looked you right in the eye.
I watched you until I saw you,
and you saw me but didn’t see a thing.
You are right, these are amazing women.
Talented, compassionate and smart
You would have come to know that eventually
but it’s not what you meant when you said
Amazing.
You meant beautiful in such a way you
wanted to touch them, possess them
as you looked left and right
and over me, through me
around me as if I were nothing
and thought instead of having
power over beauty.
Did you have a mother who loved you
but couldn’t or maybe wouldn’t
teach you that where two women are amazing
the third is most likely a Queen
so that is why you didn’t know, when you met me
how you were in the presence of royalty?
I raised my head and brought up my pride
from within me; looked you right in the eye.
I watched you until I saw you, and you saw me.
And still you did not bow to me.
So let me tell you again, because it should be known,
where there are three women
sitting at a bar or on a step or anywhere it is statistical impossibility, a scientific anomaly
if only two of three women could be called amazing because amazing women stick together out of necessity because there are some who caress our skin uninvited or interrupt with awkward conversation when we were just now solving significant problems and we didn’t care what you had for dinner or to tell you of ours when We had other amazing things to talk about
and no desire to give you power over our beauty.
But this is just a bar and
you didn’t come for serious talk you came for a drink and a laugh
and to drink in the sights
possessing us for a moment despite being momentarily blind
seeing two not three
women in your company; sigh
it’s not likely you will ever see,
not enough for Woman One, Two
or Three
but I’ll give you this; perhaps
with my head raised I can
offer you a new definition of amazing
(though I am certain you were raised
from the warm womb of kindness
by a woman who was also thus)
if you could somehow
raise yourself up and learn to see
then Three is the prize you seek
Three knows more than the world
and has the colour and power of a Queen
knows how grit can polish and
rolls her hips because it pleases her
and takes pleasure gladly in it
the feeding, clothing and making of love
gives out grace because she knows
she can afford the price and pays it
from a deep, old treasure chest
meets you mark for mark
in the heat of an argument
in the depth of her heart.
Your blindness is heavier than your hands
which do not, will not and can not touch me,
but I rise
shake it off and walk unburdened
by the weight of all that is amazing in me
what you could not see between my breasts
or in the sway of my warm, wide hips.
I was glad of the beauty either side of me
beauty of mind and glow of skin
I was gladly not beholden to profanity
the offence of blasphemy that you
could ignore the wonder of me.
the presence of amazing me, so I rise
I feel delicately the absence
of perfection under your eyes but I rise
and decide your eyes are not the seeing kind
I entertain the words I might use in response and sigh,
instead onto the higher ground, I rise seen or unseen,
beauty to the left and right
but mostly in the midst of me.
Tash McGill is a broadcaster, writer and strategist who works with people and organisations to solve problems and create transformation. She believes people are the most important thing and that stories are powerful ways of changing the world. You can find out more at tashmcgill.com or by visiting her LinkedIn profile.
