UNvisible

Devouring Jen Sincero's You are a Badass, an outrageous book that's pushed me to places craving my awake & aware presence.  

Was first beckoned by the title, which is similar to Mom's bio.  And the subtitle ~ How To Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life ~ was promising.

Glory be, it's the perfect book to be reading in December 2015 - it captures a rawness that feels in sync with my present state.  

Jen goes way past being simply iconoclastic; she takes new approaches to well-known ideas, offers fresh bold perspectives on age-old challenges.  

 

I am well-versed in the idea that we hold onto self-sabotaging beliefs because something within them delivers "false rewards" - a negative image or  results that reinforce a familiar (albeit NEGATIVE) sense of a false self.  I've worked for close to twenty years searching for, identifying & rooting those suckers out.  The stuff that continues doing me dirt is different.  It doesn't reward, just dominates.  

If there was one thing that most of my family seemed to agree with, it was my UNness.  As in an unmember* of the clan.  Not simply outside of an inner circle, but outside of the family - period.  As a little kid, that message was received without being verbalized.  As an adult, I got it loud & clear, both verbally & in writing.  

Until reading ...Badass, it hadn't hit me how that message of UNness might have reconfigured my original operating instructions, stored deep in my subconscious.  It is impossibly hard to follow through on things that benefit ME.  For three years, I've been talking about submitting a crowd funding request underwriting my current work with elders & what beckons over the horizon.  Nothing has happened.  It's not procrastination; it feels like an unspoken forbidden, "Don't go there OR ELSE!" 

 

What I need is the reverse of Harry Potter's invisibility cloak.  I need a visibility cloak, one that lets me be ME.  

Just righting that, my breath got shallower, my forearms tensed.  WHOA!  Intrigued that I used the wrong "righting" - or maybe it's not.  Maybe writing about this IS a step to righting it.  All I know is that for someone who never knew what if felt like to be emotionally invisible to anyone except Dad, maybe Mike, it's a wrenching challenge to be visible to myself. 

Maybe the best way is to envision myself wearing visibility SHOES.  Maybe the best way to turn things right is by getting a some serious grounding under my feet.  

 

Because this foolishness has GOT to be addressed & set to rights.  My response to jazzy ideas & fascinating new directions should be juices flowing, energy bumped up to HIGH.  If only!  My current response is to grog down, to yearn for a snooze.  

No need to find the root cause, which is probably beyond my conscious mind; gotta recognize when that roll-over & take-a-nap response comes up to sit with it, let it know it's outworn its stay, the day has come for it to take a hike, and get it out of my head.  Or at least curled up in some remote corner of my mind, sleeping off decades of overexertion.

Okay, I have a tangible step to take, which is more than was there when I started writing this posting.  Recognize when I should be powering up & instead power down, acknowledge it, take next steps.  I might not be able to get completely over it, but - with awareness & action - will be able to get past it & more fully connect with my joyously visible viable vivacious badass self!

 

*Always remembering that Mim & Peter only became close  fairly recently;  for most of my life, they seemed to feel even more UN, within & without the family, than I ever came close to.  Small wonder I consider myself the Lucky Lockhart!