I have so many things I am eager to share. Brilliant nuts we have cracked. Rubik’s cubes sorted into pretty little colour coded squares. Deep important insights that we know the rest of the world needs in on! We have been so incredibly busy, you and I.

But also everything that has been going on behind the scenes outside of our calls. Some of you don’t know that I was running the other day along the quiet quaint streets of Toronto *camera pans to Prince Edward Viaduct where she is leaning desperately away from traffic toward the railing in brash blasting wind overlooking massive intersecting highways. You don’t know that I tried to take a more scenic route and got trapped on the very narrow shoulder of a long long ‘no pedestrian’ road and had to dodge reckless drivers or risk being mugged or eaten alive by something in a very sketch looking ‘park’ with what seemed to be some camps, or gravestones, and no actual people except the ones that were obviously hiding in the shadows waiting to jump out and yell BOO.

You don’t know even know that I ate a rock. Not on purpose, it was just so windy that a gust blew an actual piece of gravel down my throat as I gulped down some air. There I was just having escaped certain death by car, and then having just eaten a rock, with no one as my witness. It’s a shoulder shrugging moment, kind of like the day when my daughter was small and we were on a boat together and I was holding her and her little hand knocked my brand new fancy sunglasses off my head over the railing where they promptly hit the water and sunk. There is no undo button. You’re just like, bye glasses. Welcome to my stomach, rock. 

Mostly I have been working on some very top secret behind the scenes things, over and above the amazing things you and I have been knocking out of the park. And I will share those things with you so very soon. Those things require a lot of inventorying and reflection, which brings me to how proud I am of you, me, us, of all that we have taken on together and all of our beloveds. And how important it is in a world of so much doing, and in a season of rejoicing that happens to add so much doing, and with the advent of the year to come just around the corner, waiting to yell BOO (and ask us to DO more things), that we take time to recognize ourselves, to pat ourselves on the backs, to reflect, to just take it all in. To stare at some pretty lights. Soak up some twinkle.

Feel some love no matter what went right or wrong.

Say I am proud of you for those incredible wins, but also for trying when it didn’t feel rewarding, when it was a grind, or things got messy, or scary. Say it to yourself first.

Some 22 years ago I was featured on a TV show. I have a very funny story about that time. I had created a workshop series I called “Workshops for Inspired Living”, which started out all about nurturing your creative self then segued into working through the underlying emotional knots that interfere with creativity then quickly became let’s just fix your emotional shit, because it turns out it was at the root of everything everyone was needing. Anyhow there is an intermediary part to this story where I was driving to the hotel for the show taping and I got lost and some lady gave me directions and then she yelled out at me as I was walking back to my vehicle in this mysterious voice that carried over the wind “You’re not lost!” I knew that there was a distinct possibility that she meant the route to the hotel was easy. But also CLEARLY a force greater than the both of us was yelling out a message that went something like “I know this feels scary and vulnerable and your baby is only three weeks old but you’re kind of meant to do this for the rest of ever so like chill, I got you girl”.

At the hotel, to calm my nerves I lit some incense and hopped in a hot shower. When I turned off the water, yay! The fire alarm was going off. I was naked, because that is a thing that happens when we shower, and afraid that if I ran to the phone to call the front desk I would be barged in on by firemen. I don’t ever want firemen to barge in on me naked. Not today, not ever, but if it’s possible to apply a meaningful qualifier to the situation, I had just had a baby, and so there was a mental and emotional FORTRESS around my nakedness. Also, this was 22 years ago at which point in time it was not commonplace to have a cell phone so I was pretty trapped. Anyhow, I made it to the phone, turns out, in my towel of terror, no fireman required (unlike last year at the hotel where I was living during my flood when I dialed emergency instead of the front desk on account of the buttons being next to each other on the hotel phone and had to let the fire department in my PJ’s to ensure I was not being held hostage).

On the show I was apparently quite poised, though I didn’t feel it. I thought no one would see me or notice, it was channel 13 for heaven’s sake –remember when the thirteenth channel was an extra– but it turns out that for months after I was approached by strangers I saw you on that show. Even the regular guy who served my Japanese veggie dish at the local market commented “I saw you on TV. I didn’t know you were so good.” I personally never watched the tape (remember tapes).

There are some deep spiritual thoughts that say we don’t have to DO anything to solve what ails us. Doing is a red herring. I mean those thoughts are not wrong. And certainly I stand for, and sometimes even think I invented myself what I call an inherent model of worth. Which means that we are worthy of love, just because. We don’t have to prove it, or earn it. And when we are giving and receiving love we are WELL, better contributors. As opposed to the model of emotional debt, which says I must do, I must do ad infinitum, and that my doing will be measured against everyone else’s doing. You know those parents who when you come home with your 98 will say “where is the other two percent”, ya well that is the model the World teaches us, a bottomless pit of never enough.

I also believe that anything can serve love, and anything can serve fear, and if we are going to DO, we need to place all of that doing in service of our emotional well being, in service of love. We need to connect the dots on all of the doing, and we need to feel good about it, or we really do make it a red herring in our lives, a hamster wheel, maybe even a red herring running on a hamster wheel.

22 years ago on channel thirteen I gave some exercises to the audience and my viewers at home. One of them was to write a list of everything you have done in a day. Write it to compliment your TO DO list. The have done. You don’t have to do it forever, but a few times. The things we tend to put down on a list, or those things that ping us with pain over not having been done are typically the hard things, the things we can’t figure out how to do, or we don’t want to, or we have resistance because there is some yucky fearful feeling in there somewhere, or they are just blicky things no one wants to do ever. And they tend to take center stage. You haven’t done me, mwah ha ha! And that takes up a lot of emotional energy. Giving some TLC to all that you have done corrects for that voice screaming or whispering or poking at you with all that you haven’t done or have to yet.

Do I think you are worthy because you took out the garbage, or finally hired some new financial advisor to rework your investment strategies, no. I know that your worth comes from somewhere else. But I am damn proud of you for getting it done. I am damn proud of you for saying no to that Board position, for going to yoga, for actually saving lives, for negotiating with executives, for advocating for change, for telling your crush that you would like to date them, for feeling your feelings, for saying it out loud, for taking care of your people, for letting yourself be taken care of for a change.

I am proud of myself for all of those things that never go on my list:

For running for hours, for shining the bathroom taps, for walking the dog, for taking the call from my crying kid, for doing things that are too big and brave and scary to go on a list, for forgiving daily, for working really hard even when I am hurt, not to make others feel bad about themselves in order to get my needs met or solve a problem. For opening up doors to very tricky emotional wounds with those I help and work with daily. For feeling a feeling. For trying. For all of those things that take time but don’t give glory.

So in this season, these lead up weeks to holidays and festivities, take a moment, if you can, to write yourself a proud of you list, or even say it aloud as you peddle your Peloton or string a gift or an ornament or a turkey. Write down the kinds of things you do in a day that you don’t normally recognize, and the hushed things that happen in your heart. Create a little space for all that matters but never makes the cut or the sees the day. Do it under the light of a twinkling tree, or after you’ve just had a rock blown down your esophagus, on a trip you made that you didn’t think you could fit in, but you had to, on a scary bridge to things that really matter. Take a moment in your towel, after the firemen have left the building to breathe it in. The something more that is all around you.

You’re not lost!

Much love,

— Erin

P.S. If you have a friend or loved one who is struggling sometimes a few sessions of support can make all the difference. Reach out and we’ll find the solution that is right for them.

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