Asheville, NC
Still I Rise “Possibility Driven”
Im discouraged, I feel like I am destined for shitty jobs… Why didn’t my parents force me to go to collage to be a nurse? Why didn’t they force me to work as a secretary as young as possible, so that by now id have tons of experience in the corporate world?
Funny how my (our) first response when something isn’t going the way we want, the way we thought we find someone to blame. They didn’t force me because they always gave me freedom. Freedom to make my own path. Freedom to follow what I thought I wanted or thought was right. They never told me I couldn’t pursue my dreams.
The only person who did was ME.
I feel like I am on the edge of “The Giving Up Abyss.”
You know that hole?
Getting a job in a field I don’t want and being under paid for working loads of hours feels like a death sentence on my dreams. It feels like I am saying ok… I am throwing my hands up… Im done… You beat me…
Desperately I cling to the how’s? How do I keep going? How do I make money with my passions? My talents? How do I get from here to there? How do I get more clients? How do they do it? How do I do it? How can I make good money AND be happy? Why does it seem you can have one but not both?
So that hole… that hole is looming and it is getting bigger. Day by day growing. Making it harder to tip toe around without falling. Falling far… far down the dark hole of dead dreams. Everyday my resolve weakens. Is it resilience and Courage? or just plain naivety and stupidity to keep going? To get up again and again and try over and over? I do keep going though. Because I have too. That is my only reason.
When I even think about giving up; I feel in my stomach this sort of dying I can’t explain. When I look at the hole thinking about raising my hands in defeat, I feel a catch in my throat. Meaning this would be the ultimate silencing. That I would cease to be ME.
I don’t want to cease to be ME. So…. Still I’ll Rise.
“Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.”
-Maya Angelou
Home-Coming
After the waiting. You see it break on the horizon.
Small at first, inching just as slowly as the months had felt.
Growing larger and larger, building just as the anticipation does.
Music playing, flags waving, sailors standing sternly all around the boarders of the destroyer.
Then the waiting is over. Life feels un-paused.
He is Home.
Fake it till you make it and why I hated this phrase. (Possibility Driven Series)
*I have heard this soooo much recently, I have to admit I hated it at first. I winced every time someone told it to me.
But the truth was the people whom were saying this were successful people. The type of people I look up too and well, want to be.
I couldn’t ignore advice of intelligent, creative, successful entrepreneurs.
Let me tell you why I hated this phrase: Simply because the word fake is in the sentence.
Yep, that’s the only reason.
I felt like a liar “faking it.” It felt inauthentic. It felt disrespectful.
I don’t want to fake it, I want to be perfect at it and then show everybody.
I have perpetual compulsions to be 100% transparent, making me awful at faking anything.
In essence taking the phrase “fake it till you make it” at face value is a key reason a lot of us feel other people have the secret to success.
Because it quite literally looks like they do!
We look at them with their perfect Instagram photos, book deals, friend count and chronically compare.
Not considering the long messy hours of hard work and countless years of connecting, dreaming that has led them up to that moment.
Their secret sauce isn’t that they have it all figured out.
Their secret sauce isn’t that they have no fear.
Their secret sauce isn’t that they are perfect.
Their secret sauce isn’t that they have some extra human talent.
Their secret sauce is they “fake it till they make it.”
They do the work… no matter what… Without being perfect.
What I translate this phrase to mean is this:
“What if you just feel the fear. Feel the doubt. Feel the whatever. Then my dear soul, Do It Anyway!”
THIS feels better! This feels authentic. This is what I hear them saying now and I love it!
You just have to do it, dive in, figure it out, overcome and keep going.
“Do it anyway. Fake it till you make it.”
Melody Ross told me, while I was sharing some fears of mine with her, “Do it anyway.”
It is a phrase she uses in her work often including in this gorgeous video.
(After hearing this I wrote the above thoughts. She has a gorgeous article called “Be Patient with life important things take time” have a read.
Xo much love to you Melody for the constant inspiration you are to us all!
P.s. Last photo taken of Erin Faith Allen at Call of the Wild Soul