Once upon a time I had a blog. It was a friendly little blog that was happy being just the way it was with no great aspirations of one day growing up and hangin’ with the big blogs.  I did what I wanted on that blog – wrote what I wanted, posted pictures that made me feel good, spilled random lists that flowed from my scattered brain  – because I wasn’t too concerned about who showed up or how popular it became.

I started that blog nearly 6 years ago, when I was preparing for my first trip to Africa.  Because the trip was so full of excitement, yet carried some old cultural and religious baggage that I wanted to deal with, I thought a blog might be a good way of working through some of that, as well as documenting parts of the trip for future walks down memory lane.

At first, I told no one of the blog, but then I discovered my sister and sister-in-law had secretly started blogs of their own, so we bravely shared URLs and started commenting. Soon some close personal friends started blogging, and before long, strangers started showing up for one reason or another. It was all very lovely and cosy and soon I felt like I had a nice little community of supportive friends surrounding me in cyberspace.  The odd time weird things happened (like someone claiming one of my readers was a fraud), but those were pretty rare, since my blog wasn’t really drawing much attention to itself.

About six months ago, my life started feeling really restless, stuff at my day job started falling apart bit by bit, and it occurred to me that maybe I should revive my old dream of becoming a serious writer. Maybe I should start putting myself out there in cyberspace as some kind of “expert” with wisdom to share that people would eventually want to pay me to share. Maybe I should try to build a more “serious” blog.

So, with great love and care, I created a new space (this space). It was all very exciting and gave me so much joy and pleasure to be creating something new and to have something positive to get energy from when other things in my life were feeling more like energy-sucking black holes.

People started showing up in larger numbers than they’d ever shown up at my other humble little blog, I got interviewed on a radio station, some people started linking to me,  and it was quite thrilling… at first.

But then, sadly, a few things started happening that began to taint that initial excitement.

1. It was beginning to feel like work to create an engaging, interesting space. I didn’t need more work – I was already up to my eyeballs in work. I needed pleasure and recreation, not strategy, marketing, and planning. Not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with those things, it’s just that I’ve already got plenty of that stuff in my day job.
2. I began to miss my old blog and my old friends because I had little time to spend with them anymore. At the new place, I felt like I was trying too hard to attract “readers” rather than “friends” and what I really needed was friends.
3. Before I knew it, partly because I’d had a few too many discouragements at work and was feeling vulnerable, I began to let myself wrap my self-worth in the numbers game.  When the numbers dropped (and, sadly, the highest stats were on my very first day – I never went back up to that number), I wondered why I wasn’t as interesting as the other blogs that were drawing big numbers.
4. I was pouring too much energy into this new entity (and Twitter), and other things in my life were suffering – my family, my day job, my home, and the freelance writing and workshops I used to do occasionally (and get paid for now and then).
5. In my efforts to follow this “dream”, I was reading way too many “10 easy steps to making a living as a blogger” or “10 easy steps to a more fulfilled, successful YOU!” and though some of them inspired me at first, in the end, they mostly depressed me. Self help stuff has a way of doing that to me. I can only take it in small doses.
6. Partly because of the self help “follow your dream” stuff, I was allowing myself to paint a more bleak picture of my day job than was fair.  It’s a job I was once quite passionate about, and though there have been some rough spots, it didn’t deserve to be pushed into a corner and ignored so much. I’m working for justice for people who are hungry, after all – it’s a really GOOD job. For various reasons, I need to stay in this job for the time being, so I just HAVE to find a way of committing myself to it, or I’m cheating the people I serve and whose stories I get the privilege of sharing.  (Ironically, I had to give myself the same talking to I once gave a staff member when she’d developed a bad attitude.)

So, after a few tears shed on top of my growing pile of laundry, I just quit. Cold turkey. I walked away from all of my online spaces. I re-engaged in real life. I read more books, I poured more energy into my job, and I tried to be more present for my family. I refused to care if I was committing “blog suicide” or “Twitter suicide” by my walking away, I just knew that silence was what I needed for awhile.

Yes I missed it, and many times I caught myself thinking “oh – that would make a great blog post”, but overall, it’s been such a good thing to take a break and focus on my priorities.  Even though I still eventually want to make a career change, my job is giving me pleasure and passion again. I have some fun things to look forward to (a couple of workshops to facilitate), I’ve had some really wonderful lunch conversations with friends, I’m worrying less about other people’s opinion of me, and – more than anything – I’ve found some contentment again.

I’m ready to gradually re-insert myself into cyberspace, but it will be a scaled back version, at least for now.  I’ll be setting aside the new site (for now, anyway – we’ll let the future take care of itself), and just finding contentment in my little unassuming blog in my corner of cyberspace where I can play to my heart’s content, show off my kids, wrestle with a few demons now and then, dance in the rain if it feels right, share fun stories about the wonderful adventures I get to go on from time to time, and just be the authentic me that I feel like putting out into cyberspace whenever I feel like it.

I’ll leave the big blogs, the marketing strategies, the SEOs, the self-promotion, the strategic networking, and the numbers games to someone else. (If that’s you – no judgement meant, just make sure you’re still having fun and being authentic!)

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For reasons I can’t fully explain (not even to myself), I have decided that it’s time for a little self-imposed online silence. I need to focus on a few other things right now, and I need to spend some time just being quiet and not caught up in the clutter that is the internet.

At this point, I don’t know how long it will be, but I know that I will miss all of you so I expect that I will be back sooner or later.

“To everything there is a season
And a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and time to hate;
A time for war, and a time for peace.”
- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

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I didn’t know Karla before she visited my house for the launch party for this site, but she’d been reading my blog and knew enough about me to know that she’d be interested in hanging out with me for an evening.  I’m so glad she did, because it didn’t take long to recognize that Karla is indeed a kindred spirit. When we held a sharing circle that night, Karla said something profound about how she’d realized that the most important gift she needed to give right now was a gift to herself.  Since I know that many of us are in similar situations, I asked her to write something about it, and she did…

I spent my growing-up years in a wonderful Mennonite community.  It’s the kind of place where neighbors bake you fresh buns, meals are delivered if you’re in need, farmers help each other get the last of the crops off the field, and participation in the life of the community is expected.  Service of all types was not necessarily seen as a “gift” but as an obligation – your “christian act of worship” if you will.  It’s within this context that my earliest thoughts on “what am I giving away” were formed.

The little girl from the idealistic, hard-working Mennonite community grew up.  I spent time overseas, moved to the big city, went to University and got a degree, was married and had babies.  And all the while I never stopped giving.  “It’s what you do, after all.  You give until it hurts, and then give a little more.”  People’s requests were not considered and weighed – they were agreed to immediately and acted upon with diligence.  Opportunities to give time and energy in church were accepted without contemplation.  “This is what God requires of me” I thought.  Parenting was the most unrelenting of all in its demands of my gifts.   I grew weary, downcast, and frustrated with my reality, but put my game-face on and continued to give my gifts away because it was the right thing to do.

It didn’t take long until weariness grew into depression.  It’s hard to give yourself away when you’re anxious, agitated, exhausted and unstable.   Amidst the “sure, I’ll do that” and the “what time do you need me to be there?” heard from inside my house were the irrational, loud, and angry words directed at my little girls.  Guiltridden sobs were my companion as I laid my head on the pillow at night.  I wasn’t interested in helping people anymore.  My gifts seemed unworthy and defiled.  I knew I needed help.  But good, giving Mennonite girls don’t ask for help, do they?   They are supposed to be the ones giving it away.

Finally, I was able to seek help.  Medication took the edge off my agitation and depression and I was able to regain the tools to parent my daughters without excessive anger, guilt, or shame.   I discovered the power of the word “no” and began to see the value of self-preservation.  I discovered that the only requirements God had of me were to love Him and love others.  I helped when I could and put many of my “giving skills” on the shelf for a much-needed rest.

It’s taken a long time, but I’m finally learning that the best gift I can give away is the freedom to sometimes not give away anything at all.

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Reading the Desire chapter of The Joy Diet stirred something in me this week.  Martha Beck writes that if we are attuned to our heart’s deepest desire, we will recognize our calling, our gifts – our true purpose in life.

One of the places my journey toward more fearlessness has taken me this year has been toward a deeper understanding of my own truths – my desire.

Here is one of my truths that has been unearthed – I have a deep desire to speak with my own voice, and I want to do it out loud, in public.

I think I’ve known this for a long, long time, but it’s been buried under many layers of “I’m not good enough”, “Public speaking is about showing off – you shouldn’t show off” and one of the original ones… “women aren’t meant to speak in church.”

The first message was pretty constant, growing up in a conservative Christian home.  Again and again, I watched men do what I wasn’t allowed to do. When I was around fifteen, I practically begged my dad (who had taken over the leadership of our tiny church in the absence of a pastor) if I could at least be allowed to do the scripture reading on a Sunday when there were few men available to take on the duty. He said no, it wasn’t appropriate.

That message stayed with me through two years of Bible College. I could join the drama group, but I couldn’t speak in chapel. I could be the vice president of our class council, but I couldn’t be the president. It was there that I learned to “lead from behind” as I did all the work but let the male president pretend he was in charge.

I tried to honour the longing in my heart by sinking myself into drama. I went to University and studied theatre. But I wasn’t really meant to be an actor – speaking in someone else’s voice didn’t fit me very well. I learned fairly quickly that I was better at writing plays than acting in them.  I got pretty good at writing and directing plays, but I felt the longing as I sat in the audience watching other people speak my words.

After university, I started working in government, and soon I put my skills to work by becoming a professional communicator.  I wrote dozens of speeches, and then watched politicians and bureaucrats use my words on stage. I wrote hundreds of press releases and “quoted” the experts in my words, but with their names following the quotation marks. I wrote endless newsletters, web content, reports, communications plans, etc. – always telling someone else’s story and letting someone else be the expert.

Things started getting better when I left the government and started working in non-profit. I still mostly wrote for other people, though – about passions that were not my own, and stories that inspired me but didn’t really dig into the places where I wanted to dig. I got to do a little more public speaking, but more often than not I was preparing presentations for someone else to deliver, producing videos for someone else to narrate, and planning media events where someone else would step into the spotlight.  All the while, I wondered why I wasn’t more fulfilled, considering I was getting to do so many of the things I loved to do and writing about things I felt at least somewhat passionate about.

But then this year came, and more and more I began to realize that there was something else stirring – something that I’d been burying while I thought I was following my calling and sharing my gifts in the best way imaginable. I think the turning point came when I won the Communicator of the Year award and realized that, for me, the best part was when I got to speak in front of a room full of professional communicators about my experiences and expertise.

The truth is, the times when I’ve felt most alive are those times when I’m speaking and/or writing from my own truth, my own passion, and my own wisdom.

Having a blog (or two) has helped a bit, but it’s not enough. I want to speak and I want to lead workshops. I want to write more, but I want that writing to lead me to more opportunities to speak.  I don’t want to be behind the scenes anymore. I don’t want to write for other people or edit other people’s work.

That’s my truth – my heart’s desire.  Now that I’ve acknowledged it, I need to find ways to fulfill it.

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It all started with a map.

I love maps. This was one of those old fashioned sepia-toned maps that I’d used as inspiration for my treasure hunt. I cut a piece of it and glued it to my art journal.  On one corner of the map, I stuck a photo of a woman in a safari hat looking like she was keen for adventure. It all fit so well – an explorer seeking adventure on a map of the world.  I wasn’t sure what to do next, but the beginning made me happy. I saw myself emerging on the page.

Grabbing a paintbrush and some paint, I started painting over the map. First there were light, translucent circles, but soon they became big, dark swirls. Angry looking swirls. Like a series of ugly hurricanes moving into the shorelines of hundreds of vulnerable islands on the sepia map. One of the swirls encircled the explorer woman.  She clung to her corner of the page, lost and alone in the darkness.  I don’t know where the swirls came from or why they showed up looking so dark and angry, nearly obliterating the map. I just let it happen.

I stared at it for awhile, disappointed that what started out as an exploration into the traveler in me had turned ugly. I didn’t know what to do next so I left it alone.  I considered tearing it up and starting again.

The next few days, I’d occasionally glance at that page in my journal, not sure what to do with it. It didn’t feel right to tear it out, but it looked unfinished and ugly and it made me feel unsettled when I looked at it.

I abandoned the art journal in my studio and put it out of my mind.

Sometime during the course of that week, I realized that an old familiar feeling that had been my companion for the past 6 months was beginning to occupy my every waking moment. Again.  I’d been here before – so many times. Restlessness. Dissatisfaction with the status quo. An unsettling addiction to change and revolution. A deep and burning need to wander to new things and new places.

It’s mostly in my work that I feel the restlessness crop up every few years, but it can also overtake other areas of my life.  I have boxes full of unfinished art and craft projects that I’ve abandoned whenever I got bored.  I could give you a tour of my bookshelf and point out all the passions I’d poured over in various phases of my life and eventually lost interest in. I could show you stacks of photos of all the countries, cities, parks, beaches and out-of the way paths that have given space to my wandering feet.  I have a history of changing jobs every three years. I just don’t know how to settle down. It’s not that I don’t know contentment – it’s just that it never lasts.

Once again this same restlessness was consuming me and this time, it was making me angry. Why couldn’t I settle down like other people?  Why did my passion have to shift every few years like a temperamental wind? Why couldn’t I just keep enjoying this job that I’d loved so much in the first few years? Why couldn’t I just focus on one interest and pursue excellence in it rather than getting bored before I was proficient?  Why did I keep wanting more, more, MORE? Why was I so damn fickle?

I felt like I was wrestling with my own dark shadow and I wasn’t winning.

The frustration started affecting me physically. I was exhausted and even though I slept fairly well at night, I never felt rested.  My head started to ache, and my concentration nearly vanished.

I took a sick day, hoping a little rest would help me get past this malaise.  But I couldn’t sleep, even when everyone else had left and the house was quiet.

Finally I went down to the studio and sat staring at the abandoned art journal. I flipped it open to the swirling map.  Something clicked in me and instantly I recognized what was on the page. These angry swirls represented my own dissatisfaction with the restless wanderer in me.  Even though I love the fact that I’m a world traveler, and often refer to myself as a “happy wanderer” (hence the happiness when I first started the page), there’s a part of me that feels deeply flawed because of this inability to find contentment with the status quo for any length of time. It was causing an ugly hurricane of emotions in my soul.

I sat there in silence for awhile and just let myself feel the conflicting emotions.  Happy and sad, angry and excited, passionate and bored.  It all swirled in me like those restless hurricanes.

Then suddenly, something changed. Like a gentle breeze, peace came and the storm settled. In the breeze I heard the Spirit whisper “you are called to be a wanderer. Your restlessness is your beauty.”

I was getting it all wrong! This was a gift, not a flaw. This restlessness in me was the work of the Artist, not an ugly mistake. I wasn’t supposed to deny it or try bury it beneath layers of resistance – I was supposed to embrace it and follow it!

I picked up a paintbrush and dipped it in white paint. Over the angry swirls I wrote the words that came to me. “You are called to be a wanderer.” “There are answers in the eye of the storm.” And “Excavate. Explore. Navigate. Initiate.”  At the centre of each hurricane, I painted a tiny dot of light. In the centre of the woman’s heart, I painted a tiny, happy white swirl.

Finally it was finished and it was okay. I was okay.

I started the next page of my journal – this time with bright yellow paint and a fun photo of a girl reaching for a cookie jar. The next photo represented a dream I have – a place where I’ve wandered and want to take other people to some day (that story is for another post). I painted hands reaching out for this second “cookie jar”. The only word that showed up this time was “Reach!”

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Perhaps I’ll just retire and let Maddie take over the blog. Or maybe I’ll just have a monthly “Art with Maddie” segment.

(After we recorded this, she suggested I send the video to “that guy who painted the Mona Lisa”. I informed her that he was dead, but assured her there would probably be other artists who would watch it and appreciate it as much as he would.)

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Christine Mason Miller (photo by Denise Andrade http://deniseandrade.com/)

One day in the early Spring of this year, when this website was busy getting born in my brain, I came across Christine Mason Miller’s story of how she was leaving copies of her book, Ordinary Sparkling Moments, in little brown paper packages in random places in different parts of the world as gifts for anyone who happened to wander by (100 Books Project). Not only did I fantasize about stumbling across one of those books, but I also became intrigued with the whole concept of anonymous gift-giving. Christine had been inspired by the book The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World, and I wasted no time ordering my own copy. The book served as an important catalyst for my own thinking around personal gifts and how and why we share them.

I’m very excited that Christine agreed to be my special guest today!

By way of introduction, Christine, tell us something fun about yourself.

My name is Christine and I’m a Brady Bunch fanatic!  Living in Los Angeles I see celebrities all the time, and the only one I’ve made a complete fool of myself with was Florence Henderson – aka Mrs. Brady.  Me + champagne + any Brady in real life = Me blabbing on like a crazy superfan!

What are the gifts you are sharing (or learning to share) with the world?

More than any particular kind of art or writing, the gift I am trying to share with the world is the gift of knowing that the answers to our most meaningful questions can be found within our own lives.  I would say an extension of that is that I am trying to convey this message with as much beauty as possible.  I try to do this by sharing my own stories – which includes being honest about all the messy, stumbling ways I have found my own answers.  In a nutshell, I am sharing my truth.

How did you discover that you had these gifts?

The turning point came during the hardest year of my life, when I made my highest priority in life to live by the truth.  Although that was a conscious choice at a specific point in my life, the way I have come to share this gift as an artist and a writer has been a slow evolution, one that I know is going to continue to shift and grow over time.

Why do you think it is important to share these gifts?

I believe that facing, calling out and living by what is true is what grants us the most freedom to live our most meaningful lives.  I also know that there are many layers of truth in any given situation, and the more we dig to uncover the barest essence of what is true the more we discover our own values, passions, fears and strengths.

What have been the stumbling blocks or obstacles in your path to discovering and/or sharing your gifts?

I would say my ego and fear have been the deadly combo.  As far as my ego is concerned, I try to be aware of when it is getting in the way and when it is driving my choices, thoughts and actions (not always the easiest task, but I try).  When my fears start making noise, I try to let them carry on however they want, sometimes literally saying out loud, “Do what you need to do and have at it, but right now I need to work”.  In other words, letting them cackle and bang drums and taunt me, but sticking to my task at hand.

Tell me a story about how the sharing of the gifts had a transformative impact on you or the person/people you shared them with.

I recently had a conversation with someone who wanted to know how I – and other entrepreneurial friends of mine – had built my online presence and business.  After talking about the connections I had with different bloggers and artists and how we all supported one another’s ventures, I explained that the most important thing we have all done to get where we are is to ask for what we need.  Any art show, retreat, or business we created came about because we put our idea out to our community and asked for support, help and participation.  That was the simple truth, and I could see in her eyes she was relieved to know it wasn’t anything more complicated than that.  There was no magic formula or “expert” who we all turned to, all we did was tell the truth of what we needed.

What advice do you have for other people who are learning about their own gifts?

Follow your instincts.
Follow your instincts.
Follow your instincts.

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Maddie has no doubt that she’s an artist. “Of COURSE I’m an artist,” she told me one day as she put brush to paper, just after I’d mused “maybe you’ll be an artist when you grow up”.  Why would there be any doubt – if she can pick up a paint brush, dip it in the paint, and apply it liberally to the paper – that she’s an artist? Sheesh! Moms are SO silly sometimes!

Maddie is seven.  Last night, I picked her up from her weekly “young artists” class at the local leisure centre. After waving her art in front of my face, she bounded through the parking lot, talking a mile a minute about all the projects they were going to make. “Next week, we’re making DOLLS! Can you imagine? I don’t know HOW we’re going to make dolls! I’ve never made a doll before! And then the week after that, we’re making paper maché. I don’t know what paper maché is yet. Today we did finger painting and I forgot to wear my paint shirt, and – Mom – I’m sorry I got it all over my clothes, but the teacher says it’s washable. And why would you EVER make any paint that wasn’t washable? ‘Cause really – kids are gonna get it on their clothes!” She didn’t stop chattering – from the moment I picked her up, all the way through the grocery store, to the moment she got home.  I think the only reason she stopped talking was because she needed to divert her mouth to the task of eating!

Oh the joy and confidence of a seven year old in love with art!  I want that effortless joy, that confidence that I really AM an artist just by virtue of picking up a brush, that willingness to experiment with things I haven’t tried yet, that willingness to give away my art without doubting that it will be lovingly received, that unabashed delight in getting dirty, and that ability to make mistakes without translating that to mean I AM a mistake.

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I’ve had a few people tell me lately that I’m “one of the most fearless people they know”. Gulp. Part of me is flattered and wants to wrap that description around me like a colourful jacket and wear it proudly as I strut down the street. But part of me is completely uncomfortable accepting that moniker. It just doesn’t fit the real Heather I know deep in the hidden parts of me.

Sure, outwardly I do a fair number of things that might appear “fearless” to some. I took great delight in jumping out of a plane when I turned 40 (as you can see in the above picture). I’ve wandered in parts of the globe where few North Americans will ever set foot. I’ve taken pictures of gun-toting rebels in Ethiopia. I’ve slept in a tent on a farm in Kenya. I’ve stayed in bed-bug-infested hovels in Bangladesh where wild dogs sang me to sleep (or, I should say, howled me awake). I’ve para-sailed in Mexico. I’ve back-packed in the Rockies with a bell hanging from my pack to warn the bears. I’ve climbed on top of a bus in Tanzania to get good photos of lions 20 feet away (lions that could have bounded over that bus faster than I could say “oops – shoulda stayed INSIDE the bus”).

It all looks rather fearless, if you line up all of those adventures and stitch them onto my jacket like Girl Scout patches, but if you look a little closer at that picture at the top of this post, you’ll see the undeniable truth. That’s fear written all over my face, plain and simple. Yup, I was terrified. Even questioned my own sanity when the plane door opened.  But I’m kind of stubborn and more than a little bit proud, and I wasn’t about to admit that I was too afraid to do it, so I jumped.  And OH MY GOSH am I glad I did! 

The thing is, I was raised in a family of adventure-junkies.  All four of us siblings would rather take an adventure over a material possession almost any day. Offer us something exciting to do, and we’ll all be out of our chairs so fast our spouses barely have time to shake their heads and give each other that knowing glance that’s their universal sign for “the Plett siblings are at it AGAIN!”

But this post isn’t really about all the times I’ve managed to conquer the fear and do it anyway. No, this post is about the times I had no right to wear that jacket or accept the Girl Scout badges. This post is about the many ways that fear has limited my life.

In some really important ways, I feel like I’m the most fearful kitten in the litter, hovering in the corner of the room, hoping that the big hand swooping in will be gentle, but almost certain that it will not. Sometimes I even hiss like that little kitten, mustering up all the courage I can to send the big scary dragon back to where it came.

This year, I’ve been dealing with a lot of that fear.  At the end of last year, I’d had a growing realization that fear was limiting me in far too many ways and it was starting to feel really, really icky. I was being held prisoner by my fear dragon.

I was afraid people wouldn’t like me, so I made decisions that wouldn’t offend anyone. It’s kind of hard being a manager who never makes unpopular decisions, but I was trying my hardest.  Mostly I was accepting mediocrity and my team wasn’t growing because I wasn’t challenging people to try harder and I wasn’t standing up to bullies.  I was just trying to make sure everyone on the team got along, and ironically it meant that nobody was really getting along because nobody was hearing how their behavior was affecting people and excellence wasn’t really being expected of anyone. The team was stuck in old patterns and I was enabling them by being too afraid to address it.

Beyond the fear of not being liked, one of my biggest fears was failure, so I wasn’t taking some of the risks I wanted so desperately to take (in work or personal life).  Even though I longed to be an artist, I hadn’t ever tried to paint because it felt scary and overwhelming and I didn’t know who to ask to help me and I didn’t want to admit how chicken I was.  I hadn’t tried yoga because I had too many memories of how clutzy I’d been in aerobics or jazz dance classes and didn’t want to make a fool of myself again.  Even though I’d been writing for years, I wasn’t always writing from my most authentic truth because I was afraid of what people would think of me and afraid I wouldn’t be able to take the criticism when they didn’t agree.

So when the new year came, I knew it was time to do something about the fear dragon. Even though I knew I would never be truly fearless (in fact, everyone needs some fear because it tells us we’re alive and passionate and it helps guide our paths), I chose “fearless” as my word for the year.  In retrospect, I probably should have chosen “courage”, as I knew from my sky-diving experience that it’s not about not having fears, it’s about feeling the fear but doing it anyway.  But I stuck with “fearless”.

First, I created a little video montage to mark the beginning of the journey, and then I started chipping away at my fears one by one.  I took my first watercolour class. I signed up for yoga at the local fitness club. I learned to release my daughters into their own bold lives. I laid my soul bare in a frighteningly authentic way in front of my staff team. I put some more of my writing and art and creativity out into the world (including this website).

It’s been good and rewarding in so many ways, but I won’t lie to you – it has also been really, really hard. Sometimes it seems like every dragon we conquer reveals an even bigger dragon hiding just behind it.  I started painting, for example, and fell in love with it, but then people wanted copies of my paintings to hang in public places and one person even asked me to participate in a charity art exhibit. Yikes! Was I really ready to open myself up to critique? What if nobody liked my art?

One of the really big fears I’m still dealing with involves my leadership experience.  This has been a rocky journey for me lately, and the dragons just keep getting bigger.  After being really honest about my fears and failures with my team, it seemed like everyone responded really well and things got better for a while.  But then things started slipping again and even bigger problems started emerging.  Was I ready to conquer these dragons too?

Gradually I’m facing more and more of those dragons. When it came time for annual performance reviews, for example, I was much more honest than I’d been in the past.  But that led to some hurt feelings and even anger, and my first instinct was to brush it under the rug and pretend it wasn’t there.

I wish I had a nice simple way to wrap this up, but I don’t.  Today, though I’ve conquered some of the dragons, others feel even bigger than ever and there are more things to be afraid of.  And the truth is, I’m ready to walk away from some of these leadership challenges, but my fear of failure is telling me “you can’t do it! Imagine what people will say when you’re gone! You have to SUCCEED!”

But one way or another, I have to face these dragons. I do not want to end the year on a fearful note.  Whether I need to admit defeat or find a way to forge ahead, I have to do it with courage.  With God and my community (that’s you, dear readers!) on my side, I will carry on.

 Are you with me, dragon-slayers and sky-divers?

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Vicki Madden with her family

I think my online friendship with Vicki Madden started about 5 years ago when one of us stumbled on the other’s blog and we discovered almost instantly that we were kindred spirits.  These days, she’s without a blog (though that will be changing shortly), but she is busy building a new photography business. I’m excited for her, because Vicki has an incredible eye for finding beauty through her viewfinder – sometimes in the most unexpected places. Here’s Vicki’s story of her emerging giftedness.

Looking through the viewfinder of my camera I am often caught off guard by what I see. The tenderness in a Daddy’s eyes, the love of a Mother for her grown son, the touch of a rough hardworking hand touching the soft cheek of a baby. I have been “in love” with photography since I was a teenager, but as all first loves it faded overtime and life changes. About 4 years ago after reading a blog, I purchased a used Nikon D70 and the love was reborn.

Since the purchase of my Nikon D70 I have taken pictures of almost every family function, often catching moments of daily life tasks, really looking at my loved ones through the viewfinder. It slowed me down, helped me to see my sweet gift I have been given. My family.

The moment of “gifting” was birthed in me on one such occasion. My Mom requested I take pictures of a family get together. My uncle Billy was just diagnosed with cancer, he was already on dialysis and he knew he didn’t have much time. He wanted his family to be together to say goodbye. I knew I was to document this day for his family to have later. I took pictures out of the ordinary. I took pictures of groups and kisses, and then when the posing stopped I kept taking pictures to capture the essence of his love for his family. It was a gift to me to be able to do this, this is the day I will remember as knowing I could take really great pictures, and some of them would be a way to earn money and some of them would be a way to give to others. My Uncle passed in April, and I am thankful and honored to have had the day to record these moments for his family whom I love so very much.

How are you giving? Has your gift been realized in your spirit yet? Don’t wait for it to fall in your lap, get to doing something you love and allow “it” to grow in your spirit. You’ll know when it’s time.

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