Often, I crave comfort, safety and security. Yet I’m compelled to live, think, act and create so outside the established norms there really are no walls, definitions or boxes I fit into.
It makes me one formidable business woman.
And a constant target.
Most people don’t like things they don’t understand. It threatens their own safety, security and boxes they live in. They want to make sense of it, put it in a box they can understand, define it…limit it. But how do you explain the inexplicable? How do you rationalize the impossible?
My entire life is a series of impossibilities made possible, no-ways turned into ways, rationality, predictability and established norms obliterated. How do you explain those things? You can’t.
How do I stand on my foundation of truth and doesn’t-make-sense-ness and subject myself to public opinion? I know my truth, I have lived one miracle after another for an entire lifetime. But to explain it? To be put to the fires to test my resolve?
Terrifying. Faint smells of burning stakes and the cries of “witch!” pass through my mind.
I made a career out of being a chameleon. To stay within the established lines so I wouldn’t have to be such a target all the time. I’ve never really had a tough enough skin for it.
Years perfecting my position – smile just the right amount. Be attractive, but not too attractive. Shine, but not too bright. Laugh in the right spots, toss my hair at the right time, say the exact right thing so as to make sure they feel completely at ease.
And won’t notice that I’m a complete and total alien.
As I’ve gotten older, wiser, more experienced and less afraid. As I could no longer ignore that voice that has been calling me from deep within, to really live my Higher Purpose. The thing I fear the most, the thing that terrorizes me silently – that I will be judged, criticized, persecuted and made wrong – it is my constant companion.
You see, I had this Pollyanna view that at some point it would all stop and everyone would love and understand me, and praise me for my work and just let me be to build and create. If I just did it perfect enough.
The frailty of my own sense of self bubbles to the surface in a statement like that. I see my need to be liked, to people please. My insecurity. My desperate need to be loved. My covetous idolatry. My shame. My desire for approval.
And I feel ashamed. I should be stronger. I shouldn’t care what others think of me. I’m a leader, how could I think those things let alone utter the words out loud, publicly? I should only focus on the positive. Have a constant list of motivational catch-phrases to cover all that up. Work on top of it. Isn’t there some weekend course somewhere to fix me of those things?
But acknowledging my own shame, fallibility, broken-ness doesn’t mean I give it power. It means I’m being honest. About the truth of me, right down to the core – dark and light. We all have wounds, we all have things about us that bring us to our knees, parts that need more love. Working on top of those things just means they’ll bubble to the surface somewhere else. Sometimes destructively.
Demons hide in these dark places.
No. I refuse to let what I don’t want to acknowledge in myself become what breaks me because I am afraid of how it looks.
Owning all of who I am gives me permission to let that stuff go. It doesn’t own me because I deny it.
To accept the wholeness of who we are is where real strength comes from. That is freedom. That is truth.
What we decide to do with it, that is choice.
Every moment, I get to decide what kind of woman I am going to be.
Will I let all those forces of darkness make me stronger, see the opportunity in the midst of the storm, build my way to solid ground and look back, with compassion, forgiveness and gratitude for all those who have wished me ill or who have placed me on the altar of their own judgment? Or will I be consumed with bitterness, blame and anger, trying to be right, trying to be heard among the deaf and seen among the blind?
Could I see that those who have hurt me the most actually gave me my greatest strengths and gifts.
For how would I know the depths of my own commitment if I wasn’t pushed to the depths of criticism? How would I know great love if I haven’t known loss? How would I know how much grit and determination I have until I have been tested? How would I trust in miracles if I haven’t been brought to my knees, with no human options left, and still a way is made from no-way?
If I could see it all as Love, as the Great Love that is the core of who we all really are. It is all FOR me. All of it. Even if I can’t see it in the moment.
And that Love is of all of me. Not just the parts that look good on paper. Acceptance, forgiveness, commitment, perseverance, tenacity, compassion, focus, discipline, kindness, gratitude, surrender and trust – these are the real building blocks of true success.
In the end, I don’t care to live a life as anyone other than me, by anyone else’s rules but my own. And I will answer only to the One who called me. To keep surrendering, walking and owning who I was intended to be. Come what may. Until I am awash in the mystery, forced open by Grace, filled to the brim with magic and have lost my heart forever in God….
Krystine McInnes is CEO and Project Director of Athena Farms and Grown Here Farms. Stewarding purpose-driven, change-making projects with a focus on Planet, People, Profit and a commitment to Sustainable Business models.