Dear Lovelets,
I have said it many times, but here we go again. I strongly believe that by the age of 40, pretty much all of us could write a memoir with the exact same title:
NOT EXACTLY WHAT I HAD PLANNED.
Whose life has ever turned out exactly the way they planned? And if there is somebody out there whose life has gone exactly according to their well-laid plans, would you even want to be friends with them? Would that weirdo/alien be the person you would want to call in the middle of the night when you were struggling with sorrow or fear or grief or shame? No, thank you. How could they possibly hold your heart, or understand confusion?
As for me, my life could not be more different than what I’d imagined when I first got married at the age of 24. I thought that by 55, I would be a happily married woman living in the suburbs of New York with a few kids who would be young adults by now, heading off into the world to create lives of their own. Maybe I would even be a grandmother by now — or nearly so. I definitely thought I would be holding a steady job as a journalist, and maybe picking up a few bartending shifts on the side — and every once in a while maybe I would have a short story published. And I thought I would be carrying on the same traditions and beliefs that I had been taught by my family, while living in a country that was moving ever more steadily toward more liberal and inclusive values.
Lol, sob.
How shocked (and even terrified) I would have been if you’d showed me back then who I would become — and what the world would become. I have had so many reinventions since that time, and so, too, has this world.
How many times have you reinvented yourselves, dear ones? How many times were those reinventions voluntary, and how many times did you have to change because you were forced to change? And what is destiny asking you to become next? Are you ready for it? Are you doing it, even if you aren’t ready for it?
Our special guest this week is the luminous singer-songwriter Teneia Sanders, who danced straight into my heart years ago when I met her in Jackson, Mississippi. I ask you this week to drink in a big giant dose of the joy that Teneia is feeling as she steps into a completely new life — living out her dream of moving to Barcelona. (A dream, by the way, which I know could not have come true if other, earlier dreams of hers had not faltered.)
Reinvention seems to be a feature of life here in Earth School, dear hearts. Sometimes it’s welcome, and sometimes we go kicking and screaming into the chamber of transformation. Where are you with it right now? And what does the Spirit of Unconditional Love (SOUL) have to tell you about reinventing yourself, as Teneia is so bravely doing right now?
Are you ready?
I think you are.
Tell us about it, and let’s keep going.
Love,
Your Lizzy
Dear Love, what would you have me know today about reinvention?
My love, have fun with it.
HAVE FUN WITH IT.
Do you remember the very best thing about your childhood? I mean, apart from the baby goats, and the trips to the library?
It was the dress-up closet that your mother created, in the darkest corner of that dark, sloped attic room. What a genius idea that was! Year after year, she would bring home gowns and capes and interesting hats and shoes from the thrift shop where she worked on weekends, and she would constantly fill the closet with costumes.
You loved the dress-up closet. Everyone did! It was the first place your friends would run to when they got to your house for a sleepover (after checking on the baby goats, of course). You would drag all the costumes out onto the floor and let the play begin. (Often literally a play, which you would write and rehearse all afternoon and then force the adults to watch over dinner.)
Sometimes masks and makeup were involved, sometimes tatty old stinking wigs. You got to try on different identities with each different costume. It was harmless, creative, and fun.
Baby bird, keep doing that.
Why should the harmless, creative, and fun sense of adventure and transformation end just because you’re a middle-aged woman now?
Keep trying on different lives the way you used to try on different outfits, and see what it feels like to be a whole different thing for a while.
I know, I know — it can feel to you like chaos, the number of different lives that you have already lived. And sometimes you even feel shame about all the different identities you have tried on and then discarded. You wonder why your history has been so full of what could look like disarray. And there is a part of you that longs to be stable, constant, reliable.
But I ask you: why do you have such a fixation on becoming more stable, constant, and reliable? Why do you romanticize constancy, and why do you hold it as a sacred goal?
Look around. What do you see on this planet that is stable, constant, and unchanging? It is not the way of things here in this wild realm to be still. Even rocks change their shape, given enough time. Even mountains move, given enough time.
You have a crazy idea that remaining the same thing one day after another will somehow signal to the world (why even care what the world thinks, by the way?) that you have become a reliable, responsible, and respectable person — but when did we ever convey to you that reliability and respectability and responsibility were our goals or our vision for your life?
And is it not true that the most generative creativity that has ever burst forth from you came out of a certain amount of chaos and upheaval and transformation?
Anyway, as we’ve told you 100,000 times already, this is Earth School — and you signed up to take the full curriculum. So take every class you can take, babe. Experiment, experience, examine. Keep transforming. I promise you that when you come to the end of this journey, to the end of your time in this body, you will be grateful that you experienced the wildest iterations of metamorphoses possible. You will be glad you tried on all these different identities — that you were, if only for a time, all these different things. You will be proud. Tired, maybe, but proud.
As for the next invention we would like for you to experience, try this: try being less afraid of what you are.
Or, rather, try giving up your addiction to the belief that you are afraid of what you are.
You still have a story in your mind that you are a fearful and nervous person by nature. But are you absolutely certain about that? Look around, honeyhead — the vast body of evidence of what you have done, of who you have become, of all that you have attempted and created and walked away from and endured suggests otherwise.
Listen, it’s not that there is anything inherently wrong with being afraid. It’s just that your story about how afraid you are is a bit out of date. A bit inaccurate. Maybe it never was who you were.
Maybe you don’t need that story anymore. Maybe it’s time to retire the concept.
Does that sound outlandish? Good — then try it on.
What would a relaxed and courageous and curious woman become next? That’s the only question. What would she attempt? Ask yourself that. And then do it. (Secretly we suspect it might have something to do with learning Spanish and walking across Central America, but that’s just our suspicion.) See what you find out when you go within and search for the new frontier. We love it. We love the way you are. And we’ll meet you there.
Be bold. The stakes could not be lower. Have fun.
Prompt
This week, I’d love to hear about your reinvented selves — the ones that happened by circumstance, by will, by joy and desire, or tragedy or necessity or by paths that didn’t quite go according to plan. And also, importantly: the reinventions that might be yet to come. So if you want to join me this week, just get quiet and find your source of Unconditional Love, and ask this question: Dear Love, what would you have me know about reinvention?
You may have seen my video on Instagram the other day about my upcoming event in Vancouver, but in case you missed it: I’ll be holding a weekend-long creativity workshop on May 24-25 (just click on that bit for more info and tickets!). You know the drill by now: these workshops are (though sometimes large in terms of space and attendance) intimate, warm — and productive! We get a lot done there, most importantly giving ourselves permission to pursue our curiosity and our innate human drive to be creative. As always, you do not need to have a specific project or aspiration in mind, and you don’t need any real skills; you just need to bring an open heart and a notebook.
And since it is important to me right now to extend a hand in friendship and goodwill to our Canadian brothers and sisters, I will be donating my proceeds for the entire event to two Canadian nonprofits, one which supports early childhood education in Indigenous communities, and one which provides resources for women in recovery. I love you, Vancouver, and I will see you soon!
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