Will You Help Me?
I had a coach once who called me the "Best Kept Secret." Our professional association had evolved into friendship, and after I’d inadvertently coached her one day, she insisted I put myself out into the world. So, I let the tip of my pinky toe graze a single blade of grass.
Fast forward, and I’m galloping across the field of social media bareback (and bare-assed) on a homeless mare. I press buttons and blab, only to learn while trying to delete a video that it’s already gone live. I re-read my typo-riddled posts and vow to wear my glasses next time, but I either have seven pairs in my car or none within a five-mile radius and inevitably, every tomorrow looks like today.
It might be exhilarating on Monday and demoralizing on Tuesday, and I often ask myself why I am doing it because there is a large part of me that prefers to be kept secret. The problem is, there’s a secret I no longer want to keep, and it’s the one I told on the TEDx stage.
It’s the one that has a nation of burnt-out women stuck on a rusted Ferris wheel between angry outbursts and shame attacks, women telling themselves they don’t know what they want because the clarity would feel too selfish, and women powering through life on guilt-fueled autopilot. This secret causes girls (girls in 2023!) to subjugate themselves to be loved and accepted.
The secret is that the gnarliest problem women face is self-betrayal.
My talk germinated in 2006 on the floor of an overcrowded jail cell (my personal Come-to-Jesus), gestated in 2016 in a middle school assembly called due to an epidemic of girls sexting naked pictures of themselves, and birthed this year having coached year after year, badass women suffering at the hands of their unconscious conditioning, causing them to behave in ways that don’t serve anyone.
The latest advances in neuroscience have proven that we can unlearn disempowerment and teach our brains to embody worthiness. When this happens, the thought of self-betrayal will be more uncomfortable than the subconscious belief that following your intuition is selfish.
Looking around at the state of affairs, it sounds impossible, but it can be done, and it is the answer to all that ails us, not a massage or weekend away with the girls, because just as a floodlight won’t prevent walking into walls if your eyes are closed, so too is it true that there is no external fix for self-sabotage.
Trust me when I tell you, you are more powerful than you know. Women’s liberation, your liberation, is an inside job. Please help spread this word by sharing my TEDx talk when it comes out!
There will be free prizes for you to do so, but more importantly, you’ll be part of a movement to unwind thousands of years of conditioned unworthiness, so not to worry, there is no selfishness involved.
Think of doing it not for you or even for me but for the little girl in this picture and all the little girls like her, so the new normal will be self-love rather than self-abandonment. Can I get a Hell Yes?!
UPDATE: watch and share my TEDx talk and outtakes HERE!
