What Felicity taught me today

This is one of the blogs I wrote this summer and didn’t post. I wasn’t ready to share and really stand for my knowing. A lot has happened these past two months and I realize I just need to share what comes to me and what comes with that…well I’ll deal with it when it comes. So here it is, better late than never or perhaps in divine timing.

Today’s lesson brought to me by: Felicity

I love how the universe brings me movies, songs, tv shows that offer me guidance and wisdom when I am in need (and oh I have been in need lately).

Today while doing the dishes I was called to watch this scene from Felicity (which I didn't discover until I was 36).

Let’s just say I stopped washing the dishes and watched it again.

For all recovering good girls, all sweet empathic souls…read, listen, take this into your heart.  At any age.  Wishing I had heard these words, known this truth at 12, 18, 25, 32…grateful I have found it, believe it and can say them at 41. 

Felicity: 19 year-old woman talking to long sought after boyfriend, Ben

“The truth is I can’t be with you like this. I mean I know I said I could but I can’t.  I just can’t compromise myself like that. I mean I’m an emotional person. I feel things and I need to be able to get upset and talk about how I’m feeling. 

I mean that’s just who I am and I can’t change that. 

I don’t want to.

And the thing is you knew that. You knew it and you still pursued me because you want something with me. You just aren’t strong enough to have it, which in a way makes you a coward. And the saddest part is one day your gonna wake up and realized what you missed and it’s gonna be too late. 

Ben: “I don’t know what to say.”

Felicity “I know. It’s okay.”  

It’s okay because we get it. We feel it. We see it. Swirling about us in our families, our communities, our jobs, our world. We get it’s scary and uncomfortable and new terrain and that there are so few examples of how to be this emotional person in the world.  

The problem is when we DO compromise, we and the world lose out. We lose our truth and the change and wisdom it brings.  Our self-expression and the art and creation of lives, our wants and needs that inspire others. Our value, our joy, our life force energy which balances out the left-brain world.  Because we are managing others emotions or denying our to make others comfortable, to accommodate what others are comfortable with.  We feel the pain, the injustice, the joy and there are so few places for us to express it. We want to scream, wail, moan, rage, delight, dance and the world hasn’t provided us places for this. They took away those places. Our red tents, our men, our women who could hold space for and honor our emotional gifts.  We missed out on examples of people living in their emotions. Holding in, shoving down my emotions for so much of my life cost me years, tens of thousands of dollars, mysterious diseases, divorce, and disconnection.  It cost me living in my truth, sharing my self with the world.

We must stop abandoning ourselves. We must stand and speak and rage and sob. It matters, every beautiful emotion we have shoved down, overanalyzed and not owned matters. It is time for us to own these emotions that are a sacred part of our humanity, of our world. They offer guidance, connection, solace, release, and truth. They bring color, texture and great beauty to our world. 

It is time. It is our choice. No more compromising. 

So thank you to Jennifer Levin and the other Felicity writers for the words I needed to hear today. To spark this reminder that for years I did compromise, adapted to a certain sort of insanity that I took as truth when it fact it was so far from it.  When the very thing I needed to do, the world was starving for me to do was to share all of my gorgeous, resplendent, complicated, oh-so-very-real and powerful emotions and compromise no more. 

I hope this post supports you in sharing your emotions, with yourself and others. I would love to hear about it and as always am here to support your sharing of your beautiful self, the world needs all of you. 

Here’s the clip: you can skip the video after 5 seconds of advertising

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHYlMTdW5KQ

I'm naked in a sauna in Berlin...

Yesterday I took myself to Liquidrom...a sauna, salt water pool extravaganza in Berlin. I'm in the sauna- luxuriating in the heat, the lavender infusion, my eyes are closed. Then I hear "Miss, no bathing suits allowed in the sauna."  I admit I am a little thrown, then I'm even more thrown when I get up and see the two men behind me...naked and I have to say gorgeous.  So I somewhat gracefully exit the sauna, use the shower and then walk back in and take off my swimsuit. Doing my best to get lost in the lavender infusion and having a bit of a hard time.  These are my thoughts.  "Is it no swimsuit...wear a towel around your body?" I don't think so because the men aren't. "Is it no swimsuit but be on your belly?" Doubtful. And mind you there is a wall of glass in this huge sauna that opens up to the a large outdoor lounging area where most people are in robes and bathing suits so I feel a bit on display.  A new person enters and I covertly open an eye lid and see it is a naked woman and she is not wrapping her towel around her body so I stay laid out on mine and relax a bit.

I start hearing this language I've never heard before. It is a rhythm like Australian at times and yet clearly isn't. This thought goes around and around in my head until I flip over and ask the men what language are they speaking.  Finnish. We talk about language, Finns and the saunas in their apartment, that these two men work together and are with work colleagues and a prospective hire...to see if they can hang out together.  Their words not mine.  One of the men has a kind, open energy and I am instantly attracted to him. He feels good to me. No need to think about.  We keep talking- amidst more arrivals, one who sits her naked self in between me and the men and is taking quiet awhile to get comfortable so my view goes from her torso, to his face, her arm, to the other man's face...we keep talking. I like this man more and more. His friend announces he is off to get water and the other man follows, his towel discreetly placed- thank goddess.

And I start thinking...how does one approach a naked man at a spa who is with his work colleagues and ask him out for a drink. Because I am clear I want to spend more time with him.  And it is important for me to be honest about what I want and to go for it.  

One dip in the magical salt pool later, I sit across from him and his colleagues at the outdoor lounging area, sipping my water but I don't make eye contact. I will my eyes to open and smile and they will not! I am in my head. I am acting aloof but I am not. There is a precious part of me that is scared, that has no idea about boys/men.  That has been keeping them at bay for a lifetime.  Especially ones that feel this good. I can talk for hours to the ones I have no interest in, make eye-contact etc. But when there is attraction some part of me is so afraid I flee. I've seen it happen time and time again.  And I spent the summer being curious and loving about this, seeking help, doing body work, healing up more PTSD...and my eyes will not open. Some part of me is still terrified. I forget to go to the bathroom and do a dance move to get back in my body. I forget to breathe deep. I forget to laugh, I forget to listen to music. 

At one point I am walking by the bar, glance up and see him sitting there. I say hello, except it isn't him..it's yet another scruffy bearded dark haired man. Ugg! Nice try though. Then, at long last I am back in the sauna and I see his entire group of co-workers heading to the dressing room. I lay there for a few minutes more because it isn't in my pleasure to leave yet, I want more time in sauna land and I want to talk with him (at the time I am thinking my options are get dressed and leave or stay in sauna...now I know there are more options).  I make my way to the dressing room, attempting to put on my bra and form fitting, need-help-to-get-the-zipper-all-the- way-up-dress over my sauna-hot body and I get a glimpse of him in the dressing rooms- clothed. Yes, the dressing rooms are sanctioned as male/female and yet they are no walls. That was another shock when I entered the glass door with the figurine of woman, I thought i had walked into the male locker room.  Perhaps another reason I am feeling a bit ungrounded.  I get help getting my dress zipped, go outside and he is...gone. No sign of him. Ugg. 

I go back in, put on my bathing suit and head back to the sauna to sit with all that happened and didn't happen.  

I am so tired of missing out, of being fearful, of holding back, of fleeing, of being paralyzed, of not being able to open my eyes and welcome him in. Of not asking for what I want. And yet there are many gems and expansion in all of this as well. 

Part 2 of the naked Finnish Man in the Sauna will be shared tomorrow.  It involves talking to myself in the streets of Berlin, giggles, wasabi peas, sobbing on a bridge and being asked out for a glass of wine by another man in front of a restaurant called Oxymoron.

Until then, I wish you so much love. May your eyes and heart open.