Lisa, I’m so grateful for you. For your heart, your writing, you doing the real and risky work of being your Self. This particular piece reminded me of when I was in my 20s and first started reading Pema Chodron. She was describing feelings of jealousy she had toward a colleague and I was taken aback. Probably similar to the reactions you’re describing from folks who want you to inhabit ‘after’ as the completeness of who you are. The best I can describe the feeling is as empathetic/adjacent shame. Like “wait, aren’t you a spiritual teacher? I thought you were supposed to be enlightened.” I felt myself recoil from her, wondering how I was supposed to trust someone’s wisdom who hadn’t arrived.
How incredibly different my worldview is now. I’d forgotten I’d had that reaction and expectation. Quite probably in part from doing my own work and how things grey out, deepen and evolve with lived experience, but also from working with people who are leaders and wisdoms keepers and also very human people, I feel suspicion of anyone purporting to have answers or have arrived WITHOUT owning their humanity.
I don’t mean to diminish anyone’s feelings here, and I understand sometimes we need others to look up to for faith to keep going, but I think those who want you, or other public figures to adhere to an ‘expert’ expression and projection that you’ve arrived and thus, by being in your orbit, perhaps one day they’ll arrive, simply lack maturity. Arriving is not a real thing. At least not for more than a moment. I understand that’s a persona that a lot of people in the spirituality, psychology and wellness spaces project, but the older I get and the more I deepen relationships with friends and colleagues navigating the complicated spaces of leading WHILE being people, the more I feel that these conversations are ESSENTIAL.
I think what you’ve written here is really important, not just for your own liberation as a leader and writer and therapist and person, but for the liberation of others who find themselves confined by roles and identities. It’s a conversation that needs to be had, and I’m glad you’re having it.
I feel that what you’re also doing here is simply claiming your right to evolve and do so publicly, to shift how and what you write about and share about. I felt a hit to my gut when I read that if people leave, they’re not your birth mother. THAT. Not only do followers project onto public figures, but the very real attachment entanglements that public figures need to navigate with having an audience is some very real shit. Bravo to you, for all the ways you’re showing up. An extra enthusiastic cheer for the ways you’re showing up for yourself.
The pedestal is a great image. I notice myself worrying about falling off it, and often realize “they” didn’t build it… I did - as some form of box for myself to feel safe in. What’s left after the pedestal fall is a new wondering moment about who I really am. Some kind of rebirth.
The image I form about how others see me is so very limiting. Often I look at it and realize I’m acting like it’s best for people to see me more like Robot than Human.
Lisa, as the more you share your Human with us, the more we can shed the Robot ideals we have for ourselves. ☺️
Great newsletter. Though it might not be as salient, for all the people reaching out wishing you just shared the good stuff, there is probably an immense amount of people who find comfort in someone admitting they aren't perfect...maybe they just aren't as loud. I'm currently reading Ram Dass's "Being Ram Dass" and what's interesting, but also makes sense to me, is that one thing he credits for his ability to help people while also gaining such a devoted following was that he was one of the few spiritual teachers that'd be the first to admit his stumbling and shortcomings. It made him relatable to people in ways they hadn't encountered before. Most people were just show their best and hide the rest. For everyone craving a perfect guru, there's at least 1 person craving someone to relate too. Keep going : )
Thanks so much for this, Lisa. As a therapist myself I can really relate to variations on the “you’re a therapist, you must have this figured out by now” messages, which I have also received from other therapists when I sought my own therapy! So often the desire and implicit expectation of others and myself to be a Before: Messy and Struggling Mentally Ill Person and then After: A Fixed Person Who Has Healed So Much She Can Heal Others. And, as with your experience, I find myself in-between the before and after categories, embodying some aspects of both. All this to say, thank you—I feel this post and all your work so deeply, and value it so much. <3
This is so important! This is also why I moved from having a big platform on Instagram over to Substack. It seems like there is no space for nuance on social media anymore. I always say “I’m a life coach, but I’m human first!” Xx
Lisa! I loved reading this for the relevance that shows up in your perspectives to my own values. This reminds me of a podcast I was listening to this week as well as a conversation I had with my vocal coach on the expectations of others and the inability to feel truly happy unless you are accepted for all the fullness and humanness one has to offer. Cheers to an incredible milestone on Substack and continuing to show up for a community that truly appreciates you. I know I sure do.
"I think about how paralyzing it can be to feel like there’s not room to just be a person in the world. I think about how freeing it can be to let ourselves be fully human... I think about how it isn’t actually safe for many people to let themselves do that." <-- learning that it is indeed safe, necessary and good.
As a complex trauma survivor, the invitation you extend for us to be free in our whole humanness is a balm for my weary self. Although I cannot quite find the words to properly articulate it, I wonder if choosing to walk the path of self-acceptance (for lack of a better term to encapsulate the mystery and complexity and beauty and messiness of letting ourselves be a whole human) only happens when we run out of road on the highway of hustling for healing and perfection- and that we actually want the road to run out. Maybe it comes out of desperation - out of exhaustion - out of the recognition that we have tried everything to "fix" ourselves and it only made life more unbearable. When you encounter others "off-highway" it is exhilarating and affirming: Yes! I'm not the only one. This is the way. Keep going.
“I think about the privilege of having a platform — the gifts it has given me — and also the unending pressure to both be what everyone wants me to be and also not try to be that and also not be effected by it and also use it as a growth point and also turn it into content.” lol this. I love you so much. Thank you for always making me feel like a normal human being.
Lisa, thank you. Thank you for showing up as your true and honest and full self here every week. Your willingness to be in process, to struggle with things, to succeed, to fail, and to share ALL of it is more deeply nourishing than any other way you could choose to be in this space. Your self-trust helps me learn to trust myself. Your acceptance of what is reminds me that I can accept all the messy and hard and "wrong" and otherwise imperfect bits of my life and of myself.
I don't often comment here, but every single week your newsletter calls me back to myself and reminds me to show up for what's actually here with courage and compassion. In a world full of messages for quick fixes and endless self-care or mental health practices that promise "fixing", you are a balm, a guiding light, and a soft space to land. We are all in process and always will be, and I for one need constant reminders that that is just fine, in fact, it's all there is to be.
Your willingness to just be, here, out loud, for us to see, is a gift to all of us here who are willing to receive it.
All this...human stuff, is what makes us interesting and complex. People put us in boxes and we sometimes do the same. I appreciate your vulnerability and openness.
“Part of starting this newsletter was to shift from being of service to everyone else, to also being of service to my own truth, my own wholeness, my own un-compartmentalized self, my own desires, my own humanity.” 🏆🏆🏆
This writing is so beautiful and connected with me on so many levels starting with the confusion around my place in social media and who I am in that space. Congratulations on one year at Substack! I am celebrating day 3 of my newsletter launch and it already feels like the place I’m supposed to be. Thank you for sharing 🥰
Thank you, Lisa, for showing up as you are, and modelling that to the rest of us. I'm a therapist, and feel the pressure to "have it all figured out". The thing I love most about my own therapist, though, is that she's so open about the fact that she doesn't. Because .... of course we don't.
In the past, I remember feeling inspired and awkward about public people being open about their own struggles. Inspired because they could admit it. Uncomfortable because it partially erased the illusion of a perfection I so badly wanted to reach.
I deeply appreciate you showing your human-ness, and your capacity to deal with the projections from others in such an understanding and compassionate way (including self compassion!).
What a wonderful post. Thank you and happy 'stackiversary! I remember way back when, before blogs were blogs, I had a website where I wrote things, personal things and insights, and the first "hate" email I got said, "Who do you think you are to have a website like this?!" The "who do you think you are" part was so my mother. There was a quick sting (who did I think I am?) and then I laughed. Because it was a silly reaction. Why does one person's expression of themselves/their thoughts spark such a strong reaction in others? If we dare step outside the lines someone else has drawn, there's a little Hell to pay. Shouldn't have to be that way, but it's the cost of other people's pain and feeling less-than. And maybe writing like this will eventually ease that. Funnily enough, of all the lovely, kind and complimentary emails and comments that website got, it's that "Who do you think you are" that echoes. And I'll keep answering that question with each post I write. Please keep writing and sharing, Lisa. It's needed and appreciated. xo
Lisa, I’m so grateful for you. For your heart, your writing, you doing the real and risky work of being your Self. This particular piece reminded me of when I was in my 20s and first started reading Pema Chodron. She was describing feelings of jealousy she had toward a colleague and I was taken aback. Probably similar to the reactions you’re describing from folks who want you to inhabit ‘after’ as the completeness of who you are. The best I can describe the feeling is as empathetic/adjacent shame. Like “wait, aren’t you a spiritual teacher? I thought you were supposed to be enlightened.” I felt myself recoil from her, wondering how I was supposed to trust someone’s wisdom who hadn’t arrived.
How incredibly different my worldview is now. I’d forgotten I’d had that reaction and expectation. Quite probably in part from doing my own work and how things grey out, deepen and evolve with lived experience, but also from working with people who are leaders and wisdoms keepers and also very human people, I feel suspicion of anyone purporting to have answers or have arrived WITHOUT owning their humanity.
I don’t mean to diminish anyone’s feelings here, and I understand sometimes we need others to look up to for faith to keep going, but I think those who want you, or other public figures to adhere to an ‘expert’ expression and projection that you’ve arrived and thus, by being in your orbit, perhaps one day they’ll arrive, simply lack maturity. Arriving is not a real thing. At least not for more than a moment. I understand that’s a persona that a lot of people in the spirituality, psychology and wellness spaces project, but the older I get and the more I deepen relationships with friends and colleagues navigating the complicated spaces of leading WHILE being people, the more I feel that these conversations are ESSENTIAL.
I think what you’ve written here is really important, not just for your own liberation as a leader and writer and therapist and person, but for the liberation of others who find themselves confined by roles and identities. It’s a conversation that needs to be had, and I’m glad you’re having it.
I feel that what you’re also doing here is simply claiming your right to evolve and do so publicly, to shift how and what you write about and share about. I felt a hit to my gut when I read that if people leave, they’re not your birth mother. THAT. Not only do followers project onto public figures, but the very real attachment entanglements that public figures need to navigate with having an audience is some very real shit. Bravo to you, for all the ways you’re showing up. An extra enthusiastic cheer for the ways you’re showing up for yourself.
The pedestal is a great image. I notice myself worrying about falling off it, and often realize “they” didn’t build it… I did - as some form of box for myself to feel safe in. What’s left after the pedestal fall is a new wondering moment about who I really am. Some kind of rebirth.
The image I form about how others see me is so very limiting. Often I look at it and realize I’m acting like it’s best for people to see me more like Robot than Human.
Lisa, as the more you share your Human with us, the more we can shed the Robot ideals we have for ourselves. ☺️
Great newsletter. Though it might not be as salient, for all the people reaching out wishing you just shared the good stuff, there is probably an immense amount of people who find comfort in someone admitting they aren't perfect...maybe they just aren't as loud. I'm currently reading Ram Dass's "Being Ram Dass" and what's interesting, but also makes sense to me, is that one thing he credits for his ability to help people while also gaining such a devoted following was that he was one of the few spiritual teachers that'd be the first to admit his stumbling and shortcomings. It made him relatable to people in ways they hadn't encountered before. Most people were just show their best and hide the rest. For everyone craving a perfect guru, there's at least 1 person craving someone to relate too. Keep going : )
Thanks so much for this, Lisa. As a therapist myself I can really relate to variations on the “you’re a therapist, you must have this figured out by now” messages, which I have also received from other therapists when I sought my own therapy! So often the desire and implicit expectation of others and myself to be a Before: Messy and Struggling Mentally Ill Person and then After: A Fixed Person Who Has Healed So Much She Can Heal Others. And, as with your experience, I find myself in-between the before and after categories, embodying some aspects of both. All this to say, thank you—I feel this post and all your work so deeply, and value it so much. <3
This is so important! This is also why I moved from having a big platform on Instagram over to Substack. It seems like there is no space for nuance on social media anymore. I always say “I’m a life coach, but I’m human first!” Xx
Lisa! I loved reading this for the relevance that shows up in your perspectives to my own values. This reminds me of a podcast I was listening to this week as well as a conversation I had with my vocal coach on the expectations of others and the inability to feel truly happy unless you are accepted for all the fullness and humanness one has to offer. Cheers to an incredible milestone on Substack and continuing to show up for a community that truly appreciates you. I know I sure do.
Wow Lisa, loving this one and loving you sharing your wholeness!
"I think about how paralyzing it can be to feel like there’s not room to just be a person in the world. I think about how freeing it can be to let ourselves be fully human... I think about how it isn’t actually safe for many people to let themselves do that." <-- learning that it is indeed safe, necessary and good.
As a complex trauma survivor, the invitation you extend for us to be free in our whole humanness is a balm for my weary self. Although I cannot quite find the words to properly articulate it, I wonder if choosing to walk the path of self-acceptance (for lack of a better term to encapsulate the mystery and complexity and beauty and messiness of letting ourselves be a whole human) only happens when we run out of road on the highway of hustling for healing and perfection- and that we actually want the road to run out. Maybe it comes out of desperation - out of exhaustion - out of the recognition that we have tried everything to "fix" ourselves and it only made life more unbearable. When you encounter others "off-highway" it is exhilarating and affirming: Yes! I'm not the only one. This is the way. Keep going.
Thank you, Lisa.
“I think about the privilege of having a platform — the gifts it has given me — and also the unending pressure to both be what everyone wants me to be and also not try to be that and also not be effected by it and also use it as a growth point and also turn it into content.” lol this. I love you so much. Thank you for always making me feel like a normal human being.
Lisa, thank you. Thank you for showing up as your true and honest and full self here every week. Your willingness to be in process, to struggle with things, to succeed, to fail, and to share ALL of it is more deeply nourishing than any other way you could choose to be in this space. Your self-trust helps me learn to trust myself. Your acceptance of what is reminds me that I can accept all the messy and hard and "wrong" and otherwise imperfect bits of my life and of myself.
I don't often comment here, but every single week your newsletter calls me back to myself and reminds me to show up for what's actually here with courage and compassion. In a world full of messages for quick fixes and endless self-care or mental health practices that promise "fixing", you are a balm, a guiding light, and a soft space to land. We are all in process and always will be, and I for one need constant reminders that that is just fine, in fact, it's all there is to be.
Your willingness to just be, here, out loud, for us to see, is a gift to all of us here who are willing to receive it.
Sending my deepest bows of gratitude and metta ✨
Take care,
Chanda
All this...human stuff, is what makes us interesting and complex. People put us in boxes and we sometimes do the same. I appreciate your vulnerability and openness.
Lisa, I value your humanity. There are too many people who write like they know. I prefer writers who do not know - who struggle. Thank you. D
“Part of starting this newsletter was to shift from being of service to everyone else, to also being of service to my own truth, my own wholeness, my own un-compartmentalized self, my own desires, my own humanity.” 🏆🏆🏆
This writing is so beautiful and connected with me on so many levels starting with the confusion around my place in social media and who I am in that space. Congratulations on one year at Substack! I am celebrating day 3 of my newsletter launch and it already feels like the place I’m supposed to be. Thank you for sharing 🥰
Thank you, Lisa, for showing up as you are, and modelling that to the rest of us. I'm a therapist, and feel the pressure to "have it all figured out". The thing I love most about my own therapist, though, is that she's so open about the fact that she doesn't. Because .... of course we don't.
In the past, I remember feeling inspired and awkward about public people being open about their own struggles. Inspired because they could admit it. Uncomfortable because it partially erased the illusion of a perfection I so badly wanted to reach.
I deeply appreciate you showing your human-ness, and your capacity to deal with the projections from others in such an understanding and compassionate way (including self compassion!).
What a wonderful post. Thank you and happy 'stackiversary! I remember way back when, before blogs were blogs, I had a website where I wrote things, personal things and insights, and the first "hate" email I got said, "Who do you think you are to have a website like this?!" The "who do you think you are" part was so my mother. There was a quick sting (who did I think I am?) and then I laughed. Because it was a silly reaction. Why does one person's expression of themselves/their thoughts spark such a strong reaction in others? If we dare step outside the lines someone else has drawn, there's a little Hell to pay. Shouldn't have to be that way, but it's the cost of other people's pain and feeling less-than. And maybe writing like this will eventually ease that. Funnily enough, of all the lovely, kind and complimentary emails and comments that website got, it's that "Who do you think you are" that echoes. And I'll keep answering that question with each post I write. Please keep writing and sharing, Lisa. It's needed and appreciated. xo