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Managing other people’s perceptions – it’s a thing

December 10, 2019 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

There’s no way around it: trying to manage other people’s perceptions can lead to some interesting situations.

If you feel called to put yourself out into the world in a public way you’ll receive a bevy of opportunities to help you figure out how to make amends with the drive to convince people they’ve got it twisted about you.

And if you take an inventory of all the times you’ve tried? You might come up with what I came up with: a bunch of moments when it didn’t work our that well, ie it got super messy and fast.

We can try to have a conversation with someone, about how their judgments of us are way off, but if we do we have to accept that it might not end well.

They might end up judging us even more and we might end up emotionally drained.

Truth time: the person who feels inclined to make mad assumptions is rarely willing to have a conversation about the forces behind their desire to shove you into a box. IE the inner influences that convinced them that judging was the righteous path.

So you have to meander the territory of feeling like you need to defend yourself amidst the reality that if you try to, it likely won’t help you or them in any capacity.

Silence is a message. Not replying is a message.

I’ve integrated the practice of not responding to communications that don’t empower me over the past couple of years, and it’s resulted in a lot of peace and emotional growth. I have more time and space within myself to do the work I need to do.

Much of it comes down to a desire to not enable. I can have compassion for people who are suffering, while choosing not to provide fuel for aggressive behaviours.

Not responding helps you step back into your power.

In the presence of emails, comments and people that aren’t showcasing a desire to empower or nurture you, don’t engage.

I live by the mantra that if you aren’t willing to be honest about your intentions and the source of your drive to judge me, you don’t get my time or energy.

I also live with the need to remind myself of that mantra quite frequently 😂

My life experiences taught me that I needed to protect myself from everyone, all the time. So this is a tough one for me. I need the reminder that I don’t need to show up for things that aren’t serving me a lot – that I don’t need to contribute to unproductive conversations.

If you feel called to put yourself out into the world in a public way, set the intention to heal from the desire to engage with the judgments of strangers.

It’s part of my path, to do the work I do as a writer. And now with acting – it’s kind of the next level of putting yourself out there. Getting in front of a camera can be scary. I need all the energy and emotional resolve I can muster to look after myself – to process the fear and still do a good job.

I can’t funnel my energy into managing perceptions of me AND do a great job.

My energy needs to be focused on what’s important – the areas that impact my capacity to show up and do the work I’m meant to do.

So does yours. Yes, it absolutely does suck when people judge us. It feels crappy and sometimes bizarre (especially this recent one for me. whoosh! It was extensively bizarre!)

But damn if it isn’t a sign you’re doing what you’re meant to be doing.

Stay on track. Mind the lane you’re in – yours – and let other people do whatever they want to do in their own lanes.

‘Cause they’re gonna do it no matter what.

The fallacy is that we can change people, convince them they are wrong or teach them the ways they are wrong.

The most self-loving, self-kindness infused lesson you can offer is the gift of not engaging with judgment.

Honouring yourself is witnessing the moments that affirm you’re doing what you’re meant to do. Even the ones that don’t feel so good to experience.

So honour yourself. Love yourself. And repeat.

A story about recovering from relationship trauma

August 9, 2019 by Must Love Crows 1 Comment

Yesterday I ran into 2 of my ex-boyfriends. One online and one in real life.

The first one was via an email alert that said dude wanted to connect with me online for the third-ish time. And I was like, “Nawww dude. Nuh uhhhh. S t o p.”

See, this ex isn’t someone I want to connect with. Not necessarily because he cheated on me and treated me like garbage, but because for years I damaged myself even more than he did with his actions by taking ownership of the way he treated me.

I’m talking I thought up until a few years ago that it was my fault he was so awful to me.

The destructive narrative went like this: I shouldn’t have been so crazy. So uncool. He might not have dumped me and cheated on me if I’d acted and been different.

Time and self-love have taught me that you will indeed go fucking crazy if the person you love all of a sudden ghosts you. Like if he flat-out disappears from your life one day, and then shows up again weeks later, trying to get back together with you.

You will go another shade of crazy if you have prior abandonment issues from childhood that are triggered AF throughout this lapse of time.

The extra layer of icing on your so-called crazy label? When he follows up the mind fuckery by dumping you after cheating on you with a woman who has the gall to have drinks at the bar you’re tending after you find out. 🤯

Yes, all of these situations make it all the more likely that you will indeed get emotional as fuck, and people may throw the crazy card on the field in your presence (did I just make a football reference? I think so? I don’t know FA about football 😂)

Somehow, I got it twisted in my heart and head about who needed to take ownership of HIS CHOICE to be awful.

I made it about me, directing the shame about what he did and how painful it was to experience onto myself. And I carried that shame with me for years.

I made his issue my issue. And I tried to do what I was taught to do – be cool about how horrible he treated me.

I have a lot of experience with men behaving horribly and acting as though nothing happened. That everyone and everything is fine, and anyone who doesn’t feel the same way is irrational. With my experience with emotional and physical abuse in my pocket, I carried the shame of bullying myself for expressing how much pain I was in as a result of the abuse I experienced.

I stifled my feelings about how my ex behaved, to the point that I even tried to be friends with him afterward to somehow save face and disengage with the crazy label I was offered and took ownership of.

To be clear AF: I owned feeling ashamed of the strong emotions that surfaced as a result of being traumatized by the person I loved. When the person I loved abandoned me, both physical and mentally – when he abused me – I took responsibility for his decisions.

All that said, my ex is currently all, please connect with me online social and I’m all, hells no. ‘Cause I’m done with the enabling.

If I accept his invitation I’m enabling him.

This grown man is never gonna learn that what he did isn’t OK. And dude needs to learn and own up to his behaviour, ‘cause I wasn’t the only woman he treated like garbage.

He was nearing 30 years old when I had my experience with him, so there is no Oh, he was a young kid that didn’t know any better to use as an excuse.

Even if he was and is clueless about what he did, he doesn’t get a pass for being cruel. He is responsible for his choices.

An apology is required. And I’m not talking about a two worded “I’m sorry,” just so I can heal. I accept what happened and how it affected me. I don’t need his words to make me all better. I am my own healer.

What I’m talking about apology wise is that for the betterment of society and the healing of everyone, particularly him, he needs to get clear on what he did.

He needs to understand what he did and explain in detail what he is sorry for. So he can learn and grow from what he did, and realize it’s not OK to emotionally abuse someone. In the hopes that he will go out into the world moving forward and be a better human being.

All I can do on my end is focus on healing.

Part of that process requires taking stock of what I’ve done to cause harm to others and myself in the depths of my own inner tumultuous landscape.

I cannot and will not pretend I haven’t done some shitty stuff. But Lord knows that the answer to How do I forgive myself for what I’ve done? is not creeping on people’s facebook pages and liking their pictures, or asking the people I have harmed to connect with me without a conversation.

And two-feet-on-the-ground revelation: why is an ex contacting me, a married woman, anyways? What are your intentions, dude?

Unless it’s to have a conversation about what happened, there’s nothing pure going on.

If it’s anything like the dude’s from high school with zero boundaries who want to connect so they can poke me on FB at 2 am, my guess is there’s some dysfunction you want to hand-deliver me.

AND I DON’T WANT YOUR PACKAGE OR ATTENTION.

High school is where the other ex originated from. The heavy back story is that this guy is known for serially cheating on his partners. He learned to have no respect for women and run his life according to his penis. He learned to lie and cheat and minimize and manipulate. And I’m not going to enable him by pretending like we are old chums when he sees me in the grocery store anymore.

He never owned up to his cruelty. He never took ownership of his terrible behaviour. And without him taking ownership by exhibiting some form of understanding of what he did and how it harmed others, my door is sealed shut.

Dude hasn’t earned the right to be in my space.

He must understand that I’m not into being his friend by now because when he saw me yesterday he left me alone. A swift change from last year when he eagerly came up to me with the insecure cockiness of his 16-year-old self.

Or the years ago when he kept trying to message me, and I inherently knew it was an attempt to have sex with me, even though he was married to the same woman he cheated on me with in high school.

Straight up: dude’s don’t just randomly message their married exes. They wanna have sex with them. At least that’s been my experience so please don’t come at me for speaking my truth.

With all that heat in me and a commitment to protecting myself from people who haven’t earned the right to be in my life, I saw my ex walk out of the grocery store yesterday and the strangest thing happened.

I felt a tidal wave of empathy for him. I felt overwhelmed with emotion and almost started crying right in the store.

I pictured him as a little boy who was taught to be shitty to women – who was taught that cheating, shaming, minimizing and trying to manipulate his way into a married woman’s life so he can possibly fuck her is OK.

To demoralize the trust in a relationship, and lie, cheat and steal his way into feeling a sense of power and belonging in this hyper misogynistic world – that is his idea of normalcy.

And all I could think was how devastatingly sad he must feel inside, to feel compelled to act in such a soulfully wounding way.

So I let myself feel that for a minute and the shock of the significant inner shift from disgust to compassion. And when it was over I silently said to myself, “Thank you.”

Why thank you? Because I was so damn grateful for the reprieve from all the years of loathing him and all the men like him.

I have been incapable of picturing the little boys who learned to normalize shittiness up until now. And the sadness of empathy felt like freedom.

It was fresh air bursting into my chest cavity, cracking open my heart so wide that the pain of the betrayals, the shame, and the devastating humiliations and abandonments could begin to detach from my being.

I know the little kid in both my exes must be so scared and confused and hurting. You have to be all those things to not comprehend that what you did warrants ownership, not friendship requests.

You can’t be an asshole and be OK. Inside, your spirit is being starved.

Every single time you go out into the world with the intention to serve solely yourself, your ego, and/or your dick, you harm others. That is sadness incarnate.

And I know sadness.

I know how it feels to feel empty inside and try to fill yourself up with shitty behaviours because you don’t know how to survive the emptiness.

I know the fear and desperation very well. And I might not have a dick, but I know what it is to learn how to be shitty out of survival.

I also know how to unlearn it. I know how to own my pain and break the cycle of displacing it. I know how to call out the bullshit I was taught. And I know how to call out the men I used to love.

Because I’ve done the work. And it’s time for them to do the work, too.

Why It’s OK To Care About What Other People Think

June 29, 2019 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

My name is Andrea, and I care about what other people think:

I care when I’m sharing stories about my personal life that include my loved ones;
I care when I invite people over for dinner and one of them has a food allergy or can’t fathom the idea of eating mushrooms;
I care when I’m creating digital products that could potentially help others;
I care when I set boundaries for my wellbeing and someone gets upset with me. Not because I’m worried about pleasing them, but because I know they must REALLY be struggling if they feel motivated to challenge a woman’s right to say no to something she is not comfortable with.

Things I don’t care about as much:

Side eye from other women when I’m rocking my 70s jeans, a crop top, and a bright lip (speaking of that…);
A stranger’s inability to be kind to me 😉;
When someone doesn’t want to respond to my message or spend time with me (It’s super duper simple: I invest my time and energy in people who WANT to invest their time in me);
What other people think when I say no to invites to events I’m not comfortable attending.

We care about what other people think and feel because of a thing called Empathy.

There are a lot of people struggling in the world, and I will always care about that. Maybe you can relate?

I know how hard it can be when you’re struggling to the degree that you act like a dick to a complete stranger.

If we don’t figure out how to process strong feelings we end up emoting in the shittiest of ways.

That said, it’s OK to care about what other people think, even when they are communicating their opinions in void-of-empowerment kinda ways. But…

You don’t need to let outside opinions be the deciding factor in your life.

Care that other people are struggling and lashing out;

Care that you feel rattled by a shitty comment online;

Care that someone isn’t capable of being kind to you…

Just don’t make caring another person’s opinion your top priority.

Instead, dig into understanding the struggle that is being human, meandering the world while feeling intermittently lost and misguided, and potentially (and probably) acting like a dick on more than one occasion.

But puhleeaasse, for the betterment of your wellbeing and society as a whole, don’t own other people’s pain.

Become aware of, and disconnect from, the compulsion to make outside opinions a piece of your identity.

What “they” think does not need to decide your moods for you, how you treat others, deliver you into the abyss of shame, or siphon from your well.

While there will always be a part of you that does care, it doesn’t need to be at the forefront of everything you do.

If your intention is to create positive change in the world through a commitment to creating a copacetic inner landscape, you’re on the right path.

‘Cause it all starts with you – You help others by healing yourself.

Remember (and right-click & save to share on Instagram or Facebook):

No debating it: You are loved.

For more insights and a free wellness resource, connect with me.

Everything is NOT in its place (and that’s OK)

June 4, 2019 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

It was 2 am and I had to pee. But I didn’t want to get up because I didn’t want to wake up my cat. 😂

If you’ve got kids, cool, you know what I mean.

Nothing worse than them waking up in the middle of the night thinking it’s time to get up and do day time stuff when you’re trying to take care of business.

Except for me, instead of a human child, it’s a long-haired black cat/parrot.

(The parrot reference = he mimics our voices which is equal parts hilarious and cute).

Jack the cat likes to assume that my late night shuffles down the hallway are invitations to get chatty:

Oh hey! You’re awake! Come on, let’s talk! Also, I need Food!!

That’s what happened last week. He heard me with his hyper Vulcan hearing and came chirping and dramatically meowing down the hallway.

And he wanted stuff from me.

He wanted to be petted and brushed, followed by treats and food – ASAP.

Jack the cat, committing sock felonies and leaving his DNA (read: fur) EVERYWHERE

Hard not to want to oblige – he’s pretty cute.

But he already had food, he just wanted his food a certain way.

His preferred way of being fed is freshly out of the can with the dish placed directly underneath him on the chair (which happens to by MY chair! 😂)

This is funny because it’s not like he has a discerning palate. He’s been busted eating garbage multiple times.

And he doesn’t know the difference between a few hours old and fresh food. I trick him by mixing up his older food, pretending like I just made it, and he falls for it every time!

The real issue is that he wants things a certain way or else he deems them unacceptable.

Cat idiosyncrasies might be cute during the day, but at 2 am when you’re tired and need to pee, they’re overrated.

So I said hello to him, peed, and peaced out behind my closed bedroom door. Then I woke up a few hours later to a startling realization:

I AM EXACTLY LIKE MY CAT.

I am rigid about how things need to be. Sometimes I even reject things because they aren’t the way I want them or expect them to be.

Some of those expectations are in my best interest.

For example, I expect the people in my life to be supportive and loving, or else I don’t allow them into my life.

Boundaries are an important part of the whole mental health mystery. If they aren’t in place, you’re gonna struggle.

But getting caught up in how things need to look and feel and be in other areas is really siphoning the joy out of my life.

I have a lot to be joyful about, just like Jack the cat does. I have good food, good love and support, rewarding work, and stuff and things I’m grateful for.

I am hashtag blessed, yet I let strict expectations run my show, blurring my ability to relax and enjoy all the beauty that comes with the unexpected.

I want to go with the flow more. I want to enjoy the process of life.

I want to experience joy when it’s happening.

To make that happen I need to ditch my drive to control how everything looks and feels.

The 2 am wake up with my fur child has inspired me to investigate my default settings. I’ve begun asking myself some squirm-in-your-seat questions:

Am I allowing the joy to come through in this experience?

Am I shutting myself off from joy by gripping to rigid “ideals” that are anything but?

**It can be really scary to accept that your default response is causing you to suffer.**

All it takes is one unsolicited should-based response from a stranger focusing on your perceived failures instead of the courage it took to be honest about the fact that you don’t have it all figured out, to compel you to clamp your heart shut on stuff that needs to be addressed.

But living with a closed heart is an expensive way to live. It siphons from your ability to experience joy.

So instead of buying into denying or ignoring your issues, focus on taking your power back.

The next time you get uncomfortable about the idea of inquiring into the existence of your own counterproductive default settings – particularly how being truthful about them might be perceived by others – percolate on this statement:

Unless you’re in the arena, too, Brenda, I’m not open or interested in your opinion.

(No offence to any Brenda’s out there. It just felt like the right name for this example.)

If you’re doing this kind of work, you’re on a different wavelength than the should-ers.

Unrequested (and unsupportive) critiques of your journey are coming from people who are not in the same realm of thinking as you, so their comments don’t have a place in your life.

Walk on by unsupportive comments.

Don’t take ownership of them. Just step on over and past them, and keep on walking.

Keep being courageous, ’cause that’s what these kinds of inquiries require: Courage.

FYI: the quote above (minus the Brenda reference) is from Brene Brown’s new Netflix special which I highly recommend you watch.

Watching TV can be self-care if it’s lighting you up like Brene’s show did for me. 😍

I hope something within this post resonated with you. You are loved.

Pssst: If you liked this post you might want to sign up to receive the occasional email from me (anywhere from 1 to 2 per month max.) That’s where this post originated. 🙂

Why I Let Go Of My Fear Of The Comments Section

April 2, 2019 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

I’m taking a course right now which is requiring me to do something I usually avoid like the plague.

No, it’s not dairy or gluten, or high fructose corn syrup. 😂

It’s reading the comments section!

I’m being prompted every day to read and interact with other students in the comments.

At first, I flat-out dismissed the idea, and with good reason.

I’m not into keeping tabs on what other people have to say when I’m taking a course. I’m trying to learn, not find out what Sara from Idaho thinks about what we’re learning.

I don’t want other people’s opinions in the mix while I’m taking in information from the experts. Right now I’m learning from a world-renowned psychologist and meditation teacher, and I don’t want anyone or anything getting in the way of me absorbing every last ounce of what she has to share.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the fact that the comment section scares the shit out of me.

I’ve had a small yet effective-at-freaking-me-out sampling of shitty comments over the years.

Misogyny from both men and women? Check! Ego driven passive aggressive grossness? Check! People who don’t even realize they’re being assholes? Check!

Mix mucho passive aggressive responses with a bevy of volatile life experiences, and you’re going to get the blinks whenever you’re perusing the wall of potential ignorance that is the comment section.

So those are some legit reasons why I feel compelled to avoid the comments. It can be volatile territory, a gathering place for ignorance and aggression.

I feel this duty to myself in the name of self-compassion to not entertain that kind of stuff. I don’t want to give it my energy any more than I’ve already given it in this lifetime.

But this course is really poking at me and pushing me to dig into that discomfort. I mean, it’s a course about facing your fears. If ever there was a time to face them, it’s now, right? 😂

Yet still, I began the program wanting to avoid the comments in the course.

Except its part of the program to look at them and contribute to them, so I HAD to stop avoiding them. AHHHHHHH!!!!

An initial “hard pass” on perusing what other people have to say has recently turned into engaging a bit, which has turned into me possibly changing my mind about reading comments altogether.

The catalyst for my shift? The responses my classmates offered to the question, What are your fears?

The answer everyone gave, in both direct and indirect ways, was the Fear of not being good enough.

In this case, comment sections can help us realize that our fear experience is not an anomaly.

They can help us realize that fear is not solely our own experience, it’s a shared experience.

When we are free of the belief that our fear is an anomaly, we are unburdened by a great degree of heaviness.

Case in point, consider the degree of fear you’re carrying when you believe the lie that you are alone in feeling afraid.

To believe you’re alone in your experience, you’d need to believe that you’ve got a serious abnormality – an inherent deficit going on. So you’d end up with the initial fear, plus the fear that you’re alone, and then the fear that you’re intrinsically flawed.

That’s a lot of heaviness to carry with you, right? No wonder you’re tired and anxious all the time!

After reading the comment section in my course it’s clear to me that a lot of our fears can easily be proven wrong.

My mind wanders to imagining the degree of transformation that would come if we all dug into working towards becoming conscious of the fact that EVERYONE is afraid of not being good enough.

In this case, reading the comments can help us disentangle from the lies we tell ourselves about our fear experience.

It’s not “Our” fear, but “The” fear – A fear felt by the collective.

If we become deeply aware of this truth, we won’t feel the need to be so harsh to ourselves and others when we felt afraid.

We could let go of some of the judgment we carry. Wouldn’t that be amazing? 😍

Becoming deeply aware takes work, of course.

Meditation is required. Our brains are wired to focus on judgement first and foremost.

It takes a commitment to keep coming back to noticing fear through meditation in order to change the default setting within us.

But it is absolutely possible to experience a great amount of peace through this work. I am proof of that!

Some days will be smoother sailing than others. If you’re not sleeping well, or have the flu, or someone’s behaviour is triggering fear within you, it can be hard to stay the course, and tough to remember how to be kind to yourself.

But there’s an instantaneous self-compassion catalyst I’m sharing with you today which you can reference whenever you’re feeling lost in fear:

The memory of all those comments, posted by people from all different backgrounds and ages, courageously admitting to their deepest and darkest fear: That 9 times out of 10, they are afraid of not being good enough, too.

You are not an anomaly, you are part of the collective. Therefore, you are not alone.

Also: You are loved. It’s non-negotiable.

Struggling With Guilt Over How You Reacted? This Might Help.

January 7, 2019 by Must Love Crows Leave a Comment

You want to be loving. You really, really do. Especially with that one person who reliably displaces their fear and frustrations onto others.

You affirm your patience. You ask for guidance. You seek solace in your beautiful, heart-led intentions to be a generous and loving human being.

But you miss your mark in their presence, and quickly hone in on hopin’, and wishin’, and thinkin’, that you woulda’, coulda’, shoulda’ done better.

Good news: Guilt is a sign that you need to prioritize self-kindness.

After a less than stellar interaction with someone whose very presence is an emotional trigger, you need love. Because if you can’t be around someone without pain attempting to do the thinking and speaking for you, you’re still reeling from the past.

To heal from the past you need high-frequency feelings pulsing through your body, mind, and spirit, like love.

Love is…self-compassion when you miss the kindness mark in the company of certain people.

You know the ones I’m talking about…

We don’t need to try to eradicate our guilt. Nope. Nadda. Not productive.

We just need to notice guilt’s priceless message: “Psst! We need some self-compassion in here, Stat!”

Love up on yourself when guilt makes itself known. Notice it and breathe into it. Acknowledge your humanness and the timeline of trauma that has a tendency to interfere with your intentions to be kind on every occasion.

And vow to try again next time. 🙏🏻

This one’s Instagram ready. Right click & Save to share:

It’s never up for debate: You are loved.