I’ve been struggling lately to write. So I started writing about myself in the 3rd person. I was surprised by what came out fluidly writing about myself this way, and I recommend it as a journaling technique.
Who is Lauren?
Lauren is scared but takes action anyway.
Lauren is willing to dig deeper to find her truth to uncover her potential.
Lauren has always felt regular, basic like who she is, anyone can be. She is under the radar, not someone who stands out. But unknowingly to her, she does stand out. People are drawn to her because of her basicness. She draws people to her because she shows up, she makes people feel seen. People open up to her because she’s basic, she’s regular. They see themselves in her.
But they are also drawn to her light. She’s bubbly and optimistic, but she also calls herself out. She openly talks about her weaknesses, her fears, when she is being hard on herself. The voice in her head, the inner critic, she shares what it says aloud to let go of its grip on her. It is in her sharing openly, that others feel safe to share.
Lauren has reflective properties, like a mirror, that take Lauren's light and shine it on others. People can borrow her optimism and feel compelled to be honest about their fears and take action anyway. They trust in Lauren’s truth, her vulnerable honesty, which compels them to see themselves the way she sees them.
Lauren doesn’t stay still. She is like a river flowing, sometimes raging, sometimes pooling, but always in motion. Her deepest fear is stagnation. Her fear is not reaching her destination, never “becoming the ocean.1” Lauren is willing to travel as far as she needs to. She is willing to go into the unknown. She is willing to carve out new channels of land to cross. She is willing to allow her fullest self room to grow, explore, move, transition, transform.
Lauren knows she is cosmically connected to something greater although she can’t explain it and doesn’t know what it is. She knows that things have happened to her for a reason she can’t understand, but knows in her body she is destined for greatness.
She forgets this sometimes when she is lying on the couch watching TV. When she goes days without putting on real pants. When she is down on herself for not financially supporting herself. But she’s gone through too much shit for it to be meaningless. She had to go head to head with a raging bull father when she as a child. She had to soften herself to understand others’ needs and meet them where they are. She had to rebuild her body and relearn to walk at 16 years old. She had to rebuild her hormones after cancer while in grad school. She is a bad bitch. Nothing can get her down. She knows she can endure pain and suffering. She is like Circe2 who can walk into the depths of the ocean to give herself up to a demon to save others.
Lauren birthed a child solo in her home guided by her deep connection to the universe. She knows she is unfucking stoppable. She is the baddest bitch. Nothing can keep her down. There is no situation she can’t overcome. She can’t be canceled. She can’t be rejected. She can’t fail.
Her fierceness rages into compassion for others. She doesn’t leave people behind but brings them up with her.
Where is Lauren coming from? What isn’t working in her life?
Lauren is at an inflection point where she isn’t really sure what her career is or should be. She spent a decade developing skills in nonprofit project management, grant writing, and communications in public health and community development. She worked on social justice issues from a place of anger and trauma, but once she started healing herself, she could no longer work from the pain of being a victim. She had to step away from issues she was passionate about solving. She was burnt out from working in nonprofits – the scarcity mindsets, playing defense, spending more time pleasing founders and policymakers rather than working on the issues.
She is disappointed in her career. She is a 37 year old living off her husband’s income.
She feels like a fraud.
She has all these degrees, but felt like she hasn’t made anything happen with them. Lauren always wanted to be a leader, a director, a boss who inspires, whose work makes a difference for people’s lives.
Lauren feels stagnant in life. She feels like motherhood was a pause on her ambitions and her work. She had to redefine work, where her work became taking care of her kids and home while learning to take care of herself under extreme conditions.
Lauren is judgemental of herself for being a stay-at-home mom, with childcare and house help. She can’t stay at home with her kids alone for more than 4 hours without breaking down. But she also doesn’t want to go back to traditional work. She is judgemental of the default conveyor belt life that draws smart people into working hard and giving their souls to bullshit jobs. Lauren is jaded. She is burnt out from this system – the system of work and the system of motherhood in America. She didn’t realize how much this system sucked until her dad died. It was then that she decided she wasn’t going to waste her precious days working for others over time with her children.
Lauren is grateful for the privilege to exit this system to heal and regenerate rather than mold herself into what she has to do for a money or societal expectations.
Lauren is redefining for herself what it means to be a mother where she puts her needs above her children, which allows her to show up as the kind of mother she want to be. She doesn’t have to keep her house clean. She doesn’t have to work and leave her children all day. But she also gets to have 5 hours of childcare each day to write, workout, learn to crochet, run errands, and take care of admin stuff.
But she feels alone and lacking friendships. She wants to work in collaborative spaces of creativity and abundance.
She is ready for a new chapter of life, which is why she moved to Mexico. She wants to explore new things like getting into permaculture, interior design, music, dance, starting a small business, taking art classes, screenwriting. But she is herself lost and unsure of her purpose.
Where is Lauren on her journey right now?
Lauren is moving into new territory, something she has never done before–writing a book. It’s as if she is crossing the country with a car and a paper map knowing she will land somewhere on the East Coast, maybe New York, maybe Miami but she doesn’t know where she will stop along the way.
She has to locate herself through her environment and others. She will need to rely on others to guide her and keep her in motion. There will be times when she comes across people who change her life. There will be times when she is scared shitless in a dark, backroad where she fears for her physical safety. But she will make it through the dark tunnels to the other side. She always does. She is at the beginning where she can’t see the end destination or the path she will cross. It is like when she gave birth. Like when she traveled by herself in Southeast Asia for 2 months, like when she up and moved to Brazil at 23. She will figure it out. She will look back at the end and be blown away by herself.
What stops Lauren? When does she give up?
Lauren is stopped when she feels she is no longer growing. If a job is no longer teaching her, she quits. Lauren is stopped by burnout, by over giving and letting her needs go by the wayside for too long. Then she has to completely barricade herself from everyone. Lauren is stopped when her sleep is bad for too long.
Lauren is stopped by perfectionism and caring too much about what people will think. She tries so hard to put forward something that is bulletproof, mistake-proof, dislikeable-proof. But in doing that she ends up in burnout, or so consumed by her fear that she might get criticized or offend someone that she doesn’t put herself out there.
Lauren is stopped by thinking she is not good enough or what she has to offer isn’t valuable.
What is Lauren not seeing about herself that others see?
Other people are constantly thanking Lauren for her contributions to them, but she doesn’t see it as something special because it is easy or fun for her to give. Supporting other people, helping them feel special and loved is Lauren’s gift that she gives so freely that she can’t see how powerful it is. She needs to see herself the way other people see her. That people see her as a bad bitch with fierce compassion, as a vulnerable authentic, truthful person that draws people in. As a person that people want to give back to, to repay a fraction of what they have gotten from her. Lauren is a person that people want to support without getting anything back in return. What Lauren doesn't see is that people are grateful to know her and be in her orbit.
Lauren is afraid to let in people’s love and acknowledgement of her. If Lauren lets in how much love and support she has, she’s afraid that she will lose her independence, that she might stand still and give up trying so hard. Lauren needs to see that people want to help her as much as she loves helping others.
What do people count on Lauren for?
People count on Lauren to help them feel better about themselves. Lauren gets this from her grandpa Ricardo. She showers people with acknowledgement and recognition so they see themselves in a positive light. People count on Lauren to make them feel seen, recognized and appreciated. People count on Lauren for when they are struggling with difficult emotions or a difficult situation to help them see a way through it. People count on Lauren to be with them through their strongest of emotions and to be loved through their tantrums; she can’t be scared away. She is such a space of non-judgment that she helps people let go of their shame and pain.
What do people acknowledge Lauren for?
People acknowledge Lauren for her bravery and vulnerability in sharing herself and making what she is feeling known.
People acknowledge Lauren for changing their lives helping them apply to grad school. People acknowledge Lauren for how much care she gives out to those around her.
People acknowledge Lauren for being a diplomat, being able to see all sides and being able to discuss divergent perspectives.
What is Lauren essentially?
Resilient, compassionate, unstoppable badass, seeker, seer, creative, feeler, healer, milf, truth-seeker, connector, flexible, adaptable, changeable, fluid, warrior goddess.
This metaphor of the river becoming the ocean comes from Kahlil Gibran’s poem, The River Cannot Go Back.
Madeline Miller’s book Circe is one of my all-time favorites.
I saw myself in this. Grateful for your openness and the way you share so vulnerably here. I see you.
Again! Resonated deeply although I am older than you and in slightly different phase. Thank you for sharing and being vulnerable on the page.