I am not for everyone… and that’s ok!featured

Hey there blog reader and hopefully vlog watcher! I plan on making most of my posts video blogs, but will—from time to time—post a good old fashioned blog.  This being my first post, I thought it might be a good idea to write it out and get the feel for things.

The purpose of this page is to share some of the crazy life lessons I’ve picked up on my absolutely ridiculous journey through the universe. Because I’ve experienced and learned from so many amazing things in my life it seemed unfair not to share with my fellow travelers. So that is what this blog will be about, my life, my journey, and what I have learned about both. I hope my stories will make you laugh, reflect, and inspire you to live exactly as you want to!

Going into this it’s only fair to warn you that I am not for everyone.  I am a strong personality, with strong opinions…in many cases I am a little EXTRA!  I am in fact many things. I am strong and steadfast; but also soft and loving. I am loyal and protective, and have an amazing ability to push people harder then they want to be pushed.  I am the person you go to when you want the truth at all costs, but being harsh isn’t my intention, rather a consequence of speaking whatever comes into my mind. When you bundle up all my different personality traits I have an unbelievable ability to rub people one way or the other!

So, for my very first blog post, I want you to know, that I’m not for everyone, and that’s totally ok.  In the past thirty years, I’ve engaged with people who either really appreciate my raw, slightly aggressive, very loud, full of cuss words personality…or they don’t. I have found that for every person who totally gets me, there are a few more who don’t. The lesson I have learned from this is two-fold.

• It’s important to survey the people in your life and see if there are areas you need to improve.
• Just because some people don’t like you doesn’t mean you need to change.

Let me start with part one of this lesson.  As you will learn, both of my parents are narcissists. One of the classic behaviors of a narcissist is never listening to or considering how their behavior affects others. I spent my childhood watching them skate through life, never listening to advice. And I learned a HUGE lesson from that: Don’t disregard valuable feedback from people who love you and want what’s best for you.  It’s one thing to know who you are and stand strong in that, and it’s another thing entirely to completely disregard the advice of people who love you.  It’s a fine line, so let me give you a few examples.

I have a mentor. She is one of the most amazing humans I have ever met. I trust in all things that she loves me and wants what is best for me.  She has accomplished great things not just in her public life, but also in her personal life.  So, when someone with such a strong resume and love for me tells me she thinks I need to reevaluate the way I see myself in the world—well—it’s wise for me to listen. Listening doesn’t mean I take everything she says as gospel; it means I listen to her, evaluate if she may be on to something, and act accordingly. In the case of my mentor’s advice, I realized she might be right.  At the time I saw myself as a “Warrior” always ready for battle, always ready for a fight.  Seeing myself that way led me to almost constant conflict with SOMEONE.  Changing my self-view actually led to this blog.  Rather then seeing myself as a warrior, I now see myself as someone who has fought a lot of battles and has some great stories to share.

Lesson Number Two: there are always going to be people that don’t like you, that don’t get you, and want to force you to be like them.  One super fun example came up the other day.  A few years ago I started working out at a Barre studio and I LOVED it! The super inclusive vibe made me feel right at home. The owner was an awesome, slightly eccentric woman who I thought shared a lot of opinions with me. We became friends on Facebook, as well as in real life. Last year she sold her studio and moved out of state. We touched base on Facebook and by an occasional text… and then….Taylor Swift happened. It’s a long story, but she posted something really nasty about TayTay and I defended her. I didn’t go over the top with it, I just suggested how easy it is to judge people we don’t know. But apparently that point didn’t go over well.   I thought all was good but then two days ago I learned that there was indeed still bad blood. In an open and public comment to something completely unrelated, she unleashed her full fury on me. It was one of the worst character assassinations I’ve ever experienced.  She called me basic and tiresome and later told me I deserved to be publically humiliated. I read her public hate in complete shock. She eluded to being far superior to me by using long, complicated words. And she called me a bully.

I likened her strike at me it to being stabbed in the back, straight through the chest! (Hey, Taylor, there a title for your next song: “Stabbed in the back straight through the chest”!) Before I unfriended her, she followed up with a super superior comment about how I should let my therapist read her thoughts.  By this, I guess she was insinuating that her assessment of me was so correct that reading it to my therapist would trigger some sort of breakthrough in my years of psychotherapy. I read it, and through tears, this life lesson popped into my mind:  I am not for everyone.

I analyzed her words and determined that there is truth in two things she said.

• that I am privileged (she called me privileged in the way people try to insult others for being unaware of all the things they have)
• that I am a bully.

I admit to both of these things, and I apologize for none of it….Well sometimes I apologize for being a bully…That’s not what I want to put out into the world, but sometimes it happens. I responded to her they way she should have presented these findings to me, via a private message.  If I am being honest that PM was some of my best work.  It was so good in fact, that I decided not to send her a bag of dicks to eat (that’s a real thing… Google it) because sending them would take away from the awesomeness of the PM.

So in closing, my friends, the lessons here are

• allow those who love you to help you be better
• allow those who don’t love you to help you to be better while realizing that not everyone is going to get you, not everyone is going to like you, and that’s ok!