guest post by Cynthia Kocialski, shared by Girls Can’t WHAT?

You hear it all the time as a little child, “No, you can’t do that.” As a parent, I say “no” more frequently than I say “yes,” mostly for safety reasons. As a parent it’s frustrating when your child ignores you and does something anyway. But until writing this post, I never stopped to think about whether this is a good thing to do? If I say no, will this stifle my child’s drive to reach their ambitions and dreams in the future? So I am reflecting upon those no’s that I received as a child.

I have to admit, I was far less supervised than my children. Times were different. There weren’t so many child protection laws. I had three older siblings who were all attending private colleges at the same time. My parents weren’t wealthy and both had to work in order to pay the bills for three tuitions. In fact, my earliest memory of my oldest brother is the day he left for college. For the most part, I was left to myself, to do what I wanted.

My seventh birthday was my first recollection of not accepting “no.” My parents had a simple rule; I could do what I wanted as long as it didn’t cost anything. Throughout kindergarten and first grade, it seemed all my friends were having birthday parties and I wanted one too. I knew if I asked my parents would say “no.” Not to be deterred, one day I took some drawing paper and made party invitations for my classmates. I invited every girl in my class of 120 students. I handed them out at school the next day. Then I told my parents I was having a birthday party at our house and I handed them the list of things – birthday cake, party decorations, prizes – that I needed. I don’t recall them saying anything, they just did as I asked and it was a great birthday party. Of course, my parents not saying anything just encouraged me. Finally, I saw how to get what I wanted! Read more…

Guest post by Gretchen Cawthon of Girls Can’t WHAT?

Traditionally we think of a Super Power as some freak ability or the possession of an object like Wonder Woman’s Lasso of Truth.  We joke around on Facebook notes, memes and social profiles about what our Super Power might be if we had one.  We answer as if it’s just wishful thinking.  But the truth is we do have a Super Power.  And just like your favorite cartoon heroine, you can change the world with your Super Power – but only when you know what it is.  Are you ready to find out?

What Makes You Super?

In every Super Heroine story, there is a problem to solve and Super Heroine with just the right skills to do the job.  In this world, there are oodles of problems for you to solve.  Knowing what makes you Super is your key to picking the right battles.  Heroines all have one thing in common: Passion.  That is what makes you Super.  Your passion will help you locate injustice and bring it to light.  Passion will drive you and inspire you to make a difference.  But Passion is useless without Power.

Where is Your Power?

Every heroine had a strength.  In order to solve the problem, she would turn to her strength to fight the battle and save the day.  In order to fight your battle, you have to define your strength.  The good news is that you’ve been developing it all along.  Your passion did not show up overnight.  You’ve put a lot of thought and research into it.  You’ve trained for it.  You’ve studied it.  You KNOW every aspect of it by heart.  You LOVE it.  It fuels you like nothing else. What is this secret power you’ve unknowingly developed?  If you’re a School House Rock fan then you already know this….Knowledge is Power!  You can’t be passionate about a topic without building up a wealth of information about it.  It’s now time to harness your Passion and your Knowledge into the unstoppable combination known as the Super Power.

What is your Super Power?

Has someone ever caught you off-guard by asking what you do?  You likely responded by saying your occupation or telling where you go to school, right?  How lame do you usually feel when you say that?  I know when I say “web developer,” the person’s eyes usually glaze over and they lose interest in the conversation quickly.  I used to wish I had come up with a better answer and now I have one.  The next time someone asks me what I do, I’m going to tell them my Super Power.  You will, too.

Here’s how to figure it out in 3 easy steps… Read more…

guest post by Heather B. Wood of From Shadow to Seen

I wax philosophical on Sundays, mulling over those deep questions of human existence and why we are here. Are we here to take up space and get caught up in the gears of our cultural existence—sitting on the couch after a grinding day, watching news, sports or reality television? The key word here is “watching,” not creating. Or are we here to put something of ourselves out into the world to improve it if even a little bit? Shouldn’t life be about creating something—a song, a meal, a child, a home, a garden, a business, a dance, a blog or work of art? It does not have to be masterpiece to be a contribution. If that is what life is about, what gets in the way of creating?

I believe it is fear—fear of failing and of not being good enough. Fear that we don’t have the right talent, experience, credential, or degree. We are afraid to make something ugly or stupid and to be ashamed. We remember the time we painted our room yellow and instead of being surrounded in warm sunshine vibes, it looked more like our dog peed all over the wall. We remember the poem we wrote in college—the one about the heartbreak and agony of our first love—which got a “D” for drivel. We remember the time we planted a garden on a warm spring day and forgot to water it in. Next morning, every plant had withered and died.

Sometimes we don’t get it perfect the first time. We need to take small steps.  My sister, Bonnie Black, an author of three books and a university teacher, has said there are three things you need to do to when you write: edit, edit and edit. The key message here is in order to edit you have to have something to edit. Which means you must write something, anything, down on the paper. Let it sit there and walk away from it. Then reread it several times for clarity, flow and structure.  My friend, Pauline Hauder, a painter, will tell you in order to keep the creative juice flowing, you should paint (and play with) more than one canvas at a time—have several going, which insures not getting attached to the outcome of just one. “Keep playing,” she always says. She has drawn and painted hundreds of beautiful pictures and hundreds more that wound up as compost. We learn every time we try. Just keep playing.   Read more…

On the heels of One Billion Rising, celebrated on the 15th anniversary of V-Day, as one billion women and those who love them rose worldwide to bring awareness to the issues surrounding violence against women, I have been thinking about interpersonal violence in our own country. There appears to be a distinct disconnect between the message we want to send to girls and young women-that they can love and respect themselves and acknowledge that they have needs of their own that come first-and the message they are receiving-that they should look or behave a certain way in order to receive love and acceptance.

So why aren’t girls and women getting the message that they are fine just the way they are? Perhaps those of us trying to send this message are getting drowned out by the sheer volume of socially constructed messages bombarding girls and young women every day. Examples of objectification and violence are thrown in our faces constantly. While the recent charges of rape against high school football players in Steubenville, Ohio–young men who allegedly raped a 16-year-old fellow student last August while other students videotaped the unconscious girl–may seem extreme, we see other seemingly unimaginable stories day after day. Take the story of the “fantasy team draft” created by ninth-grade boys at the elite Landon School in Maryland in 2010, where the boys chose girls, rated them, and planned sexual conquests as part of a competition in which money would eventually be exchanged. Then, there was the violent murder of a University of Virginia lacrosse player by her abusive ex-boyfriend, a former Landon student.

It is no wonder that young women are so confused. If boys today are being sent to prestigious private schools like Landon only to be taught to objectify and debase young women by drafting them to teams with such names as “The Southside Slampigs,” and the punishment for planning sexual conquests is a slap on the wrist and a “boys will be boys” mentality, then the cycle will only continue. The former Landon student who murdered his ex-girlfriend had been seen previously choking her. He had also attacked a male teammate he thought had kissed her, and he became so out of control with a female police officer during a drunken rampage that he had to be tasered. But apparently everyone looked the other way, and through silence, the behavior continued to be condoned.

Guest blog by Carol Terry, in her on-going series on the spiritual aspects of life

I get lots of information about spirit by focusing on my inner body. So many religions are, as my friend says, biophobic and demand that we deny, ignore, retrain, or refrain from thinking about our bodies. It is as if the minute we start talking about bodies, we are talking about sex. Uh oh.  But I am talking about the body’s inner energy field and how to participate in the unity that creates everything. The body is my pathway to spirit.

My practice has been to pay attention to somatic (physical) energy that vibrates within me. If you’ve never tried this, Eckhart Tolle describes the feeling and process beautifully in The Power of Now. He says, by going deeply into the body, you transcend the body. It’s easy. It only requires focus within and soon you feel the humming energy throughout your inner body. For me this began with regular meditation. I could center myself in a ‘baseline’ calm feeling. With continued and consistent practice, I have started to use my body as a barometer to tell me how far I have traveled from that baseline. I have started to let it tell me what is going on around me rather than analyzing with my mind. I find myself being more intuitive and responding from a more authentic reality. Read more…

Guest blog by Roz Brown

On one of our first dates, my soon-to-be husband took me to the Boulder Dinner Theater to see South Pacific.  As the character Emile sang Rodgers and Hammerstein’s intoxicating Some Enchanted Evening, love was in the air. Over the next two decades, often with our daughters in tow, we saw everything from Cats and Hello Dolly, to Singin’ in the Rain and Chicago.

Alas, the enchanted spell of that first evening didn’t last, and 20-years later, like Nellie in South Pacific, I ‘washed that man right out of my hair.’  On the upside, my divorce did nothing to alter my fondness for Boulder’s live theater, so when Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella was recently on the bill, my youngest daughter and I had front row seats.

And so the story of Cinderella begins with her huddled near the fireplace embers–in the cinders–awaiting the next summons from her nasty stepmother and stepsisters.  You know the rest.  She is eventually rescued from her miserable life after a brief but starstruck meeting with Prince Charming.

But as the curtain opened, it was almost immediately clear that this Cinderella was atypical.  Yes, she had the classic, angelic face. And yes, her soaring voice was exquisite. But as she made her way toward the center of the stage to sing her first number, she seemed to be limping, and it was soon obvious that she was disabled.  It turns out the highly successful 20-year old actress, Jenna Bainbridge, lives with partial paralysis in her lower body, an unexplained condition that struck her when she was just 16-months old. Read more…

Guest blog by Carol Terry of Say What You Mean, writing, coaching, and information design. Carol discusses the real nature of what we do at work and how to describe it. Need some encouragement to describe your work in more detail, with more confidence? Read Carol’s thoughts on the spiritual aspects of résumés.

Do you know what you really do at work? Some of us find it difficult to showcase our professional accomplishments, possibly because we don’t realize what we  actually do. We go to work every day; try to do our best. Often, we actually do our best. But to break down everything that you actually do might take a little coaxing. Okay, say you “Defuse potential conflicts with humor.” Or “Manage projects with diverse stakeholders.” Read more…

guest blog by Rashida McKenzie, founder of Sisciety

Imagine being a balloon – in which you had to endure one of two fates: Be confined to a wrist for the duration of your life or be let go. Which one would you choose?  I know this question seems silly, but it’s symbolic of the way many of us live our lives.

A balloon attached to a wrist is simply there for someone else’s enjoyment. It’s nice to look at. It brings them pleasure. It goes where it’s led and never drifts beyond where it can’t easily be brought back. So although predictable, the life of that balloon seems perfect. This is the safe choice.

But if you ever witnessed the beauty of a balloon when it’s let go, it goes gracefully into the air above, soaring to distances and heights it would have never been able to experience tied to a wrist. It’s free-free to fly wherever the wind can carry it, which admittedly in a life scenario can be a little scary.

Some of us end up settling for what’s safe over what’s scary for many reasons, but primarily because we feel like we don’t measure up- to the expectations of our friends or families, societal standards, or media stereotypes of who they say we “should” be. Over time, that influence often results in a denial of who we are, in exchange for becoming the person everyone else wants us to be. We feel like we aren’t capable of going higher, so we hold back what we’re thinking, what we’re feeling, and what we truly want because we don’t want to disappoint anyone. I mean, you’ve seen a child’s face after they’ve accidentally let a balloon’s seemingly tightly wound string slip through their fingers. Ugh, the sheer sadness! So we stay stuck, confined by limits that keep us from pursuing our passions. Eventually you feel forced into being someone you’re not; you feel held down.

That’s because you were created to soar. Read more…

guest blog Carol Terry, excerpt from Rescue Yourself a work in progress

The fastest way to freedom is to feel your feelings. Gita Bellin

Feel. A revolutionary act.

I want to integrate my experiences and commit to feeling all of my feelings. This helps me know who I am. If I don’t, I am susceptible to the media definition of who I am, what I should look like, how I should behave, what I should value. Corporate ‘interests’ will make sure I am held in fear and helplessness (unable to help myself).

Will buying their products and their image make me more desirable? Safer? Happy? Productive? Not so much. Our bodies are the conduits that deliver the unique information with which we integrate experiences and commit to becoming our whole unique selves. No-one else can integrate my experiences for me.

Maybe it is obvious. There are good feelings, some bad ones. Feelings. Feelings that can’t be helped, that give you no choice. Overwhelming grief, flash of anger, stabs of loneliness – feelings that grip and get a hold of you. You struggle for balance and struggle to Get Over it. Then there’s the other feelings – the good ones – joy, happiness, awe, gratitude. You don’t want to get over them, you try and hold on.

Maybe something overwhelms you, triggers you, and you realize you are feeling old stuff, as in a flashback. If you stay with that feeling and look really close, you might see the shadow of your own small self that needs attention because it is trying to survive. It is the part of yourself that you ignored or are ashamed of, the part you never gave energy or approval or permission.

The part you kept hidden, maybe even from yourself. It lumbers down the mountain and stops right under your nose, right in front of you, much bigger than you would have imagined, much stronger, much darker, and more destructive. Until you turn and face your grief-bear, you ignore its wonderful and scary invitation to be with that part of yourself that you have abandoned. It is hard to face uncomfortable feelings.

It is not a path for everyone. People suffer from complex traumatic effects that require professional help, or more, to untangle. But for many of us, paying attention over time, as well as in the moment brings unresolved trauma into focus and gives it some space to resolve. Facing uncomfortable feelings is, well, uncomfortable. But I have always found that they shift over time and, often, transform and empower me.

I feel energy vibrating within me; find information in grief patterns and triggers; enhance my energy flow; use patterns and emotions to inform me; re-vision stories; help others instead of getting re triggered; help others instead of triggering them. Committing to feeling your feelings is scary, we don’t know the outcome. That’s what unique means. Every moment is new in the present.

Paying attention to the inner body is a way to maintain presence in the moment and a way to listen. If you keep your attention in the body as much as possible, you will be anchored in the now….It is almost as if you were listening or reading with your whole body. (The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle, p. 117)

“It is each individual’s right and responsibility to exist in spiritualism in whatever way they choose.” ~Lorie Fuller

Have you ever been part of an organized religion and realized that your beliefs didn’t match that of the group? If so, you know what standing up for what you believe can be challenging.  Recently,  the Catholic school that Lorie Fuller’s daughters attended decided that two students could no longer attend.  Their sin? Their parents were gay. Read Lorie’s letter to her girls about doing the right thing, even when it is hard.

Read more…