Have you ever taken a deep breath and said the hard thing that needed to be said? Perhaps it was “no.” No to working at a job that was killing your spirit. No to a relationship that was making you shrink and squirm. No to a family role that was never you.

Any of these acts take tremendous personal courage. In situations where you fear being hurt verbally or physically or where you don’t want to hurt people you care about – taking action can be particularly difficult.

Recently I had to set boundaries in a personal relationship.  Although I liked the way the relationship began, it had become difficult and scary for me.  I had to say – “this is what I am willing to do” and “this is what I am NOT willing to do.”  I was nervous – my knees were shaking when I was talking, but I was able to clearly state my boundaries. What I had to say was not popular or immediately accepted.  But when I was done I felt so proud that I had the courage to say what I needed.

Eventually, I could see that the person I set the boundaries with had a new respect for me.  I was no longer at his mercy, playing by his rules. He seemed to hear what I had been trying to say – nicely – for the first time and realized he had been taking so many good things for granted.

When you are facing the need to set boundaries – here are some ways to get prepared:

1.  Center yourself in your strength:  take a deep breath, imagine someone who inspires you with her strength.

2. Prepare: think about what you will say – write it down. You may want to review your notes several times before you need to actually convey your thoughts, so that you can better remember what you want to say in a stressful situation.

3. Say it out loud:  to yourself or a trusted friend.  Get used to what you sound like being calm and firm. Eliminate any softening words or phrases – such as – “if it is OK with you” or “if you don’t mind” or “kinda/sort of/a little bit.”

4. Find a place you are comfortable for the conversation.

5. Square your shoulders, take a breath, feel your power and go for it!

I wish you great personal courage and new self-respect and swagger.

NOTE:  if you fear for your safety, please reach out to your local women’s anti-violence organization.  Not sure? Read here about healthy and abusive relationships – http://www.girlsguidetoswagger.com/?p=1596.

If the first swagger tool is intuition http://www.girlsguidetoswagger.com/?p=1772 , the second one is centering.  Intuition is developing the ability to listen to the small, still voice inside yourself for wisdom and direction. But how can you hear that voice if you are rushed, off balance, and anxious?

Many times during a day, you might feel off-center – it is bound to happen.  Driving in heavy traffic, deadlines, a crying baby, and complaining spouse can push us off our center and cause us to act from fear, rather than inner wisdom. When we are in fear – we don’t feel our swagger and can lose touch with our self-esteem.

If you find yourself disconnected from your center and your swagger, here are a couple of things you can do:

1.  Get grounded:

* feel the ground under your feet

*feel your connection to the solid and nurturing earth

*take a deep breath.

2. Get centered:

*take a few deep breaths

*you can close your eyes or keep them opened – whatever keeps you most connected to the world

*feel into your length, feel your spine stretching and expanding – notice what you feel inside yourself – strain, pain, worry?

*feel into your width – feel the edges of your body, allow your awareness to expand out beyond yourself – what do you notice? Sometime I feel a tug at my back – like my angel wings emerging.

*feel your past – at your back is everything that has come before and brought you to this place – what do you see?

*look ahead – what is coming, what are you excited about, what is inviting you to the future?

I like to think of this poem by Hafiz:

The God Who Only Knows Four Words

Every

Child

Has known God,

Not the God of names,

Not the God of don’ts,

Not the God who ever does

Anything weird,

But the God who only knows four words

And keeps repeating them, saying:

“Come dance with Me.”

Come

Dance.                                                     -Hafiz

With thanks to somatic coach and wise woman extraordinaire Renee Gregorio and Strozzi Somatics http://www.strozziinstitute.com/about/history+and+mission.

Are you looking for your swagger?  Swagger Poet Olivia Romo shares her thoughts on finding yourself and expressing your voice. Listen to Olivia’s advice on You Tube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z42lBPQhKQo.

Thanks to Olivia for sharing her poetry and thoughts with The Girl’s Guide to Swagger.  Olivia’s inspiration comes from her connection to her roots and the land and water of Taos NM.

According to author Carol Lee Flinders in  Rebalancing the World, early humans lived in harmony with the land.  Flinders identifies a series of “values of belonging” that these peoples had in common.  One of the values is:

*intimate connection with the land to which one belongs. Not merely sentimental affection, but concrete knowledge of issues such as where the region’s water comes from, what kinds of grasses and trees flourish there, and what threatens it.

Olivia’s poetry reflects this value of belonging, as well as her life experiences, which includes joy, sorrow, outrage, and redemption. You can find out more about Olivia and her swagger poetry:

Introduction: http://www.girlsguidetoswagger.com/?p=1628

Woman empowering poem:http://www.girlsguidetoswagger.com/?p=1648

Sacred connection to land and water: http://www.girlsguidetoswagger.com/?p=1708

Guest column by Donna Daniell, psychotherapist with Balance your Life

Are you healing from grief, stress and emotional burdens? If you keep going on and on and don’t stop to heal, don’t stop to rejuvenate, don’t stop to rest,  you will hit BURNOUT.  Joan Borysenko, Ph.D.defines burnout in her new book, FRIED as “our frenzied, speed-oriented, exhausted state of mind.”  And BURNOUT can be defined as “losing your most loving, creative self and all you have left is your most negative version of yourself.”(p xi-xii)

Luckily BURNOUT has not made it to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  If it had, we’ve have a drug for it by now.

And can you imagine what a drug might do to this state of being?  How can a drug bring us back from our most diminished sense of self which has at least three dimensions:

1)        Emotional exhaustion: deep fatique and feelings of being emotionally drained and overwhelmed

2)        Depersonalization:  a loss of self and cynical regard for the people you live with

3)        Diminished personal accomplishment:  a progressive loss of confidence and competence (pg. xxvi Fried )

I think we all have our own version of “burnout” based on our own personal experience. The real issue is here, how to we keep ourselves balanced and resilient enough to avoid this burnout state. I have experienced burnout when I get stressed and it continues over a long period of time because I can’t seem to avoid the stressors or I allow myself to focus on them until they break down my spiritual integrity or my sense of my wholeness.

This experience leaves me in a diminished state, in which I can’t seem to get the rest of me back. I’m stuck in negativity. This year, I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of it – perhaps because there’s so much in our environment that is negative and it is impacting our ability to stay open and flowing – our resilience is constantly being tested by our “Fried” world. Read more…

How do you feel about your body? Do you love it and appreciate it for its strength, grace, and beauty?  Or do you think you are unattractive and fat?  Do you feel like you need to compete with other women to be the prettiest, the thinnest?

Few women like how they look.  One reason is the ultra-thin and unrealistic images of women in the media – many of them not even real!  Do we need to strive to achieve a look that is not even possible?  Maybe we could use the time, energy, and money we spend trying to achieve this look and competing with each other to improve our minds, support a local charity, organize a trash pick-up, or collaborate with others to help kids in poverty. We give away our own power and reduce our self-esteem and swagger when we let someone else define how we should look or act.

In my book Lessons from Nature in healing, strength, and flexibility, I wrote

“So often, we compete: our clothes, our careers, our bodies. Compete to be the prettiest, the richest, the best. And why?

Each of us is a sunset, the best of its own unique existence.

The more that I let go of competition, the more I glory in my own uniqueness, as well as that of others, the happier I am.  In this state of mind, I can be glad of another’s accomplishment and beauty, rather than threatened or of jealous of their gifts.

In nature, there are many flowers, each glorious.”

I want to be part of efforts to value and honor each individual with their unique talents, voice, and shape.  This week is Fat Talk Free Week, sponsored by the collegiate sorority organization Tri Delta.  Read on for more information on how you can honor your self and others.

What is Fat Talk and Why Fat Talk Free® Week:

Nearly 10 million women are dealing with eating disorders in this country, which is more than are suffering from breast cancer. Tri Delta’s partnership with Dr. Carolyn Becker has positioned the organization as a leader in the discussion, changing the conversation to create a more positive body image for women everywhere!

Fat Talk Free Week, an extension of Reflections: Body Image Program, is an international campaign designed to engage members, campuses and communities in the conversation. Tri Delta is leading the way, taking a stance and declaring that it’s time we take control over our own destinies, our own bodies, and our own inner dialogues.

Fat Talk Free Week is October 16-22. Find out more at www.EndFatTalk.org.

What do you think of our culture’s narrow definition of beauty – you can never be tall enough or blond enough or thin enough? This definition excludes most of the world’s women, yet many suffer their whole lives trying to achieve an unrealistic body image.

Only 2% of the women on the planet consider themselves beautiful and the other 98% of us feel unattractive. Who created this unrealistic and unnatural definition of beauty?

Did you know that people over time and across cultures have recognized healthy, vibrant, and wide-hipped women as beautiful and desirable?

The current false image of beauty hurts women. By starving ourselves to be thin, many girls and women damage their bodies and become too thin, suffering from anorexia and bulimia.  We might undergo dangerous surgery to enhance our breasts, reduce our hips, or erase our wrinkles. Poor self-esteem can cause us to hold back, be quiet, not express our needs or our true voice.  If we don’t speak with our true voice – there is no one else to do it – we are unique and have a talent to give the world.  If we hold back, the talent and the gift is lost.

Poet slam champion Olivia Romo takes on the culture that makes us hate our bodies. When she recites her woman empowering poem – she gets angry and righteously so.  She says “I object to this objectification.” So do I – how about you?

Her solution is to draw on the strength of the women around us and the women of history.  She calls on the power of farm worker organizers, suffrage rights fighters, and queens and “contacts the women before us,” to help support our struggle to increase our confidence and swagger. Here is her invitation to us: “Ladies, listen to me! We can change this cycle and join forces with the moon.”

Watch Olivia recite her powerful poem on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0gS0ovQXiQ&feature=channel_video_title.

Warning: this poem contains righteous anger and adult themes and languages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0gS0ovQXiQ&feature=channel_video_title

Are you in a healthy relationship?  How can you tell? Do you feel safe, valued, and supported?

According to BPD Central, healthy relationships include non-threatening behavior such as “talking and acting so that your partner feels safe and comfortable doing and saying things.” Other signs are:

Respect

• Being emotionally affirming and understanding.

• Valuing opinions.

Trust and Support

• Supporting your partner’s goals in life.

• Respecting your partner’s right to his or her own feelings, friends, activities and opinions.

Honesty and Accountability

• Accepting responsibility for self.

• Acknowledging past use of violence and / or emotionally abusive behavior, changing the behavior.

• Acknowledging infidelity, changing the behavior.

• Admitting being wrong when it is appropriate.

• Communicating openly and truthfully, acknowledging past abuse, seeking help for abusive relationship patterns.

Shared Responsibility

• Mutually agreeing on a fair distribution of work.

• Making family decisions together.

Abusive relationships look the exact opposite of a healthy relationship:

Intimidation

• Making your partner afraid by using looks, actions, gestures.

• Smashing or destroying things.

• Destroying or confiscating your partner’s property.

• Abusing pets as a display of power and control.

• Silent or overt raging.

• Displaying weapons or threatening their use.

• Making physical threats.

Using Emotional Abuse

• Making your partner feel bad about himself or herself.

• Calling your partner names.

• Playing mind games.

• Interrogating your partner.

• Harassing or intimidating your partner.

• “Checking up on” your partner’s activities or whereabouts.

• Humiliating your partner, weather through direct attacks or “jokes”.

• Making your partner feel guilty.

• Shaming your partner.
Using Isolation

• Limiting your partner’s outside involvement.

• Demanding your partner remain home when you are not with them.

• Cutting your partner off from prior friends, activities, and social interaction.

• Using jealousy to justify your actions. (Jealousy is the primary symptom of abusive relationships; it is also
a core component of  Love  Addiction.)

Minimizing, Denying and Blame Shifting

• Saying the abuse did not happen, or wasn’t that bad.• Shifting responsibility for your abusive behavior to your partner. (i.e: I
did it because you ______.)

• Saying your partner caused it.

To learn more – go to http://www.recovery-man.com/abusive/abusive_signs.htm .

Most communities have resources for those who fear abuse or trying to escape from it – here is a national reference http://www.ovw.usdoj.gov/domviolence.htm.

Many excellent non profit organizations are working to reduce dating and domestic violence including Courage to Change and their brother organization It Stops with Me.

Courage is Change, It Stops with Me, and Red Tent Club are efforts to stop violence and support young women. The aim of the Red Tent Club is to provide a space for young women to create community, to be accepted, to learn tolerance and to create healthy relationships with peers. Young women learn to find their voice, the power of intuition and to increase confidence in their abilities.

Web and social media addresses: www.courageischange.org, www.itstopswithme.org

I wish you only healthy, strong relationships!  But if you fear that you are in an abusive relationship – please reach out to a local organization for help!

A correct relationship to your self is primary, for from it flow all possible right relationships with others and the Divine.

Ralph Blum The Book of Runes

Do you respect yourself?  Do you meet your own needs as well as you meet those of your significant other, your children, your boss?  Women often love and nurture those around them, at the expense of their own needs.  As a mother, wife, and employee -I’ve had days where I gave all I had to others and left nothing for myself – no energy, no perspective, and certainly no sense of fun or sense of humor.  Although I thought I was doing the right thing – I wasn’t enjoying my life and I probably wasn’t very pleasant to be around.

One summer, I took a leave of absence from my job and lived alone. I wanted to see who I was, what my body needed, what I liked to eat, how much I needed to sleep – when I wasn’t busy meeting the needs of everyone else.  Many of my guy friends thought that this was a very weird thing to do and told me so.  However, when I described my plan to my girlfriends they said without exception – I wish I could do that or that sounds like heaven.

Turns out I need eight hours of sleep – not the six hours I had been getting.  My body wanted to go to bed at 11 pm and get up between 7 and 8 am.  I figured out that I needed a light breakfast, exercise every day, and time alone.  As I settled into my new life, I began to recover my sense of self – along with my sense of humor, fun, and adventurousness.  I started to write poetry and short stories and I began to dream very vividly. My spiritual self awakened. Read more…