1. I lose trust in those who are there to help
2. My self esteem and belief in myself are diminished
3. I lose time for myself and others
4. I lose faith in my instincts
5. Money is lost
6. My energy is depleted
7. I lose hope in my future
8. My concentration is severely diminished
9. I lose my ability to allow nurturing foods into my body
10. My voice falls silent.
Last summer I was on my friends gorgeous sail boat. It was 90 degrees out and we stopped to swim. Immediately I went downstairs to put my bathing suit on and as I was changing, I heard the others talking about whether it would be cold or not, or if there were sharks in the water.
As I listened to them talk something came over me, an urge. There are lots of times in life that we are supposed to suppress our urges because they are socially unacceptable. But there are also lots of times that we suppress urges that would cause us to be free and experience pure, unadulterated fun.
This was one of those times. I had the urge to run up the stairs and jump off the side of the boat without stopping so I did it — cold and sharky water and all.
The second I hit the water everyone on the boat leaped in after me. Some even still had their clothes on.
Later, one of the guys on the boat pulled me aside and said that it was one of the most spiritual things he'd ever experienced.
Simple as that: I jumped, they followed, we all had fun.
Spirituality — try it.
It helps you shine the light on what's really goin on. When I was little, my Mum dressed me like a boy. I always wanted to be sexy but because of this I had really bad identity problems.
I always thought I was ugly.
That, coupled with trying to be a supah dupah good girl, made for a exhaustive navigation through reality.
I had friends steal my boyfriends all the time. They would say, "Sue, guys check you out all the time and you don't even notice" and I thought that was good because it meant that I wasn't vain.
Well it instead made me lose all the opportunities for a guy because they would go after them and get them.
I said this on WTF with Marc Maron and I'll say it again.
One of the most profound experiences that I ever had in therapy was when I was telling a story about a cute guy at the gym who was hanging all over me.
As I was tellin it, I mentioned that the girl behind the desk was all over him.
I made it sound like I didn't care because I thought I didn't.
Well all my therapist did was shift in her chair and say, "Well, someone's got to get the last piece of cake" and I felt a rage from the tip of my toes to the top of my head.
I was like "I WANT THE LAST PEICE OF CAKE!"
I had never tapped into my desire before, let alone my sexual desire but boy when I did!
Since then, I have learned how to have desire and to express it.
I can happily report that I finally feel really, really sexy.
That being said, I am realizing how many guys have thought that throughout my life it has to do with my looks, but so much more.
It's my generosity, my fun, my love, my sense of humor, my body, my brains, my strength, etc.
So here's where this all comes into play.
I was dating a guy, who to the naked eye, appeared to be a sexual human being.
But when I sent him sexy pics, he would ignore them.
It was OK because I thought maybe he's just not into that, but my second thought was, but every other guy I've ever sent a sexy pic to said "more" right away.
It's funny as I type this I wonder if those thoughts were reversed.
First, I probably thought, that's weird, then I justified it by defending him.
Then there was another time where we we totally acting out a sexy scene: he was shaving his beard while I watched. (That's all I'll say about that for the sake of privacy.)
Well we got into bed and.................................he fell asleep.
My first thought was, oh he must be tired, then my second thought was, I've never been in bed with a guy who could not keep his hands off me." And my third thought was, this is the beginning of this relationship so this can't be good.
Again, the thoughts were probably switched. My first thought was probably, what's wrong with this guy? Usually guys can't keep their hands off of me. Then the second thought was to justify it, under the guise of bein a supah dupah good girl.
I write this not to toot my own horn. I write this to show that if my self-esteem was lower I would have spent the rest of the relationship trying to prove that I was desirable, blaming myself for whatever his block was, and squelching my own desires to make him feel comfortable, which in turn would squelch us both.
Sex is life.
I did try to talk about it to no avail, cause that 's what right sized, regular, good girls do.
I wanted a sexual relationship, and he wasn't willing to talk about it, so I was able to make the decision to end the relationship.
"It's you, it's not me" is what I said when I ended it.
Marc puts aside his fear of Boston Natives to welcome the thickly accented and very funny Sue Costello to the garage. Sue talks about how the bottom dropped out on her rising comedy career and how an unlikely role in The Fighter prepped her for a comeback.
Be still and I know that I am. Even a star needs to pull in on itself in order to pulsate out. Sometimes one of the hardest actions in the world is to do nothing.
Silence.
It takes every muscle in my body.
When provoked and rightly so, the first instinct it to retaliate.
But in the long run, I’m the one who suffers.
Serena Williams attacked the judge at the US Open this weekend.
She flew off the handle.
She was mad, she thought the judge was being hard on her because she was black.
That was her past, being projected into the present, to create an unhappy future.
She was so emotional that she based what was goin on on something old in her nervous system.
An old wound.
You see the judge made the legal call.
But Serena was so emotional that she couldn't even stop herself to think for a second.
She reacted from her wound.
She knows the rules. She knows that any distraction during a time like this can be fatal.
Yet, even if she knew it, even if she cared, her lack of impulse control, her need to protect that wound, made her lose that match.
It's a fact.
Not only that, but she tried to bully that judge, to scare her.
But what do we know about bullies?
They are dumb. Not the person, but the bully behavior makes the person act like a dummy.
They are scared, so they scare others. But if the other person has more internal fortitude, if they have healed their wound and they don't feed into the bully, the bully crumbles in on themselves.
If the bully has nothing to push up against, they have to implode.
Fact.
Meditation is not just some weird thing that only wicked spiritual people do. It's a practice that you can take and apply to your everyday human life.
It actually helps you win, because most people have impulse control problems. They have wounds.
So, if you are the one who can remain still while others around you are acting out, you win in the long run.
Internal fortitude means guts; guts to care enough about yourself to protect yourself from a bully, which in the long run protects the bully because they have to suffer the consequences of their own behavior.
You can sit and listen and react to what is REALLY going on. You can stand up with your guts and sometime standing up means sitting down.
This is how the wound heals.
Fact.
The way to do this is to clean out all the things about you're personality that you don't think are part of who you are authentically.
Things, behaviors that you have developed to survive.
I have a secret: those things you developed to help you survive are turning on you and ruining your life.
Find your guts.
The ugly is not you. It's the wound you've created, the puss needs to get to the air to heal.
Once it heals, only the real you is left. Your guts — which is God, which has been in you all along.
The compass that will help you navigate a better life.
And that is when the miracle happens. You are actually listening, not projecting your past into your present to make an awful future.
Slow down. It might hurt at first to not say everything that's on your mind, but once you practice, you might even enjoy only sayin the things that actually mean something to you.
Then the words you say or don't say will match up with the authentic you to create a future different from your past.
And maybe, just maybe, others will slow down too because usually when you set a boundary with someone who has no impulse control they are so grateful because they can't do it for themselves.
Most people don't care enough about themselves to say something.
That is how you stand up to a bully and then the wound of the world begins to heal as well.
…and I'm burnin up for your love. Just now had a second to sit down and write. I've been so busy. I performed Minus 32 Million Words on Nantucket and they LOVED it. I'm so excited, but most importantly I'm blown away by the fact that I'm doing this all by myself. I have no representation (except God) and I am re-building my career one step at a time with lots of love.
The main reason for this is that I have worked so hard to become a person who can be around people, a person who cares about people but doesn't take abuse.
I ask myself why would I have someone else handle me for me?
I am responsible for my own life, for living in the world exactly how God made me.
Lately so many people have been telling me how smart I am. They have told me that my whole adult life.
In high school they told me differently. Also, as a child, there were many adults who didn't want me to realize how smart I was because (a) I would see and understand their bad behavior and (b) I would not take care of them and their bad behavior if I did.
They squelched me, but really they didn't — I squelched me.
I took my own fiah and turned it on myself and burned down everything around me.
I would hear people say that I was smart in my adult life and I would go to bed.
The anger was unbearable. I would think, "they were wrong about me."
Now I go out into the world more with those words, "I am smart" and they give me the confidence to keep my fiah burning in a healthy way.
I'm proud to say that instead of smoldering in the dark I'm setting the world on fiah in a contained, concise, purposeful way.
LOVE IS MY FIAH and I love me first, then I can't help but love you.
Also, feel free to light your fiah off of mine — just don't try to take it all or we'll both burn to the ground!
..but I get up again. The other day I was on a great clip with my career, feeling really good and I got a phone call that one of my friends was in the hospital and they didn't know if he was going to make it through the day.
It hit me like a ton of bricks.
I have had bad news before but something about that phone call, that idea that I could get another one telling me either he's gonna live or he's gonna die.
I was so uncomfortable the entire day. I was prickly, if you will.
It's easy for me to go on every day spouting my thoughts and beliefs about hope, but it’s times like these where faith is tempted.
I always think to myself when I am in pain, don't make anything worse.
Whether or not the pain is inflicted by a person or an event, the pain is still the same.
Being able to tolerate it without taking it out on someone else is the test that I always give myself.
My friend turned the corner and is going to be OK.
That's the phone call I got instead of the other one.
I am just starting to get my bearings back today and it's almost a week since I got the news.
Okay you wanna hear something CRAZY? An earthquake just hit the East Coast as I'm writing about getting knocked down.
My book shelves were shaking, I was on the phone with my friend and I felt the apartment shake then a few minutes later I saw the book shelves shaking.
So I ran down the stairs outside and the people there didn't feel anything.
Hmm…
Just goes to show you: what affects one person might not affect another person.
That being said I am affected by everything all the time. I'm sitting here scared right now and my first thought is, don't make anything worse.
And as for me — as for my friend — we are hopeful because as long as there is breath there is hope.
We get knocked down, but we get up again — even though it might take a few days to regroup.
