So far, So Fast

This post is dedicated to my Fastgirls, without whom I would not have felt the urgency to be authentic. You inspire, humble and amaze me with all that you bring to the world. Thank you.

Today marks the end of the 90 Day Be the Expert Challenge. As I type this I am overcome with emotion. This post represents the last 'required' post of the last set of tasks for the challenge. I missed the 9PM deadline, rendering me incomplete with the challenge. As usual, I procrastinated and I find myself writing this post to complete the challenge. I feel a mix of emotions but mostly a calm about not having completed the challenge but still having had my life transformed by this work--even in the face of enormous disappointment with myself. I was the only person out of 13 women left in the challenge to be incomplete at this last check in. What can I say about that? I was being authentic. (Insert ironic smiley here.)

The last 90 days have taught me a lot about what I value, how I prioritize my time and what I am willing to do to be true to myself. I fell into authenticity as an area of expertise and as a life practice, as a behavior because this is what the challenge has demanded. It demanded from the beginning that I be clear about my value and values, that I commit to taking action and spending time with my community of Fastgirls, and that I was consistent in each of these things.

Fastgirls helped me refine my passions and create my path forward at a time when things were a bit murky. Fastgirls surfaced the framework for my forthcoming leadership curriculum. In a year of great loss, gave me an expansive sense of self, which is invaluable in a way I never could have imagined. I came to Fastgirls looking for some idea about what would vaguely be next for me and what I leave this challenge with is near perfect clarity about what I am called to do.

When I was 11 years old, I participated in a life-changing leadership development program and the homework component was at times overwhelming. Some nights, at 11PM, when I'd had all I thought I could stand, my mother would offer me a glass of water, rub my back and tell me I could read another page, write another paragraph. From prep school to college, from college to grad school and at every job in between, my mother was there with a word of support and hand to hold.

Though my mother died almost 9 months ago to the day, I have no doubt in my mind that she has been with me these last 90 days, encouraging me to write every blog post, present in every letter of gratitude I've written to poets who've changed my life. She has seen me grow and change in this work, defining for myself a path that she always saw for me when she gave me journals, imploring me to write, or tell me to challenge myself, ensuring that I'd grow. For all that I have gained these last 90 days, I also dedicate this note to my mother, my very first Fastgirl.

Bridges

Last night, I had the great fortune of hosting two of my closest girlfriends at my apartment. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have been a night of good dinner, good wine, and even better conversation -- and it was, it just happened amongst boxes, piles of paper and long-forgotten dry-cleaning. Most important was the fact that it was actually an intervention. I had called these women over to help me climb out of 'my bag' as my grandmother might say.

This 'bag' was and is a psychic space that I find myself in after the death of my mother and the dissolution of (what I thought was) a very serious relationship. After months of walking around boxes and stacking and re-stacking mail on the 'other' side of the bed, I had had enough. I had moved in almost 6 months ago and the living room (where I used to host all manner of delicious and engaging events) looked like I had just arrived yesterday. My bookshelves, although fully unpacked, were teeming with tchotchkes and unread volumes begging to be let go. My desk's vertical filing system had been woefully neglected and I was breeding dust-bunnies around the baseboards. Needless to say, a cluttered space reflects a cluttered mind. I needed help, and quickly.

The funny thing about grief is that it's just numbing enough to make you think you're functioning. You're getting up, you're going to work, the bills get paid, the laundry gets done, but you are numb really. The little things that seem normal or even enjoyable in some regard begin to slip, like coking for yourself, "I'll just order pizza again," or things that are never reasonable become reasonable in your mind "I'll sort through the last 8 issues of The Chronicle of Higher Education this weekend, in my free time." There is no basis in reality that you cannot or should not have pizza for dinner 3 times a week (at least not topped with sausage and pepperoni - no wonder your blood pressure is high!) You can't believe that it will take you longer than 30 minutes to get through approximately 800 pages of musings and articles on the world of academe. You are young, you are smart, you have been to school -- for a loooooong time -- you have run races, and done fasts. You are indestructible and 'on it' -- until you realize you are not. Well you might be, but you are also human, and you are broken and you are standing at the shore of very choppy waters trying to cross over into the place that is more familiar to you, the land of 'Get-it-togetherville."

Enter the bridge, or in this case, the bridges. They arrived relatively promptly (by our sister standards at least), bearing the requisite libations and offering hugs full of, "Don't worry, we're here and we'll get this done." I ushered them up the stairs into the mess. There had been no parties, no dinners, no casual get-togethers in 6 months. No socializing, no nothing. But here they were, my girls. Years of friendship, gallons of tears and reels of funny moments danced between us as they laid themselves down over my cluttered space and mind and mapped out the next 6 months of how I was going to 'deal'. First, we talked about their recent and impending nuptials over full glasses of Montepulciano and plates of Pad Thai. But then we finished our meal and got back to the task at hand. One opened another bottle of wine, the other went to my whiteboard and immediately started to identify what would be short and long term tasks. We covered wellness first ("How are you?" and "How is your family?" "Are you getting enough sleep? Of course you aren't.") When they were sufficiently convinced that I was just sad, not suicidal and that a little organization and a few words of encouragement were what I needed most, we could get back to things like, "Do you need two Mardi Gras masks? Really?"

I won't bore you with more details of the night, but two things are worth highlighting. 1) My mess was not nearly as big or insurmountable as I thought it was and 2) It took my girlfriends, responding to my clarion call to lovingly, and objectively to tell me "No, this is not ANYTHING like that hoarder show. Girl have you SEEN that show??" and remind me that grief is a process and a journey that no matter how smart or determined I am, I cannot accelerate. It simply cannot be done. This is what the sturdy, beautifully made, majestic bridges told me as they laid themselves down over my life. So with that, as we organized the Chronicles for recycling, hung up all the cardigans, and finished the wine, I started to cross over the choppy water, thankful that I didn't have to swim.