Nancy Colasurdo | Writer - Columnist - Life Coach

Thank you, Jim Carrey

by Nancy Colasurdo on April 3, 2013

Dear Jim –

I’ll be honest. Most of your comedy since the fabulous In Living Color hasn’t resonated with me much. I prefer your work done in skits. But events of this last week have put me squarely in the category of Jim Carrey fan. A fan of the man even more than the entertainer.

By Francois Polito via Wikimedia Commons

The satirical video you did that went live on Funny or Die last week, well, it was brilliant. For those who missed it, “Cold, Dead Hand” is a play on Charlton Heston’s infamous declaration that we’d have to pry his precious firearm from his cold, dead hands. You made it into a song featured in a Hee Haw spoof in the video.

“But the psychos win no matter what you do, because they’re always gonna buy more guns than you,” you sing with a golly-gee smile in a cowboy getup.

It’s clever, well executed and spot on funny. And it in no way calls for disarming anyone or repealing the Second Amendment.

I suppose that is why it was so astonishing – or maybe not, given the drama-filled climate on this topic these days – to see so many people projecting those very messages on to the video. The vitriol in the reactions showed that the satire in your piece went zooming over their heads and the paranoia in this nation regarding guns isn’t subsiding any time soon. As long as there are people benefitting financially from keeping the belief alive that gun control = gun elimination, we’ll continue to be polarized and talk at each other instead of to each other.

So mind-numbing.

But your video performance and the ensuing reaction and then your response to that have been an apt reminder of how difficult it is to have a reasonable discussion about guns in the United States. Every day my Facebook feed is filled with untruths about what might potentially become law regarding firearms. Are there some hysterics on the side of gun control? Absolutely. But there is something decidedly more eerie about hysterics who are armed to the gills.

I keep shaking my head at those who call you a hypocrite because you have armed bodyguards. What does that have to do with the message in the video? You don’t call for the elimination of guns. You make a statement about the unhealthy attachment some Americans have to their guns, as it’s clearly not just about sport or protection. It’s identity. It’s insidious fear of some kind of impending revolt.

“These thugs, though menacing, are a minority but they will have their way if good people don’t step forward now and make a difference,” you write in a follow-up piece published on The Huffington Post. “Every American has the right to speak their mind. Every American has the right to bear arms. But it is up to every American to draw the line when it comes to the type of guns that are considered a reasonable means of self-defense.”

You have called attention to that angry element that muffles the voices of responsible gun owners. Kudos for exposing them in a brighter light and in turn showing us why it is more important than ever to address gun violence and brainstorm potential solutions.

While so many dismiss the opinions of celebrities on the bigger issues of our time, I find it courageous when you and your colleagues speak out with passion. You have a lot to lose, so it must mean you feel strongly about a cause when you go public and get vocal. There is this feeling that you couldn’t repress it any longer, regardless of the cost to your popularity or your pocketbook.

“And to the bullies who will try to marginalize and discredit me by saying, ‘Shut up, you’re just an actor,’ while they brag about what a great president the ACTOR Ronald Reagan was, who threaten me with the demise of my acting career and much worse, I say SO BE IT!” you write in The Huffington Post. “How shallow do they think I am? I would trade my money, my fame, my reputation and legacy if there were the slightest chance of preventing the anguish of another Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, or Sandy Hook Elementary School. I ask you, truly, what manner of human being would not?”

I wish I didn’t know the answer to that question.

Sincerely,

Nancy Colasurdo

{ 0 comments }

The Whole Gay Thing

by Nancy Colasurdo on March 27, 2013

GAME PLAN:

“The bottom line is, what does a player’s sexual preference have to do with her ability to play basketball?”

I wrote that in a front-page Sunday sports column on December 15, 1991 while working for The Times of Trenton. It was about Penn State women’s basketball coach Rene Portland and her team policy that no lesbians were allowed to play for the Lady Lions.

Four years later, in another Sunday column, I wrote this:

“There is a church in Philadelphia where Greg Louganis would not be welcome. No kidding.” You know, because homosexuals had “abandoned the way of the Lord.”

Back then it was mostly about AIDS and Magic Johnson and Arthur Ashe. There was buzz about whether Rock Hudson doing a love scene with Linda Evans on the set of Dynasty had endangered her life. I wrote about all of this in the latter piece.

I’m not sure why I was moved to literally pull print articles stored in airtight containers out of my personal archives (and date myself in the process) today, but I suspect it was partly about feeling a bit of pride in all of this progress that’s happening around me regarding gay marriage and, truly, attitudes around that.

Before it was the hot topic and there were Facebook photos to switch to red, I was writing about homophobia. As a sports writer for a mid-sized newspaper in the 1990s there was plenty of opportunity to call people on their tunnel vision and their use of religion to defend bigotry and I reveled in that. Maybe it feels a little jarring – if wonderful — now to be part of the groundswell as opposed to one irreverent voice in the wilderness.

I’m happy to be living in this amazing time. So much change is afoot and I find that so many in my generation have had to keep up in a myriad of ways. It is heady. On the issue of gay rights, many of us went the way of former President Bill Clinton.

“… Mr. Clinton’s journey from signing the Defense of Marriage Act to repudiating it mirrors larger changes in society as same-sex marriage has gone from a fringe idea to one with a majority,” Peter Baker wrote in Monday’s New York Times.

Yes. What he said. Regardless of our feeling back then that our gay brothers and sisters deserved the same rights as us, the marriage aspect was still fringe. In retrospect it doesn’t make much sense, but nonetheless here we are – the majority — embracing it with a feeling that it’s a no-brainer.

I’m certainly not the first to write that in 50 years this will all seem kind of comical. That we ever gave a hoot who Ellen DeGeneres was attracted to will seem silly. That loving couples as parents have to be male-female.

All of that, I think, is what makes it infinitely easier for me to bear the excruciating conversations happening all over the country right now via the Internet and otherwise. We are all hyper-sensitive and that is a vital part of sweeping change. I have seen gay people I love take exception to comments that are not at all anti-gay. I have seen conservative Christians I love express a kind of sheltered and, frankly, condescending view that has no place in decisions regarding the laws of our land. The Supreme Court is not deciding religious doctrine. Dial up the Vatican if you want Brownie points for quoting the Bible.

I wish we could all just take a deep breath and chill. I’m not about to start disowning people who are not evolving at the same rate as the majority. This is not about that, is it? I’m not comfortable getting up in someone’s grill when the whole idea here is to widen our perspective of love.

When I wrote my Greg Louganis piece back in 1995, I had just seen his emotional 20/20 interview with Barbara Walters and the footage of some of his dives. Here’s how I ended the column:

“I saw footage of one magnificent dive after another and felt my eyes get watery. I thought of the young people who viewed that splendor and were inspired to take up the sport. I thought of Greg Louganis, who detailed a troubled existence, referring to diving as his ‘salvation’ and how, right at that moment, I was witnessing one momentous save after another in the life of this complex man. I wondered if the members of that church in Philly and their ilk were watching. And I wondered if they were feeling.”

I don’t think I could express it any better now.

{ 0 comments }

Pink, Parenting and Pre-Adolescent Lingerie

by Nancy Colasurdo on March 25, 2013

GAME PLAN:

I love Pink. I particularly love how the anger that sometimes comes through her music fuels my workouts when I’m in that place. In fact, I think my thighs are a little smaller because of this very real and very gritty entertainer.

Perhaps it is because I have opted out of the whole parenting ride that I am completely appalled at something that happened at a Pink concert last week that has been getting a lot of positive attention from mommy bloggers. In the middle of her concert in Philadelphia, Pink stopped mid song (a really good one, mind you – “Who Knew”) to address a crying child in the audience.

To be clear from the start, I have no issue with Pink’s handling of the moment. It was human and lovely of her to reach out. But what seems much overlooked here is that this singer was so distracted by the distressed child that she stopped singing. How incredibly selfish is it to bring a child to this kind of event? Are you kidding me? If you can afford a ticket to see Pink, you can afford a babysitter.

And I’m only getting started.

The appeal of Pink is her authenticity. What comes through her music is that she loves deeply and rages wildly. And she’s vulgar. Sometimes I dig vulgar. A lyric from one of her most popular songs:

“Midnight I’m drunk I don’t give a fuck.”

I love this stuff cranking in my ears. I do. Makes me go faster on the bike. Pump the iron harder.

But is this appropriate for a child?

For those unfamiliar with Pink, the aforementioned line is from “U + Ur Hand” and the main verse goes like this:

I’m not here for your entertainment
You don’t really want to mess with me tonight
Just stop and take a second
I was fine before you walked into my life
‘Cause you know it’s over
Before it began
Keep your drink, just give me the money
It’s just you and your hand tonight.

Look at that last line again. Are you explaining to your child as that refrain loops over and over that she’s telling some guy in a bar to get lost and go home and masturbate? What a fun theme to discuss over mac and cheese and chocolate milk after the show.

I wouldn’t be this worked up over one example of one parent exhibiting this kind of judgment. In fact, after a friend who was at the concert posted about it on Facebook, I expressed surprise there was a child there and moved on. But since then I’ve come across a few more mentions of it and the tone is always a kind of exultation at how Pink is a mommy, too. I have come across actual conversations where one person after another thinks it’s just peachy to share this kind of experience with a kid.

Yes, Pink is a mother and used that sensibility to go out of her way to be kind in the moment when she could have just as easily embarrassed the parent in the middle of an arena. That is to be applauded.

But I saw one columnist who actually took it as a sign to reconsider leaving her kids home when she goes out to events like this. Please, mommy dearest, stick with your original gut feeling that it isn’t fair to you or the child or the people around you to take that kind of chance in a place of adult entertainment. To boot, there is plenty of time in later years to teach your child how to ward off unwanted advances.

In a welcome contrast to this idea of raising children who are three-going-on-25, there is a piece circulating social media right now that is a letter written by a father to Victoria’s Secret. It beautifully and intelligently addresses the company’s new line aimed at middle school girls.

“The line will be called ‘Bright Young Things’ and will feature ‘lace black cheeksters’ with the word ‘Wild’ emblazoned on them, green and white polka-dot hipsters screen printed with ‘Feeling Lucky?’ and a lace trim thong with the words, ‘Call me on the front,” Rev. Evan Dolive writes. “As a dad, this makes me sick.”

As well it should. I see so many of the parents in my life struggling with these issues regularly. Sexy clothes aimed at 8-year-olds. Sexy pop culture choices. It’s troubling. The demand has to be coming from parents, though. A power like Victoria’s Secret wouldn’t be churning out these kinds of garments if they weren’t sure they were meeting a demand. Those panties will sell. The comments on Dolive’s piece suggest as much.

He goes on to write, “I want my daughter (and every girl) to be faced with tough decisions in her formative years of adolescence. Decisions like should I be a doctor or a lawyer? Should I take calculus as a junior or a senior? Do I want to go to Texas A&M or University of Texas or some Ivy League School? Should I raise awareness for slave trafficking or lack of water in developing nations? There are many, many more questions that all young women should be asking themselves … not will a boy (or girl) like me if I wear a ‘call me’ thong?”

Of course for some girls the inevitable question might be, “Mommy, can I wear my new Victoria’s Secret thong to the Pink concert?”

Just fab.

{ 2 comments }

Anatomy of a transition

by Nancy Colasurdo on March 21, 2013

GAME PLAN:

First comes the shock, right? Bam. There’s change. Not change you initiated, but change that feels like it’s been foisted on you.

I have come to learn for me that’s ultimately the best kind. Emphasis here on ultimately. It’s rarely clear immediately that this is going to turn out to be beneficial or even life-transforming. In fact it’s jarring and it angers and frustrates me.

Photo courtesy of FreeImages

But then … liberation with a bravado edge. A little bit of jitters. Exuberance. Anxiety. Every day those ingredients whir as if in a blender and mix a new concoction for the day. As winter (eventually) gives way to spring here in the Northeast, I am downing my daily elixir with gusto.

Because here’s what I’ve learned in the last decade or so since being laid off from a television producing job in 2002. Back then I was panicked because I had never left a job on any terms but my own. It was unthinkable to NOT work for a company that was giving me benefits. I was paralyzed at the idea of COBRA, the great unknown.

Now?

I am an independent contractor. While I made that change a long time ago, I was still carrying around some of the old mindset and it came bubbling to the surface when a long-standing, steady freelance gig came to an end. I reverted to an ‘unemployed’ mentality pretty quickly.

Then a few days into it, it hit me. I already pay my own health insurance. It’s a fixed amount. No reason to panic.

“You are not unemployed, Nancy,” a friend said. “You are an independent contractor who lost a big client.”

Of course. Duh.

But let’s take that further. While the conventional mindset is that it’s time to “find” a job, in my case that’s not true. It’s time to create income. It’s time to dig in.

Self-employment with the focus on ‘self.’ Self-generated. Self-growth. Self-motivated. Self-sustaining. Columns self-published – after all, am I not a natural columnist? Why would I depend on someone else to validate that?

That – all lined up and layered — is empowering.

I have been working a lot and it’s come with an escalating enthusiasm that feels like a new beginning. I make a point of building in small and large breaks in the midst of all the productivity. A day at a museum here, a 16-minute meditation with Oprah and Deepak there. Every day invaluable Morning Pages a la Julia Cameron. Several days a week glorious workouts at the gym. Since Hurricane Sandy, about once a week I go to Mass on a weekday at 12:10, more than anything to force myself into spiritual stillness for 30 minutes.

A few weeks ago I worked my way through a stack of old magazines before discarding them, looking for images or words to add to my evolving vision board. I wound up with so much beautiful material that I realized my existing vision board was earnest, but reflected the short-term. Excited and seeking a clean palate, I wound up creating a whole new vision on my bathroom door.

What emerged was not a concrete goal, but a recognition of a higher consciousness and a more ambitious way of looking at my life and what was before me. Shortly thereafter I started to feel as if I was being led, as if there is a breadcrumb trail laid out for me to follow. I am being nudged, whispered to, cajoled.

Updating my bios on social media sites turned into an enlightening exercise as I thought about what I wanted to convey. Each conversation with friends far and near has provided some kind of high value. For example, one talk last week made me yearn to teach again. The following day I conceived the idea for a class called “What Are You Waiting For?” that would do for enrollees what my first course in The Artist’s Way did for me back in 1999. I had this nagging feeling back then that there was something more. Turns out I was right.

We need to find our definition of living. I think I’ll be fine-tuning mine for the rest of my life and that makes me really happy.

For now, this day, this moment, I’m keeping ear to ground, eyes open, heart and soul welcoming, mind cooking like crazy.

Self-employment in all its glory.

{ 2 comments }

No empathy for rapists? Really?

by Nancy Colasurdo on March 18, 2013

GAME PLAN:

You know how sometimes you click on a link because you can tell from the headline that the story is going to piss you off? And you know how sometimes it makes you go, “wait … hold on … no” instead?

That’s me. Today.

It seems there’s a pretty significant amount of outrage at CNN’s handling of the coverage of convictions of two young men found guilty of raping a young woman in Steubenville, Ohio. The objections I’m reading center around the network’s alleged lamenting of the boys’ promising lives being snuffed out by this criminal act.

Intrigued, I’ve been watching the clips and reading the comments. However, they did not inspire outrage in me. This feels significant because most of the folks who are upset are people I’d typically agree with on such matters.

Not this time.

I watched the coverage and I saw some empathy for these young men, yes. But to me, rather than take focus off the victim, what I saw was the complete, refreshing antithesis of ‘boys will be boys’ unfolding in a courtroom. I saw it as a wakeup call to any parent of a teen-aged boy who in any way has been cultivating that mindset in his or her son.

“Son, take a look at this. You think being a varsity football player means you’re untouchable? That you can act like another human being is your play toy? That it’s OK to violate another person just because you’re out-of-control drunk or because she is? Think again. Is it worth living with the crime for the rest of your life? Not just in jail time and being tagged with a ‘sex offender’ label, but on your conscience day after day, year after year? Kiss the scholarships good-bye. Kiss freedom good-bye.”

I don’t see how feeling profoundly sad at watching a young man break down in tears at what he’s done means that we feel any less horribly for the victim and her family. His father, a man with an alcohol problem, took responsibility for not having been there for this boy. How do we not wish to God that had been different?

I’m not making excuses for crime. I think the judge made the right call. I can’t imagine being in the young woman’s shoes and having to repair her life after such a public airing of this assault.

But why can’t we have empathy for both? One human to another? That, to me, is more pro-feminist than only surrounding the victim with much-needed support and forgetting that societally we need to address this big picture. This attitude that some boys have that girls are a sum of sexual parts and it’s OK to help themselves – guess what? It comes from somewhere. They didn’t develop it in the womb.

It is tragic that a girl was raped. It is also tragic that two boys thought it was acceptable to rape. These aren’t mutually exclusive statements.

Like it or not, teen-agers are going to continue to drink too much. Too many adults set the example, think it’s no big deal, glamorize it. So that’s our realistic starting point. When we teach kids, we have to operate from the place that assumes they will be in a position of feeling out of control at some point in their high school and college lives.

By the media not showing the consequences, the impact on those boys’ lives, their own seeming horror at what they’d done, we’d be doing the victim and other victims an injustice. Without nuance, it would be easier to write them off as anomalies, “bad” people not worthy of our time or attention as opposed to “there but for the grace of God goes my kid” or “there but for the grace of God goes me when so-and-so at that party last week took a girl in the alley and wanted me to join in.”

You think that’s not happening all over America right now? Please.

Back in the 1990s when a girl was sexually assaulted by high school boys in Glen Ridge, N.J. and it was found that a mob mentality contributed to it, there were plenty of parents on their knees thanking God their kid, on that night, had the sense to walk away. That is fact.

“I’m afraid people are going to walk away and say this was all about Steubenville,” Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine told CNN. “It’s not. It’s a cultural problem.”

Darned right.

If we are spiritually and morally centered, don’t we ideally want to see those boys emotionally ripped apart by what they’ve done? Don’t we want anyone who contributed to their upbringing having to ask themselves how in the world it came to this?

I say air it. Let’s hear what these boys have lost in their lives. Let’s hear it shouted from the rooftops, loud and clear. Anyone have a megaphone?

That 16-year-old girl and so many others deserve to hear it reverberating over and over again.

{ 6 comments }

Butterflies and the Creator

by Nancy Colasurdo on March 15, 2013

GAME PLAN:

It wasn’t planned, this day of mixing spirit and science. It just happened.

My friend Kathi and I set out for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) to see the Butterfly Conservatory exhibit. We wandered through the tropical little enclosure as they flitted and swooped around us or simply blended into the plants that filled the space.

As I gazed at these light creatures, from the speckled to the solid, the almost woven-looking wings of some and the more papery of others, I kept thinking in divine terms. Each one so perfect in design and engineering. Delicate and discerning. Some looked manic, others peaceful.

I am admittedly a bit jittery when they swoop, but I slowly made my way through, letting my eyes drink it all in. Kathi pointed out the blue morpho ones, which were so gorgeous and captivating I was happy to later read they are said to signify joy, happiness and even luck.

We made our way to some of the permanent exhibitions, first the Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians. Going from an enormous alligator to a tiny lizard and seeing the intricate aspects of how they hunt or reproduce I just kept saying, “How could anyone question the existence of a Great Creator?” It was a bit jarring to feel the escalation of my spiritual response as we continued from case to case of frogs and lizards and snakes.

I hadn’t been to this museum in over a decade, so I also had a hankering to see the famed blue whale. Dwarfed by the 94-foot long mammal, I was hit immediately with this – we are specks in the Universe. Somehow there was comfort in that, being a miniscule part of a much, much larger production.

The folds of the walrus’ skin, the thick fur of the polar bear just kept reinforcing this notion for me. I am in a place of great transition in my life right now, so perhaps that accounts for why each phase felt like a heightened experience. Attention paid to every blessed thing – what a rush.

We left the museum for a late lunch at a nearby French bistro. Sitting in a booth in the bar area, we saw on the television that there was an animated crowd at the Vatican and that just-elected Pope Francis was speaking.

Science to spirit within the span of an afternoon.

This spiritual moment in time came with the pageantry of smoke and embroidered robes. Euphoric people celebrated the historic day, unspoken hope that something in this institution will shift, that Pope Francis will bring open eyes, open ears, open heart.

And the Francis, oh the Francis. I sit here writing this with a laminated St. Francis of Assisi card propped on my computer. It is always there, reminding me to focus on understanding rather than trying to be understood. What a fitting message and mission for this new Pope.

“Like a life-term prisoner who wakes up one morning to find he has been pardoned and is free to leave his dank, dingy cell, Francis made a sudden break with his past and the cares of this world when he embraced his new life of service to God and humanity,” writes author John Michael Talbot (with Steve Rabey) in The Lessons of St. Francis.

It feels special, this Francis thing.

In retrospect, the fact that St. Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of animals brings me back to that feeling I kept getting at the museum. We – living, breathing beings — are all connected. We have a responsibility to look out for each other. By virtue of choosing this name, perhaps Pope Francis gets that.

The most aware among us, I think, see not just the connection but the complete and utter melding of spirit and science. There is no division unless we create one. These words from Albert Einstein in The Writer’s Almanac the day after our museum excursion resonated in a new way:

“I’m not much with people, and I’m not a family man. I want my peace. I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.”

The challenge before all of us – not just this Pope – is to answer the call to doing our part, to paint our own wee corner of the world so that when we’re done it looks like the most magnificent butterfly wing. Or at least I like to think of it that way.

Talbot wrote, “In everything created, Francis saw the handiwork of the Creator.”

Suddenly, miraculously, I’m seeing it, too.

{ 0 comments }

My new favorite feminist: Beyonce

by Nancy Colasurdo on March 12, 2013

GAME PLAN:

You know who I’m finding really refreshing these days? Beyonce. Yes, she of the gyrating hips and long legs.

I’ve never met her, but she seems like a lovely person. I’m not a particular fan of her music, although some of the tunes are catchy. However, I am a big admirer of her focused work ethic and her complete and utter comfort with her body.

As I watched her HBO film, Life is But a Dream, I kept thinking that the reason this woman sizzles is because she is comfortable with herself as a woman. That’s morally, emotionally, artistically, maternally, intellectually, spiritually and sexually. Don’t read that as 100 percent confident 100 percent of the time. We’re all insecure at times. Read it as more wholly integrated than a lot of us (yes, this writer included).

Contrast that with, say, the seemingly endless discussions these days around the work-life balance issue of the put-upon American woman. I am, make no mistake about it, a feminist. I don’t apologize for it and I don’t long for a “re-branding” of it, as so many have been calling for lately. I spent the bulk of my 15 years in sports journalism covering women’s sports and advocating for women’s issues. I’m all in.

But I digress.

Because of Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer’s decision to ban telecommuting there and have a nursery for her infant son in the office, as well as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, the discussions are starting to sound like an endless loop of – I’m sorry to say – whining. To be clear, I’m not calling Mayer and Sandberg whiners; I’m talking about the ensuing charged exchanges about whether it’s elitist of them to address the rest of the females in the workforce, about companies not being sympathetic to the realities of family living, and about whether women can “have it all.”

So tedious.

I’m not making light of the fact that we all face some very real choices in our lives and that those of women often differ from the ones men must make. But there comes a point where we have to collectively concede that some things are about arithmetic. We cannot be in two places at once. There is only so much time in a day. Not every job can be done from home. The number of women earning college degrees has tipped over the half mark, but that doesn’t mean suddenly half of the Fortune 500 CEOs will be female. Some change is glacial.

The women’s movement never promised that by making our career choices more feasible and attainable it would also smooth over all of the ripple effects of those choices. With the recent 50^th anniversary of Betty Friedan’s wonderful The Feminine Mystique, I was brought back to a moment in 1996 when I was auditing a women’s studies class at the University of Michigan. At age 36, I was by far the oldest student in the room and I almost had to pick up my chin off the floor when one young woman attacked Friedan’s work because it only gave the viewpoint of suburban middle-class white women.

And so that negates her having the courage to speak out about a “malady” that was afflicting so many women in her acquaintance? Why do we get so caught up in one person or one book having to cover all the bases or else be dismissed?

Can’t Mayer be one example of how one woman is handling leadership? We could hear what’s she doing and say, “Wow, maybe it is possible for me to get to the highest of leadership levels while growing my family, but it may take a proverbial village.” Or, perhaps, get some perspective on what we don’t want to do – “I would never want to take on that much at once. I need to consider that in my career and family planning.”

By dismissing Sandberg’s story or advice as fine for a privileged Harvard grad but not the average Jane, aren’t we closing ourselves off to thinking big in whatever way that means to us? So we’re not all going to have Sandberg’s career trajectory, but isn’t she right when she talks about young women often pulling themselves out of contention for jobs and promotions because they’re anticipating having a family? Is it always because they want to or because they think they have to?

It’s thought-provoking. Something to mull over. The reason we share our stories is not so people can go out and imitate us, it’s so something, even a kernel, will set off a little epiphany we can either act on or store away for future reference.

This brings me back to Beyonce, a true feminist. What better term for someone connected to heart, soul, mind, and creative core? She is married to power but she is power. She’s blown away by her body’s ability to create a life. She’s comfortable with her sexuality. She extricated herself from her father as her manager in a vital move for independence. She lets herself be vulnerable. She feels her partner makes her a better person and vice versa.

That’s an ideal feminist message. Are we going to dismiss it because she’s earned truckloads of money? Or because she’s easy on the eyes? Does that make it any less pure? How about more so?

Whether we agree or disagree, isn’t it worth clarifying our own viewpoint? The way I see it, a sparked emotion or thought is a gift on the road to being awake and self-actualized. How fabulous to simply untie the bow and marvel at the offering.

{ 2 comments }

A dream with a special guest

by Nancy Colasurdo on March 8, 2013

GAME PLAN:

It is so rare that I remember my dreams, but I had one this week that jolted me awake. I was relaxing on a balcony in Lower Manhattan, engaged in conversation with author Elizabeth Gilbert. Both of us were in lounge chairs. Our view was the Hudson River, looking southwest, so facing the Statue of Liberty and New Jersey.

At one point, amused, I pointed to a darkness that started coming over the river a bit north of where we were. Then, suddenly, the darkness stretched way down past Ellis Island and we realized it was caused by an immense wall of water coming our way. I woke up before the tsunami had its way with us.

Holy mackerel. What was that?

Well, I knew immediately it was a pretty classic anxiety dream. That’s natural given I’m in a transition phase, isn’t it? Being an optimist the majority of the time doesn’t mean life’s challenges aren’t scary.

But why Liz Gilbert? That requires a little more thought. Hold on, I’m going in. Stream of consciousness, here we go.

Eat, Pray, Love is one of my favorite books. Committed also affected me deeply, as it is rare to have someone so eloquently express the same view I hold about motherhood – wonderful for the majority, but it simply doesn’t interest me. Hmmmm. What else? I had, in fact, just watched the Eat, Pray, Love movie prior to the dream.

Interestingly, I’d already seen it a few times, the first at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York sitting right in front of Gilbert and her friends and family. This most recent viewing came on a night when I had spent the day remembering a man I loved who had died just one year ago. It was late on March 2, 2012, that I received the startling news and so on this one-year marker I was restlessly channel surfing when I came across the movie.

As is often the case when we reread books or watch movies a second and third time, I heard something I hadn’t ‘heard’ before. Javier Bardem, playing Felipe, is responding to Julia Roberts’ – Gilbert’s – fearful declaration that she doesn’t need to love him in order to prove she loves herself. He tells her she doesn’t need a man, she needs a champion.

Wham. It hit me. The man I mourned for a year was most certainly my champion and I miss that so much. Especially now as I write the next phase of my story. And yes, it would be really beneficial to open myself to that idea now, not just by better appreciating the champions I already have, but potentially attracting a romantic one who is among the living.

Thoughtful enough, but this still didn’t explain Gilbert’s presence in my startling tsunami dream. Even with all these ripples of her work swirling around me, there had to be more to it.

Ah, wait. I have it.

Those aforementioned are examples of how I experienced her work from the standpoint of reader/viewer. However, I believe it’s the writer in me who was sitting on that balcony with an author of memoir who took a plunge and shared her intimate thoughts and feelings for all the world to see. I know what kind of courage that takes. As a journalist I’ve been putting myself out there for the better part of 25 years. I’ve been called an idiot. I’ve been told my columns change people’s lives. All of that. My readers, whether in agreement or disagreement, write me as if they know me and that is a precious gift.

And yet, the idea of my published memoir-in-progress simultaneously scares the bejesus out of me and delights me beyond measure. I am in the process of selling it. Selling isn’t my strong suit. In the dream, Gilbert represents all those writers – and creatives in so many other disciplines – who laid themselves bare in their art. She is – they are – staring down my fear with me in my ever-fascinating subconscious.

Very trippy.

So is it a little weird going public with a dream that includes a very well-known fellow writer? Yeah. But she gets it. We all do. Without vulnerability we’re forgettable and mediocre. With it, we’re teachers and kindred spirits sharing a human experience.

I’ll take the latter any day. Come to think of it, I’ll be the latter any day.

Thanks for playing, Liz.

{ 0 comments }

Free falling

by Nancy Colasurdo on March 6, 2013

GAME PLAN:

Over a month ago, upon returning from a stay with my parents when my mother had had knee surgery, I arrived in Hoboken train station and approached the first available cab. I stepped off the curb on to the cobblestone street and lost my footing, somehow landing on both knees with a thud. My suitcase and handbag went down in a heap with me.

I sat there, stunned. The cab driver jumped out of his seat and around the car.

“Are you OK, miss?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I recall saying.

I couldn’t move. And in the moment I already knew it was about emotional and psychological hurt as opposed to physical. No, Nancy, your clumsy ass did not just land on the very knee you had surgery on last year. No, this did not happen. No, no, no.

When I snapped out of my momentary daze, I saw the other cab drivers looking over in concern, wondering. I realized I was still on the ground, but my driver was putting my bag in the trunk and then extending a hand to me.

“Are you OK, miss?” he asked again as we began driving.

“I think so,” I said. I was still shaking.

When I got home, I realized I had a very surface scrape on my right knee and what felt like a little bruise on my left (the “surgery” knee). Whew. OK. The next day I was still fine. Again, whew.

By day two, I had already gotten the message of that anxious moment where I had landed hard and my body weathered it: You’re way stronger than you think.

I’m not quite sure why I have to repeatedly remind myself of this in my life, but it feels like every so often I need the validation. I don’t give myself enough credit for being strong. How many of us, if asked if we’re strong, would answer with a resounding yes? Not enough of us, I’d venture.

But we are. And thankfully so, because in my case a few challenging things have transpired since that fall.

A few weeks ago I got a call from my editor/producer at Fox Business saying they’d decided not to publish my column any longer. It had been five habit-forming years and 543 columns, so it was a bit of a blow. But truthfully, hearing shortly before that that the person who’d hired me had just parted ways with the company, somewhere deep down I sensed my time there might be coming to an end.

It was a friendly call and part of me knew this was a very good thing. That’s the part, I suppose, that wrote it on a little strip of paper and put it in my happiness jar. It was time to go and find my next forum. However, we’d agreed to three more columns. The very next one I sent, Life Coaching the New Pope, did not sit well with the Fox editorial powers-that-be and they opted not to publish it because it felt like too much of an opinion piece. I was disappointed (columns are, after all, opinion pieces), but I took it as a sign that yes, indeed, life was ushering me to the next thing.

While intellectually it all made sense, financially it was quite a hit. A steady gig in freelance is a privilege and this one had been a godsend. Now, feelings of what it was like when I got laid off in 2002 started surfacing. I was numb, in denial, optimistic, angry, teary – all of it. Then, in came a feeling of freedom. I started looping Barbra Streisand’s “Free Again” on the stereo and belting it out right along with her.

I was instantly resistant to the conventional thinking that always seems to center around “panic and hoard” in these situations. No, I’m sticking with abundance and don’t rain on my freakin’ parade (yes, more Streisand). This was alongside manic doing, as if never resting would make it all better. Look at me. I’m working hard. Aren’t I a good girl?

Ha.

Is it any wonder that by last Friday I was ready for an art escape to the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

The following day marked one year of the death of a friend and I spent that meaningfully. It was so clear by the time my head hit the pillow that night that I was done with grieving him and I mean that in the most respectful, loving way. I have no doubt he is somewhere nodding vigorously. Yes, Nancy, please. Live your life.

Another swift kick sending me into freedom. What a clearing. I could not imagine how good it would feel.

So, yeah, as I write this I’m free falling. There is much love and support around me. An array of friends planting seeds. Even though I’m not ready to hear some of the ideas coming at me, they’re taking root on the surface waiting for their time to be considered. I’ve begun visioning what I want. I’m trying my best to let the “how” show itself instead of forcing it. I feel very connected to self.

And blessedly, there is this: I am way stronger than I think.

Here we go.

{ 0 comments }