Put Your Big Girl Shoes On;

People have been asking me what is really prompting “life unplugged”?

So here goes…

When I was 18, I had a beautiful quote by Marianne Williamson plastered to my wall, I’ve attached it for your benefit… yes, I knew about it even before Anthony Robbins made it famous, because you know 18 was a loooong time ago.

But at some point, I got lost in life and kids and work, and I woke up one morning feeling smaller or living a less extraordinary self than I knew I could be.

I’m a Family therapist and an action strategist by training. I got very specialized working with teens, parents and more recently young adults/moms struggling with life transitions. But I have always HATED calling myself a therapist. I guess, because I despise it when people say ‘I just want to help others’ – as if we have access to some miracle know how that no-one else has.

Also, therapists kids are most often messed up, (you know, the shoemaker and all that) and I have 5 kids– so those were some big stakes to be playing with!!!

Ambivalent about what “helping” means, I became ambivalent about my work. For many years I just kept a skeleton practice…I ran away from my G-d given skills and talents, I opened an app, I worked in a Jewelry business, I even stood paralyzed for a whole year like a dear in headlights, just unable to decide how I was going to move my life forward, and do what I think I have been put here to do. It was personally pretty painful.

And then one day both my sisters yelled at me. Like actually yelled.

‘You know all this stuff, you have all these creative ideas, you write, you get teenagers and parents, you are never scared to be totally real with people. Parents are struggling, people in general are just struggling and you are hiding in your little office…and its not right. The universe is not going to thank you for this lame effort”

My sisters can be quite scary. I might have made up their actual words…. But you get the drift.

My sisters may be my biggest fans… but they had a point – at some stage in life everyone needs to be willing to put their ‘BIG GIRL SHOES ON’ and actually start being who we know we are meant to be.

So im doing it. I have zero idea what it will look like.

I do however know the following:

I am good at being with people. Holding space for their stuff –is my privilege. Somehow when people get a sense that someone is with them, they are better able to access their own strengths and from that point, by holding their strengths really deeply and with great awareness, they can make massive life changes… and I get to witness it.

17 years of this, has given me many ideas about life, parenting, teenagers, social skills development, crisis, transition – and the world is such, that ideas only become worth anything if we share them.

I know I love to write. (Although I am clueless about grammar and punctuation)

I love interviewing people.

And I know that authenticity is my super power.

So I’m taking it all and putting it out there, in the hope that it moves people, educates people… but also brings some relief in knowing, that while our life experiences can leave us feeling bereft and alone, our common human experiences are more binding and more shared than most of us dare to believe.

If living ultimately comes through giving, then we owe it to each other to put our big girl (or boy) shoes on, and step out fully into the world – whichever way we can.

So this is what prompted life unplugged… where this goes, your guess is as good as mine.