Scotch Tape and Safety Pins!

What would they say if they knew? How am I pulling this off anyway? There was a time when I believed my business plan was like an architects blue print. I put my neat tidy plan on paper, and… SO BE IT! As if this entrepreneurial gig was a paint by numbers kit.

I’ll be the first to admit I have an extraordinary life, and I have lovingly, intentionally, and haphazardly made it happen. On those mornings when Oprah is interviewing me in the bathroom mirror with the curling iron microphone, I’m invited to answer the same quintessential question, “So Kara, tell the world, just how do you do it?”

How do I keep this radical wilderness of amazing afloat? With duct tape, safety pins, and unicorn feathers of course!

No really! Today my life and my business are nothing more than a kindergartner’s craft project. Don’t be fooled by my glitter. Yeah, yeah thankfully some days it’s a Burning Man magnum opus at sunset. My point being it’s all art, as fierce and fragile as my own heart.

If they knew, they’d take away my licenses, all of them, the irresponsibility police would have me cuffed and sentenced in minutes. Don’t worry, I’m not relying on this recycled yogurt container half filled with bio diesel. What really keeps this ship in motion is the enormous brilliantly colored plume of my possibility parachute. Running on the hot air of positive happen stance, serendipity, and “I hoped that would happen”, oh don’t forget the blood sweat and tears!

Security is the ultimate illusion. That being said, of course I would like to have more of it. Yet there is aliveness here in the unknowingness. It’s refreshing to look life in the eye and say, “I don’t know, and I choose not to figure it out. Instead I’ll ask myself what do I want to create here? I’m casting my nets and we’ll see what I pull in this time.” (I know I’m a business coach’s worst nightmare.)

For most of us entrepreneurs it’s the passion, the dream, the wildness of doing it our own way that keeps us tenacious in the face of fatalistic contrary naysayers. Or maybe it’s the grasp of truth, knowing we’d wither and implode at the prospect of being anyone else’s bitch. Just one side glance glimpse of Dilbert reality makes our scotch taped construction paper professionalism sexy all over again!

What I’m trying to say here is I know your little secret! I know you don’t have it all together, I write the same dirty little hush-hush in my journal. Knowing that makes you all the more alluring. The fact that you boldly go where you’ve never gone before, that you buck the system and forge your own path, the fact that you wake up every day unsure but inspired makes me love you soooooo much!

I raise my glass to you! Thank you for making it happen despite all odds. Thanks for not listening to your parents and peers, for running with scissors, going stag to the Prom, and making crazy unruly love to life! You are my Shero!

"In a perfect world, what do you want?"

"Dissolve Me" collage by Kara McKay

"In a perfect world, what do you want?"

he asked me as I was collecting every part of me in a desperate collaborative effort just to breathe. Mere survival was the peak of my aspirations.

Then I caught sight of my soul. She was shimmering and earnest. Hovering above the strangling tourniquet of polarities: good and bad, positive and negative, wrong or right. 

In my human body the pain of emotion had become corporeal, almost doubling me over. My little lizard brain squealing like a pig bound for slaughter. 

Archetypically speaking I have a cast of characters starring in this mortal theater show. Really an introduction is in order for the rest of this to make a lick of sense. 
With no further ado...

The Queen: A benevolent, regal matriarch, she powerfully and almost humbly rules the Earth. (no really, she does)

My girl: If tantrums could walk and talk... she is pouty and fierce in her self righteous indignation. Soothed only by warm loving arms willing to scoop her up and hold her close.

The Lover: Cleopatra, Dark chocolate, Mae West, cashmere, Catherine the Great, caramel, Mata Hari,  Delilah, Eve (yes the first one)...

The Bodyguard: Boots, dark glasses, a glock...That's right bitch, back off!

The Rebel: Joan of Arc told me I could if I want to! Everyone else is doing it, why should I? Don't think I can? Watch me! 

The Mother: Come here baby, let me fix it for you! I'll wipe your tears, rub your back, make you dinner, fold your clothes, run my fingers through your hair, lay your head on my chest, in my lap... I got you baby, ssshhhhhh sleep now my love.

The She Hitler: *shivers* I hate to use this word, but there's no other word for her (cover your eyes) Cunty. Yep that's this nasty broad's MO! I will destroy you, for I am the pure unrivaled mistress of Evil. I will find your every weakness. I will exploit, torture, and defile you. (I have to go wash my hands after typing this.)

The Wise Woman/ Witness/ The Observer: The Wholly silent MC. Creating the space, suspending judgement, granting unconditional permission and forgiveness. She watches with the compassion of Kuan Yin, the great Eye in my Sky *winking at me*

That's my lead cast. There's more. The Mystic, the Saboteur, the High on Molly Cheerleader, and the rest of em are begging for real estate here in the credits, but since this is a blog and not the encyclopedia of Kara's lunacy and lineage,  I'll stop the intros there. (The supporting cast is infinite as far I can tell.)

In my Ego's perfect world, my Queen has sovereignty. This is a one woman act! 

Here's the thing: My sweet precious honey of a soul is here for the whole experience. She wants it all, every last drop of lust, laughter, heart break, fury, and longing. I see her stretching, pushing into each emotion, and tasting them like candy. 

My judgement of and resistance to these messy less evolved faces of me is preposterous to my Soul as they give her admission to the Cirque du Human Show.

So there I was publicly becoming what I deemed the most hideous shamed thing I could imagine. Total loss of perceived dignity. The deformed and stunted gnarly parts of me were there in the open. He saw them. I saw them, through my tears. Despite my lizard brain doomsday threats. I stayed there, open, vulnerable, and present. (I lived to tell!)

 On that bloody edge of uncomfortable frontier. My Wise Woman emerged, observing and holding space for the tantrum and the contraction. Her light of consciousness cradled even these as sacred. They expressed, unfurled, and were granted asylum. (NO, not that kind of asylum, smart ass!)  An amazing thing beyond mere survival took place. My wise woman became even wiser.

In a perfect world what do I want? 
I guess I want this.

An uninterrupted stream of ripening. There is no rush, no race. 

What experience is your sweet soul crafting? Are you willing sit down and watch and feel the show? Grab a tissue!

  

Just FEEL it already!

Emotions? Feelings? Oh those silly sloppy sloshy unmentionables. Yeah well here I go mentioning them, so brace yourself!

The voice of inner bitch right now is saying that for me to be writing this blog on Emotional Power is the height of hypocrisy. I'm going for it anyway! Maybe this is just good old fashioned divine comedy.

I've been in emotional turmoil again. It doesn't stop does it? Just when I'm settling into a smooth groove, thinking "Oh yeah baby, I got this!" I start to take my light hearted mood for granted, my limitless confidence seems unwavering, right up until it wavers. 

We've been taught that as women our emotions are another weakness. 

I'll be honest, nothing makes me feel weaker than the unpleasant side of the emotional spectrum. To truly allow myself to crumble, cry and FEEL whats there is terrifying, AND it's a form of power. I know it sounds backassward right? I promise you it takes far more courage to be present and honest with these emotions than it does to ignore, deny, check out, and go numb. (Especially that most despicable emotion, you know the one... jealousy!) Here's the straight up truth: that poker face tough girl stuff is for pussies. (ahem, I mean kitties. Just ask Betty. ) 

In Vividly Woman we define Emotional Power as the freedom to feel and the mastery to choose what we do with that emotion. I know, right?! Go back read it again, I'll wait.

When I don't cry the tears or scream the rage, it's still there, an undercurrent of passive aggressive behavior sabotaging me. Emotions are just energy, another form of information. The key piece here is choosing when, where, and what to do with this information. It's energy that wants to move, when it's trapped in our bodies it becomes issues in our tissues, dis ease or disease.

Why is this important? (Beyond disease prevention) one word: Relationships.

Whether you're an entrepreneurial  business heroine, stay at home mama, or ahem human being, relationships are key to your success. Relationships are all about emotional integrity. 

At Dance Your Power we offer you to an intimate experience of your own Sensual, Emotional, and Intuitive Power Centers. We create an opportunity for you to identify whats blocking you from your power!

Successful healthy happy relationships are a result of emotional power claimed and activated! 

Go ahead break down, let er rip...see what's on the other side of that emotional outpouring. I dare you.

Let's talk Sensuality, shall we? (Dance Your Power Part 1)

 
 Let's talk about sensuality. This is a word that has been under-defined to say the least!
When I say that word, people often squirm. (sometimes it's a good squirm, other times a more frigid squirm). Thoughts go immediately to things of a sexual nature and for some that's uncomfortable.

When I say sensual I'm talking about your whole body. (yes I've seen the photo of a woman's erogenous zones in Leela's new book and I agree that encompasses most of a woman's body !) While the sensual experience drastically enhances the sexual, the 2 words are not interchangeable. 

Sensual is all about inhabiting my body by being truly alive to my 5 senses. Allowing my fingers to hungrily take in the texture of the soft grass with as much awareness as they would take in my lover's skin, and noticing the internal response as my body receives this information. When I adjust my vision to receive the nuances of colors, shape, and beauty all around me, again my body responds to this. As each one of my senses reaches out to drink in the world outside of me, there is a world of sensation activated inside of me. In realizing this, every moment is a sensual experience just waiting for me to notice it.

Over the centuries we as women have been taught that our sensual nature is one of our weaknesses. Many religions encourage us to transcend the body, telling us that this is just a shell that holds us back from all things spiritual. The message has been and still is, "Just ignore it, the body can't be trusted. Our bodies are messy, they leak strange liquids, and smells, not to mention desires."

We've become masters at shutting down, checking out, and turning off our beautiful body signals.
The mind has taken over. We're relying on the mind's assumptions based on random data that's been installed in us over the years instead listening to the TRUTH OF OUR BODIES! This causes us so much unnecessary suffering.

 This body betrayal, this loss of sensuality has stripped us of our power! We're suffering from eating disorders and obesity, unfulfilling sex lives, fatigue, and more. We're oblivious to the subtle clues of disease until advanced stages and symptoms rob us of health and sometimes life all together.

In Vividly Woman this is the first of 3 Power Centers we come home to, our Sensual Power Center! On this healing journey we discover what true feminine power means, Sensual, Emotional, and Intuitive Power. We identify what is blocking us from our power, so we can reclaim what is innately ours, and start living the passionate purposeful lives we've hardly even dared dream.

At Dance Your Power you have 3 amazing days on an experiential journey of your own Sensual, Emotional, and Intuitive Power. We use ritual, sacred Circle, Dance, and more to melt through the blocks that keep you suffering. Join us in the beauty of nature and in the safety of a small group of women like yourself who are ready to start living powerfully!

What's holding you back?

The Changeling and Other Stuff (your dying to read about)

Uh oh... I'm brand new all over again. Put your seat belt on sista, here we go!

In this continual (and somewhat narcissistic) journey of Self discovery, I keep trying to figure me out. Right? Cuz then I'll be able to predict my next move, and stop being such a neurotic mystery.

 Each time I start to get it, to get me, the floor falls out from underneath me. What was solid sparkling truth yesterday is suddenly a tattered comic strip taped to an old woman's fridge.

Excuse me Morpheus, how many red pills was I supposed to take?

Remember when life was divvied up into 3 neat and tidy piles?
The good, the bad, and whatevs, the latter hardly counted and the polarity of the other two was just plain comforting. Hell or heaven, angel or demon, democrat or republican, right or wrong, you get the gist. The simplicity meant that my side was always good, right, and worthy. It was so easy to be an indignant victim in this paradigm.

Over the years I've done things I swore I'd never do. I've broke the holiest of promises and failed beyond my wildest dreams. Those nice tidy piles? Well they look more like my laundry room floor on wash day.

Today this is what I now suspect to be true (read it quick, at the rate I'm changing I might decide it's all garbage tomorrow)...

1.) Everything is a story. So make up a good one. One you really like.

2.) Nothing is personal. Everything is an opportunity to heal, to grow, and to forgive.

3.) This time on Earth is a mystery. Stop trying to figure it all out and start enjoying your time here! 

4.) You have a body, stop judging it and start using it to experience pleasure.  Let your body be art, decorate yourself in a way that pleases you. Eat really delicious food slowly and moan! Have all kinds of sex often and laugh sometimes while your doing it. (yeah I just said "doing it"). Dance when no one else is. Hug! Give nice warm close hugs, not those half ass frigid, "I can't wait to get away from you" excuses for hugs. For god sake snuggle more! (Snuggling is really just horizontal whole body hugging.)

5.) Ask for what you want. It's always worth a shot.

That's it. That's all I got for truth today... oh maybe one more kernel.

All there is, is change. What if I became the change I'm resisting? What if it was okay to have really great questions and none of the answers? 

What if I just exhaled and decided to enjoy the ride?








 

Holy, Worthy, Significant!

Photo By Jennifer Wowak

You will lose everything. Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memories. Your looks will go. Loved ones will die. Your body will fall apart. Everything that seems permanent is impermanent and will be smashed. Experience will gradually, or not so gradually, strip away everything that it can strip away. Waking up means facing this reality with open eyes and no longer turning away.

But right now, we stand on sacred and holy ground, for that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realising this is the key to unspeakable joy. Whoever or whatever is in your life right now has not yet been taken away from you. This may sound trivial, obvious, like nothing, but really it is the key to everything, the why and how and wherefore of existence. Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude.

Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar. 

- Jeff Foster

The Sold Out Sh**t Show

Maybe you can relate?

Sold out: "I'm a sell out, a fake, who am I to offer anyone guidance? I'm as crazy as they come!"

And now for the Shit Show: 

I’m spiraling in the midst of something and I don’t f'ing know what it is. It’s a new era and an oh so old one. As if I’ve been suddenly transported back in time and now I want to do strange things like fall into bed with strangers followed by smoking cigarettes in bed.

 Normally I'd only scribble these dirty little secrets in my journal, where I keep my messy and my crazy locked up safe. I choose to write it here partially because I’m looking for penance, maybe to to punish my self with public humiliation (I don't do self flogging that well anymore) and the other part is just because it’s true.

I’m bored with self help gurus that make it shiny, squeaky clean, and tidy. That’s almost as obnoxious as those that say it's easy. “10 simple steps to inner peace”, true it’s simple, what it's NOT is easy!

Everyone who is on the human path of self healing and wholing deserves to hear about the time it didn’t work. Today is that day. I’ve felt it gurgling inside of me. It’s an inner unrest, a rebellion. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe its just having to do stuff I hate.  I don’t believe I should have to do shit I hate. It feels disgusting and inauthentic. If I’m an entrepreneur, it’s a choice I made having much to do with a burning desire to do what I choose, not what only what is expected of me. Anyway I digress, I muscle my way through it, with no real grace or know how until I’m about to run away. Then today it happens, I crack.

I let the noose of reality slip thru my fingers. I release the hard work of being present and I become someone else. This someone I become is well…perfect of course. She has it all and is just basking in the fruits of my imagination. This the first sign trouble is really brewing. At this point I know I’m falling of the cliff and am not sure how to pull my parachute. There are several paths of destruction that might follow this inner collapse.

As I write the thoughts reorganize themselves. My inner Hitler whose been trying to send me to the gas chambers for my shadow even existing, has lost his blow horn of contempt. Now some of the other parts of me can be heard.

The very act of admitting: "this is where I am and it sucks", disarms him.

What is true for me is that even in this funk, this relapse of sorts, there is an obvious evolution. What I now perceive to be the depths of inner personal hell, was at one time my norm. When I knew no center, and relied solely upon my vices and constant distractions to tolerate, and just get through each day, I have perspective now. Even my worst day now is better than my best days then.

A friend of mine referred to one of her stages of healing from her eating disorder as being a “dry bulimic”. I so get that!

The artist Ani Difranco poses a brilliant question in one of her songs,

“And they say that alcoholics are always alcoholics

Even when they're as dry as my lips for years

Even when they're stranded on a small desert island

With no place within 2,000 miles to buy beer”

Is it really that impossible to heal? Feels that way at times.

Stage 1: On these worst days when I check out, I give in to the fantasy of inhabiting another’s body, her life, and I use all my imagination to create for her/me a most hospitable existence of ease. 

Stage 2: I revert to a state of dry bulimia. It takes a certain amount of will power to NOT throw myself head first into a tub of Ben and Jerry’s, and then into the toilet. It takes will power to avoid a slew of other shadow behaviors that once ruled me. Yes, today at 41 yrs old, some days like today I just want to take ecstasy, rip all my clothes off, have riotous sex with people at random, masturbate to shocking porn all day, shoplift, smoke a pack of American Spirits, do a couple lines,  drive off leaving obligation, my calendar, and anything remotely resembling a duty in the dust! (TMI?)

The difference today is that I watch myself entertain these notions and relive old memories. While I’m not exactly present, I’m still able to observe myself. There is space between my thoughts, impulses, and actions. In these shadowy times of being a “Dry bulimic”, the pattern is activated; the difference is I am now in choice! 

These days come rarely now, and they leave quickly. (Apparently there is something to this path of personal growth after all.)

Maybe I'm not a sell out, maybe I'm just another human.  On this grand stage of life I'm gonna say it like it is and every once in awhile I'll show the world my shit.