PARTS 5: On Granola
Or, discovering Angela Marie
At the start of 2020……
…well, shit.
Currently, I’m in a well-worn purple cotton robe, having just gotten out of a warm bath with an almost-empty glass of red wine. Sitting on my husband’s side of the bed — selfishly, of course, so as to not get my side wet — I find myself struggling to continue to stare at my computer screen after a full-day of ‘zooming’. A pink REI water bottle sits on the nightstand next to me, full of ice water and rusty high school memories, tempting me with warm whispers of self care and hydration.
Admittedly, the wine is much more attractive.
Moving on.
In February, I had decided that intimacy was my word for this year. It is the thing I’ve simultaneously never been good at and fear the most and, therefore, the thing I was initially reluctant on practicing. Thanks to some encouragement from my coach, I ultimately decided to take it on.
And, no, I’m not talking about sex — although physical intimacy is indeed part of it. I’m talking about the act of listening and acknowledging on a deeply emotional level, both with myself and with others. Intimacy requires a level of presence and vulnerability that most of us shut down at an early age.
I’ve always been better at the opposite: tuning in to others in order to avoid tuning in to myself. It’s made me a lot of acquaintances and friends and, arguably, a really strong Life Coach. As a result, I found myself less and less in tune with my own needs and wants.
Thus, #ProjectIntimacy was born.
Then the world went to shit.
I mean, had it already been on its way to going to shit? Arguably, from my admittedly-highly-liberal-vantage-point, yes. Not completely, but that’s been the general banter-about-town these days.
And by shit, I mean a deadly, unprecedented, global pandemic has taken our ‘normal’ way of life hostage and forced us to come to terms with the gross insignificance of many of our first-world indulgences.
My first response was to immediately “do” something about it — if only to combat feeling small. My husband and I, along with a team of film artists, got to work on The Shield Project — re-purposing our film manufacturing skills to make face shields for healthcare heroes, and put artists to work in the process. Genuinely, we are really honored and humbled to be able to contribute to the heroic effort that healthcare professionals are putting in all over Illinois.
For the rest of us, those of us who aren’t essential workers or on the front lines, eight to twelve weeks inside your apartment certainly forces a new level of intimacy upon us all, no?
It did for me.
Shortly after the work of The Shield Project normalized, I found myself forced to be with myself on a much more, regular consistent basis than I was used to. Confined to my home office most work-days, I’ve had to spend a lot of time with myself without the ability to use my environment or others to distract me.
That extra ‘thinking’ time, which I largely attribute to not having a commute, has lead me to a new definition of intimacy for myself: Granola.
Ah, there it is. I bet you were wondering how I would weave that in, weren’t you? ;)
Granola.
(Not the food).
I’m talking about my inner hippie-mountain-girl who was born and bred in Boulder, Colorado. The girl who hikes a lot, basks in the sun frequently, and smokes weed occasionally. That’s the girl I shed like snake skin when I moved to Chicago over a decade ago.
This is Angela Marie:
Admittedly, she still feels far away. In my blog series PARTS, I talk about the different inner-voices in my own head. Within those cast of characters is Angela Marie, whom I’ve labeled as the aforementioned hippie-mountain-girl. She is still the one I know the least about.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been practicing Granola, largely in the form of clothing. I’ve ordered Birkenstock sandals, found various scarves and floral shawls, and found a deliciously simple forest-green jumpsuit that I can not wait to wear.
It’s a start.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about channeling Granola internally, rather than solely expressing it externally. I’ve become increasingly aware of all of the things I’ve shifted about myself since moving to Chicago, and how ‘forced’ a lot of it feels.
It’s kind of like there are two competing sides to me — the CEO and the mountain-hippie. The CEO is all about pencil skirts and heels and strict schedules and happy hours and socializing, and is rather intense about it all.
The mountain-hippie is more subdued; she’s focused on finding what feels right and natural, rather than conforming to a way of living that is societally desirable.
I’ve recently gotten some clarity as to how these two parts of myself show up — specifically around my relationship to physical exercise. For the past 10 years, CEO-Angie viewed a successful work out as one high in intensity, difficulty, and sweat. It had nothing to do with what I actually enjoyed or needed, and everything to do with how I perceive working hard to be synonymous with success.
Perhaps it’s the quarantine or the turn of the season, but in the past week or so I’ve become much more in tune with what I enjoy. And wouldn’t you know it — it’s actually walking and yoga, with the occasional run.
Since making the conscious choice to pursue that early last week, I’ve never been more consistent in my physical activity. Walks and yoga almost every day — who would have thought that JOY could lead to such consistency? It has me recall a sentence I wrote in my first blog in the PARTS series, that the voices in my head were “addicted to the importance of their respective struggles”.
And I’m sitting here like wow, working out doesn’t have to be a struggle?
Much easier said than done.
Bringing it all back around, I guess what I’m most present to is that the CEO in me was born from a place of “should”, and my inner mountain girl born from a place of “joy”.
Moving forward, the challenge for me will be in integrating the two of them, especially when it comes to leadership and relationships. The integration, the middle ground — that’s where the true intimacy is.
Huh.
I really did just piece that all together.
Thank you for reading my inner dialogue.
And welcome back to the table, Angela Marie.
