When a cold goes on forever there comes a point where you just have to buck up and see if some activity thrown at it shakes anything loose. That was me on Monday, on day whatever double digit of this incredible virus my family has been sharing. I realized that I hadn’t been on my mat in 9 or 10 days, and other than some really special walks in Acadia National Park over the holiday, my movement in general was incredibly minimal. I did a short low impact ride on the Pelo and I did feel a little better, enough that I figured heading to a 26&2 class in the evening might be a great idea. Or a horrible idea. It’s hard to tell when you are in the later stages of a cold that you can’t remember not having. But I think that it had worked in the past so I figured I’d give it go.
I went and it was great. I had the same earth shattering realization that I have had countless times before, when I show up and I need the yoga to be soft on me and it somehow totally is. Like a puffy mattress topper or a fluffy cloud. I am reminded in those moments that it is not just me loving the yoga, but the yoga loving me right on back. In all of its neutrality and independence, in my times of need the yoga goes easy on me and sets its ferocity aside for a bit. And yes it probably had a little bit to do with the Sudafed/Muccinex/Ibuprofen cocktail that I was swimming in, but everything felt warm and soft and easy enough to embrace and tend to all of me. It was a gift.
In the spirit of giving and gifting, I am wanting to clarify something that has been shifting and rearranging in my own relationship to making meaningful donations. When I began making a little cash from my Beautycounter business- which was a pretty big departure from the mostly breaking even relationship I’ve always had with my yoga business- I knew that I wanted to redirect some of that cash to organizations near and dear to my values and my heart. So I tried on a few different iterations of that. From giving 15% of my commissions for all Friday sales, to 5% total throughout the month. I would pick a different org each month based on relevant current events, prioritizing local groups when that made the most sense. For quite some time, this felt robust and dynamic and meaningful to me. But over time, something shifted and some time in the middle of July this year I stalled out.
To understand what happened for me with this I have to take a closer look at what has been at play for me for awhile regarding the ways in which I interact and relate with Social Media. Over the past 12-18 months or so, I have been overhauling how I show up in the apps, primarily Instagram but FB too to a certain extent. A year or so into the pandemic I found myself so fatigued with the content and politic of the socials that I noticed I was no longer motivated to act but rather was becoming overwhelmed and frozen. I was experiencing increasingly intense levels of anxiety that was nudging into semi-regular panic attacks unlike any I had experienced in decades. That didn’t really taper off until this past May actually.
I decided that one of the things that I needed to do was to stay in my own lane and keep my eyes on my own work. I stopped sharing almost all content other than my own; I also gave myself permission to delete comments and began muting or even blocking more individuals. I needed to do a little housekeeping in order to restore my own peace. I knew I didn’t want to leave these spaces entirely; in part, because I do run my businesses from them, but also because I have a deep desire to be seen in my own authenticity and vulnerability. It is probably one of my primary values. I found this quote in the notes on my phone the other day from late 2019- I am not sure who said it; maybe I did because it is weird to have not written any attribution with it but also maybe not. Anyway. “Sometimes I have to be false to my personality in order to be true to my values.” This is a little muddy but I think the point comes across. I do place value in how I show up, and I also place big value on advocacy and social justice and equity and inclusion. So, in some ways, it was a complicated decision to choose not to use my platform as a means for sharing issues and causes that are of great importance to me. And yet, I needed to pull myself out of the stress of that in order to continue doing my work, part of which is to stay an active participant in education and advocacy. What that has looked like is allowing some things to speak for themselves.
I have not stopped my relationship to redirecting resources. I am just not sure how to talk about it in my spaces right now. The shape of things is reconfiguring a bit for me, the details of how frequently I switch up recipients and things like that. I have a few ideas of how to connect more with where it is that my clients would like to be seeing cash go, but again, I am not interested in broadcasting much of that. One of the things that was really attractive to me about Beautycounter in the beginning and continues to be is their B-Corp status. I knew that it was a significant designation to achieve and that it signals a company’s commitment to “meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials” (from bcorporation.net). Just through one (two?) word(s): B-Corp. What an efficient way to convey a much larger and incredibly significant message. And in some ways, linking arms with BC feels a lot like me getting to convey that as well, but not everyone is in the know and often it feels significantly more personal to say it myself.
Maybe it is a both/and situation yet again. Aren’t they all? I am connected with this business in part because of its commitment to transparency, improvement, and meaningful charitable giving. And also I am compelled to give from my own resources on top of that. I am, probably unnecessarily, just a little bogged down in the logistics of that as well as how to authentically convey that to my people. So, there it is. For anyone who has been wondering what happened to 15% Fridays or 5% giving, it hasn’t really gone anywhere, I just haven’t landed on a way to share what I am up to in that regard that doesn’t feel overly personal and yet is still authentic.
Anyhowwwww. In this season of giving, this is where my thoughts are. Now that the big work of the year’s biggest sale is in my rearview, I am happy to turn my attention to offering gratitude to all of my incredible clients (who literally are the impetus for this conversation) and also toward finding a rhythm of communicating gifting in a way that is real and right for me. I have a few ideas. And I hope to share them when the time is right, but I am not applying much pressure in this regard. Sound good?
Ok. That’s all for now. Happy end of November. Happy almost advent. Happy SAGITTARIUS SEASON my sugar lumps. I am so glad to be here with you.