Hi, friends.

 

In early 2018, I was living in Los Angeles, but in truth, I wasn’t so much living as existing. I was technically alive (vital signs, check) but internally I was a disconnected, dead thing, a dial tone flattened by years of stress and overwhelm dressed up as success.

 

I didn’t know how to take care of myself (take a bath? put my phone in the other room at night? decaf???), and I also didn’t believe I could simultaneously take care of myself and keep my business running. It was a real ”one or the other” type of situation in my head, and since 2013, I’d been picking the business.

 

For five years, I’d been shoving all my emotions down, telling myself I didn’t have time to feel them; there was too much on my to-do list. I was in survival mode, afraid to stop even for a few minutes, because I knew if I did, I wouldn’t have the energy to start again. I had two primary fuel sources: quad-shot iced espressos and the crippling fear of screwing everything up. IT WAS AS FUN AS IT SOUNDS!

 

I can’t remember how I first ended up in Jon Paul Crimi’s breathwork class, and I can’t even remember how I first heard about breathwork. Truth be told, I was such a mess that lying on the floor and breathing was about as much of an activity as I could handle, and I probably showed up because the class description mentioned lying down in the dark.

 

I assumed we would be, like, meditating.

 

I was wrong.

 

Breathwork moves and clears emotions that I couldn’t talk out of my body with a lifetime of therapy. Of all the things I’ve ever done in service of my own healing — and the list is ridiculously long, especially for my reluctantly-woo, Boston-native, recovering-cynic self — breathwork has been the most transformative. Ironically, it’s also the easiest and most accessible.

 

I’ll write more in the coming weeks about what breathwork is and what it’s good for, but it’s been so useful for me that in 2019, I started feeling called to teach it. And then I spent the next 4 years making excuses and talking myself out of it and dropping out of one teacher training program before I finally gave in and said OKAY FINE I AM READY TO DO IT SCARED.

 

So as of last week, I am an officially-certified breathwork teacher, thanks to Jon Paul. I’ll be teaching online starting in June; watch this space for all the info.

 

Standing on the edge of change with Jon Paul Crimi.

Highly, highly recommend his teacher training btw. Not an affiliate, just had a great experience.

Even though I interact almost exclusively with cat-based content at this point, my Instagram feed is still filled with ads from people trying to convince me they have the answers, and their way is the best way, and I, too, can use their formula for success and become a seven-figure entrepreneur for one easy payment of $1997.

 

There was a time when I was seduced by these promises and the lives I imagined these people led, lives that appeared to involve a lot of laughing while sitting poolside, laptop tossed nearby as a kind of afterthought. I know more now, though: about what success means to me, about how there is no formula, about who I want to learn from and how I want to learn it.

 

I am not interested in learning from people who present a filtered facade of perfection. I crave leaders who are not afraid to show their humanity, who don’t pretend to have all the answers, who are transparent with their own process and up-front about the fact that they’re figuring it out day by day too, just like the rest of us.

 

In my own leadership, I want to model the courage to try new things, and the willingness to take responsibility and ask for grace and forgiveness when I inevitably screw up. And I want to serve as living proof that making a mistake won’t kill me, and it won’t kill you either.

 

As I find my way forward into totally new kinds of work, I notice how vital it feels to measure success with new metrics. And the older I get, the more I feel pulled towards spending my time on things that can’t be measured at all.

 

Success is not doing something right; success is doing something wrong and loving yourself anyway. 

 

Success is allowing yourself to be a wobbly beginner and not shaming yourself into quitting because you’re not great yet. 

 

Success is refusing to abandon yourself in order to to make someone else happy. Success is recognizing that it is not your job to be a human customer service desk. 

 

Success is having fluency in connection and friendship and love, always love, in whatever form it wants to take.

 

And success is showing up, imperfectly, trusting that what you have to offer is enough.

 

Happy May, everybody. Thanks for being here.

 ANNOUNCEMENT! ANNOUNCEMENT! ANNOUNCEMENT!