Allison Vesterfelt's Blog

When I was 28 years old, I married a Christian pastor. We prayed together, counseled married couples together, planted a church together, and “waited patiently” together to have sex until we were married. We checked all the boxes. 

So imagine my surprise when, four years into our marriage, I found out he’d been “having an affair.”

I put “having an affair” in quotes because this is far too often how this behavior is conveyed in the church — one man’s moral failings, a “slip up” he made because he was burnt out or because he wasn’t getting his needs met. This is for sure how my now-ex-husband spun the story and the church followed suit. I received dozens if not hundreds of emails from people urging me to give him a “second chance” and telling me plenty of couples recover from this.

I’ve learned to perk up my ears when another man in the church is “having an affair” — it’s often much deeper and more twisted than that.

What I discovered first was a thread of text messages my husband at the time had forgotten to delete from his iPad, although he had meticulously deleted them from every other device he owned. And as bad as that was, that message thread turned out to be just the beginning of what was to be uncovered. It was the “thread” (pun intended) that, when pulled, makes the rest of the sweater come unraveled. 

Within days, there were bank receipts, photos, emails, more messages, and page after page of incriminating detail he didn’t know I had.

When I confronted him about these things, he was careful. He admitted some fault — but as little as possible. Until he would find out I had more evidence stacked against him. Then he would admit a little more. Until finally I confronted him about a bank account he had opened without my knowing, to which he insisted I had been there at the signing. (I hadn’t). This was the moment I decided I would file for divorce.

You might think that it’s possible my experience was an isolated one — or just a sad, small percentage of “bad apples” who happen to weasel their way into leadership in the Christian church. But sadly that is not the case. Since my own experience years ago, not a month has passed without new news of yet another scandal, another man, another pastor who is “having an affair” which I’ve learned is far too often code for sleeping with more than one woman, sleeping with women on his staff, sleeping with women who are underage, paying for sex, stealing money from the church, abusing his wife or children, or any other number of other illegal or inappropriate behaviors.

And yet somehow — nobody seems to be doing much about it.

These men are payed off, told to quietly walk away, asked to “take some time off,” often even imported into other church communities, no questions asked.

This is not “one bad apple,” this is a powerful system that is protecting the system itself at the expense of the vulnerable individuals inside of it.

Recently yet another megachurch pastor was found to be “having an affair.” It doesn’t matter who — because wait a week, and it will be somebody else. I think the most shocking part each time I hear news like this is always how shocked everyone else seems to be. “No, not him!” “Another good one falls!” Or my personal favorite, “Pastors are so prone to burnout!” Again, this is not a moral failing of a single individual or the result of pastoral burnout. There are a predictable set of factors that set up any environment for hidden abuse — and the church is not immune from this. The way the modern western church has chosen to operate not only invites men like this to exist in church circles — but we give them leadership positions where their abuse and predatory behaviors get to continue, unchecked!

This particular set of circumstances will play out again and again, until the end of time — unless we decide we’d like to do something about it.

If you watch in the comment sections of these often public apologies, you’ll see a trend. It’s not the vitriol and hatred you might be afraid to see when someone has a vulnerable moment on social media. It’s actually a hailstorm of comments that look like this:

Nothing but grace for you brother… 

God’s grace is big enough to cover you… 

No judgment here – just grace… 

Grace grace grace grace grace… 

And at first glance, this might not seem as problematic as it is. What’s so wrong about the members of a community sending their brother “grace” in the midst of a challenging time? 

The problem, again, is that when you see these posts on social media, you rarely have all of the information. “Affair” is far too often code for what would be better categorized as dangerous and predatory (and even illegal) behavior. A gross misuse of position. The problem is that our view of “grace” has not historically included things like accountability, transparency, and the appropriate adjustment of power.

Grace is not a soft cushion meant to shield you from the pain of being human. Grace is a container, strong enough to hold you in the fire while it does what it was always meant to do. To humble you. To burn away your ego. To remind you that you are no better than anyone.

Some people stay in this fire and get their grace. 

Others don’t want to get a sunburn. 

Far too often it is men in leadership in the modern church who are given free rein to do whatever they feel like doing, whenever they feel like doing it, no matter the consequences. They’re protected from the natural ramifications of their actions, let alone the “punishment” that they would otherwise deserve. They’re shielded from criticism, overly coddled, and deferred to by everyone around them. All in the name of grace.

Sometimes it can be good for us to take the long fall from the pedestal where we have wrongly placed ourselves. Grace is not making sure nobody ever “feels bad” about themselves or experiences the consequences of their actions. Grace is not stroking the edges of an already overblown ego. 

Grace is the 600 square foot apartment I lived in after my divorce was final, where I cried myself to sleep most nights for months. Grace is the life that was pulled out from underneath me, making way for a better one. Grace is the life I get to live now — out in the open, with nothing to hide from anyone.

Grace is putting the exact right words to what happened to me. Manipulation. Gaslighting. Betrayal. Abuse.

What a grace.

Author Kathleen Norris has this quote about grace. She says, “If grace is so wonderful, why do we have such difficulty recognizing and accepting it? Maybe it’s because grace is not gentle or made-to-order. It often comes disguised as loss, or failure, or unwelcome change.”

Yes. Unwelcome change indeed. 

What a grace that our world is changing. What a grace that women have a voice. And not just any women—but the women who have been manipulated and used and abused for far too long. What a grace that the tides are changing. That we get to finally put the exact right words to an unfair situation. It’s not an affair. It’s dangerous, predatory and toxic behavior that needs to change.

We are better and we can do better. 

What a grace.

The post A Culture of “Grace” is Perpetuating Abuse in the Christian Church (Here’s How I Know Firsthand) appeared first on Allison Fallon.

I wrote this years ago—just a few months after my divorce was final, right as I was letting go of the last remnants of my old life. I never intended to share it. I forgot it about, in fact, and stumbled across it the other day. But I wanted to share it with you today as a reminder as you try to push through the pain that your pain may be trying to tell you something.

It’s been a hell of a week. Work pressures pushing in, commitments I made months ago that are feeling weightier now, people are depending on me, expecting me to show up at my best, and then there is me, still a little weary from what I’ve been walking through the last year—the divorce and the shattering of this old life and the rebuilding from scratch.

I am still finding days where I don’t quite feel like myself—hell, still finding days where I don’t even know who “myself” is, or when grief crashes over me with such a big and unexpected wave, I forget it’s been a year since my life fell apart.

It almost feels like yesterday.

I moved all of my stuff into a storage unit last week.

Movers came and helped me do the whole thing. That part wasn’t hard. I don’t mind packing and organizing. It’s a good break for my brain—the simplicity of it—after sitting at a computer all day and trying to figure out the mysteries of the universe, which mostly entails figuring out the mysteries of my own heart and brain.

So again that part, the moving part… that wasn’t hard.

Three burly men showed up all stiff and professional, introducing themselves to me formally with a handshake, and by the end of the day we were all laughing about how I wrote a book called Packing Light and I still have so much stuff.

The hard part was really the idea that I’m doing this again… feeling upended, uprooted, like I’m unattached and floating and wondering where I might land.

This is such a familiar feeling. Such a terribly familiar feeling.

Then there are those moments where I stumble across something I didn’t know I was going to find and suddenly it’s like I’m back there—in the moment, the sea of moments where I’m invisible and terrified and wishing for a way out. There are moments where I am wondering what I have done wrong and why nothing I tried would fix any of it. Fix him. Fix me so he could love me. Fix me so I could love him.

Physical items have this way of doing that to us. Sentimental items. Homes. Spaces and places and cities.

They hold the energy for us of times passed and as we release them we have the opportunity to release the attachments they represent.

So that part was hard. Releasing all the attachments.

Also, randomly—maybe from all the walking up and down the stairs in a pair of shoes that were ill-advised for moving—I got a blister on my heel. It was a small blister. Really not a big deal. It barely hurt. Or at least that’s what I told myself. After all, I had to get through this move. Once everything was over, then I could focus and dealing with the pain on my heel. Then I could take care of it with some antiseptic and a bandaid and maybe even some epsom salts.

After. That’s when I could take care of myself. That’s when I could face the pain. After I shored up all the leaks. After I impressed everyone.

This is my usual approach, by the way. Push through the pain. It feels so inconvenient in the moment to actually deal with it. Pain feels so in the way. So like the obstacle I have to get past so I can get the thing I want.

So I can pretend like I’m “totally okay”.

But pain is always trying to tell us something.

It has messages for us, if we will listen. When we miss what our pain is whispering to us, we miss everything.

I did that thing I normally do: push through the pain. All day. That worked for awhile. I made it through the move and got everything into a storage unit and rested in my own personal sense of accomplishment. Then, the next morning, I had a conference in town where I was speaking, so I got out of bed and pulled myself together and got dressed and put my shoes on—again, another ill-advised pair of shoes—and that was when I first really noticed it.

REALLY NOTICED IT.

But, instead of doing what the pain was asking me to do, I told myself, this was only one day. It wasn’t that big of a deal. I could do this. I was strong. I hunkered down and tried to pretend like I wasn’t limping and was on my feet in heels for eight hours that day, parking blocks away from the event, walking, standing, talking, and more pretending like I wasn’t in pain.

I’m really so very good at pretending like I am not in pain.

Aren’t we all?

I swear I’m telling you this for a reason that doesn’t have anything to do with my foot problems.

The next day I signed closing papers on my house.

This was the last of my attachments to my old life.

I cried through the whole meeting, but they were good, happy, cleansing tears, the kind of tears that tell you this hurts like hell but you know you’re moving in the right direction. The kind of tears that tell you you’re finally free again. So I cried those tears and the agent sitting across from me asked if I needed to take a break and I told her, no, all I really needed was this.

Exactly what I was doing.

To just let myself feel the pain of it. For just a minute I needed to be not okay.




This is the only way to let go. The only way to move forward.

She handed me a box of tissues and I cried and signed a bunch of papers and then I was on my way again. The rest of the day I spent running errands and setting up a wedding shower for a dear friend of mine, who has fought in the best kind of way for the man she is marrying, and he has fought for her, and that’s all I could think about as I went to go pick up balloons and coffee and ice and as we arranged food and tassel garlands around another friend’s house.

I couldn’t think about the pain in my foot, or the pain in my heart.

All I could think about was how beautiful it is when you see somebody really fight for something they want, and when they finally reach a point where it seems like their hard work has paid off.

It’s always such a gift and an honor to celebrate these stories.

It seems they are Indestructible.

I’ve had people ask me if it’s hard for me to go to weddings and baby showers now. The short answer is yes. In fact, a dear friend of mine recently had a baby shower, and I was in the car and ready to go—all dressed up and make-up on and everything, the sweet little girl gift sitting in the back seat—but before I could even back out of the driveway the tears started coming and no matter how hard I willed them, they would not stop, and I never made it out of that driveway.

Instead, I went back inside and sat by myself and just let myself cry.

That’s what I needed. To just let myself feel the pain of it.

To stop trying to push through the pain and to listen to what the pain was telling me.

But that part of the story is still all the short answer—which is that YES it’s hard, of course it’s hard, the same way it is hard for anybody who has watched something slip from their grasp, something crumble, without their permission. The way it would be hard for a woman who lost a child to stand at a playground and listen to the laughter of the other children. Of COURSE it’s hard. But it is also, in a way, healing, because it reminds me that there is still pain, and pain is not a bad thing.

Pain is a reminder that we are alive.

Pain is always telling us something.

It’s always pointing us toward the healing we are craving.

That night I put my shoes on for the party.

Which was when I realized the pain was bigger than I had once thought. It was perhaps too big for me to handle. But wait, no, if I just favored my right side a little bit, I could make this work. I wouldn’t have to walk that far thankfully. And besides, the most important thing was to LOOK GOOD, to KEEP THINGS TOGETHER.

That was the most important thing I could do, wasn’t it?

It was just a little bit of pain. I could handle it.

The night was glorious and beautiful in every single way. So beautiful I forgot about the blister for most of it.

It wasn’t until the commotion started to die down and people began to leave and I went into the bedroom to check my phone that I realized how much pain I had been in all along. So much pain. Way too much pain. Now the pain wasn’t just the blister, but it was radiating all the way up my ankle and into my leg. The bandaid I had put over the top of the blister to cover it was soaked with blood… and well… I’ll just leave it at that for the sake of you keeping your breakfast down.

But what I realized was that the blister was now infected, and the infection was radiating away from the original place of pain. It was growing and moving and getting bigger and bigger and screaming louder.

This is what happens to pain when we ignore it, by the way.

It doesn’t go away, as we once hoped. No. It gets louder and louder and more aggressive until we start listening. It does this because it loves us. Because it’s JOB is to point us toward what is good for us.

It’s literally BEGGING us to do what is good and healing.

It’s odd to me to think about this, this morning as I am lying in bed and thinking about our beautiful night last night, that beautiful moment of being together. It’s odd to me to think about how you can be in so much pain and also be in exactly the right place. Exactly the place that you are supposed to be in. It’s odd for me to think about what my pain might have been trying to whisper to me last night, what it is trying to whisper to me now, this morning.

It’s strange for me to think about how long pain has been whispering, and how long it has taken me to listen.

I’ve not been good at this in the past—at listening, at slowing, at hearing what the pain is trying to tell me—but that’s okay. I’m am getting there. The woman in me who thought she could fight her way thought the pain is also the woman who saved me.

She is the woman who has become strong enough, through all of this fighting, to be soft now.

She is the one who is letting go.

If you’re ready to hear what the pain is trying to tell you, join me in Nashville on April 14th 2018 from 8:30am-4:30pm where I am going to teach you a process you can use to get unstuck in any area of your life. Learn more here..

The post What You Need to Know Before You Push Through the Pain appeared first on Allison Fallon.

I started going to yoga about six weeks before everything fell apart. The work-out “thing” had been a back-and-forth fight between us for a long time. As in, I wanted to do it and he felt it was a waste of money and time. I fought and fought him on this point (as I had on many others) until there wasn’t any more fight left in me…

Then one day he came home and, for some reason, he had changed his mind. “I heard yoga is good for improving your focus and productivity. I think you should go,” he said.

I walked immediately down the street and signed up.

To learn more about how to become soft enough to stay in love and strong enough to leave, join me for a LIVE event in Nashville, Tennessee.

In those early days of yoga, I remember realizing how out of shape I had become. Not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. The instructor explained how for my first few classes I should focus on simply staying in the room (which is heated to over 100 degrees). This suggestion seemed ridiculous to me, since at one time in my life I had been a long distance runner and even completed a marathon.

How hard could it be to stay in a room?

Then I got in there and realized how far you can get from yourself without even knowing it, how short of breath you can become when the heat is turned up to ten, how terrifying it feels to have so little control of your environment.

The only reason I kept coming back was that the instructor said yoga would give us three things:

1. More love

2. Less fear

3. More of what we want in our lives.

I prayed she was right…

Six weeks later, everything fell apart.

Uncovering.

It was a normal Thursday afternoon when I uncovered the truth of us.

It’s crazy to think how little it takes to snap everything back into focus. A couple of messages. That was all it took. It’s amazing to imagine how surprised we can feel by something we have known all along. The day it happened, a friend asked me if I’d had any idea, and I told a her to imagine she had been in a fist fight for years with a blindfold on.

Then today, someone took the blindfold off.

So yes, I knew. We hold truths in our bodies that are too big for our minds.

Yet as I walked away from everything I thought I had wanted, I remembered that steady, clicking mantra our teacher would sing in yoga class, time after time—more love, less fear, more of what you want in your life—and I couldn’t help but feel a burning resentment toward those words.

This seemed like exactly the opposite of what she had promised.

Didn’t it?

Still, for some reason, later that day I went to yoga.

Join me for Becoming Indestructible in Nashville, Tennessee to learn more about how I used yoga, writing and other tools to leverage my heartbreak for healing.

Surrender.

Who knows why I did it—who knows why we do any of the brave and beautiful things we do when we are in our own bodies, when we have stopped fighting and started surrendering. All I know is that what I found when I did it was the tiniest bit of peace that perhaps progress doesn’t always look like progress while its happening, and that maybe, just maybe, what I thought I wanted wasn’t what I wanted at all.

More love, less fear, more of what we want in our lives…


You do the best you can in a yoga practice. You give it all you have. You fight and hold postures, even when your body shakes because you know that shaking means growing, because suffering is the only way anything changes and because you have been so desperate for change for so long.

Then, when it’s all over—when you’ve done all you can do—you lay on the ground and let it all go.

In yoga they call this Savasana.

Total surrender.

Letting go.

I thought about “fighting” for us. Even after everything, I thought about it.

There were people who said, “you can’t give up when things get hard,” or “you have to be willing to fight for love.” And I heard what they were saying. I did. But the more honest I was with myself, the more I realized I had been fighting for love for as long as I could remember, and the one thing I hadn’t done yet was the hardest the hardest thing of all to do.

Letting go.

We cannot make people in our own image. We cannot control them or coerce them or manipulate them or “fix” them and also love them.

We can either be in control or be in love. Not both.

I am ready to be in love.

So that winter, I filed for divorce. I walked into the attorney’s office and did the thing I swore to myself I would never do, the thing I had judged others for doing, the thing I had wanted to do for longer than I could even allow myself to admit. The truth does this to you, I guess. Humbles you. Makes you human again. Gets you back into alignment with yourself.

More love.


Less fear.

More of what you want in your life…

And of course, after signing all of those terrible, beautiful, life-altering papers, I went to yoga. I fought and cried and melted into my mat again, and again and again… praying that one day this would all add up to something.

It was all I had. It was all it took.

This offering.


An offering. A softening.

One of the things I have loved and hated and resented most about yoga is that there is nowhere to hide. In life we hide behind make-up or name brands or job titles or relationship statuses. In yoga, in that hot room with all those smelly, sweaty not-so-covered-up bodies, there is nowhere to go except… right there.

In the truth.

The fleshy, terrible, magical, beautiful truth of you.

It’s a terrifying and beautiful thing to to see yourself so completely.

To look at where you are weak or soft or grieving or heartbroken and let love go there. What a strange and petrifying feeling to find that all the pieces of the puzzle you had been fighting to hold together weren’t even your puzzle pieces in the first place, and that all that love you were dying to have had always been right there. It’s just you were hardened against it.

All you have to do is get soft.

Really really soft.

Let love happen where you are soft.

People say love hurts, but I’m not so sure that’s true. I think what hurts is to let yourself be soft after all that hardening you’ve done. It’s like cement cracking, like ice popping in your water glass.

You either be in control, or be in love. Not both.

This is how we get strong enough to leave when staying is killing us, strong enough to stay when love needs us most, and strong enough to let go of the way we thought things would go, the way we assumed people should be, of the impossible expectations we had for ourselves and our lives.

It’s the letting go of control that hurts.

Not the love.

I wish I could say there were a better way. That there were a way to get to love without the breaking. I wish I could offer you some sort of formula or guarantee or magic button that would get you past the pain, faster. More love, less fear, more of what you want in your life. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as skipping steps.

There are no short-cuts.

What an amazing strength it takes to be so soft.

What a spectacular offering.

To learn more about how to become soft and strong enough to stay in love, join me for a LIVE event in Nashville, Tennessee. Read more about the event here.

The post Getting strong enough to leave (more love, less fear, more of what you want in life) appeared first on Allison Fallon.

In the past 10 years working with writers and creatives, the number one complaint I hear over and over and over again is something like this:

I’m stuck.

When I ask people if they’re stuck in their writing or in their life, they think for a minute and the answer is usually both. I’m never surprised. Writers block isn’t really writers block, after all, but life block. Energy block. There’s no way to be “blocked” in one but not the other. The two are inextricably linked.

I identify deeply with their problem. I flash back to when I was married—just days before the long-buried truth of my marriage came to light. I was sitting at my kitchen table, trying to write a book about the “redemption story” of our relationship, which I can hardly say with a straight face now that I know what I know, and now that I see our dynamic with new eyes.

Still in those days I spent so much time sitting there, staring at that blinking cursor, not certain why I couldn’t figure out what I was trying to say.

We don’t know what to say because we don’t know what we think.

We don’t know what we think because we are so completely out of touch with ourselves.

Writing will put you back in touch with yourself. Fast. You can’t spent much time with yourself on the page and not start to see the truth of you. This, I would say, is why we’re stuck in our creative work and struggling and avoiding and experiencing so much resistance. Because in order to write, we’d have to see the truth.


I love what David Foster Wallace says which is that “the truth will set you free… but not until it’s done with you.”

The good news.

The good news is if you want to uncover your creative genius, writing is one of the most effective ways to do it.

It’s a very inexpensive, accessible, totally powerful way to, according to research, reduce your anxiety, curb your depression, advance your career, improve your relationships, help you process grief and heartbreak and even to speed the physical healing process from illness or injury.

The cheapest form of self-therapy.

I’ve watched writers of ALL kinds—from writers with zero experience to published authors who have sold thousands upon thousands of copies and are making a full-time living from writing—experience the liberating power putting the words on the page.

If you can get yourself UNSTUCK in your writing, you can get yourself UNSTUCK in your life.

Your career. Your love life. Your family. Your relationships.

We think writing is this “elite” activity, that only certain people were made to do—only the really gifted or skilled or privileged or “called” or whatever. When really writing is just thinking. Writing is being. It’s meditation. It’s communication. Communication with ourselves and with something much bigger than us.

It’s a birthright.

Most people are missing it.

The problem is most of us are missing it—all the beauty and power creativity has to bring into our lives because we’re waiting for permission or for a paycheck or for some big social media following to do our creative work.

The problem is that if you wait for permission or a paycheck to do your creative work, it’s no longer YOUR creative work. I don’t mean to say that some people don’t make a living doing creative things, but anyone who works in a creative field can tell you that the minute you start making money for your creative work, things change.

Now you’re not answering to your creativity anymore. You’re answering to the marketplace.

To your customers. To your “boss” (whatever that looks like).

That’s not bad. It’s just not ART. It’s business.

Again, nothing wrong with either of these things. But I think we need to distinguish between the two, since one will pay your rent and keep the lights on and grow your skillset and if you’re really lucky, might even send you on a vacation or two.

But the other? It will heal you. It will pay you in dividends that may NEVER show up on your bank account. It will wake you up to parts of yourself that have LONG been offline.

It will supercharge your energy. It will shift the way you see the world and your role in it. It will improve your confidence.

It will change your life.

If you want to get unstuck, business is not the way to do it. Art is.

And art is fueled by freedom. The permission can’t come from outside, it has to come from inside. The paycheck won’t help you it will only hurt you. And no amount of popularity or applause or coaxing from others will save you from the terrifying and beautiful moment that you actually have to show up to yourself on the page.

In fact, all those adoring fans might scare you right out of saying the thing you most need to say in order to save your own life.

Waste some time.

Here’s something you need to know about art. It is remarkably inefficient.

We live in a world that worships productivity and efficiency and that LOVES for things to happen lightning fast. We live most our lives in this space, trying to figure out how we can fast-track and streamline things and this is all well and good except this is the very antithesis to our art. Art is a wandering, meandering path into chaos and darkness.

How’s that for a sales pitch?

Trust me, I get that this isn’t the most compelling way to invite you into a creative process, but I also wouldn’t be doing you any favors if I acted like there was a way to do your art without some chaos and confusion and inefficiency and wandering and PLAY.

When I meet people who are struggling to find their voice, I asked them when the last time was that they wasted some time?

When was the last time you danced, just moved your body in a way that felt good?

I can see by the looks on their faces that they are thinking the thing I hear writers say over and over and over again to me, which is, “what if it is all for nothing…?”

Yes. What if… What if it is?

I have asked myself this question a thousand times and I am also learning to see and to believe that as soon as we make peace with this possibility, we at the same time open ourselves to the option that this could, instead, be the most remarkable thing we have ever done.

Art and Rebellion.

The most common piece of advice I hear given to aspiring writers (and the thing spoken over me when I was starting in the publishing world) is, “If you want to be a writer, you have to grow a platform.”

Honestly, I understand this advice, but it makes me cringe every time.

Nothing stops you from writing something great faster than trying to write something great.

Nothing stunts your creative growth and progress faster than talking about your “audience”.

It’s the difference between sitting with your best friend on a couch trying to tell her the worst thing you’ve ever done, and standing on a stage in front of 3000 strangers doing the same thing.

Where do you have the best chance of really showing up?

I urge writers to FORGET their audience completely and instead write like it’s a love letter. The longest love letter of their whole life. Write it like a love letter to your children, or your lover, or your partner, or your best friend. Write it like a love letter to yourself—that terrified and lonely version of yourself that is fighting for her own freaking life.

Write it like that.

Sure, it’s a beautiful thing to see someone show up vulnerably and unapologetically on a stage. And eventually every creative person would like to see his or her deepest creative gift shared with the world. But in order to share our creative gifts, we have to UNEARTH our creative gifts.

And in order to unearth them, we need privacy. Intimacy. The OPPOSITE of a stage.

So forget about your audience. Honestly. Rebel against them. Your art is your rebellion. Write it privately, in a place that no one will ever read it if you need to—write the things that you feel like you can never say. Write what you’re sure would get you booed off of a stage. The great irony is… this is what the audience is dying to read, anyway.




It’s a rare and beautiful thing to meet a person who will tell you the truth.

If you’re reading this because you believe there is something beautiful and life-changing and even perhaps earth-shattering inside of you welcome. If the fact that you’re still struggling to uncover it makes you worry that maybe you’re perhaps delusional or self-centered or that you’ve gotten it wrong, take heart.

You are in the right place. You are doing it, this inefficient, chaotic, terrifying and beautiful thing.

You are remarkable.

The post Why Most People Are Missing Their Creative Genius (and How To Find It) appeared first on Allison Fallon.

I don’t know about you, but my life has not gone the way I thought it would go. If it had, I’m not sure exactly where I’d be, but it would not be here—in Nashville, TN—at the coffee shop where I spend most of my mornings typing away on my computer and running a small business.

I was joking with a friend the other day that I came to Nashville kicking and screaming and then somehow fell in love with it.

Isn’t is so crazy how this happens?

How, of the things we love most in our lives, so few of them would be ours without this wandering path we’ve walked to get them.


Here are 13 things I’ve learned from a life that did not go as planned.

1. Most advice is total BS.

I hate to say it, but it’s true. Most of the advice out there, even the really well-meaning stuff, is total crap. A good bit of pop psychology and self help and just about every “guru” and even religion will make it seem like if you just follow their program, their system, their set of rules… your life is going to be perfect and painless.

It’s so strange to me.

Since from the beginning of time there has never been any such thing as a perfect or painless life, and since the lives of people we admire most—the people we desire to be like—were neither perfect nor painless.

Martin Luther King Jr. Buddha. Mother Theresa. Jesus.

From them we learn that the way of meaning is always a way of love, and that the way of love is tangled up with sacrifice, heartbreak, hardship and pain.

Life hurts sometimes? It probably means you’re doing it right.

2. You are exactly where you’re meant to be.

Or perhaps you’re not. Who knows.

But you’re the only place you can be. The only possible place you can be in the world, in history, right here, right now.

This is where you are.

Period.

So the most insane thing you could possibly do—the only truly counter-productive thing—is to try and be somewhere different, to lie or hide or fantasize that you are someone or something you are not. The only way we can ever make any progress, have any enjoyment, find any meaning or purpose in our lives is to just… let it be.

Let it be true that you are right where you are, right now.

Here you are. In this place that you maybe, perhaps, would not prefer to be. But here you are, nonetheless.


Let it be true.

The truth, as they say, will set you free.

3. Don’t play it cool.

If there were an olympic sport of acting “totally chill” about something you do not feel “totally chill” about, I am convinced I would win the gold medal. “Sure, no problem,” “Whatever works best for you…” “I’m just happy when you’re happy”… this sort of BS. And yet I am learning that playing it cool is just another way of resisting and lying and hiding in a life that is not my own.

I am learning to be not-so-chill.

Like… no, that will not work for me. No, that does not sound fun to me. I’m actually pissed/sad/ashamed/humiliated about that thing and NOT “totally fine” about it as I originally stated. No, I can’t make that work. No, I don’t want to come.

No thank you. Please leave me alone.

I actually really like you.

That sort of thing.

This doesn’t come naturally to me.

I tend to hesitate and tremble and bumble my way through and apologize unnecessarily for having feelings or thoughts or ideas about things that might inconvenience or disappoint or hurt anyone who is connected to me.

But I am doing it anyway.

Speaking up. Saying things. Using my voice, no matter what it costs..

4. Art is everything.

I don’t know why it is that we have measured creativity as “second rate” in our culture. Second to efficiency and productivity and sports and money and more important “intellectual” pursuits. But art is not secondary.




Art is everything.

Art is resistance and resilience and survival.

How we do art is how we do life.

The most courageous and spectacular and phenomenal creative work we will do is to shape the life we are living. Impossible to do this without mess and failure and pain and fear and vulnerability.

Time to get our hands dirty.

5. Don’t wait to be happy.

Be happy NOW. Right this minute. 

Despite what so-and-so thinks about you. Despite the rejection. Despite the fact that you don’t have all the things you thought you’d have. Despite your loneliness, your grief. Be also happy.

Don’t make your happiness contingent on anyone.

You are in charge of your own happiness.

Give yourself permission to be wildly, stupidly, ridiculously happy right this minute.

6. Life is not happening to you.

YOU are happening to your life.

It’s not that you have 100% control over your circumstances. It is that you have so much more control than you ever dreamed possible. I have wasted so much time whining and complaining about the way “things” should have gone, and all along I have ignored what was right in front of me: the power to change me.

Life didn’t turn out how you planned. So what?

Time to write a new ending.

7. Soft is strong.

We spend a lot of time talking about how we need to be “strong” to face life’s challenges, but I have to wonder if this is really working. If all this “hardening” isn’t making us brittle.

When things didn’t go our way, we shatter.

These days the challenge for me is to stay soft. And wow, does it takes strength to do it, to give in, to go with the rip tide, to let things take you exactly where they’re going to take you, to stop digging your heels in. The more I do it—the softer I become—the stronger I get. Real strength. True strength. Strong like water.

She bends, but she doesn’t break.

Soft and strong.

8. You do not have to be good

It was Mary Oliver who first said this but it’s finally making sense to me.

You do not have to be good.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

I tried for years to be a good woman, a good friend, a good Christian, a good daughter a good wife… and the funny thing was, the harder I tried to be these things, the worse I became at the only thing that actually matters—telling the truth. Not bashing people over the head with what I have decided is “true” for them, but showing up… showing the truth of me.

Open and vulnerable. Here I am.

I do not have to be good. I only have to be human.

Actually the hardest, most terrifying, most life-changing thing I’ve ever done.

9. Nothing is worth the trade.

A thousand times in my life I’ve traded my heart, my soul, my passions, my voice my integrity for a paycheck, a job, a sense of security, a relationship, a title, a status, access to the inner-circle, a feeling of being invited to the club. I feel myself easing into it… “well, it’s just for now,” “It’s not that big of a deal…” “I can make this work…”

And yet nothing—NO THING—has ever ever been worth the trade.

At the end of the day, when it all falls apart, when the house of cards you’ve built comes crashing down… all that’s left is… you. Your greatest investment.

The only true form of life insurance.

Your #1 security plan.

If you have you, you have everything.

10. Go all the way for what you love

Be passionate. Be two feet in. Go all the way for the things you love.

Sure, it makes you vulnerable and it’s scary and other people may not care as much as you do… that’s okay. They’re not supposed to. It’s not their job.

It’s yours.

So go ahead. Dive in, head first. Love what you love.

11. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive.

When you go the way of love, you’re bound to get hurt. It’s impossible for this not to happen.

Forgive as quickly as possible. Forgive all the time. Practice it every morning.

Start with yourself.

Forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive.

Freedom is found on the other side of forgiveness.

12. This is Not An Accident

This place you are right now—the place that seems so impossible and so cruel and so tragic that it could not possibly be real, let alone be orchestrated or even allowed by a God who cares about you and loves you and sees your pain. Even this.

This terrible burning of you. It’s not an accident.

It belongs, as Richard Rohr would say.

The loss of your love belongs as much as the happy years you spent with her. The devastation of your career belongs as much as the years where you were celebrated for your accomplishments. The tragic end of your marriage, somehow, BELONGS, as much as the vows you took on that first day you stepped into it.

It seems so impossible.

How could this be true?

We are being shown slowly—those of us who are learning to stay—that the pain adds up to something over time. All the shaking and shattering that seems so cruel—it is a great grace, helping you get to that soft and tender part of yourself that has been hiding for so long.

13. No such thing as missing your own boat.

When you’re done hiding, done resisting, done blaming and making this about everybody else, you come into the light and discover that all the the opportunities you’ve been waiting for, all the love, all of the joy you thought was “out there” in the distant future is actually right here, right now.

It’s been waiting.

You did not miss it. It’s not too late. There is no such thing as missing your own boat. Life will keep waiting, keep bringing these things around to us again and again. You might miss somebody else’s boat but you can never, ever miss yours.

What would you do if you knew this was true? If you knew there was nothing to prove, nothing to muscle into place, no reason to compete with the people you want to love?

Relax.

Your boat is waiting.

It’s impossible to miss it.

The post 13 Lessons From a Life That Did Not Go As Planned appeared first on Allison Fallon.

Like all of you, I’m reeling this morning with the news of what happened in Charlottesville over the weekend. I’m grieving for the individuals and families affected. I’m grieving for our Nation. I’m grieving for myself—for that part of myself that has held back, kept quiet, been “careful” with words, who was scared to say the wrong thing, so she said nothing.

She was scared and careful and trying, bless her.

But she has to go.

Instead, I’m doing something. I’m certain it’s not the only thing I can do, but it’s the first thing I always do when nothing makes sense. I’m putting pen to paper. Because now is the time to write.

I’m convinced in times like these—times when the world seems chaotic and terrifying and we have more questions than answers and when we are worried and disconnected and in pain—this is the easiest time for us to forget about writing. About any creative work. To push it to the side. To tell ourselves there are “more important” things to be doing.




There are, more than likely, other things we need to be doing.

And also, pushing our creative work aside is a huge mistake.

Now, more than ever, is the time to write.

Take a minute, while you’re reading this and put your hand on the low part of your belly. This is seat of your creative power—literally where your reproductive organs are. Think about that. From this place—your most creative place—you can invent a brand new human life. It doesn’t get much more powerful than that. We literally reproduce ourselves.

If we are going to be out there in the world reproducing ourselves, shouldn’t we be concerned about the person we’re reproducing?




Creativity is how we shift that. It’s how we shape our souls, which are shaping the world we live in.

That place of your deepest creativity—that place inside of you that can be a bit dark and stormy and confusing and hard to look at sometimes—this is where all of your potential for human kindness, genius, innovativeness, connectedness, child-likeness, imagination, curiosity, generosity, neighborliness, and love come from.

Our only hope for shifting the tides of hatred, violence and evil—is that.

Now is the time to write.

In writing, we name the things that are wrong. Put words to the evil.

There is something powerful about naming things. Even if you aren’t sure what to do yet, start naming what is happening. Call it what it is. Hatred. Violence. Evil. Bigotry. Start by speaking the truth and you’ll be surprised what opens up.

The way we say things matters.

We don’t change our minds until we change our words.

Writing helps us to process our grief.

Write your way through your grief.

Write what breaks your heart. It is only by processing your own grief that you become any good to anyone else. Grief carves us out from the center, cleans out all the garbage, challenges our fragile egos, strips us down to nothing.




Grief unprocessed becomes bitterness, resentment, and unharnessed fury.

Grief processed becomes a unstoppable force of compassion, empathy, and love.

Writing helps us see ourselves. Our role in the story.

You don’t think you play a part in the story? You play a part.

Let me give you a hint about whether or not you know the part you play. When you begin to see yourself—clearly—it hurts. Badly. When you see your own privilege and judgement and misunderstanding. You feel it.

If you don’t feel it… the vulnerability, the humility… then you don’t see it.

That’s how you know.

Don’t just try to sweep those big feelings under the rug and move on with your life. Those big feelings mean something. Write them. Write them all down.

It opens us to answers we couldn’t see before.

I hear people say all the time, “we have to stop talking/writing about these things and actually do something!” I couldn’t agree more. But we often don’t know what to do until we know what we think. How we feel.

Until we mine for answers under the surface that were always there but we couldn’t see them before.

This doesn’t happen in one sitting. Or two. Or five.

It happens over months and years and decades of showing up to ourselves, to our words, to the words of friends and even our enemies, over and over and over again.

We have to keep doing it.

The harder it gets, the more it matters that we do it.

So what to do when the world seems terrifying and hard and confusing and full of hate? Write. Write your grief. Write your fear. Write your stories. Use your voice. Speak up. Words change things.

Or at the very least, they change us. And things change when we change.

The post When There is Violence, Hatred, and Evil in The World—Now is the Time to Write appeared first on Allison Fallon.

I got an email from a woman recently who wanted to know how to know when it’s time to let go. Of that job. That relationship. That friendship. That person. That old resentment. My first response was to wonder why she would ask me a question like this when I feel the least qualified to answer.

But I did what I often do when I worry I don’t have a good answer for something.

I wrote about it.

What I found were answers I didn’t know I had. So many answers. All of them equally true, I think, though also strangely contradictory.

How do you know when it’s time to let go?

Now. Always. Yes.

Letting go is not a thing we do but a way of being. We learn to hold things loosely. With open hands. Our stuff. Our life. Our loves. Because they were never really ours to own in the first place—this thing about ownership is a uniquely first-world presumption, anyway, so very capitalist of us. And because we learn quickly that if we can’t hold things loosely, they will get ripped from our reluctant grasps.

Change is the nature of things. Movement is the natural order.

If we do not get IN FLOW, then the flow flows without us.

Getting in flow means you let things happen at exactly the time they are going to happen. It means giving up this notion that we have control over everything anyway. We loosen the white-knuckle grip we have on our lives and we learn to let things come and let things go. We let people come and let people go. We let feelings come and let feelings go.

When lose something we are sad to lose, we let ourselves be sad. We cry and go to yoga and have dance parties in our underwear.

But we do not hold on.

Let go let go let go let go. This is the mantra I whisper to myself.

The time to let go is NOW. Yes. Always.

When you can’t hold on any longer.

You know when it’s time to let go because of that feeling. That deep, guttural I cannot-do-this-anymore feeling. It’s like I told the woman who asked how I knew I was ready to let go of my marriage. I said because I could have held onto my marriage—but first I would have had to let go of myself.

That last tiny scrap of myself I’d been holding onto like a life-raft.

That’s it. That’s how you know.

When the pain of holding on, of things staying the same, so far exceeds the pain of changing, that the choice makes itself.

Then you just…. do it. You have to. You can’t not.

When letting go is the only thing that will save your life….

Then, in one giant not-so-courageous but life-saving moment you exhale. A deep breath. A quiet, sorrowful surrender. To something bigger and stronger and more gracious than yourself.

When it lets go of YOU.

Sometimes we try to let go of things but they do not let go of us. Yes?

In a hotel room late last year, I called a friend for advice. I’d been trying to let go of a person I loved for a long time—too long it seemed to me—and for some reason, this person just kept showing up. Like a magnet. A ghost.

When I called my friend, I thought I knew what advice she would give.

To drop this completely. To BE STRONG. To never talk to him again. To ignore his texts.

To let go.

See sometimes, we use “letting go” as an excuse, a safe-guard, a strategy to protect our hearts against the the lessons that will not let us go until we have fully learned them, against the brokenness that ultimately saves us, to harden against the work of being a human—the showing up, speaking the truth, learning to love ourselves and someone else in the mess of all of this.

Instead of telling me to let go, my friend said something so unexpected.

She said: call him.

She suggested that, perhaps, there was something left for me to learn here. Something he needed to teach me. Something I needed to teach him.

If I didn’t learn now, it would come back to haunt me, she said.

I took her advice. And I’m glad I did. Because what I found when I picked up the phone was that there was more work for me to do. More mess for me to make. More answers for me to find, more forgiveness, a more LOVING version of me to come to being.

There are no shortcuts on this path called life.

What a miraculous thing that even when we let go of love, it does not let go of us.

What a grace to get to do this together.

What a grace.

The post When It’s Time to Let Go appeared first on Allison Fallon.

One of the very first things I do when I work with authors on their books is to have them imagine one specific reader. One familiar-faced, I-know-you-in-real-life kind of reader. Not a “compilation-of-some-people-you-know” kind of reader. Not an “imaginary-made-up-for-marketing-purposes-ideal-reader” kind of reader.

One person who’s face you can picture and who’s name you know and who’s very being you adore.

Without even trying. You just love them.

Pick that person. Then write the book or the article or the poem to them.

Directly.

To be fair, I work with almost exclusively non-fiction writers—usually creative non-fiction—so I can’t say certainly if this advice carries over to other genres, but after writing 12 books and coaching hundreds of authors, I can tell you this one shift in perspective changes everything about the writing process and outcome.

[If you’re interested in learning more about how I help writers, register for one of the 11 writing workshops I’m teaching before the end of the year.]

I was telling friend recently that my most recent manuscript, which hasn’t been published yet, is different than anything I’ve ever written. It came out more quickly and easily, is more raw, and I believe is deeper and richer and better than other things I’ve written. Some of this, of course, comes from gaining experience (your most recent book should be your best book).

But also, I told her, I did something different this time.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“I wrote it like a love letter.”

There are several things this approach did for me and I believe it can do the same thing for you if you give it a try.

First of all, it virtually eliminates writer’s block.

I always tell writers that writer’s block isn’t so much writer’s block as it is life block. When we don’t know what to say, it’s usually because we don’t know what we think, what we believe, how we feel. When your words fall flat on the page, it’s not because your grammar sucks. It’s because you have lost touch with yourself.

Nothing puts you back in touch with yourself faster than being with someone you love.

Our families. Our lovers. Our pets. Our kids. Our friends.


When we’re with the people we love, we talk and listen and argue and gush and ask questions and laugh and say whatever comes to mind and guess at answers and edit as we go. We feel all of it, all the feelings—the grit and humor and transcendence and transformation and tension we so crave in a piece of writing.

If you’re stuck on a specific piece of writing, or stuck knowing you want to write but not knowing where to start, try writing it like a letter to someone you love.

Second, this approach makes your writing deeply personal and human.

Writing is relationship.

We forget this, I think, and reduce writing to this very forced, stilted, mechanical thing we do. Writers I work with struggle the most often when they’re trying to show up to the page all buttoned and laced—to make their sentences flow perfectly and their grammar impeccable instead of just getting it on the page.

Writing is conversation. Communication.

When you’re communicating with someone directly and personally, you don’t waste too much time worrying that what you say is the last and final word on something, or that it has to be spoken with perfect grammar, or any of that. You look in the person’s eye and talk to them like a human and take the feedback and edit and change course as you go.

You may get hung up, but when you do you adjust and keep things flowing.

No perfection needed.

Where have we come up with this idea that writing is some elite activity and only certain people can be good at it?

Writing is so terribly and beautifully human.

No wonder we all lose interest when you distill all of your humanity out of your writing.

Finally, this approach keeps you motivated and moving forward.

On those not-so-infrequent days when your “graceful-writer-in-the-coffee-shop, light-streaming-in-the-window” fantasies have been crushed once more, and you find yourself perusing Twitter for the second hour in a row instead of doing the writing you promised yourself you’d do, and then judging yourself for not sticking with your plan, and then berating yourself for judging yourself…

Love is motivating.

It will get your fingers moving when you feel frozen and terrified.

It will get your butt out of bed in the morning when you want to hit snooze for the fifth time. It will wake you up in the middle of the night when you suddenly have that dream that clarifies everything.

When you have something specific to say to someone you love, it feels dire, doesn’t it? Urgent. Secret. Life-or-death.

Pretend that’s the case with your writing, since it is.

Write it to the person you wish you could talk to, but can’t, for all kinds of terrible and ridiculous and totally practical reasons.

Write it to the person who holds your heart.

Write it to that part of yourself that you finally have compassion for.

To your kids.

To your parents.

To your partner.

Bring all the energy that you bring there, to your writing. All the passion. All the intensity. All the anger. All the fear. All of the joy and the gumption and the tenacity and the bravado and the surrender. Bring it all.

See what happens. I dare you.

The post Write it like a love letter appeared first on Allison Fallon.

When I started writing my latest manuscript, I promised myself I was going to tell the truth. I was going to use my voice, speak up for myself, talk about the things I had kept secret for so long, and finally finally be free to say what was on my mind.

I was done hiding.

When I actually got into the writing of it—a very personal story that shares how I made it out of an abusive relationship, and talks about recovering from the real lasting emotional damage of control and manipulation—I realized that telling the “truth” wasn’t going to be as easy as I had once thought.

[If you’re interested in learning more about how I regained my confidence, found and starting using my voice again, check out this new creative writing workshop I’m teaching.].

The obstacles.

One of the major obstacles I came up against was that I couldn’t remember what it felt like to hear my own voice. To trust myself. To assume that my answer to a question—although not necessarily the only answer—was a perfectly valid and important answer. If you had asked me a question like what do you want for dinner? Or what do you think is the best approach to this dilemma? in those early days of recovery, I would have been frozen in my tracks.

I didn’t know.

I’ll never forget a friend having to remind me, when I was about to make a big purchase in a store one day, that I was allowed to change my mind if I wanted to. There I am, a 33-year-old woman, standing at the cash register frozen, and my friend could notice the shift in my energy even more astutely than I could.

I didn’t know how to give myself permission to want what I wanted, to feel what I felt, to know what I knew—let alone to say what I thought. What a disorienting thing to have your only reference point for information and affirmation be outside of you, to other people or institutions or sources—to the point where you aren’t even in touch with your own perspective.

When you check in with yourself, to see how you feel or what you think about a thing, you just… come up blank.

But it gets even more complicated than that.

Even as I did the work to reconnect with myself (through therapy, friendship, writing, yoga) and began recovering the sound of my voice, I realized there was a very external obstacle to using it.

There were forces at work which had a vested interest in keeping me quiet.

Power. Control. Manipulation.

Some of the “push-back” we get when we begin using our voices is healthy—an opportunity for us to see and experience the impact we have on others and hold space for someone else to have their (conflicting) truth, too. But a lot of it is toxic and unfair and and unthoughtful and biased and discriminatory and limiting. Driven by the same forces that drove my abusive relationship—the need for certain people to stay in control and stay in power.

To keep you quiet.

The ramifications many of us experience for using our voices play a powerful role in keeping us from doing it. I noticed in my own recovery process that watching another woman speak up and then get crushed by those who didn’t believe her or take her seriously, or even just didn’t share her opinion, would make me think to myself, “why would I ever put myself in that position?”

The control is working. Until we decide we’re ready to break the cycle.

[When you’re ready to break the cycle, I can teach you one incredibly powerful and effective tool you can use to reconnect with yourself and start using your voice again.]

The dangers.

It’s incredibly dangerous to not know the sound of your own voice—or to know your voice and not be using it.

The first and biggest danger, in my view, is what I alluded to above, which is that when we don’t know and trust ourselves, we become extra vulnerable to control, manipulation, and betrayal. Maybe you get this. You might feel like you have been in business or personal relationships over and over and over again where you are betrayed or lied to or used or silenced or trampled on.

It’s much easier for someone to control you if you don’t know the sound of your voice—because conveniently, when you don’t trust yourself, you have to look to them for guidance.

Religious communities can do this, spouses can do this, significant others can do this, family members can do this, bosses can do this…

And sure, there are plenty of totally benign churches and spouses and parents and bosses who are not taking advantage of those in their care who don’t know the sound of their own voice. But when you know yourself, when you know your voice, suddenly the onus of control for your life and your growth and your development and your happiness is back where it belongs—in your court.

Secondly…

Speaking of which, the second dangerous thing that happens when you don’t know how to navigate your internal world is that you become highly likely to place all of your focus outside of you for the circumstances of your life. This is one way people who feel powerless gain back a sense of power, without actually reclaiming their power.

They blame everyone else for their problems and wish everybody else would change so their experiences could change.

I noticed myself doing this in my recovery when I would start to get really uncomfortable with some of the big feelings I was having about my new life, post-relationship—all the grief, all of the confusion, all of the re-calibrating. Anytime I would speak up about my circumstances and someone would ask me, “how didn’t you see?” or “why did you ignore the warning signs?”

I would point the finger.

It’s a clever evasion move.

Well, he wouldn’t let me…

Sure, maybe there is truth in that statement. But the more important truth, the harder truth, the only truth over which I have any control and the only truth which can set me free is the truth of ME.

Why did I abandon myself?

Why did I ignore what I knew?

Why didn’t I listen to myself?

I’m not saying the external circumstances weren’t terrible or unfair or that they didn’t matter. They did. Of course they did and of course they made things complicated and scary and of course they were unjust and unfair. What I’m saying is that when I answered the HARDER question—“why did I abandon myself”—that’s where I gained back all of my power.

The price of using your voice.

The hard truth is there is a high price to speaking up. Criticism, judgement, rejection, abandonment.

We’re right, I think, to have a little fear of what it costs.

But the bigger question, I think, is “what is the cost of denying your voice?”

I was talking with a friend the other day who got wrapped up in a religious group where she was forced to abandon many of her family and relationship ties—not to mention all of her freedom to think her own thoughts and make her own choices. What she gained in return was access to the “inner circle,” which offered her an elevated social status and unthinkable resources.

After walking away, she said, “it was too expensive. It was just too expensive.”

From one woman who sold her soul for a period of time to anyone out there reading this who knows how it feels to be out of touch with yourself, I just want to say one thing.

It’s not worth it.

It’s too expensive.

It’s time to start using your voice.

It’s time to come home to yourself.

I can teach you how to use the power of writing your story as a tool to reclaim yourself and start using your voice again. Check out my writing workshop here.

The post The Benefit of Using Your Voice, No Matter What It Costs appeared first on Allison Fallon.

When I started writing my latest manuscript, I promised myself I was going to tell the truth. I was going to use my voice, speak up for myself, talk about the things I had kept secret for so long, and finally finally be free to say what was on my mind.

I was done hiding.

When I actually got into the writing of it—a very personal story that shares how I made it out of an abusive relationship, and talks about recovering from the real lasting emotional damage of control and manipulation—I realized that telling the “truth” wasn’t going to be as easy as I had once thought.

[If you’re interested in learning more about how I regained my confidence, found and starting using my voice again, check out this new creative writing workshop I’m teaching.].

The obstacles.

One of the major obstacles I came up against was that I couldn’t remember what it felt like to hear my own voice. To trust myself. To assume that my answer to a question—although not necessarily the only answer—was a perfectly valid and important answer. If you had asked me a question like what do you want for dinner? Or what do you think is the best approach to this dilemma? in those early days of recovery, I would have been frozen in my tracks.

I didn’t know.

I’ll never forget a friend having to remind me, when I was about to make a big purchase in a store one day, that I was allowed to change my mind if I wanted to. There I am, a 33-year-old woman, standing at the cash register frozen, and my friend could notice the shift in my energy even more astutely than I could.

I didn’t know how to give myself permission to want what I wanted, to feel what I felt, to know what I knew—let alone to say what I thought. What a disorienting thing to have your only reference point for information and affirmation be outside of you, to other people or institutions or sources—to the point where you aren’t even in touch with your own perspective.

When you check in with yourself, to see how you feel or what you think about a thing, you just… come up blank.

But it gets even more complicated than that.

Even as I did the work to reconnect with myself (through therapy, friendship, writing, yoga) and began recovering the sound of my voice, I realized there was a very external obstacle to using it.

There were forces at work which had a vested interest in keeping me quiet.

Power. Control. Manipulation.

Some of the “push-back” we get when we begin using our voices is healthy—an opportunity for us to see and experience the impact we have on others and hold space for someone else to have their (conflicting) truth, too. But a lot of it is toxic and unfair and and unthoughtful and biased and discriminatory and limiting. Driven by the same forces that drove my abusive relationship—the need for certain people to stay in control and stay in power.

To keep you quiet.

The ramifications many of us experience for using our voices play a powerful role in keeping us from doing it. I noticed in my own recovery process that watching another woman speak up and then get crushed by those who didn’t believe her or take her seriously, or even just didn’t share her opinion, would make me think to myself, “why would I ever put myself in that position?”

The control is working. Until we decide we’re ready to break the cycle.

[When you’re ready to break the cycle, I can teach you one incredibly powerful and effective tool you can use to reconnect with yourself and start using your voice again.]

The dangers.

It’s incredibly dangerous to not know the sound of your own voice—or to know your voice and not be using it.

The first and biggest danger, in my view, is what I alluded to above, which is that when we don’t know and trust ourselves, we become extra vulnerable to control, manipulation, and betrayal. Maybe you get this. You might feel like you have been in business or personal relationships over and over and over again where you are betrayed or lied to or used or silenced or trampled on.

It’s much easier for someone to control you if you don’t know the sound of your voice—because conveniently, when you don’t trust yourself, you have to look to them for guidance.

Religious communities can do this, spouses can do this, significant others can do this, family members can do this, bosses can do this…

And sure, there are plenty of totally benign churches and spouses and parents and bosses who are not taking advantage of those in their care who don’t know the sound of their own voice. But when you know yourself, when you know your voice, suddenly the onus of control for your life and your growth and your development and your happiness is back where it belongs—in your court.

Secondly…

Speaking of which, the second dangerous thing that happens when you don’t know how to navigate your internal world is that you become highly likely to place all of your focus outside of you for the circumstances of your life. This is one way people who feel powerless gain back a sense of power, without actually reclaiming their power.

They blame everyone else for their problems and wish everybody else would change so their experiences could change.

I noticed myself doing this in my recovery when I would start to get really uncomfortable with some of the big feelings I was having about my new life, post-relationship—all the grief, all of the confusion, all of the re-calibrating. Anytime I would speak up about my circumstances and someone would ask me, “how didn’t you see?” or “why did you ignore the warning signs?”

I would point the finger.

It’s a clever evasion move.

Well, he wouldn’t let me…

Sure, maybe there is truth in that statement. But the more important truth, the harder truth, the only truth over which I have any control and the only truth which can set me free is the truth of ME.

Why did I abandon myself?

Why did I ignore what I knew?

Why didn’t I listen to myself?

I’m not saying the external circumstances weren’t terrible or unfair or that they didn’t matter. They did. Of course they did and of course they made things complicated and scary and of course they were unjust and unfair. What I’m saying is that when I answered the HARDER question—“why did I abandon myself”—that’s where I gained back all of my power.

The price of using your voice.

The hard truth is there is a high price to speaking up. Criticism, judgement, rejection, abandonment.

We’re right, I think, to have a little fear of what it costs.

But the bigger question, I think, is “what is the cost of denying your voice?”

I was talking with a friend the other day who got wrapped up in a religious group where she was forced to abandon many of her family and relationship ties—not to mention all of her freedom to think her own thoughts and make her own choices. What she gained in return was access to the “inner circle,” which offered her an elevated social status and unthinkable resources.

After walking away, she said, “it was too expensive. It was just too expensive.”

From one woman who sold her soul for a period of time to anyone out there reading this who knows how it feels to be out of touch with yourself, I just want to say one thing.

It’s not worth it.

It’s too expensive.

It’s time to start using your voice.

It’s time to come home to yourself.

I can teach you how to use the power of writing your story as a tool to reclaim yourself and start using your voice again. Check out my writing workshop here.

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