Vironika Tugaleva's Blog

Did you see the Northern Lights on Friday? I didn’t. I spent the evening kissing my baby good night, exercising, cooking, and pumping milk in my mother’s basement before going to bed exhausted. I used to follow the phases of the moon and sit for hours watching the night sky. I used to look up Northern Lights activity obsessively. Seeing them has been on my bucket list since I was a teenager. Two days ago, the Northern Lights were upstairs, and I had no clue.

Years ago, if someone would have told me that story, I would have taken it as a reason to hold off on having kids. Now, sitting here writing this at 4 am, seeing my little one on the baby monitor, I feel so grateful to be where I am. 

Before I became a mom, I noticed screaming babies. I noticed the exasperated looks on parents’ faces when their kids threw tantrums in grocery stores. I noticed the exhausted dark circles on the faces of child-carrying mothers whose husbands made eye contact with me as they walked by. Ick. I never wanted to be stuck in something like that.

I’ve been studying childhood trauma for a long time—not only as a psychological topic but also as a facet of my psyche. I knew that my aversion to becoming a mom had something to do with my relationship with my parents. Too many times, I’ve been afraid of dragging my children through exactly what I went through. I felt it was safer to stay away from the whole experience.

Older women warned me that something would happen in my 30s, some biological shift that would make me want to procreate. I remember being 23 years old with dyed black hair, face full of piercings, and a button clipped to my Nightmare Before Christmas bag that said “Cats Not Kids.” Back then, I considered getting my tubes tied to prevent hormone-induced brainwashing. 

A few years ago, I started feeling something more than cramps with every menstrual period: some emptiness I couldn’t explain. I’ve written about having a love-sized hole inside my heart. Some people talk about having a God-sized hole. No one tells you about the child-sized hole: the literal empty uterus and the inexplicable longing to create a tiny being.

As my baby boy was growing inside me, I felt peace. I also felt nauseous at the smell of my favourite foods and terrible heartburn after consuming anything, even water, and anxious about the future of my artistic endeavours, but I also felt peace. I was, after all, embarking on the ultimate creative act: creating a human being.

I was excited to become a mom, but I was also afraid. I feared that my inexperience with children would make me unable to connect with my son. I feared living without sleep or inspiration or intimacy with my partner. I feared losing myself. I feared experiences exactly like the one I had this weekend: realizing I missed the once-in-a-lifetime celestial event I’d been awaiting while wrapped up in motherhood.

If I could speak to myself in pregnancy during one of those overthinking midnights, I’d show her just a glimpse of the magic that happens around here every day. Sure, there are moments of stress and overwhelm and confusion, but there are even more moments of pure joy and deep connection and real laughter. There are bursts of dancing and silly songs and wide-eyed wonder. I tried so many things to heal my inner child, but there’s nothing like a real-life baby to keep my inner child company.

I’ve had some tough moments where I’ve felt like I had to choose between my inner little girl and my little boy. In those times, I’ve chosen him more automatically than I can explain. During my traumatic delivery as well as a difficult postpartum period, I put my child’s welfare before mine, and I did it without giving it much thought. If you’re a mom, you know. That’s how it is.

I realize now that this is why, in all the years I spent coaching people on self-love and self-confidence, the majority of my clients have been mothers. Motherhood gives you strength and happiness, but it also makes you less selfish. Motherhood gives you the ability to care for someone more than you care for yourself. It’s a superpower, but it also has the power to harm your self-trust.

My inner child can wait, but she can’t wait forever. If I don’t create space for her, I can’t be the best mother I can be. We are always parenting ourselves as well as our children.

No matter how much I’ve tried to create space for myself with daily exercise and nature walks and writing in the middle of the night, I still missed my beloved Northern Lights. Honestly, I don’t even know when the last full moon was or when the next one will be. That feeling of separation from myself is uncomfortable, but it’s also an essential communication. A part of me is calling myself home.

Women older than me always like to remind me it was harder for them. They had to boil cloth diapers and handwash all their dishes and mop the floors on their hands and knees. I think it’s true that it was harder, but not just because of the chores.

The biggest advantage we have nowadays is the opportunity to destroy this myth of the mother who loses herself through her children. There might be things I miss out on. There might even be things I can’t do at all right now. But every day, I take time to put my phone away and engage with my baby deeply and find parts of myself in him that I’ve been looking for all along.

It’s easy to focus on what we’ve lost. I had abs and long nights of sleep and lots of free time. I can only gain back so much right now. But instead of focusing on what’s gone, I see what I do have: a totally in-the-moment, curious little guru waiting to teach me about seizing the moment.

One day, I’ll see the Northern Lights. My son will be by my side. I’ll tell him about the time I missed it when he was very small. We will be in awe of the spectacle before us, and we will be grateful that I missed out all those years ago.

More than anything, this is what motherhood has given me: an eternal beacon of hope. A reason to not only live but live fully and believe that everything happens for a reason and everything will be okay.

Just a quick note before I leave you to the comments that the poem in this blog post was written as part of The Poetry Nest project for Ars Poetica. Read more about it here.

The post What Being a Mother Means to Me appeared first on Vironika Wilde.

A friend once asked me what makes a “good poem.” I said, “a good poem makes me feel something, moves me.” How subjective. What moves me might not move you. Besides, what moves me might not even look like a poem to you.

This is the trouble and the beauty of poetry: there is so much room for relationship. It’s something you either connect with or you don’t. Because poetry tends to be more abstract than prose, it hits us all differently.

I can’t tell you, objectively, what makes good poetry. However, I can tell you that I’m an incredibly emotional person. I feel things deeply and often. The poetry books that hit me hardest are ones that keep pulling on my emotional heartstrings every time I read them. The books I reread are ones that tell the truth, no matter how inconvenient or tiresome it is. Books that reveal parts of our collective humanity that often go unacknowledged and unspoken.

That is all to say: take this list with a grain of salt. This is my personal opinion, like any list of book recommendations is bound to be. But also note that salt strengthens other flavours. I’m here as a poet who’s used poetry to heal myself and I’m recognizing the work of other poets who have done the same. This list is bound to hit you differently than one that’s researched off the bestseller lists. It’s nice to have a bit of salt.

Please note also that the links below are Amazon Associates links, which means I get a nominal commission if you buy through them. If you’re opposed to this, don’t click on the links, and just search for the books yourself.

Without further ado, I hope that the poetry books below will make you laugh, cry, and write, just like they did for me.

Bone by Yrsa Daley-Ward

Bone was one of the first poetry collections I read after I decided to take myself more seriously as a poet. There are pages in this book that I have read dozens, if not hundreds, of times. There’s something about the way these words hit on uncomfortable truths that is unmatched in so many other collections. There’s also something about her level of transparency about her family and her past. At the very least, I can guarantee that this book will make you more honest.

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Helium by Rudy Francisco

I first found Rudy’s work through his spoken word videos. Something about his flow captured me and took my breath away. When I finally read his book, I was surprised to see how differently the words sat on paper. I was also surprised by how differently the narrative had been arranged⁠—how the page poems stood as a different art form altogether. I highly recommend this collection to anyone who’s interested in both spoken and written poetry. Rudy Francisco is a perfect example of how to execute both with emotional and intellectual precision. He’s also a perfect example of combining political content with love poems. His poems about racism and prejudice sit beside his poems about heartbreak. He is a whole human being when he writes: mind, body, and soul. I can’t say enough about this collection. You’ll have to find out for yourself.

The Madness Vase by Andrea Gibson

Andrea (who now goes by Andrew) Gibson is another poet I first found through spoken word. When I started buying their books, I couldn’t stop. Admitedly, these poems came to me at a time when I was questioning my sexuality, so the topics were hitting hard, but I felt more than just an experiential overlap. There’s this ability Andrea has: jumping through metaphors, combining them into labyrinths of imagery and feeling, saying so much while dancing around what is being unsaid. These poems are guaranteed to confuse you just enough to make you feel something profound. And if you are exploring yourself as a member of the LGBT community, then you’ll surely find solace in the subject matter as well.

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

Deaf Republic is the only book on my list that’s been applauded by poetry critics. To be honest, I find the literary sphere in relation to poetry to be incredibly elitist and exclusive. Most people who make it onto those lists are there for a reason: who they know. I tend to find the subject matter boring and the writing style intolerable. Then, this little book came to me. I have to admit, my interest in Ilya’s work came partially because of my own background. He’s a Ukranian immigrant to the USA who’s writing poetry about his political experiences. But these poems are more than just emotions. They’re woven into a story. Ilya introduced me to the idea of crafting a solid narrative out of a poetry collection. He also showed me how much I still had to say about my relationship to my culture. I can say with some certainty that this book will blow you away. Especially if you also enjoy fiction, there’s a storybook element to this collection that is mindblowing. And if you also happen to be Eastern-European, you’ll surely find pieces of your family history in these pages.

Black Movie by Danez Smith

This book is an emotional rollercoaster, and its structure is nothing short of brilliant. The author paints a picture of racism in America using film as a theme. Except it’s not a film: it’s writing (and not just any writing, but poetry) that draws on the film world for reference, inspiration, and reflection. The words in this book will educate you, move you, and haunt you. They will also inspire you to use the page in ways you’ve never imagined.

Life of the Party by Olivia Gatwood

This collection inspired so many of the poems in my book Love and Gaslight. There’s something about the way Olivia makes use of structure, not only within her poems but also within the collection, to tell shocking, relatable truths. Before I read this book, I didn’t realize how much I still needed say and how badly I needed to say it. Watching her be so honest about her experiences as well as the intricacies of her emotions, I can honestly say it’s made me the artist I am today. I also found her to be incredibly pleasant when I emailed to tell her this, so I can tell you that I’m deeply amazed by the art and the artist alike.

Love and Gaslight by Vironika Wilde

Speaking of Love and Gaslight, I have to risk sounding self-promotional here because this poetry collection saved my sanity. I had just left a toxic relationship, ended up in an even more toxic rebound, and then got sexually assaulted by a so-called spiritual healer. Then, I got locked down in New Zealand for the first spring of COVID. It was a stressful time to say the least, and I felt like I was drowning in trauma. This poetry collection, which is also a story in 5 parts, gave me a sense of purpose. It helped me feel heard and helped me process the giant pile of unaddressed emotions that had built up over the years I hadn’t been releasing my poetry to the world. If you read the other books on this list, you’ll also see how the various collections here inspired my own. These poets all helped me become the writer I am today. That is something I adore about poetry: it’s a conversation. It’s not only a dialogue between ourselves and our inner worlds, but it’s also a constant interplay between our work and the work of others. The inspiration is never-ending.

salt. by Nayyirah Waheed

I am not overexaggerating when I say that all modern-day poets owe a hat tip to Nayyirah Waheed. She’s been a pioneer in many ways, and if you scour the internet, you’ll find that some of the most famous poets of our time (I won’t mention any names) have been accused of plagiarizing her work. Just like Rudy Francisco, she manages to strike a balance between the personal and the political. But what I love most about Waheed’s work is that it doesn’t hold back. She says exactly what she means, and sometimes, it hurts. But it’s the pain of truth. She’s also famous for her short poems, saying so much in so few words. She’s the one who gave Instagram Poetry the feel it has today. If you’re a modern-day poet or simply someone intersted in the genre, you must read this book.

Nejma by Nayyirah Waheed

If you’re going to start reading Nayyirah Waheed, you’ll find it hard to stop. So, here’s another recommendation. I found this book on the bookshelf of an apartment where I was cat sitting. I devoured it in one tearry-eyed, belly-breathing afternoon. I can honestly say I felt every single emotion possible reading it: love, fear, anger, disgust, shame, guilt, arousal, inspiration, sadness, everything. This is the power of Waheed’s work. I cannot stress this enough: she is a pioneer of modern-day poetry and definitely deserves your attention.

Nothing is Okay by Rachel Wiley

Of all the books on this list, Rachel Wiley’s has something special: humour. She’s just as honest and vulnerable as any poet I adore, but she also allows herself space to laugh at the worst things that happen to her. The poem, “A response to the men of OKcupid adamant about showing me their cocks,” for example, has a hilarious spin at the end and that laughter acts as a healing salve for anyone who’s been uncomfortable in those situations. She heals not only with tears, but also with giggles. To me, that makes her special and absolutely worth reading. If you have a comedian inside you, Rachel will show you how to use that side of you to process your trauma and connect to your art form.

That’s it, friends. Those are my top 10 modern-day poetry reads. Now, I’d love to hear what you think.

Which of these are you going to pick up ASAP? Have you read any of them already? Are there any books you think belong on this list that you didn’t see? Please let me know in the comments below. I love hearing from you.

The post Best Poetry Books for the Soul – 10 Must-Read Modern Collections appeared first on Vironika Wilde (Tugaleva).

When I first discovered spirituality, I thought I had found the answer to waging peace in the world. The idea that, at some level, we are all one, all united, all interconnected—this, to me, seemed like the idea that would bring world peace.

After I wrote my first book, The Love Mindset, people kept writing to me to ask, “How?” “How do we keep ourselves open to love?” “How do we experience ourselves as parts of an interconnected reality?” “How can we overcome the divisiveness of the world and experience oneness?”

That book released almost seven years ago, and over those years, my answer to this question has been evolving. Before I realized what the potential answer might be, I learned what the answer was not.

In the first few years after the publication of The Love Mindset, I found myself on various spiritual radio shows, stumped by questions about my favourite healing crystal and my zodiac sign. I took a step back from the New Age movement.

In the next few years, I found myself more involved in the self-help world, disgusted by the marketing ploys and consumerism that kept people dependent on so-called gurus. I took a step back from the Self-Help genre.

Over the next year, I found myself involved with the Toronto conscious community. Soon after, I was sexually assaulted by one of its members, spoke out about it, and had no one in the community reach out to help me or eliminate the predator. I took a running step back from the conscious community.

Right now, I find myself involved with poetry and activism. Poetry has allowed me to look into the viewpoints of human beings all over the world, to empathize with those whose life experiences are different from mine. Activism, including continued education about social justice and equality, has helped me define the systems that dictate human experiences. Finally, I am getting an answer to The Love Mindset ‘s How that isn’t full of spiritual bypassing, ignorance, and privileged light-washing.

John Welwood defined spiritual bypassing as using “spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep personal, emotional ‘unfinished business,’ to shore up a shaky sense of self, or to belittle basic needs, feelings, and developmental tasks.”

While this definition rests on the avoidance of personal growth, it also explains how spiritual ideas can be used to avoid societal growth. In response to the recent Black Lives Matter protests, some so-called spiritual people are shutting down the calls for justice by saying things like “we are all one race,” “but I love everyone,” and “all lives matter.” While these ideas might seem like they are advocating for unity, they are in fact, perpetuating the very racism they claim to exist above.

In his brilliant book How To Be An Anti-Racist, Ibram X. Kendi states, “The opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘anti-racist.’ What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist.’”

This non-existent safe space is where much of the New Age spiritual movement resides behind the ideas of “detachment,” “non-dualism,” and other concepts that encourage mental and emotional distancing from the world. Of course, being able to detach from our thoughts is a useful tool. Knowing that we are not our thoughts or that we don’t have to believe everything we think—these are helpful tools on the journey of self-awareness. However, when we use these concepts to ignore or oppose the necessary work of correcting injustice in the world, our spirituality is not founded in love. It’s founded in apathy.

Recently, I saw an Instagram story by a prominent influencer who used the common New Age belief that “our souls choose our bodies before birth” to invalidate anger in the black community and tell people to “relax” and “use this as an opportunity for personal growth.” This is not love. This is not spirituality. This is not compassion. 

In his book Spiritual Graffiti, Jeff Brown defines what he calls the “New Cage Movement” as “ungrounded, dangerous and simplistic elements of the New Age movement, including but not limited to: wishful thinking mantras, spiritual bypass and premature forgiveness practices, superficial healing techniques, the perpetual denial of common sense realities, and the insistence on inflated, fantastical perspectives—‘Everything is an illusion,’ ‘It’s all perfect,’ ‘There are no victims,’ ‘Anger is a substandard emotion,’ ‘Everything that happens is meant-to-be,’ ‘All judgments are bad,’ ‘You chose your every experience and circumstance,’ ‘Your personal identifications are inherently false,’ ‘Just ask the universe for what you want…,’ ‘Everything you see and feel is a reflection of you,’ ‘There is no one to blame,’ ‘The ego is the enemy,’ etc.” He goes on to say that “these perspectives have their place in certain circumstances, but taken too far—as they often are—become a prison of their own making, locking humanity in with its unresolved pain, obstructed from doing the real work by their addictive flights of fancy.”

When I first came across this definition, I rolled my eyes at it. Years later, I saw how I was harming myself with these ideas. Years later, I saw how I had harmed other people with these ideas. Reading it again today, I see how these ideas perpetuate racism and halt the fight for justice.

The reality of spiritual oneness does not erase the reality of material, social, and racial divisions among people. The way to keep our minds open to the interconnected love that binds us all is not to ignore the disconnections. In fact, by addressing the disconnections and working to solve them, we can heighten our experience of oneness with the world—specifically by ensuring that other human beings have equal opportunity to experience that oneness.

When people are denied their rights to breathe, to eat, to live—our awareness of oneness with those people should not numb us to their struggle. If we truly felt at one with others, would that not make us empathize with them? Would that not mean we feel their pain as our own and seek to make their lives easier?

The fact that we are all part of one human race should not, therefore, make us disregard those who are bringing up racial inequalities. It should make us want to stand beside and behind them in addressing those inequalities. If we truly feel that we are part of the same human race, should we not want to help those who feel separate because they are constantly, systemically made “Other”?

Kendi says, “To be antiracist is to recognize the reality of biological equality, that skin color is as meaningless to our underlying humanity as the clothes we wear over that skin…To be antiracist is to also recognize the living, breathing reality of this racial mirage, which makes our skin colors more meaningful than our individuality. To be antiracist is to focus on ending the racism that shapes the mirages, not to ignore the mirages that shape peoples’ lives.”

So, yes, race is a construct that was invented in order to justify the slave trade hundreds of years ago. But this construct is currently responsible for the existence of racist policies in society. In order to dismantle the divisions, we have to acknowledge them. In order to experience ourselves as a unified human race, we must address the ways in which we are divided.

If you would have asked me, seven years ago, how to use spiritual awareness to address racial injustice, I might have said that we should acknowledge people of different races as identical to ourselves on a spiritual level and then allow our actions to evolve from that awareness. Now, my answer might begin the same way, but it would continue to specify what those actions might be, such as: read antiracist books, participate in the dismantling of racist policies, donate to social justice organizations, speak out against systemic injustices that lead to inequality, buy from business owners in marginalized groups, acknowledge the reality of privilege, participate in classes by antiracism educators, and most importantly of all, invite and validate the experiences of those who are experiencing racism. These are just a few ideas. There are so many actions to take. There are so many opportunities to help. I’m listening to leaders in the antiracism community who know more than I do. I do not have the answers, but I am learning from those who do. Spiritual awareness alone is not enough.

It’s common for many spiritual seekers, myself included, to experience feeling worthless, useless, or empty. We reach for spirituality because it gives us a sense of meaning in a meaningless world. But if we do not reinforce this intellectualized meaning with behaviours and emotions, we start to feel empty again. If we continue churning our experiences of oneness into practical, conscious, everyday choices that support human rights, it becomes simpler to maintain our awareness of that oneness.

Battling racism is a daily choice, a daily struggle, and a daily process of awareness. In that process, seeing those who are racially oppressed as spiritually equal to us is a given. It’s not something that needs to be said out loud, and it’s definitely not something that should be used to invalidate anyone’s feelings.

I was in my late twenties when I discovered that my grandmother held Muslim beliefs. As a Ukrainian immigrant with Russian roots, I thought people of my culture were all either atheist or orthodox. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Tatarstan, where my grandmother is from, is a part of Russia that houses people of Muslim faith. When I asked my grandmother why I had never heard about this before, she said that spiritual beliefs were not something she considered necessary to share with anyone. She said her spirituality was her own business.

My grandmother’s words come to mind when I see self-proclaimed spiritual people shutting down black activists with refrains of “we are all one.” This is like reminding George Floyd’s family that “we all need to breathe.” It might be true in an objective sense, but saying it in that time, in that place, to those people—it helps no one and, frankly, makes you sound like an asshole.

Empathy is not the opposite of mindfulness. The idea that every emotion and experience is temporary does not negate the idea that every emotion and experience is valid. Detaching from identifying with our emotions is not the same as detaching from feeling them.

It’s time to take a good, long, hard look at the New Age movement and question the ways in which it perpetuates inequality and silences marginalized voices. A black square on social media is not solidarity. Real solidarity requires compassion. Real compassion requires listening, empathy, and action.

Loving spirituality doesn’t sit with its hands folded neatly in its lap, waiting for someone else to clean up the mess. It gets its hands dirty. It cares. It helps.

**Please note, I am donating 100% of the affiliate commissions and book sales generated by this post to various organizations promoting racial justice. If you have suggestions for where this money should go, I welcome your suggestions in the comments below.**

The post New Age Spirituality Meets Black Lives Matter (How to Love the Human Race Without Sounding Like an Asshole) appeared first on Vironika Tugaleva.

Photo credit: Brittney Guimond / Womyn With Heart

It started with the dreams. My first lover would appear. First, for conversation. Then, for the glamorous pull of love, home, love, sex, and everything foreign. I would wake up sweating, confused, and hungry.

The boy in my dreams would ask, “Has anyone else ever made you feel this way?” The answer was silently stitched into the sleeping face beside me⁠—the face of the man I said I loved.

I spent years running from poetry. It didn’t feel like a problem. After all, poetry was a companion for my darkness. And after that darkness almost ended me, I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want poetry. I wanted to be someone else, someone wholesome, whole. I was afraid of the pain I had caused to so many, most brutally to myself, and I wanted my life to have some meaning, some purpose, some magical, happy ending that made all the conflict seem worthwhile. I could not love who I was, so I changed myself. I could not love what I couldn’t get, so I changed my definitions of love. Then, I helped other people believe my story. A story that felt nice to believe. A story that was true but not at the expense of everything I made false, all the paradoxes I couldn’t yet hold in my hands.

In came the dreams—hot, heart-wrenching, and oh-so-inconvenient. I couldn’t help but write poems about them. Where else could I run from the perfect life I had created for myself? Where else could I share the deep hypocrisy of my deepest yearnings? This was how The Shades of Missing You was born: out of necessity. I had something to say and nowhere else to say it.

No one asked me to cut art, anger, or sex out of my public persona. I did it myself, gladly. And while I shared stories about self-love, there was a hidden story behind closed doors. At first, I couldn’t see it. I was focused on another problem: the relationship I was in. The constant conflict, disrespect, and misunderstanding. And only after I gained the courage to leave did I realize that him and I were co-conspirators in the kidnapping of my truth. I was afraid of the madwoman in my veins, so I unconsciously found someone who thought she was just as ugly. We locked her up together.

Writing The Shades of Missing You helped me resurrect the narcotic, addictive passion that fueled my poetry as much as my addictions. I was on a roller coaster, a ride I didn’t have to control. I loosened my grip and let it take me where it wanted.

Naively, I thought that the years of self-awareness had scrubbed clean my emotional traumas, that this passion would lead me to what I truly deserved, to cherries I could put on top of my cemented sense of self-respect. Life had other plans.

The first order of business was to embody the opposite of everything I had written about myself, especially everything I had published. I was glad many times for The Art of Talking to Yourself. Its paradox-loving, pro-hypocrisy attitude kept me from hating my inconsistencies and allowed me to march courageously into a new world. I wrote it to help people. Turns out, I also wrote it for myself—as a springboard into the unpredictable vortex of the real. It has been my father, my mother, my ancestor, beaming at me with faith and encouragement, no matter how lost I got.

And lost I did get. I wandered through uncharted paths in my inner forest. I followed the wolves, chased them, let them rip my flesh and suck on my bones. I walked on the yellow brick road, knowing the end of the story, and still I believed and sang and danced into the arms of disappointment.

When I visited Montreal in June, I met a woman whose admiration of my first book, The Love Mindset, caught me off guard. She took me to dinner, bought a few books, listened to my sadness and my excitement, and then gently explained that the way I sometimes talked about my first book was disrespectful, that she once got into a debate with someone about how it was better than The Alchemist, and that my obvious preference for my second book feels like a slap in the face to those who loved the first one more.

At first, I found her words hard to digest. Then, I felt confused. Then, I felt ashamed. I was doing it again: flipping sides of a coin instead of spending it on a ticket into tomorrow. Just as locking up my self-loathing past had caused turmoil, locking up any chapter this self-loving past would cause just as much turmoil. I was both. I was everything. And the more I saw how many galaxies lived inside each of my breaths, the more I became paralyzed by the dark matter around the light, the void holding it all together.

I wrote poems. I wrote spoken word. I performed. I painted. I collaged. I sang. I danced. I cried and laughed and yearned and begged and moaned and forgave and raged. My existence itself shaped into a poem. Everything became a metaphor. Everything became mysterious, tragic, and beautiful.

After I experienced the world as one unified organism, I called this God sometimes. I stopped being triggered by people using that word to mean something else because I understood we were seeking the same plane of perception. Through my return to poetry, I have experienced what I keep calling the Goddess. The creative energy that births itself and then dies, makes love to itself and then cries. That strange yin-yang of beauty and chaos that constructs all the pedestals and digs all the caves.

I have written so much. And there is so much more to write. I have sometimes hated crawling back to my words, full of blood and filth and scars, begging art to make me whole again. But what must come must come. What must be written must be written. And the truth is that I have not been as honest as I could be in my writing. And if I am to receive the answers I desire to my unanswered questions, then it will only be after I have bled everything onto the page, until the lining of my heart sheds, unobstructed by all my bitter yesterdays.

The Shades of Missing You was an exciting first step. And I understand now that it is a step. I lifted a weight off my chest by speaking the inconvenient truth, and my task now is to keep writing and sharing whatever possesses me, so that I may let it go. Release is not a forceful process. It is a relaxation that allows all the built-up pressure to seep out, sometimes slowly, sometimes in bursts, and always full of beauty and pain.

Since I was little, I’ve been healing through poetry. Much of what I’ve written has been destroyed or lost. Sometimes, by the hands of other people. Often, by me. I’ve been ashamed of my emotional turmoil. I’ve tried to make it more consumable. But I’m hard to swallow, just like the truth. I’ve feared being “too much,” and for some people, I always will be. I’ve been working on accepting this. It’s painful. It’s scary. But it’s real. And I am here to leave a legacy of truth, of telling the stories we can all relate to but fear sharing. This is my task. I am as afraid as I am in awe of it.

I welcome the ripples of healing that spread each time I share the words that have healed me. I have been healing alongside you, and this is another chapter. A coming of poet story, perhaps.

The poems I have been writing lately make me uncomfortable. I think, “Can I really say this?” And each time my thoughts wander that path, I remember Yrsa Daley-Ward’s words: “If you are afraid to write it, that’s a good sign. I suppose you know you’re writing the truth when you’re terrified.” I am. I am in a cocoon weaving a new self through my memories, my pain, my unfulfilled desires. And it gets easier. When I first began to write the poems in The Shades of Missing You, I thought I’d never share them. Now, I am excited to share them, but I’m afraid of sharing something else. Courage is a daily choice for me. And I will keep making it.

I feel naked, raw, exposed. I also feel relieved. I’m finding a home inside my words, a sense of belonging I’ve been afraid to admit I desire. Now more than ever, I am grateful for your attention, your openness, your acceptance of my words and my journey. Thank you. I love you. I really do

I’d also like to take this moment to officially announce the release date of The Shades of Missing You: November 11, 2019. I think 11/11 looks nice. Don’t you? You are welcome to check out a preview here. I hope you’ll also take the time to leave me a comment and let me know you’re still here with me. I’m still here with you

The post Speaking My Truth: A Journey of Pain, Paradox, and Poetry appeared first on Vironika Tugaleva.

My report cards from childhood have some consistent criticisms: “distracts the class,” “comes late,” and the most common of all, “doesn’t work well with others.”

My grade 4 report card feedback: “…she is not afraid to take a leadership role. She needs to learn to share this role with other group members. At times, she overpowers her peers and makes commands rather than suggestions as to what should be done.”

Shockingly, my parents didn’t care about that. I say shockingly because my parents certainly cared about my report card.

My horrific group work ratings weren’t the only things my parents overlooked. Consistently, I got scores well below 90% (my parents’ expected minimum) in gym, music, and art. I still remember coming home crying one day because I got Cs in those subjects. My mom laughed. She said, “It’s okay. It’s genetic. We’re not an artistic or athletic family. That’s not what we’re good at.”

I suppose that’s how they felt about group work too. Back home, no one taught me to hold the door open for people or to care about others’ emotions. The lessons I was taught, fiercely and perpetually, were: trust no one, always be number one, and don’t ever show fear.

Though I rebelled hard against my parents as a teenager, I took those core lessons with me. I continued to believe that I was athletically and artistically challenged. I stifled my fear instead of working on it. I made independence a part of my personality. I would even quote the report cards when confronted. Hey, if I’ve been bad at group work since childhood, that must mean it’s genetic, right? (I.e. “I can’t help what an asshole I am.”)

Since I began my journey of self-discovery, I’ve been challenging this conditioning. I took up running and yoga. I finally learned to ride a bike. I faced some fears I had accumulated from childhood: being upside down, climbing trees, jumping. I started playing guitar and singing. I’ve worked to publicly share my fears and my journey of facing them.

The group work bit has been harder to
challenge.

In my last year of
college, I realized that many of my classmates saw group work with me as a free
ride to an A. I tried, with no grace whatsoever, to change those patterns. In
the end, I ended up doing most of the work last minute and being furious about
it.

Since I first started blogging in 2012, I’ve tried to do everything myself. Like this, I learned WordPress web design, basic HTML and CSS coding, graphic design, social media. I have rarely hired people (and when I have, I’ve rarely been happy with the results …here’s one of those rare times). I’ve been functioning as a solopreneur, a one-woman show.

These tendencies haven’t just crept into my work. They’ve also been part of my personal life. I’ve never had a roommate I didn’t resent at some point for not doing as much cleaning as I did. I’ve frequently loaned money that I never received back. And I cannot tell you how many times in my life I have been exhausted, thinking, “I am so tired of doing all the work!”

But how tired was I? Tired enough to clean less and give others an opportunity to notice it was messy and take initiative? Tired enough to set boundaries? Tired enough to not give out more than I was willing to lose? Tired enough to say, “No.” To say, “I can’t”? To say, “I need a break”? Tired enough to actually take that break instead of being productive during it?

Obviously, I wasn’t tired enough.

Last year, I planned a book launch in Toronto for The Art of Talking to Yourself. I had an idea to include others in the event: artists whose work visually represented my book’s contents. This was a step in the right direction, but I still ended up overwhelmed.

Of the five artists who participated, only two were available to help on the day. I didn’t think of how it would affect me to have more people helping. I just focused on doing everything I could myself.

The attendance to the book launch was low. Just when I was starting to get disappointed, Jamie saved the day. He stood outside and pulled in people off the street, promising them free food and inspiration. If he hadn’t done that, I might have walked away with some familiar feelings about how much I got back from what I gave.

About a month later, I was invited to take part in an event run by Daniel, an artist and musician who printed canvases for my book launch. From the moment I stepped into that room, I knew it was a special place. The walls were covered in art and, even before the doors opened, the room was full of people—those showcased in the event.

Something came alive within me that day: an idea. Is this what was possible when people worked together?

Daniel’s Art Party in fall of 2017. Daniel in the red sweater on the right. Find me in the back on the left. (Photo by Melissa Aquino.)

After that, I took off travelling again for nine months. I went back to solopreneurship, but my goals for the year were different. I didn’t want to spend all my time working. I wanted to face my fears, ignite my creativity, and explore the big, wide world.

I expected my business to suffer from my reduced working hours, but surprisingly, things went in a different direction. Having less time to work forced me to try to make things more efficient. For example, deciding to go on a four-day trek in Colombia brought me face-to-face with an uncomfortable reality: I couldn’t actually walk away from my business for four days.

There were tools that could help me with this, but they all cost money I hadn’t been willing to spend. I needed to make a decision: did I want to have freedom or did I want to save money? I bought some automation tools. I set them up. I gave myself the gift of freedom.

More opportunities came, and I kept having to make the same choice: was I committed to doing the new, uncomfortable thing to build the life I wanted or was I committed to comfort? I kept choosing the new. Choosing discomfort. Choosing to face my fears.

When I came back to Toronto in October, I reconnected with Daniel. Was he planning another event like the one last year? He wasn’t. I thought about trying to plan one on my own, but something within me resisted. That’s your comfort zone, I told myself. Working alone is the same old, same old.

So, Daniel and I decided to work together. The process was hard for me. With all my triggers around group work, my mind kept trying to convince me why it would have been better to work alone. And I kept having to redirect my thoughts, to choose to think a new, different way.

During one of our first meetings, Daniel said, “Some people are into trying to plan everything, and they just focus on that. They don’t realize that planning is only part of the work. Being able to run an event smoothly when things don’t go according to plan is an important part of it too.”

I kept remembering those words. At my book launch, I didn’t do a good job on the day. In fact, I did very little except talk about my books and sign them. I’m fond of planning, and I’m good at it. But I kept reminding myself of what I wasn’t good at—a skill set which Daniel has in spades.

One evening, Daniel and I went flyering for the event. My plan was to hit up as many gallery receptions as possible and put flyers into people’s hands. But when we entered the first art show, Daniel didn’t do what I had expected. He walked up to the main artist and began a long conversation. At first, I felt lost, but after a few minutes, I followed suit and started talking to another person, who turned out to be the director of the gallery.

Later on that night, we ended up at another reception. Within minutes, Daniel made some connections with new people. I was part of those conversations, but he had started them. Then, he said he had to go.

The first five minutes after he left were overwhelming. There were people everywhere. What was I going to do? Could I approach strangers and get into deep conversations?

It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how much working online had blunted my already hazy social skills. I could send an email to someone I didn’t know, so why was it so hard to just approach someone face-to-face? It wasn’t objectively harder. It was just new, uncomfortable.

That night changed my life. Not only did I overcome my fear, but I also found some incredible vendors and artists for the event, made connections with people whom I plan to work with one day, and stayed up until the wee hours of the morning talking to the gallery owner (with whom I’m now co-hosting an event).

So what was it worth: Daniel modeling those skills for me? Was it a fair trade for the extra hours I had spent flyering? I started to realize that what he had given me was priceless. There was no fairness, and there was no unfairness. There were only his offerings and my offerings. His boundaries and my boundaries. Everything else was magic.

Before the show, another person came to work side-by-side with Daniel and I. A comedian, poet, and button-maker, Anto is a ball of wit and energy. As we were discussing the approaching event a few days beforehand, he said to me, “We are going to take care of all the setup. Don’t worry. You’ve done so much in planning and promoting the event, it’s important that we come through on the day. You just stand at the door and invite all the vendors and artists before the show. We will set it up.”

Watching the cars pull up on the morning of December 16th, I felt like a child patiently waiting for my parents to do the adult work. When was the last time I let myself be in that position? When had I sat back and just allowed myself to receive?

That morning, lots of things went wrong, but I only remember what went well. Jamie took a long cab ride back to our sublet to get something we’d forgotten. Jason, our DJ, brought free breakfast for everyone and refused to let us reimburse him. Jamie and two volunteers, Brooke and Thomas, not only helped set up the market but also ran it in exchange for nothing more than free food and appreciation. Two more volunteers, Yana and Beki, came to help us set up and had to leave before the free food even arrived. Anto not only helped set up the vendor tables but also emceed the whole event. Four photographers and videographers came to document the event, mostly for service trades. We hosted 18 vendors, 8 artists, and 5 performers, all of whom had worked to help us promote the show, sell tickets, and build a loving vibe in the room.

That day, my heart was so full, and my mind was playfully obsessing over an idea that was rocking my world: “I couldn’t have done anything like this alone.”

Our team of vendors, artists, and performers at the Liberty Village Holiday Market.

There’s an African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I had put going fast on such a pedestal that I never saw the value in teamwork. Until now.

As I’ve allowed myself to embrace the idea of working with others, opportunities have been dropping into my lap left, right, and center.

The day after the event, I met up with Daniel, Anto, and Avienna (one of our most helpful vendors in selling tickets for the event) to discuss forming an arts collective. We have a name. We have a plan. We have momentum.

Shortly after, Anto and I met up one-on-one. He wanted some advice about editing and the direction of his creative career, and I wanted to thank him for all his help in the show. I knew what I had to give, but I wasn’t prepared for what I was about to receive. When I told Anto that I wanted to start performing, he told me he could help me with that. Within a few days, I was on a stage performing spoken word. It was incredible, and I couldn’t have done it without his guidance.

Anto giving me the mic at the Liberty Village Holiday Market. This photo feels so symbolic. (Photo by Brittney Guimond of Womyn With Heart.)

A few days later, I ran into Yana (one of the volunteers who didn’t even get free food) at a music event a few days after the show and told her some of my ideas about music events. It turns out that she not only has experience with planning those kinds of events but also a huge network of people who can help.

That gallery owner I stayed up talking to? Him and I are now planning a weekend seminar event. He has a two-floor space for us to use, connections to artists all over Toronto (and the world), and a graphic design degree.

I reconnected with a
friend from my theater school days. He’s now working for a media company with
millions of followers, and we’re brainstorming on what we can do together.

In the meantime, Chris Agnos from Sustainable Human made a video with clips from my audiobook. He has an audience of 2 million and video creation skills that I can only dream about. But I’ll let it speak for itself:

All of these incredible people with resources that I don’t have. For years, I worked on being abundant by maximizing my own skills and resources. But I’ve realized that human beings are the richest resources of all.

I’ve decided to put off
travelling this year and stay in Toronto. New opportunities seem to pop up
every day. I’m starting to understand why: I had walls put up against working
with others. Now that my walls are down, all the incredible opportunities I was
keeping at bay are flooding my world. And I’m learning to swim.

The most important lesson
here, and it’s one that I keep learning, is that just because something’s been
around for a while doesn’t mean it’s permanent, even when it comes to personality.
Everything can change. It’s just a matter of understanding why it’s there.

That whole thing about me
not being from an artistic or athletic family is nonsense. My mother is a
sensational artist and illustrator. She sews. She writes. My dad does
woodworking. He used to play guitar. Both of my parents exercise regularly now.
They’re both wizards at cooking. It was all just belief systems. Limiting
belief systems.

Some ideas have come to us
from multi-generational cycles that encourage self-repression and
inauthenticity. Will we stand up to those patterns and say, “It stops with me”?
Will we choose to make the new, uncomfortable choices? Will we trust where our
intuition is taking us? Will we take the opportunities that are available,
however inconveniently they may present themselves?

May our eyes remain
ever-open to these choices, and may our hearts remain ever courageous to say,
“Yes.”

The post Learning to Work With Others (Instead of Doing Everything By Myself) appeared first on Vironika Tugaleva.

I adore this cat.

I still remember when I first saw him, barely a few months old, with his huge ears and tiny, fluffy body. He’d been left in a box with his many brothers and sisters outside a vet’s office in Toronto. They were too young to be away from their mother. When I came, he was the only one left to adopt. I took him with me that day.

For years, this cat and I had a special bond. He was familiar with my gradient of extreme emotions, and he comforted me through every stage. He brought me so much joy and so much comfort. His name was originally Oscar, but somehow, it ended up being Tittens. No one is sure why or how.

Though Tittens has always stayed in my heart, he’s had a new home for a while. Six years ago, I was moving out of the house where I lived with more roommates and cats than I can count on both hands. A few days after moving in, it turned out that my new landlord and I had miscommunicated about pets. They weren’t allowed.

I called my friend Ivy. She took him in that very night.

At first, I felt guilty and planned to take him back as soon as possible. Then, I visited him. He recognized me when I came through the door and showered me with all the love in his little body. I watched him that evening. He seemed so calm and comfortable.

Something dawned on me: he was happy here. At my new apartment, he’d have been alone much of the time. He had spent his whole life around people and cats. He would have gotten lonely.

And he had also bonded so quickly with Ivy. Was it possible that he belonged with her now?

Every time I talked to Ivy, it became more and more apparent that Tittens had become one of her closest friends. Every time I saw him, he remembered me. Every time I saw them together, it solidified a decision that was never made official—a decision that felt natural to everyone involved. Tittens had a new home now.

A year later, I decided to sell my things to travel. It wasn’t lost on me that this decision wouldn’t have been possible with Tittens in the picture. Was I selfish for leaving him not only in a different home but now a different country? Would he forget me? Would he have a happy life?

This year, after nine months in South America, I returned to Canada in mid-October—the home of my family and the home of Ivy and Tittens.

Last weekend, Ivy had travel plans and asked me to cat sit. I love pet sitting (especially cat sitting), but this was even better. I was excited to see my old friend, Tittens. I also wondered if it had been too long. The last time I’d seen him was a year prior, when he got sick and I came to help with his care. I didn’t know if he had recognized me back then because he was in rough shape. Before that, it had been another year. Would he remember me?

As soon as I walked through the door, Tittens came towards me and looked me in the eyes with that same loving stare as always. I reached out for him. He started purring. It was like no time had passed at all.

For three days, we spent so much quality time together. We hugged. We played. We slept. We cuddled.

He’s older now, slower, calmer. He’s gained a few pounds. He doesn’t run around like a maniac, and he also doesn’t fear noises. He’s heard them all a hundred times by now.

But what I notice most about him is something that he’s had all along: presence. He’s always willing to have a moment of connection. He’s willing to take each new opportunity for intimacy, joy, play. If I can’t respond to him right away, he waits. He comes back later. He gives me another chance.

The day after I arrived, I faced a difficult situation. Someone I once wronged rejected my attempt to reconcile. In that moment, I asked myself, “What would Tittens do?”

The answer was so simple: he would make the best of it and accept her if she ever wanted to come back. So that’s what I did. I smiled and told her she was always welcome back. Then, I wrote a poem. Then, I kept dancing. It didn’t spoil my night. It actually turned into a valuable learning experience.

For years, I’ve been working on cultivating acceptance and curiosity, and here is this little guru, who’s known about these things all along. I never saw it in him before. I can see it now. Magic.

“What would Tittens do?” Would I have ever asked myself that all those years ago when he was “my” cat? Would I have appreciated this about him if we’d stayed together? Would I have felt such reverence for his level of serenity and wisdom if I hadn’t sought those on my unique path?

It’s impossible to predict what would have happened, but I do know that Tittens is happy and so am I. I know that Ivy adores him and he adores her. I know that I feel transformed by the few days I spent with him, and I know those transformations are only possible because of the seeds planted by hundreds of other experiences.

When Ivy came back from her trip, she offered me to stay with them for a few more days. Her and I bonded more than we ever have. We talked deeply about our lives, our transformations, our beliefs. I saw, within her thoughts and feelings, traces of the wise teachings of Tittens. This little guru had been there to reinforce her every lesson on the journey of self-discovery. The things we had both found so difficult, he knew all along.

I am writing this on my last night here. Though I will come visit Tittens, I’m not sure when will be my next opportunity to sleep with him curled around my hand or to be pleasantly interrupted by his hopping onto the bed next to me. I’m can’t say, without a doubt, that this will ever happen again. All I know for sure is that it’s been magical and that I now have more resources to cope with life’s gifts and challenges.

It’s sad to let go. But this experience has taught me the importance and sacredness of distance. In the spaces between interactions, we have the opportunity to learn, grow, and integrate the lessons we have trouble learning in closeness.

Roger de Bussy-Rabutin once said, “Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it inflames the great.”

I believe this applies to any kind of connection, not just what is stereotypically defined as “love” in Hollywood. Our bonds are tested by distance. Some strengthen. Some weaken. But all provide a valuable lesson about the nature of the relationship: a lesson that isn’t always accessible without first letting go.

The post What Would Tittens Do? Life Lessons From a Cat. appeared first on Vironika Tugaleva.

My dad once told me that I like to make life hard for myself. He said this years ago when I first switched from being vegetarian to vegan. At the time, I took it as an insult. Now, I realize three things:

I have always, in some way, tried to increase the challenges in my life.
My parents, directly and indirectly, taught me to be this way.
Some challenges are more worthwhile than others.

In retrospect, instead of getting offended, there are two things I could have said. First, “Takes one to know one, dad!” True, but not exactly helpful. Second, “Yes, I’m willing to go through hardships to get what I want, and I like that about myself.” I’m still waiting for a chance to pull that one out.

My parents taught me to work hard and aim for perfection. I realized, some years ago, that this attitude was destroying my relationship with myself. I was trying so hard to be perfect, but I was just human. I was working so hard to be someone I could never be.

But this attitude did serve me in certain situations. It helped me get good grades in school. It helped me excel at math. It made me good at cleaning. (Why sweep a floor once when you can sweep it four times?)

There’s a certain gear that I shift into when I am working as hard as I can, when I’m being “a perfectionist.” I become attentive to minute, seemingly insignificant details. I shift my focus only onto the task at hand and ignore everything else. I care more about achieving the best possible outcome than about the exhaustion in my mind and body.

When I first made self-love a priority, I sought to tackle perfectionism, throttle it, annihilate it. I thought this was a terrible personality flaw, and I blamed my parents for all those times they forced me to study into the late hours of the night. All those times I had to reclean the toilet until it was sparkling. All those times I had to rewrite my homework until it was flawless.

I believed that self-love was about acceptance. I worked on accepting my makeupless face, my stretch marks, my cellulite, my cold sores (instead of always trying to fix them). I worked on accepting all the awkward things I’d ever said and done (instead of staying up all night worrying about them). I worked on accepting the versions of me that lived in other people’s heads (especially when those versions were unflattering).

But in those days, I never tried to work on accepting my perfectionism. I just thought of it as an inconvenience, a nuisance, a chronic illness. It was something I had to purge. Why accept something that was making me miserable?

So I battled with what some call the “inner critic.” I tried to get it to leave me alone. It didn’t. Not only did it not leave me alone, but it actually got stronger. The more I tried to ignore the imperfections in myself, in others, in reality, the louder it would scream.

I was waging a war within myself. I still had a lot to learn about acceptance.

I remember one day when I was feeling particularly self-critical, I sat down to edit a piece of writing. I remember finding the misplaced commas with a kind of sick pleasure. That nitpicking, overanalytical part of me finally had something productive to do.

I began to realize that this part of me wasn’t actually useless. It wasn’t toxic. It was just misdirected. Of course, pointing out the imperfections on my body isn’t helpful, but what about finding imperfections in a book or a blog post I’m working on?

Of course, nitpicking over what I had said in a social situation is draining, but what about nitpicking over the fonts and spacing in a document?

I realized that the issue with my perfectionism was that I was seeking a place called “perfection.” I wanted to get to the end, the finish line where everything would be perfect forevermore. That hasn’t happened and never will. Perfectionism as a noun didn’t help.

But what about perfectionism as a verb, as the act of perfecting something the best I can while knowing that it will never be perfect? Isn’t this what every great artist, musician, writer, inventor, and businessperson in the history of humankind has done?

Instead of wrestling with my perfectionist thoughts, I began to channel them. Editing, I’ve found, is an incredible outlet for criticism. Writers always talk about writing during waves of inspiration. Well, I’ve learned to edit during waves of criticism.

Last spring, I remember returning from the grocery store one day, my mind buzzing with thoughts about the way I had spoken to someone the day before. I stopped walking, closed my eyes, and firmly thought to myself, “If you’re going to go on a critical tangent, then why don’t you think about how to merge chapter 6 and chapter 10 because that’s actually important and worth thinking about it.”

My mind went blank, shocked by the sudden discipline. After a while, it started churning again, this time with thoughts about my book. I didn’t figure out how to merge those chapters that day, but I did some solid thinking about it. I felt a potent sense of self-mastery.

Another surprising outlet for me has been taking on physical challenges. When I first started running long distances, I felt that same self-mastery. As a kid, my fitness level was abysmal. Training my body to endure, to perform—this made me feel a sense over power of myself that I had never felt while putting on makeup or dieting.

When I was trying to look a certain way, I felt powerless because I couldn’t make myself look how I wanted. When I started exploring my body’s abilities—shifting into a focused state where I was willing to do whatever it took to do my best—that, I could do. And it felt amazing.

Over the past year, I’ve found another passion: trekking. I’ve always loved hiking, but trekking is something else. Treks have a destination in mind, a purpose. My analytical mind loves that. Trekking challenges me to stay present while pursuing a solid goal.

Recently, I did the Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu in Peru. Early on the second day, our group ascended a steep slope to reach 4630m in altitude. The lack of oxygen was noticeable. The sun was beating down on my sweaty neck. I just looked down at my feet and went a step at a time. Not too fast, not too slow, not staring at the top. Each step was a challenge, and each step was an accomplishment. In those minutes, nothing else existed and nothing else mattered. It was just me and the mountain. Me conquering the mountain by conquering myself.

The feeling at the top was indescribable, but it was familiar. It was the same feeling I’ve gotten after struggling with a math problem for hours, after cleaning a floor on my hands and knees ten times, after blotting out the last blemish on my face with thick concealer, after rereading my book for the hundredth time and not finding any major errors, after constructing an elaborate lie to cover up another lie and seeing that someone had bought it.

There are so many ways to feel accomplished about conquering something difficult. And you know, none of them are inherently “bad.” For a makeup artist, it’s helpful to feel a desire to create the perfect mask and feel a sense of accomplishment after creating it. For an improv actor, constructing false versions of reality on the spot is a challenge worth pursuing.

For those of us who feel compelled to, as my dad says, make life hard for ourselves, the question isn’t whether we will encounter obstacles and challenges in our lives. We will. The question is whether or not we will consciously choose those obstacles and challenges. Will they serve us or hinder us?

So I’ve dropped all the unhelpful labels: perfectionist, overachiever, overthinker, type A, control-freak, stickler. When I saw myself and others this way, I overlooked the incredible opportunities contained in these tendencies.

This also applies to the opposite way of being: lazy, irresponsible, careless, type B, absent-minded, air-headed. Some people tend toward these patterns, and there’s nothing “bad” about that. There are also potent gifts in being the kind of person who is quick to accept reality as it is without always trying to change it.

I think happiness is a process of balancing these extremes within ourselves, not in trying to eradicate one and replace it with the other. And balance begins with recognizing how lucky we are to have expertise in one extreme and cultivating curiosity about exploring the other side.

We are never doing the “wrong thing.” We’re just sometimes doing half the job.

There’s something so liberating about accepting our tendencies while we work on building new patterns. Maybe accepting reality will always be harder for me than trying to change it. Maybe I will always feel an urge to control things I cannot. I’m okay with that.

Some people find it difficult to make changes, while I can make changes at the snap of my fingers. That’s something worthwhile. And I find it difficult to stop and take a break when I need one, while other people do this effortlessly. That’s something worthwhile too. We all have our gifts, and we all have our projects.

So, yes, I suppose I do like to make life hard for myself. And not only do I accept this fact, but I also genuinely love this part of me. I wouldn’t be who I am without it.

So maybe what I really should have said to my dad was, “Thanks.”

The post The Gifts of Perfectionism: Why I Like to Make Life Hard for Myself appeared first on Vironika Tugaleva.

A while ago, I saw a meme that said, “If it still makes you angry, you’re not over it.” I wasn’t bothered by this message when I first saw it. In many ways, I could get behind that idea. I had spent many years being angry about everything that had happened to me, and when I started healing, anger cracked open to show other, more vulnerable emotions: fear, sadness, and even joy.

What irked me was another meme that I started seeing recently. It said something like, “If it still makes you cry, you’re not over it.” This didn’t line up with my experience of the world. No matter how much I’ve healed, I’ve continued to cry about the things that have wounded me. What changes is the reason I’m crying.

A great example of this is my relationship to the letter I wrote to myself back in 2012. I decided to share this letter in chapter 8 of The Art of Talking to Yourself, and from the very first drafts of the book, I cried every single time I read it. As you can imagine, this made editing difficult.

I edit a lot. I’ve learned, over the years, that if I let my work sit until I lose my attachment to it, I can come back with fresh eyes and edit even better. With The Art of Talking to Yourself, I vowed to continue this process (edit, leave it, edit, leave it, etc.) until I was only making tiny changes. Put in a comma in, take out a comma out. Put in the word “that,” take it out. This took four years and hundreds (literally hundreds) of edits. And every single time I read that letter, it made me choke up.

As I was reading, I would see the indented margins of the letter approaching. I’d feel tears starting to gather. As you can imagine, this became inconvenient. So I started skipping that passage. It was simply unproductive to end up so emotional every time I read that chapter!

But even though I stopped reading it on every edit, I continued to feel moved by its presence. I remember on my first edit of the hard copy, my eyes watered when I flipped a page and saw the letter out of the corner of my eye.

Then, it came time to record the audiobook. A few weeks before going into the studio, I pondered my reaction to the letter. Would I cry when I recorded? Would my voice shake? Would this take away from the final product?

And most importantly of all: why was I crying?

There’s another thing that always makes me cry to watch or even think about. In The Notebook, there’s that one scene in the rain where she accuses him of not writing to her, and he says, “I wrote you 365 letters. I wrote you every day for a year. It wasn’t over. It still isn’t over.”

You know that speech, I’m sure. It tears me apart. They are words she has so longed to hear and he has so longed to say. It’s like a supernova, an explosion, a tearing down of the walls of illusion to find passion, love, strength.

That’s how writing that letter to myself made me feel. It was like time stopped, and there was only me and myself in the rain, saying the most fiercely romantic words anyone had ever said or would ever say to me. My saviour had finally come. She wasn’t what I expected, but she swept me off my feet.

That is why I cried. Why I still cry. I cry because the memory of catharsis evokes cathartic feelings within me. I cry for all the pain I released by standing up and taking responsibility for loving myself. All the pain that so many people walk around with day to day. They are tears of joy, release, compassion, and love.

So when I recorded reading that letter, yes, I cried. And yes, my voice shook. And no, it didn’t harm the recording. I think it made it better.

My family used to always tell me to stop crying. Whenever I would tear up, they would say, “Don’t do that.” When my grandfather describes happy people, he says, “You know, the ones who never cry.”

It’s nonsense. It’s culturally ingrained nonsense, and it keeps us from healing. Tears are essential. For some more than others, but for all of us, to some degree. Tears are emotional lubricant. They help us feel our lives, feel others’ pain, feel the moment. Being open to life is a tear-jerking experience. And there is nothing bad about that.

There are so many bodily functions that we jokingly claim are “better in than out.” I remember being in an Uber once and suppressing a sneeze when the driver told me, with concern in his voice, that it was dangerous to do that. He learned it in medical school.

I think it is potentially dangerous to suppress any feeling, and much of our suppression begins and ends with our beliefs about what we “should” feel.

The first meme said, “If you’re still angry, you’re not over it.” Maybe this is a harmful idea too. Maybe for some people, anger isn’t toxic. Maybe it comes up to help them remember to set boundaries or fight for justice.

If I end up in a situation that reminds me of the past, I might experience old anger bubbling up. Does that mean I’m not over it? Or could my emotions be trying to help me identify the similarity of my experiences and warn me that I might be repeating unhelpful patterns.

The second meme said, “If you’re still crying, you’re not over it.” Maybe both parts of that sentence are wrong. Maybe the most dangerous belief of all is that we should “get over it.”

Am I over my self-love issues? I write about my experiences. I coach people through their journeys, feeling the intensity of their pain with them. Sometimes, I cry with them. Many of my poems chronicle my healing process. Every day, I find new ways to relearn the same lessons. And I still cry all the time.

Does being “over” something require that I sort through my emotions and then quietly sweep the whole thing under the carpet, go on with my life, and never show anyone what happened or try to connect to people that it’s still happening to? If that’s being over it, count me out.

I choose to feel. I am not afraid of my emotions. And I will not stop crying.

The post Healing Doesn’t Mean You Stop Crying. appeared first on Vironika Tugaleva.

Last week, after two and a half months in Ecuador, Jamie and I stepped on a bus headed to Peru.

Ecuador was a thrill ride. In Quito, I experienced the gifts and obstacles of living at a high altitude. In Olon, I learned to surf and had endless miles of beach to run on. In Cadeate, we did a house sit where I got to spend some time with two sweet dogs and a rare bird. It’s been incredible, but it’s also been cloudy. Quito has a year-round chilly climate, and Olon (along with most places in South America right now) is entering rainy season.

We were ready for some sun. An internet search revealed a little town on the northern coast of Peru called Mancora. This part of the coast happens to be a desert climate, so it gets 365 days of sun every year. The bus ride was about 7-9 hours and cost only $10-40 per person. We were sold.

The internet also informed me that it was crucial to get a direct bus across the border and to try to avoid stopping in a town called Tumbes. Stories of people being lied to, hassled, ripped off, pickpocketted, and sometimes even kidnapped and mugged are common. People again and again said this town was a terrible place.

The bus companies around here don’t post their updated schedules on the internet. They never pick up the phone. So, on the day of our departure, we set off to the Guayaquil bus station, hoping for the best.

We arrived at 2pm. The direct buses were at 7:20am or 7:20pm. Unless we wanted to wait five hours, we had to go to Tumbes. Since Jamie had to work in the morning, this seemed to be our only choice.

After we crossed the Ecuador-Peru border, a local man who wanted to practice his English came to talk to us. In-between stories about his country, he said he hoped we weren’t staying in Tumbes. He said, “It’s a terrible place.”

When we arrived, we were swarmed by mototaxi drivers. They told us that the connecting bus we thought we’d be taking wasn’t running anymore. We had to take a taxi to a nearby bus station. The internet had warned us about this happening, but we didn’t know what to do. It was almost 11pm at the time. Even the bus driver confirmed their story. We sighed and decided to get in the mototaxi.

We got heavily overcharged, but we did get to a bus station. There, the bus driver charged us more to get on that 1.5-hour bus than we had paid for our entire 7-hour journey so far. We were tired. We let it happen. It wasn’t an exorbitant amount of money. We just wanted to get there.

When we finally arrived to our place in the middle of the night, we laughed it off. All of those rumours about Tumbes were true. It really is a horrible place.

It had all become a funny story until the next day when I bought a Peruvian SIM card and went into my bag to look for the change purse where I’d been keeping all my SIM cards. In that purse, I was also keeping memories from our travels: small seashells from national parks and islands we’d visited, handmade bracelets I bought from local artisans in each town, a few cool rocks (one of which I specifically got as a gift for one of my life coaching clients), and change in various currencies. All those memories. Gone.

At first, I didn’t know what was happening. I thought maybe I’d dropped it somewhere in the apartment while unpacking the night before. I was very tired after all. But after I turned the house upside town, it started to dawn on me: the people who had overcharged us for the bus had probably rifled through our luggage.

We’ve been travelling since 2014, and I’ve never had anything stolen. I felt a mix of emotions: sadness, guilt, self-judgment, violation, loss. But as I’ve coped with this situation, I’ve learned a few valuable lessons. Here were my epiphanies, in the order that I had them:

1. Memories are more important than money.

It might sound dramatic to call what happened “being robbed.” People usually think of robbery as something to do with money. And funny enough, we had money in our luggage too. The apartment we are renting in Peru wanted cash up front. Jamie and I had split it and carefully hidden it in our luggage. I put that little change purse in the same bag, but I didn’t hide it as well as I hid the money. Some part of me values $300 more than 6 months of memories. I should say valued. I learned my lesson. I would much rather have lost the money.

2. I can admit blame without getting down on myself.

I should have hidden it better. That’s a fact. I have a serious history of beating myself up about these kinds of things, and for a long time, I thought self-love meant glossing over these situations. But there is no gloss. Yes, I made it easier for my things to be stolen, but that doesn’t mean I deserved it. It doesn’t mean I’m the only one to blame. And it doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. I can take responsibility for my part, and that can be empowering rather than degrading. If I had a part to play, then I can help prevent such situations in the future.

3. I felt like I lost something, but was it mine to keep?

Taking those few rocks and shells could be considered environmental destruction. If everyone took a little shell or rock from every beach, there’d be none left. And would I have necessarily remembered the places they came from years later? Was it worth disrupting the ecosystem? And the money I collect from different places I visit: is it mine to keep? I took about $3 worth of coins and bills from Colombia. If every single tourist did that, the Colombian economy would seriously suffer! Did I have a right to own the things I was calling mine?

4. Memories aren’t gone just because the way I wanted to remember them is gone.

I never used to buy bracelets. I bought my first one in Medellin because a scruffy-looking local guy offered me one for the equivalent of $2. I want to support street musicians and artists as much as I can. Better he sells bracelets than drugs! My second one was from a young Venezuelan punk who was seeking refuge from the troubles in his country. My third, I bought directly from an indigenous tribe. It contained a small 1000-year-old stone in it from the protected land around the Lost City in Colombia. There were many more such stories. It’s unfortunate that I don’t have those bracelets anymore, but I wasn’t buying them to have them. I was buying them, first and foremost, to support the local artisans. I’ve still done that. The act of buying them remains in the past. Over time, the bracelets became symbols of the places I’ve visited. But those memories aren’t gone. I still have my memories, even if they are not in the form I think they should have been.

5. Just because something isn’t in my direct possession doesn’t mean it’s gone.

Maybe the people who stole that purse opened it and felt disappointed. But what did they do with its contents? Maybe they gave the bracelets to their kids. Maybe one of those kids will grow up and become an artisan because of that. Wouldn’t that be even better than what I had planned to do with those things (keep them in a jar/box/bag/bowl somewhere)? If I can expand my concept of “self” to include more than this meat sack and include humanity, nature, and even the universe into my idea of who I am, then I haven’t actually lost anything. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Everything that was here is still here, changing form, changing location. It wasn’t mine to keep, and it’s never truly gone.

6. Being free from materialism means being able to lose sentimental objects too.

In 2014, I sold my things to travel. It liberated me in ways I can hardly describe. By getting rid of the possessions attached to me, my sense of self became more grounded, more authentic, more fluid. But I still have some boxes of journals, cards, and memories at my parents’ house. I still value those objects. Are those necessarily good for me, whereas owning a blender or a couch wasn’t good for me? If I can feel freedom in separating from material things, then I can separate from all material things, even the ones I gave meaning to. Some people, after all, give meaning to their couches and blenders. I am an impermanent being fueled by an eternal energy. I can’t take my objects with me when I die, and they are not essential to my progress or happiness. Yes, I lost things I treasured, but in the end, they were just things.

7. The thief is having a more impoverished experience of life than I am.

Did that person make a conscious choice to steal from me? Did he sit down, ponder all his options, and decide that this, truly, was the most useful course of action? No. He’s functioning unconsciously. His circumstances and environment dictate what those unconscious actions are likely to be. As I heard again and again, Tumbes is a terrible place. When we asked the man on the bus why it was so terrible, he replied, “A lot of poor people. They get desperate.” Am I really suffering so much from losing a few pieces of memorabilia? That thief is worse off, whether or not he acknowledges it.

 

I learned a lot. But these lessons weren’t my way of “looking at the bright side.” I’ve never been much of an advocate for that kind of thinking. I have always seen the flaws, the disappointments, the darkness. I couldn’t ignore them if I tried. I’ve always been the one lifting up the covers, looking around corners, wanting to know what lay beyond the shiny exterior. I don’t want to ignore reality. I want to welcome it in all its glory.

Rather than positivity, these lessons are about alchemy. With certain ingredients, all matter changes form. With certain perspectives, all experiences change in meaning. That is the power of being a self-aware human being: we can play with our perceptions. We can rewrite our stories. We can grow, learn, and thrive through anything.

It took me a few days to write this, but when I began, it was Nelson Mandela’s birthday. This man was a symbol of just the kind of alchemy I’m talking about. Imprisoned for 27 years, he had every reason to fall into despair, numbness, depravity. He chose to evolve, change, thrive. We all have this power, if we only stop being afraid of the responsibility that comes with using it.

The post 7 Lessons I Learned From Being Robbed appeared first on Vironika Tugaleva.

Shortly after I released my first book, I got an idea for my second one: a book about self-talk. The title hit me immediately: The Art of Talking to Yourself.

As I began to write this book, however, it changed. I changed. Through the intimate and important conversations I had with myself as well as my life-coaching clients, I realized that no piece of self-help advice could help everyone. And those whom it did help, it would eventually hinder. The people in my life (myself included) kept changing. Our journeys kept changing.

This is how The Art of Talking to Yourself, as it exists now, was born. I realized that if I really wanted to help people then, as opposed to giving them tactics and advice, I would help them help themselves. I would help them become free of the need to always be reading self-help books.

This isn’t about that story. (But if you want to read it, it’s in the Introduction of the book, which is available in this free preview).

This is about another story: something that happened after I finished writing the first draft and started editing.

The Tao Te Ching says, “Do your work, and then step back.” I’ve spent my life being absolutely awful at this very thing. I never knew when to stop talking, when to let go, when to finally leave the party.

This is a bit like how self-help marketing works. They say, “Here are the 10 steps to happiness.” They teach you steps 1 to 9 for free (or a small fee), but if you want step 10, you have to pay for their 3-day breakthrough weekend.

They never know when to stop, mostly because of money.

With The Art of Talking to Yourself, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to help people break free of always seeking answers outside themselves. I especially didn’t want them to seek any more answers from me! I wanted to say everything I thought was important to say, and then step back.

Each time I read and reread my words during editing, I would ask myself, “Is this everything I have to offer? Is this everything I have to say?”

The more I answered, “Yes,” the more I started to feel a gnawing discomfort. If this was, truly, everything I had to say, then, after saying it, I’d have to stop talking, wouldn’t I?

The idea emerged: I had to stop writing these kinds of books.

My first feeling when I got this thought was a deep sense of peace. I felt, firmly, that it was the right thing to do.

My second feeling was terror. After all, self-help was where I had moved in and called home. It was paying the bills. What would I do instead?

Even with all my fears and doubts, I knew I had to make this transition. If I really believed what I was saying in the book—and if I really wanted to help people rather than reaching into their pockets for more, more, more—I would step back. I would do my work, and then step back.

The more I stood up to my fears, the more terror grew into excitement. I started to realize that, although self-help had began to feel like home, it was never meant to be that for me.

I’ve been writing poetry, songs, and stories from a young age. I started to see this transition in a different way: a return to my original passion of writing.

I realized that instead of focusing on helping people, I could focus on making art. And if I hold true to my journey of self-discovery, then my art will naturally help people.

I feel creatively liberated. I’ve been writing a lot of poetry, which will be my creative focus for the foreseeable future. But I am getting flashes of dialogue, images of characters, and melodies of songs. My mind and heart are so open, so full.

And now that The Art of Talking to Yourself is out there in the world, I feel a deep respect for it that I never felt for The Love Mindset. I was fresh into self-help back then, and I wanted to make the book into a program, a retreat, a series of meditations.

I feel differently about this one. I want to read its words out loud and share them with people. I want to put its quotes against pretty photos and have people put those up in their houses. I want the book to exist and shine as itself. I want to honour its words and help them spread.

There will be no breakthrough weekend.

There will be no sequel.

I didn’t know writing it would lead me here, but I’m glad it has. Writing a book about self-awareness has helped me become more aware of myself. I am stunned and humbled by this.

Too many times in my life, I’ve chosen the familiar over the uncertain.

But not this time.

Familiar doesn’t mean useful. Or painless. Had I ignored those feelings, I would have had a hard time. By honouring those feelings, I’ve had a hard time. Everything is hard in its own way.

I don’t choose whether or not life is going to be painful. It is. I just choose whether it’s going to be painful to evolve or painful to resist. The pain isn’t going anywhere.

But you know, I’m glad I’m here. I’m inspired. I’m creating. But more than anything, I’m grateful.

The post Why I’m Not Writing Any More Self-Help Books appeared first on Vironika Tugaleva.