Stepping Into My Own Extraordinary Shoes

I had this idea for a post. Actually, I keep a running list of ideas for posts, but this one had been on my mind for quite a while. Every time I tried to write it to you the words just felt as if they were jumbled, jagged and stumpy. It’s such an important message and I wanted to get it right. I wanted it to flow like water so that when you read this, you’d feel like you were in your own tiny boat floating down the most beautiful stream.

I’d start, then stop. I’d read it and then tear it up. I had absolutely no idea what the problem was. Then, as I wrote in my journal (which I do in the first person because, you know…I’m writing to myself…it’s my journal after all) I realized that the message I was trying to write to you, all of the women that read my goofy words for some reason, I really needed to write to me. I can’t believe it took me this long to figure that out because, after all, this is my story.

That revelation broke free and the words just came pouring out, and thus begins the story of my shoes, so to speak…

I am an extraordinary woman. I am the extraordinaire. I am soooooooo deliciously e-x-t-r-a.

This new proclamation for me comes from a recent epiphany and this realization has changed everything for me. Yes. I am a phenomenal woman. We ALL are phenomenal women. I am no better, no smarter, no more beautiful, funny, talented or worthy than any other woman. I have simply allowed myself to step into my greatness and my greatness is not due to nor bestowed upon me because of deeds, work, statuses, categories someone else put me into or accomplishments. My greatness is so. much. bigger. than. that. I am extraordinary because I am alive. Inside my bones there is a story and it is my story and that story continues with every step I take in every pair of shoes I choose to walk in. My story is not your story and your story is not anyone else’s story and that makes us extraordinary.

I am an extraordinary woman and my extra has always been there waiting for me to claim and to step into it. I have been trying this phenomenon on like a pair of shoes for a while but just couldn’t seem to get the steps right. They have never fit until now and now I am ready to claim them as my own.

I am not rich. I am not beautiful by standards that someone else wrote that I do not know and, frankly, based on the standards they wrote I do not want to know. I am only 3.5 years away from being half a century old, which by those phantom standards means I am insignificant and irrelevant on so many levels. I am chubby with wrinkles, cellulite, a saggy bum and a round belly. I have not saved the world, instilled world peace, nor have I ever won the Nobel Peace Prize…or any prize for that matter. You guys…I can barely do basic math and still have a hard time understanding how I launder my whites to continuously come out pink. I, in no way, fit the mold of what society deems as someone that deserves greatness. 

Yet, I own such a level of greatness that I have risen beyond all of those inconsequential boxes that some people somewhere said I fit into, which I don’t. For some reason I believed that I belonged in all of those boxes and categories. And for some reason I cannot explain, it all now just does not matter to me anymore. My greatness outgrew it all.

What is the secret here? First, it was a lot…and I mean A-FUCKING-LOT of hard work that honestly I didn’t even know I was doing for this specific reason. I wanted to be happier. I wanted to be more fulfilled. Dammit, I wanted to get on with whatever purpose I was put on this earth to do. This epiphany of greatness was unexpected, but as you can imagine, ever so welcome. It is an epiphany that I see now is linked to another epiphany I had in my early 20’s.

I was in a conversation with someone and it was one of these 2am-a few vodkas in-sitting on the floor-really getting to know one another-conversations. All the same stories began their bored and perfunctory march off of my tongue. “This” happened when I was this age and then “that” is what that person did to me. When I was such-and-such age “that” is what he/she did to me… Gawd…these same stories I had been telling myself and others for so many years. The sheer angst of this story, and the agony of that one…and then those words for the first time ever just got stuck. It was like trying to fit into a pair of shoes I had outgrown yeeeaaarrrs ago. These stories, like that old pair of shoes, just did not fit anymore. I absolutely could keep shoving my feet into them and wearing them around if I wanted to. 

Or.

I could take them off and see what a new pair felt like. I had let those stories define me for so long and that epiphany was so clear in its message: I seriously needed a new narrative. I had been living in the past and in that moment all I wanted in the worst way was to leap, with my new shoes, into the future. So, that’s what I did. I left behind that old, stinky pair of shoes that I didn’t even recognize anymore and started walking…forward.

That moment may sound quite less than climactic to you, but it was extremely monumental for me. That release was so powerful and I remember that feeling as if it were yesterday. 

That was my first step into my greatness.

It was a moment of acceptance, rising above and courageously taking on a new level of greatness. Yes…I said courageously. We all know how easy it is to stay settled into our past, our stories and our wounds. It is familiar and instills a level of intimacy that’s hard to give up. We all know how to be broken. Greatness….ohhhhhh greatness. You see, that takes courage. It’s letting go of the past without having any idea whatsoever what is in store for you in the future and what’s even scarier is that there is no guarantee of greatness. Why? Because we all have the free will to fuck it up at any given moment. (insert balloon deflation here)

Without those stories I just had no idea who the hell I was. I didn’t know what boxes I fit into or what categories I fell under (side note: none of them. News flash: neither do you). I was in completely unknown territory and I was completely on my own. But I accepted it, went with it and took my new pair of shoes on a totally unbeaten path. #worthit

Here I sit, the absolute epitome of everything that every earthbound notion has defined as so stupendously un-great. I don’t look the part. I don’t sound like the part. I don’t live the part. The shoes I walk in don’t look like the shoes you would equate with greatness. In fact, they squeak when I walk (my favorite part). Yet I have never sat in, danced in, meditated in, reveled and rolled around in more of my own personal bucket greatness then right now. I am awesome in so many ways. My extra is so extra and it is so much greater than all those silly notions. It has risen above all the chatter and nonsense I had been telling myself for years, and letting other people tell me for years. Say it with me: those shoes just don’t fit anymore. 

This is my second step into my greatness.

What is this greatness, you ask? It’s kind of hard to explain because when you step into your own greatness it is a step of intimacy with your Self. It’s a kind-of friendship and love affair you begin with yourself. Think of your most trusted and closest confidant. This is the person that you would say knows you better than yourself. Now, multiply that times a hundred; that’s your new relationship with you. At its core, it means that you have finally learned to forgive yourself, block out all the negative chatter (especially the really toxic stuff that comes from your own self), and sink into your beauty, love, abundance, worthiness and all the magic that comes along with understanding that you are a spiritual being having a human experience called life. It’s mystical and magical. It’s painful and beautiful. It’s a deep understanding that putting yourself first is a bold step into self-love and knowing that it is the furthest thing from what you were always taught about putting yourself first: that it is self-ish.

So here I am, stepping into my pink, glittery new pair of shoes and walking, yet again, into the unknown. Even though they fit like a soft, buttery, diamond-studded pair of gloves (c’mon…it’s me, y’all) they still feel a little weird and I know will take some time breaking them in.

But this pair…they are extraordinary. They are the extraordinaire. They are sooooooooo deliciously e-x-t-r-a.

Anyone need to go shoe shopping?