Take up your space. The words that have been bobbing around in my head ever since I read them in this post by Annie Blake. They live in the back of my mind and have become a tiny, humming mantra: Take. Up. Your. Space. There are a lot of ways we make ourselves small, forcing a fit into a space that someone else hands to us. We adopt expectations and roles we don’t actually want. We tuck away our thoughts and discard dreams that are too big or too impractical. We let the space around us contract, giving up tiny pieces of who we are as it shrinks. It’s so easy to lose ground in your own life.
It can feel like sleepwalking until you have a defining moment, when a tremor of thought becomes a seismic shift, changing the landscape inside of us.
In an ironic nod to the fact that I am a woman in my thirties, I had a defining moment in Target. I was there in January picking out a baby shower present. It was cold, it was late, and the mood was already grey and meh. Wandering through the aisles to pay my respects to the stationery products (as one does) I saw a new collection of notebooks and planners that I recognized. The company was one I had been working with for over a year, but I didn’t know the products had launched. I scanned the rows of bright new things and swooping artist signatures, looking for my designs. I looked again. And again. But none of my work was there. I took a picture and sent it to Mike. “My stuff didn’t make it. Sad sad sad.” Then, in the middle of aisle C18, I cried.
The stinging disappointment and pit in my stomach was more than just seeing that collection. It was the last domino that fell in a string of so close, maybe next time let downs that were almost expected at that point. I would usually spin down the spiral of self doubt - I was not a real artist. My work wasn’t good enough. People would never buy it.
But it was in that moment, standing by myself holding baby clothes and a Nose Frida and a king size Reese’s, that I finally felt like my work was good enough to be on those shelves. I realized how badly I wanted to see it there. And I was ready to figure out a way to make it happen.
One of my first steps was finding someone to help me. I did some social media crowd sourcing and a few weeks later booked a call to talk with a business coach. That’s when I met Winn. I knew that I wanted to work with her as soon as we started talking. Over a couple of calls I spilled my life story and hopes and dreams and Winn magic-wanded it into a coaching plan and objectives. One of the first things she did was figure out my current narrative (how you show up in your life) and then how to help me move into the narrative I wanted to be living.
As Winn read me my narrative, I cried (it’s a theme). “You’re waiting in the wings. You know the lines and are well-trained, yet you don’t feel ready. You’re nervous about being selected as you’ve not yet been given the opportunity to step onto the stage and into the spotlight. The audience still doesn’t know who you are.” I was showing up in my work life as The Understudy.
It resonated so deeply. I had been waiting. Holding back. Not wanting to take up space. It wasn’t because I felt undeserving or unworthy of my goals and dreams, I was just waiting for permission from someone that it was my turn. Like waiting in a line only to look around after awhile and realize that the line has no destination. I was waiting for opportunities to find me instead of going out and looking for them on my own.
A few weeks after that call with Winn, I was doing my morning writing when in the stream of consciousness spill there was this memory. I was in 5th grade, at a new school. My friends were the typical elementary school girl gang - you could be in at school drop off and very much out by lunch recess. My status was always hazy. Towards the end of the year there was a 5th grade talent show, and our little group decided on an ode to the bleached tipped boys of *NSYNC. We practiced the moves and slightly off lip synching at recess. The day before the talent show, the other girls decided that there was only room for four girls in the dance, not five. I was out. The next day, they stepped out onto the auditorium stage while I watched from the side, flipping the colored spotlights on and off as they moved through the song. It's tearin' up my heart when I'm with you… blue red blue. But when we are apart, I feel it too… red orange red. I knew every line, every move - but I wasn’t on the stage. I was the backup. The understudy.
As I wrote, there were more and more memories where I stepped back instead of forward. Where I shrank from what I actually wanted. Sorting through them, I started looking for the moments where I felt most like myself too. I started to see the threads of who I am, and pulling those threads I was suddenly five - and remembering the first time I felt proud of myself. I did a 500 piece puzzle on my own, climbing up onto the dining room table to work on it everyday. I wanted to do it so I just figured it out. I remember feeling like I could run for President after putting that last piece in. I felt like I could do anything. I tacked up this picture on the inspiration board in my office so I could channel that five year old confidence again.
It sounds weird, that I am making space for myself in my own life. But Mary Oliver and Pinterest are forever reminding us that we only have “one wild and precious life” to live. So here I am. Taking up space.
