Fruitioning Myself

Dear Loved Ones,

In the quiet of the morning of my 48th sun turn, with multi-platform, multi-channel messages of love pouring in from all over the world, Mack sleeping under the covers, the sun coming in the window, the coffee hot and delicious, I celebrate all that is present in my life.

Last year was flattening- First- entropy. Then loss. Then ebb. Then chrysalis. Sig-other, job, friends, colleagues, opportunities… Gone. Identities, titles… Gone. Partner, Executive, Girlfriend-Sig Other, Child-Daughter, Earner, Leader... Gone. I could not make any external forward progress. The more I tried to exert my will on the emptiness, the more scattered, brittle and exhausted I became. The more disruption I caused myself. I got physically sick- my thyroid crashed. The more I endeavored, the more slipped through my fingers. More try, more loss. Which in turn resulted its own undermining of my sense of self, sense of worth, sense of value. The more I tried, the less I generated, the worse I felt, and so it went.

So I threw up my hands and stopped. And I went inside. Any landscaping of my life failed to thrive. So I began ‘inscaping’. It started off simply enough- I accepted that there were things I needed to reflect on, to own, take responsibility for, and forgive myself for. Fair enough. Then I started looking at how there were repeating patterns demonstrating over the decades. Fair enough. Then I started looking at the underlying beliefs that enable the patterns, and down down I went. Uh oh.

I wrote volumes of journals, read volumes of books about self-forgiveness and how to reframe “failure”, meditated, sound bathed, oracle read, chakra healed, Supersoul podcast listened, mantra repeated, affirmation wrote, astrology followed, coaching, acupuncture and therapy received, walked and talked for hours with wise friends, cried oceans of tears. And sometimes, I felt so shitty that I just slept. Which is never a good idea in the middle of the summer, in the middle of the day in the middle of the week, trust me.

As my external layers were already stripped, and my exogenous circumstances pointed to sitting in emptiness, I was raw and open as only one in so much pain can be, so it was a high-speed train ride into the core of myself. I touched some deep foundational beliefs that had long ago served their purpose, that I had long ago outgrown, but still ran me. Again, this is all good stuff.

Until I stayed too long. Until it wasn’t good any more. By the end of the summer, I was in quicksand. The heavy lifting of understanding myself became the heavy lifting of self-abuse. I was wrong! I was flawed! I was a failure! I was worthless! Huh? How did I get there from what seemed like a positive spelunking excursion into my psyche, so I could throw some trash out from the bottom of the cave that was causing stank up at the top. Slippery slippery slope.

Sometime in September, both my therapist and my coach said to me in the same week, STOP. Enough. You are done. Read a novel. Watch a movie. Take a trip. You went too far into the cave, you stayed too long in the dark. It coincided with me having a speaking engagement at a conference later that week. In the airport, I picked up Crazy Rich Asians. It was the first fiction I had read in as long as I could remember. It literally changed my brain chemistry. Pleasure, without a learning, healing, cleansing, clearing expectation or objective, switched something back on in my brain.

The last quarter of last year became simply about pleasure and service. Of course I read all three Crazy Rich Asian books, and saw the movie. I visited friends in NYC, DC, Australia and San Fran. I started mentoring and contributing to friends with new businesses, new ideas, non-profits. I saw Thom Yorke twice on two different coasts. I went to parties. And didn’t write a stitch in a single journal.

I started to feel ‘in the world’ again. Connected, switched on. At a Christmas party right before I left for my annual year end solo trip to Hawaii, I was telling a friend about how in the last couple of months I started showing up in the world again, even though I had no idea really what for, and nothing in my external circumstances had changed, but I felt better. And he said, oh yeah, kind of like duh… “When in doubt, focus OUT”. I know a million well intentioned people had said this to me from a place of love all summer when I was in my self-hole, but for some reason that little ditty just clicked.

I went to Hawaii, my happiest happy place. And there, instead of my usual inflection, introspection, inscaping self-work, I solo-celebrated every minute of every day. I had silent discos on the beach, conversations with sunning sea turtles in the sand, bike rides where I screamed with joy into the wind, swims where I felt the universe hold me in totality.

And again, I threw up my hands. I said to the great mystery- “What would you have me do”.

That was my mantra. When in doubt focus out. Out-focused was my question, instead of in-focused on how, and why did I get here? “What would you have me do”, again and again, to the solstice full moon, to the pre-dawn sky, to the sea and birds and fish and trees and flowers and geckos- “What would you have me do”?

The answer came in a word. Fruition.

When this beautiful word came through, I immediately started to give it parameters and to define what the fruit itself would look like, (a default pattern). I was focusing on calling in new things- Job, Partner, Lover, Opportunity- thereby defining fruition as Evidence.

I once heard this behavior called “future tripping”. A case of the “when I have’s…when I have that job, or when I have that relationship, or when I have that money, then I’ll be happy.”

Then I remembered my question “what would you have me do”.

Then I remembered this prayer from “A Course in Miracles”…

Dear God, where would you have me go, what would you have me do,
what would you have me say and to who?

Except in that moment I remembered it wrong, but I like it better, so I will keep this one.

Where would you have me go,

Who would you have me be,

What would you have me do, and for whom?

What sprouted me from the fallow field that was my life in 2018 was to choose happiness despite having any evidence. Nothing in my external circumstances changed, but I changed. And the action that enabled me to choose happiness is service. In the past few months since I came up from under ground, my life has been service, experience, connectivity, adventure, movement, joy, celebration, contribution, traveling, visiting, mentoring, volunteering- just showing up for what is available, rather than focusing on the things I was wanting but didn’t have. And this showing up for what I do have, this focusing out, has shifted me from fallow to fertile.

Of course I miss having a ‘sig’, I worry about my financial future, I worry about being alone in old age, but they are moments rather than a state of being. I am more outwardly focused than not, which is creating its own beautiful momentum.

In January, the momentum began to manifest as opportunity- high-level paid consulting projects where I was being asked to lend my expertise to help fruition businesses and brands.

So it came to me. I started a company. It’s called Fruition. I parked an LLC, a web domain, got a brilliant designer to help me build a visual identity, wrote a service description, set up a linkedin page, made a deck, put the mission into words, and voila- a company! Fruition is a seed that has sprouted- so much so that thankfully, gratefully, blessedly, I have more work than I can even handle and will be imminently hiring. And it took like 3 weeks.

Here is Fruition.co’s WIP deck, website coming soon.

I am thankful beyond words to my parents for holding me yet again when I fell. I am thankful beyond words to my friends, support network, board of directors and strategic advisors, executive council, and expert witnesses for holding me, yet again, when I fell. I am thankful beyond words for the little blessing that came in a pint size 8.5 pound rescue dog (who rescued who?).

Oh and one last thing…

From Merriam-Webster.com: Fruition must come from the word fruit, right? Not exactly. Fruition and fruit are related (both ultimately come from the Latin verb frui, meaning “to enjoy”), but they were derived independently. The original meaning of fruition had nothing to do with fruit. Rather, when the term was first used in the early 15th century, it meant only “pleasurable use or possession.” Not until the 19th century did fruition develop a second meaning, “the state of bearing fruit,” possibly as the result of a mistaken assumption that fruition evolved from fruit. The “state of bearing fruit” sense was followed quickly by the figurative application to anything that can be “realized” and metaphorically bear fruit, such as a plan or a project.

Fruition in its essence is pleasure. To enjoy. This is the point of all of the work that is required to till a field, the endeavoring energy required to cultivate a fertile space for things to grow. So that when they do, and they always do, we receive pleasure in their fruition. And so today, I am, pleasuring.

I love you. Beez

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