Until recently, I never thought about accepting myself as I am. How could I accept myself when I’m so obviously imperfect? I’m too fat, I’m not blonde, I’m too short, I don’t like sports… the list goes on and on. I’ve always been an outcast: I tried Girl Scouts, but got kicked out for “deviant behavior”, I hated Sunday School with a fiery burning passion, I stood out like a sore thumb in various other groups. Hell, I even got kicked out of the gay youth group I was in as a teenager.

I wanted to play with dolls years after my friends were all too “grown-up” for that. I never wanted to date boys – and never even thought about dating girls till I was much, much older. I wanted to read, but the books I had access to were vapid and left me feeling disconnected and not really nourished. I led a very sheltered life, spotted with frequent moves that took me away from any friends I did have. I’m a communal soul that flourishes in groups, but often found myself alone.

And even as a child, I saw the boxes I needed to fit into, and so squished myself into them as much and as often as possible – even at great personal cost. I was often lonely inside, even when I had friends. I was smiling and fun, I had money and a car, I was doggedly loyal and incredibly sweet. But I would cry myself to sleep at night, hating myself and my body and the lies I told myself.

It’s not like I considered acceptance and decided against it – I literally never even thought of it. We all hate ourselves for various reasons, right? You’re too tall, you’re too thin, your boobs (or penis) aren’t big enough, yours are too big. Every time we look in the mirror, we shudder. We’re trained to hate what we see, to constantly strive for a sort of physical perfection that we may not even clearly understand.

If we love ourselves as we are, we’re not manipulateable. The Big Industries (Diet, Cosmetic Surgery, etc) can’t get to us if we love what we see regardless of what we see. Diet pills and miracle cures wouldn’t sell. No one would ever go under the knife (or laser) if we were happy with ourselves.

Why do women need to look like 14-year-old girls with giant breasts?

Why do men need to look like athletes?

Why can’t we look like ourselves?

Save the date for the free, 52-minute How to Be Awesome teleclass on Monday, December 14th at 1pm Central. (time zone converter) We’ll distill everything we’ve learned about personal growth into the Basic Principles of Awesomeness, and we’ll do Q&A, too! Join our newsletter if you’d like an email reminder; you can unsubscribe at any time.

Another epiphany brought to me by Dianne Sylvan and her incredible book, “The Body Sacred”.

There is a distinct lack of male energy in my life.

I’m not sure how much I need it. I’m still trying to figure that out. But I am sure that a big reason I don’t have much is because I’m afraid.

And I can’t be having with that.

I’ve a long history of abuse in my life, almost entirely from men. I grew up in a patriarchal religion where God was supposed to be like a father, but was jealous and prone to acts of random violence and unfairness. I didn’t feel comforted by that. In fact, it sort of set the precedent for the rest of my relationships with men. The only men I’ve dated were abusive to me. All the sex I’ve had with men was abusive or hurtful.

It bled over into my spirituality, too. I have tried in the past to connect with male deities, but never felt safe. So many of them come across to me as sex-crazed, out to possess me or own me or dominate me or control me – and I most certainly do not want that. There are so many stories of gods possessing mortal women, stories of rape and violence, domination, objectification.

In general, I see men as sex-crazed, out to possess or own or dominate or control me. Men want women to do as they’re told, stay silent and docile, and produce fine, strong sons. Right? This ties into my self-esteem issues, wanting to stay fat to be protected from further sexual abuse (though all the abuse I’ve lived through happened regardless), self-sabotage with my appearance to avoid being seen… It’s deep stuff.

Oy.

The men in my life now are gentle, funny, sweet, open, kind souls. I feel nurtured by our friendships, comforted by their affection, safe in their presences. They are a rare breed, and I feel lucky for having so many of them so close to me. (I love you guys!)

But outside my circle, I perceive men as dangerous.

This isn’t finished for me. I’m still processing, still feeling out what’s going on deep under my surface. I think I want to find and connect with a male deity that feels like my friends. That feels like a healing thing to do, a good furthering step.

Save the date for the free, 52-minute How to Be Awesome teleclass on Monday, December 14th at 1pm Central. (time zone converter) We’ll distill everything we’ve learned about personal growth into the Basic Principles of Awesomeness, and we’ll do Q&A, too! Join our newsletter if you’d like an email reminder; you can unsubscribe at any time.

Pace and I made fifteen vows to each other.

We spent a few hours curled up in a coffee shoppe, whispering sweetness and outlining the things we wanted to promise each other. We went through our book and reworded the chapters that sang to our hearts to better mesh with the rest. We held hands and looked into each other’s eyes and worked out the most important things to each of us.

And now, we share them with you. Here are the bulk of our vows, the first thirteen. (The last two are forthcoming, in the next two weeks.)

In this sacred space, surrounded by our loved ones, in the presence of Spirit, I do vow:

to acknowledge and accept that you will disappoint me.

We are happy to share our reasons behind any or all of them, but they seem self-explanatory, so I’m going to leave them as they are. Feel free to ask us anything; we’ll happily answer.

This morning, I showed Pace my new morning ritual. It involves me taking my liquid vitamins, which would otherwise be tedious and repetitive. But each bottle needs a good shake before I administer my dose, so I grab a bottle in each hand and do a little dance and sing “Shake it, shake it, shake it!”

This makes every single morning a little brighter, and starts me off on a silly foot and in a good mood.

It’s even turned a bad morning around for me before. Just a few minutes of shaking and dancing and singing to my vitamin bottles, and I’m cheered up and giggling. Making it a part of my morning routine is important, because when I’m feeling down, I’ll probably do it anyway – and then I cheer myself up without even trying!

We tend to underestimate silly. We grow up and get serious – and a lot of us lose our joy. But being grown up doesn’t mean you can’t sing to your vitamins. It doesn’t mean you have to be serious or stoic. It means you’re taller, potty trained (I hope), and you have more responsibilities – but that means you can reach more things, go places without your parents, and that you can find your own joy.

Being a public figure can make us shy away from joy, too. We think about all the people reading (or watching) all the things we do or say, and we clam up or put ourselves in boxes or spend too much time being serious.

If you follow me on Twitter, you have a sense of my every day life – and it’s a life full of silliness and joy. Twitter is my public place of choosing to really be myself, uncensored – and you’ll note that I am a giant goofball.

Give yourself some space to be silly. Dance around the house in your socks, sing at the top of your lungs when your favorite song comes on, laugh full and loud and long. In this ever-increasingly troubled world, our hearts need all the silly they can get. Find something silly and simple and incorporate it into your daily routine, so it can cheer you up every day!

Time for another dose of what’s going on in our community!

Hildy

Our friend and fellow world-changer Hildy Gottlieb presented a workshop in Tucson. She mentioned The Usual Error and gave us photographic proof! Look on the whiteboard behind her head!

I (Pace) recently finished reading Hildy’s book, The Pollyanna Principles, and it feels like the connection paradigm applied to nonprofit organizations. (Sorry, “Community Benefit Organizations”, which I agree is a much better name for them.) It’s like reading something I could have written, except in a different context, and I’m working on a whole blog post just about this book. If you’re at all interested in changing the world through organizations that benefit the community, you probably want to get to know Hildy, because she’s awesome like that. She’s also on Twitter. (:

The Buddhist usual error

Speaking of the usual error, I came across the oldest reference to the usual error I’ve ever seen: a quote from the Buddha, who says “We see as we are.”

Lespreneur

We made the front page of Lespreneur, the magazine for lesbian entrepreneurs! Here’s the cover story.

Quiet Company

Do you like Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn? Do you like music? If so, check out this music video by Taylor Muse of Quiet Company. The song and the video are inspired by Ishmael, and it made me really happy.

Here’s the video: On Modern Men

Also, thank you to Green (who wrote the lovely poem we posted on Wednesday) for introducing us!

Being Out at Work

We wrote an article for Out In America on being out at work and how it can change the world.

Opening the Moneyflow

My friend Mark Silver is offering a year-long course called Opening the Moneyflow. It’s about a heart-centered approach to building or growing a business of your own. Many of you have asked that the two of us offer a course on how to start your own business in an ethical, non-slimy way that will change the world for the better. We’re not ready to offer that course yet, but in the meantime, we wholeheartedly recommend Mark Silver as our proxy. He’s the real deal: honest, authentic, knowledgeable, and just a super sweet guy. His earlier course, Heart of Money, certainly helped me a huge lot.

If you’re interested in starting or growing your own business in a heart-centered way, I suggest reading about it to see if it’s for you. Here’s an affiliate link and here’s a direct link if you prefer. (:

Last but certainly not least, we’re eagerly preparing for the launch of 52 Weeks to Awesome, our exciting new e-course that starts in January! Pre-registration opens on December 14th, and we’ll be telling you more about it as it draws near. Keep it in mind as a potential gift for friends — who couldn’t use a little more awesome in their lives? (:

To kick this off, we’ll be hosting a free, 52-minute How to Be Awesome teleclass on Monday, December 14th at 1pm Central, 2pm Eastern, 11am Pacific (here’s a time zone converter) – and if you join the Freak Revolution newsletter, we’ll remind you via email in plenty of time to sign up. We’ll give a brief overview of what we’ll cover in the course — the Basic Principles of Awesomeness.

Hope to see (or hear) you there! (:

Brides the Day After
by Lynnivere

What are we if we are made of meat?
We paint our bodies with flowers and sighs
And every moment we are loving full force
               Our monkeyspheres and our families.
Love is the change we wish to see and be.

We are constantly recreating ourselves -
Our former selves created in our current image,
Striving for the noble goal that shares
               And bares our souls once more.
The self is always working.

The center of our creation is an ideal-
An ideology. We call this paradigm
Connection. Connected not like bricks
               Glued together but instead like flowers
Growing all up out of the same earth.

We refurbish words through alchemy,
Transfiguring slung mud into the fertile earth.
These words belong to us now -
               Words like Freak and Witch and Wedding.
We have made these words our own.

Our power is an intrinsic quality
Rooted in effective communication.
With our words we can do magic
               That heals, emboldens, and connects.
Our communication. Our connection. Our Love.

This time of the year brings challenges for me.

It’s the fallow time, that dark quiet between Samhain and Yule, where the previous year has ended and the new year has yet to begin. My internal clock slows way down, which is natural but has interesting side effects. The early darkness often brings me a sense of restlessness and a kind of loneliness. And here, where it’s 85° but dark by 6pm, all these feelings are enhanced by feelings of dissonance – what the hell season is it, anyway? Gah.

So I wind up feeling down and motionless and stagnant.

Last Friday, my dear friend Timary taught me the first two steps in crochet so I can make my own insanely cute tiny little stuffed animals (aka amigurumi). I spent over an hour chaining and then another hour doing some other simple crochet thingie – and I loved it.

When I got home, I started crying. I realized that I’ve been overwhelmed with stagnation. I feel like I’m not learning or growing right now. I’m just kind of… living. Day to day, things are great. I love my life. But I feel a general lack of growth, all too common for me in this weird season.

This year, I think I’ll move through it by finding new things I can do, like amigurumi. I’m going to exercise, so I don’t feel so sluggish. I’ll read all those books in that huge pile on my nightstand. I’ll make sure to get more quality time with my friends, and to enjoy all the special things that only show up this time of year.

Celebrate, instead of dread. That’ll do it.

What about you; do you feel similarly? What do you do to move through it – and can I help?

Here’s a conversation with Daniel Quinn about how to change the world. It’s really good. Go read it, especially if you’re a Quinn fan.

A summary of the conversation:

The Author writes a book containing revolutionary ideas. The Friend reads the book and recommends it to The Business Owner. The book changes the way The Business Owner runs his business, thereby changing the way his competitors do business, thereby changing the world.

How neat! Three different types of revolutionaries all working together!

Three Types of Revolutionaries:

1. The Artist

The Artist changes the world by creating revolutionary art, books, movies, music, blog posts — anything that can reach and inspire a large number of people.

In Quinn’s example, The Artists are authors: Paul Hawken and Daniel Quinn himself. In the Freak Revolution Manifesto, we talk about The Artist type of revolutionary on page 30.

2. The Friend

The Friend changes the world by connecting with a small number of people and sharing revolutionary ideas with them.

This is the type of revolutionary that Quinn says is the most important. And in the Freak Revolution Manifesto, it’s on page 27.

3. The Business Owner

The Business Owner changes the world by doing business in a revolutionary and effective way. This creates a larger change in the market, forcing competitors to revolutionize as well.

The Business Owner in Quinn’s example is Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, Inc. And we’ve talked about this type of revolutionary in our blog post “How can small businesses change the world without being evil?“.

4. You?

What other types of revolutionaries can you think of?

What type of revolutionary are you?

We’re gathered here today, as family and as friends of Kyeli Ruvoryn Lorino (Smith) and Pace Mawokamatanda Reagan (Smith) for their joyous, illegal wedding ceremony.

Pace and Kyeli really wanted you here to share this day with them, and that’s profound. You see, Kyeli and Pace can’t legally get married in Texas. The state of Texas, like too many other states in this country, wants to pretend that their union doesn’t exist.

Well, that’s just too bad for Texas…

Look at what Pace and Kyeli have done. They’ve built a home. They’ve built a family. They’re raising a beautiful, amazing son. They’ve brought together a community of hundreds and hundreds of people. They spend their days teamed up together, encouraging people to communicate, to grow, to change the world.

They haven’t done this in darkness or in silence. They haven’t done this by hiding who they are. There’s no way they could have. They live their lives brightly, like shared beacons of possibility, showing others just how great things can be when you’re true to yourself, when you commit yourself to the things that you believe in, and when you treat those you care about with love.

And that’s where we come in. Just as surely as Kyeli and Pace have reached out to us, we’ve reached out to them, and we have an opportunity to keep reaching out to them. Marriage isn’t just the union of two people, it’s a union of the community. When a marriage is stronger, we’re stronger. When we’re stronger, the marriage is stronger.

We live in strange and, in many ways, strained times. We have more personal freedom than ever. We have vastly more options, and far fewer limits. We are a sea of individuals… and many of us are more alone than ever. Our families are smaller, our communities are more distant, and our neighbors are strangers. It’s confusing, it’s lonely, and it’s frightening. We can’t persist alone. We can’t thrive like that. But what we can do is open our eyes, and open our hearts to each other. We can search our own hearts, know our own selves, know our own wounds, our own scars, as well as our own capacity for love, for kindness, for forgiveness, for empathy. And as we do so, we can begin to look around us and see opportunities to connect. We can begin to see others, and we can begin to see what is beautiful within them. Not despite their fear or uncertainty, but including it. We can see others as complete humans, who may have sometimes walked a rocky path, but not without carrying love and hope and compassion within their hearts, just as we have.

We can open our hearts, and learn to accept ourselves, and as we do so, we can begin to invite others in. We can’t help but build community. And we can’t help but support those we love. Of course, ultimately the success of Pace and Kyeli’s marriage comes down to… Pace and Kyeli. Being an active participant in any committed relationship is a lot of work, and that’s all the more true of marriage. It’s an incredible amount of work… but that’s because it’s a path of growth. Growth is hard, and it’s intimidating. Being that close to another person requires a lot of patience, self- examination, and, sometimes, sacrifice.

And yet, that’s also the reward. You have to become stronger. You have to learn how to be giving, how to be loving, how to pay attention. You have to grow in your understanding of yourself — and others. But, just as you must do these things to be an active partner, you also have a partner. There will be someone there to care for you, to help you when you stumble, to team up with you to rise to new challenges, and to allow you to see yourself more clearly than you ever could on your own.

It’s not easy work, but it’s some of the only work truly worth doing.

This was written and read by our very dear friend Nathan Winant, who officiated at our wedding. We were both completely blown away by the depth and beauty of this, and it really set the tone for the rest of the ceremony. Thank you, Nathan.

This is the first time I (Pace) have touched the Internet since Friday night. Kyeli and I haven’t even peeked at Megan’s liveblogging of our wedding yet!

We were up until 4am last night and the night before, so we’re taking the day off of blogging today — we’re collapsing, recuperating, and enjoying each other. We’ll post about the wedding soon, but for now, here are a couple of pictures to hold you over. Thanks for these pictures, Toby!

Without further ado, here’s each of us walking down the aisle accompanied by our respective moms.

Kyeli and her mom

Pace and her mom