Kyeli and I have been talking a lot lately about what we want to do for our next project. But what we want is only half the story, because we also need to know what you want.

So if you can spare a minute to tell us about yourself; to tick some tickyboxes and maybe even fill in a text box or two, it would make us really happy.

Talk to us. We’re listening.

Here’s what’s been going on with us and with our community lately!

Kyeli just had a post-surgery followup appointment. Everything looks good and she’s healing on schedule. You’ll probably be seeing more of her around here soon. (:

Ana Ottman, previously our online friend, has moved to Austin! She’s awesome in real life, too.

Mark Silver poignantly told the story of why marketing is so important for those seeking to do good in the world. (And if you’re one of those people who wants to do good in the world and wants to learn how to do so more effectively, don’t miss Mark’s course, Heart of Business Momentum.)

Rachael E. C. Acklin wrote something too beautiful for me to summarize. It’s about Love.

Shann Vander Leek wrote a book! It’s called Life On Your Terms, and it’s about redefining your notion of work and breaking free from what’s expected of you. I haven’t read it yet, but Shann is cool and it sounds freaky and revolutionary, so I thought I’d share. (:

Last but not least, The Egg. A story about spirituality that moved both me and Kyeli to tears.

What’s been going on with you lately?

My new tattoo.

The blue lotus represents me on my spiritual journey. The lotus haunts me; every time I see one somewhere, I am reminded that I’m on the right path – even when I don’t know where I’m going anymore. The first time I saw one after finding out about prolapse, I flipped out. How could I still be on the right path now, after this? But the lotus perseveres in my life; there was one at the hospital, in a painting across the hall from my room. I may not know where to go, but I trust in the universe – and She peppers my path with the lotus.

The opening bud represents my little girl lost. Her brief time, her tiny touch in my body, her huge ripples in my life. Her moment to barely open, just here long enough to change me forever.

The two closed buds represent the children I will never have. Silenced, closed tightly against the world, but here with me in my heart forever.

And the bright yellow star, rising up out of the lotus, represents my own bright rising star; the love of my life, my not-so-little boy, my son.

I chose blue because blue is sacred and spiritual for me, and because of the song, Lullaby in Blue. It’s a song about losing your child, one I first heard not even a week after I lost mine, and I’ve held it in my heart for years. Now, for me, it’s about every child I’ve lost, whether I was given the chance to know their souls or not.

And it’s on my forearm so I can forever see them and hold them all – including myself – close to my heart.

If you live in or are visiting Austin and want a tattoo, Karen at Spellbound Studio is my artist. She’s incredible; I cannot recommend her highly enough!

I used to think that I would jump at the chance to reconnect to all my old high school friends. I miss them, and think of them, and wonder what their lives are like now, and all the things most of us probably do with old friends from long ago.

Now, here I sit, looking at the profile of my best friend from my entire high school career; we were close for over five years. I’ve seen as much of her profile as her privacy settings will let me; enough to know that she still lives where we grew up. Enough to have seen her face; enough to feel nostalgia wash over me in waves, a kind of homesickness.

But I’m not jumping.

My former very best friend for years is right here, one simple click away. I’ve searched for her for ten years; I followed leads, checked friends-of-friends, asked around. I was nearly desperate to find her – and find her, I finally have.

And yet, I’m not jumping.

As I looked at her profile, a sense of peace swept over me. I took a deep breath. I realized that somewhere along the way, I forgave her for the traumatic way our friendship ended. And more, I realized that I don’t need her to know me now. I don’t need her to not know me, but I don’t feel that sharp desperation I once had for her approval, for her to see me now and tell me how awesome I’ve become.

I can tell myself how awesome I’ve become. I don’t need it from the outside anymore.

We spend a lot of time these days finding and reconnecting with people from our past. Sometimes, that’s a good thing; old friendships rekindled, common ground found where time and distance once separated us.

But sometimes, it’s good to reflect on our motives for that reconnection. It’s important to make connections that fuel and heal us – and equally important to steer clear of connections that drain and deplete us. Reconnecting brings its own mixed bag: old wounds reopened, regret, behavior and thoughts and feelings we thought long buried.

Before you next click that connection button, as easy as it has become, pause. Breathe. Make sure the connection you’re creating is healthy for both of you. Make sure you’re connecting because it’s what you want, not because it’s expected – and not because of what you once had.

If you met this person now, today – and didn’t share history – would you become friends?

In my case, my heart said no. I gave her a silent farewell, sent her wishes of goodness and waves of forgiveness, and closed the tab.

Another installment in the series of posts of the WCWW scholarship contest winners and runners-up! Today’s post is written by Alexia Petrakos, one of the five scholarship winners. Enjoy!

There is nothing more important than remembering who you are.

You knew when you were born. You knew who you were when you were 3 and running through the grass and screaming and laughing and playing.

You knew who you were right up until school. And that’s when they made you forget.

At 5 or 6, your world changed. People you didn’t know expected you to sit up straight, stop talking, pay attention, write your letters just so, color inside the lines, don’t wander off, sit still.

And people you love and adore started echoing those people you don’t know. Pay attention. Do your homework. Don’t daydream. Quit acting out. Focus. You can’t do that for a living!

And you forgot.

They expected you to be just like them. Because that’s all they knew.

And what they knew was to succeed in life you need to conform, to become like everyone else, to not make waves and be obedient and quiet. To fit in the machine like a cog.

But the machine is breaking down, spitting out cogs like watermelon seeds.

People are trying to get back into the machine but there’s no place for them anymore. They don’t know the only way to succeed now is to get back to who they once were, to who they really are.

You need to remember who you are. You are not a cog. You were never meant to be a cog. And the only way to live and thrive now is to be yourself. Truly yourself. 

Excavate the you that was at 4 or 5. Before they got to you. Before they made you forget.

Find the dreamer, the dancer, the insect-collector, the star-gazer, the artist that was shoved in a box years ago.

Find you again. Remember who you are deep down inside. Remember your original design. Because you were designed for a greater purpose than machinery.

The minute you discover, re-discover who you really are, that’s the minute you become yourself again. That’s the minute you’re open to the possibilities. That’s when you are you again.

The dreamer. The doer. The reader. The philosopher. The comic. All the things they said wouldn’t pay the bills is what you need now to keep you afloat.

And when enough people remember who they are, the world will change for good. It’s changing some now with the few that have remembered. They’re the ones who are opening eyes and ears to new possibilities.

But they can’t make you remember. They can show the way, but you have to do the work.

You have to remember. You have to clear the years of disapproving stares and shaking heads and fingers and you-can’t-do-thats and how-will-you-ever-make-a-living and a-good-secure-job-is-the-only-way-to-go.

And that’s not easy.

I know.

I’ve rediscovered that I’m a dreamer, a creator, a teacher. And the possibilities are endless. I see them because I’m myself again. Because I remembered.

I want to change the world. Starting with me. Starting with remembering and reminding myself of who I am.

I want to help others remember.

In the remembering is truth. And with truth comes freedom.

Hi. I’m Alexia. I call myself “eclectic” because all the other words for how my brain works range from scary sci-fi reference to frou-frou woo-woo silliness. Although I’m all for silliness, just not that brand.

My current business escapades include WordPress, Blog & Social Media coaching at WPChick, bookbinding & other arty stuff at ARRRT!, and general bloggy stuff.

On launch day for the World-Changing Writing Workshop, Pace posted a link to the video we made the day we started the Freak Revolution.

I watched the video, which I hadn’t watched in a year.

I was really struck by my face. I watched myself talk, watching my lips, my facial expressions, my own eyes – all with this surreal feeling. Something felt very odd, not quite right.

Then it hit me.

This video is only a year old – but I look much, much older now, especially my eyes. My eyes are stormier, sad, somehow less. As I sat watching my own video, tears slid down my face and I thought, “I’ve lost something. I’ve lost my innocence.”

When I look at pictures and videos of myself from only six months ago, I get the same feeling. When my uterus collapsed, I started dealing with very intense physical trauma – followed immediately by very intense personal trauma, and it hasn’t let up.

This has been one of the hardest years of my life. I’ve spent months in a deep depression. I’ve undergone a massive spiritual crisis. I threw myself into the creation and launch of the World-Changing Writing workshop so I wouldn’t think about it.

But still, this has been here, in my core, swirling around and changing me. Whether or not I admit it, whether or not I deal with it, I have changed.

I have lost something.

And I don’t yet know what I’ve gained.

But, for the first time since this whole thing started, I know I have gained something. Somehow, my life has been enriched by this experience. Somehow.

I just don’t see it yet.

Another installment in the series of posts of the WCWW scholarship contest winners and runners-up! Today’s post is written by Gloria Adams-Hanley, one of the five scholarship winners. Enjoy!

The Dragon at your Door

For someone who has such a profound interest in communication, you’d think I would be properly equipped for… well… communicating with people. My major passions are writing, teaching, and theatre. Each of these fields requires the ability to form sentences, to make connections, to speak up. And when it comes to writing a poem, explaining a theory, or reciting a monologue with feeling – I’m there. I’m your girl. But ask me to give an impromptu speech, or to call someone up to make plans, or to say the right thing to a hurting friend, you might want to scroll past me on your contact sheet.

It’s not that I’m mean. I go out of my way to be giving, caring, and available. Just like it’s hard to tell what direction you’re going in a blizzard, it can be difficult to identify the communication issues plaguing a relationship when you’re the person struggling with it. Everyone thinks differently, in their own internal brain-language that we translate into our human-language and human-behavior. For some, translation seems effortless. They speak fluently and confidently in most situations, respond well in social situations, and develop surface relationships easily (in other words, they network expertly). For others, they stutter or freeze in social situations. They don’t know when to call, or what to say when they get an answer. Some, like me, are so shy they become ashamed of themselves.

Which is why I have developed my interest in communication; I struggle so hard to be understood that the struggle itself has become an interest of mine. I love to read books on conflict resolution and communication techniques. I sit one-on-one and talk at length in meta-cognitive bursts of self-awareness about my issues and needs. And as a result, I’ve gotten better. I doubt I’ll ever be a champion at impromptu speaking, but slowly and surely I have made important strides in communicating with friends and family. And while I might still be awkward on the phone, I’ve found a way to express my voice and communicate what my soul is singing: poetry. I’ve turned my weakness into my strength.

If I had never had the pain of being misunderstood, or dumbfounded trying to resolve a fight with a friend, then I wouldn’t have searched out my patience for poetry and revision. My talent in writing is not the words that come out first- that is in fact my downfall when speaking, that I say things mixed up and wrong. My talent in poetry is in calming down, accessing the intention of my words and figuring out what I’ve said wrong, in analyzing and revising. If I weren’t so awful at saying things right the first time, I never would have developed that reflex.

Because I desperately needed a chance to rephrase my words and make sure they came out right, I found my voice in writing, and even developed a philosophy of writing and revision: It doesn’t have to be right the first time, but it does have to be written the first time. Finding writing has transformed my life. I’ve presented my poetry at a national student convention, had a short play I wrote performed before an audience, and have written a screenplay that led to my co-founding an independent film company. Finding my strength inside my weakness literally transformed my life, my plans, and my identity for the better.

This is not to say that I am already an amazing writer; I have a long road ahead of me. This is not a story of success yet. Right now, it’s a story of process. A story of finding a path and choosing to walk it. A story of taking the ugliest, most painful part of my personality, and learning everything I could about it, taking the weapon used against me and wielding it in my defense.

That dragon beating down your door? It might just be your ride to a better place. Tame it.

Gloria Adams-Hanley, (known to friends as “Green”), is a poet, playwright, screenwriter, and mother. She is an English Education Major at St Edward’s University. She has presented original poetry at Sigma Tau Delta national convention, written a short play performed at the 2010 New Works festival, and is currently producing her first screenplay, Hard Bargain. She occasionally jots down stray thoughts on her blog.

Another installment in the series of posts of the WCWW scholarship contest winners and runners-up! Today’s post is written by Ellie Di Julio, one of the five scholarship winners. Enjoy!

Wholestyle is a novel, bordering-on-radical approach to sophistication. It began as a yearning to find a name for the idea that being stylish requires not just trendy clothes, but exploring the world around you, steeping yourself in culture, embracing new ideas, stretching your boundaries, looking inward, reaching out. It was an itch on the edge of my mind, on the tip of my tongue, waiting to be said, but the right words hadn’t been invented yet. I instinctively knew that being stylish is more than what you’ve got on the outside; it’s everything you’ve got inside, too. You’ve got to investigate everything from fashion to politics, art to science, academia to fandom, literature to history, creation to destruction, outrage to glee. Then one day, like a comet crashing to Earth, the word was there. It was so obvious! Sophistication of this caliber means you need a whole-world approach. Whole-style. It’s a philosophy, a movement, a way of life.

Its application could revolutionize women’s worldviews. Armed with a depth of knowledge and a broad spectrum of ideas in hand, they will better understand themselves, each other, and the world they live in. It’s vitally important that they do. I can feel my heart rise, my spirit stir, my eyes brighten when I think of how desperately modern women need this kind of emphasis on experience and education. Yet I’m stuck in a mysterious quagmire of angry frustration as I try to get the word out.

When I was in elementary school, you couldn’t stop me from writing. My mom brought home blank books that I filled with nonsense stories and abstract pictures because I absolutely had to pour out all the wonderful things that filled me up before they threatened the safety of my brains. I had so much to say to the world, and it flowed perfectly from imagination to crayon to page.

When I was in high school, English was my bitch. I could crank out witty, detailed, engaging, reasoned essays faster than most people could read the prompt. I sailed through every course that needed me to tackle any kind of creative composition. Only very occasionally did I get stuck – usually when required to write on something I didn’t like or agree with. And the private poetry I madly scribbled at home was not to be trifled with.

When I was in my junior year of university, I hit a wall. Subjects I could normally talk about for hours in conversation were daunting as I stared at the blinking cursor. I’d always break through it eventually and feel that delicious warm rush of free-flowing prose. This resulted in some of my best work, but the nagging feeling that I’d slipped somehow coloured the victory.

When I started blogging last year, I was full of ideas. I’d struck upon a novel worldview for women and honestly believed that it needed to be shared with the world. I could make a difference! But I soon found that I’d regularly burst into frustrated tears when I sat down to write. Not just a few tears down my cheek; we’re talking huge, gulping sobs punctuated with near-screams. I wanted so badly to share my thoughts, but I couldn’t get it out. Literary constipation fits here.

It’s not a lack of inspiration – I’ve got an amazing idea.

It’s not a lack of drive – I can’t wait to share it with the world.

It’s not a lack of talent – I know I’m a good writer.

I know what it’s not, but I don’t know what it is. And I have to name it so I can conquer it. The fear that I’ve lost something ineffable between my high school days and the lecture hall, the fear that it’s unrecoverable, keeps me awake at night and threatens to bring on tears of shame.

I want to rhapsodize!

I want to sing praises!

I want to unstick!

Wholestyle can change the world. It’s the first time in my entire life that I’ve really, truly, deeply believed in the positivity of something I’m undertaking. Never before have I been so concretely certain that anything I’m doing is right, that it will succeed. The entire project feels like I’m reaching out my metaphysical arms to embrace women everywhere, to guide them on this journey to understanding, to hold them close and whisper the secrets of real style.

If only I could put it into words.

Ellie Di Julio is a blog reader extraordinaire, freak kid, pompom shaker, and founder of The Wholestyle Network. Her life has taken her all over the Western world, filling her up with grand ideas about society, culture, and people. She’s got a BA in Psychology, an English-teacher-mom/librarian-dad-inspired love of books and writing, and big, devious plans for how to change the way women look at themselves and the world.

Greetings and welcome to Mad Props Mondays! This is a series of posts of the WCWW scholarship contest winners and runners-up, coming at you Mondays for the next several weeks.

Today’s post is written by Megan Potter, one of the five scholarship winners.

Change the world… What do I have to say about changing the world?

Oh God, I want it so bad; I want to be a world-changer. I want to say, “When I was twenty-something it was like this, but now, now look at it.”

I just recently saw the Dalai Lama speak (did you know he was 75 years old? I didn’t know that) and he told a story about meeting the Queen Mother (Queen Victoria). I don’t know how long ago this story happened, but he told us that he’d grown up with images of her around him and when he had the opportunity he finally requested an audience with her.

I love the Dalai Lama’s mind; I love how inquisitive, how light and natural he is – real, that’s the word that best describes him. So, he requests and is granted an audience with her and, he tells us, that he’s slightly surprised she’s so “small and chubby”, but he asks his question. Seeing as she was born in 1901 and has pretty much seen the entire century go by, he wants to know: “Is the world better or worse?”

We hear all the time about how terrible the world is. About how much worse illness is, violence is, war is. Ask the average person on the street and I’m sure they’d tell you that the world is getting worse; we’re suffering from a severe case of nostalgia.

But not Queen Victoria. “Better,” she said. The world is getting better for sure, compared to the turn of the twentieth century. We have equality, freedom, and human rights – concepts our ancestors a century ago were hardly familiar with. It may not be perfect, but the world is definitely getting better.

When I’m old and wizened, I want someone to ask me, “Seeing as you’ve been alive this long, can you tell me, is the world better or worse?” And I want to tell them, in all honesty, “Better,” and know in my heart that what I did with my life, everything I poured out into the community, that the small amount I played had a part in making the world better.

The funny thing is, I don’t need to tell my questioner the part I played. Do you think that Queen Victoria than proceeded to narrate all the actions she participated in that qualify her for claiming a part in changing the world for the better? Of course not. It doesn’t matter to me if you know I changed the world, it only matters to me if I, in some small way, helped humanity out.

Years ago, I read the book Cheaper by the Dozen (by Frank B. Gilbreth & Ernestine Gilbreth Carey). It’s a quaint memoir of a father’s life as recorded by his children. Their dad was the very first “efficiency expert”; he was obsessed with it to the point of making specific, step-by-step directions for bathroom usage (like brushing your teeth) for his kids. He was an average man who very few people have ever even heard of (and if not for the book, he’d be nothing more than an obscure mention in an encyclopedia or two), but he changed the world. He invented dozen small and simple things, like touch typing, that we use everyday to make our lives easier. I remember sitting back in shock as I noted the list of his contributions to society. This man changed the way that I live my life, and I didn’t even know it.

When I work through books like “The Fire Starter Session” or other life purpose things, I always answer the questions: What do you want to be known for? What do you want to do with your life? with something like “Change the World!” But even though I say that and tell you all this, something inside me says, change the world? That’s huge. The whole world? That’s… that’s an insurmountable task, don’t you think? There’s just one little-old me, with only so many years of work available to me; if we get down to it, I’d have to say that I’ve probably already wasted a good 30 or so of those years on silly things like simply “getting by”. (Where’s the world changing in that?) How could one little, uneducated, inexperienced me hope to change the entire world?

So, when that completely practical, freaking out voice tells me to put my hand down, sit back in my seat, and put my nose to the grindstone, I remind it of something I learnt in church (yep, church – every now and then they do have a brilliant idea or two). The idea went something like this:

What if I never reach more than three people? What if I get to share my full-out, passionate, nothing held back heart with only three people and I revolutionize their lives? What if I help them rediscover the Feminine Divine in them, or peel back their layers till they see their true core of potential and power? What if, their lives changed, they each reach out to three more people? And those nine people, their lives unadulteratedly changed, each reach out to three more people. I’d have changed 100 people’s lives in no time, and 100 so quickly becomes 1000 and then the whole world. It might not be me touching them all directly, but it’s that heart that I opened and exposed and breathed life and inspiration into that reached out to them.

And hey, if one humble Jewish guy can be declared the Son of God and take over the entire Western world for 2000 years then me – one little, uneducated, inexperienced 32 year old woman, mother, wife, and life changer can honestly expect to sit back at eighty, to see all those threes, multiplied by three, by three, and three again and she’ll know that yes, she did change the world. The world is better because she helped to invite the shift in.

What do I have to say about changing the world? Give me three, full-on, hard-core, committed people and set me free, I know I can do it.

I’m Megan Potter, and I’m a Pagan, New Age, Metaphysically minded, homeschooler (into high school, now that’s freaky!), and a Goddess Worshipper (with a Christian foundation). I believe in a magical, miracle filled world, that Divinity is immanent in everything (including you, your dog, and that tree over there), and that each of us has the power to create our own reality. That, in fact, we have a shared purpose of coming to self-possession, through personal and spiritual development and self-responsibility, for the sake of making a better world. I believe in intuition and divination and that the Limitless Divine both communicates with you and I, but is actively engaged in our lives.

I’m a life-coach, a tarot reader, and a spiritual guide. My business, Limitless Living is all about teaching Beautiful and Courageous women to Honour their Selves, Nurture their Spirits and see their Souls Blossom. You can find me at LimitlessLiving.ca

We are pleased and proud to announce the winners of our scholarship contest!

We had 30 entrants, and every single entry was excellent. I spent all day yesterday – literally, hours and hours – pouring over the entries, reading and re-reading, laughing, crying, and then struggling to choose just three from the pool of overwhelming awesome.

And in the end, I just couldn’t do it – so, we have five winners! These are the five that made both Pace and myself cry. A lot.

1. Megan Potter

2. Ellie Di Julio
3. Green Blackwell
4. Alexia Petrakos
5. ThinkingTooHard

Big congratulations and joy and glee to each of the five of you! Well done!

Each winning entry (and a few of the runners-up) will be posted on the blog on Mondays over the next several weeks as the workshop gets underway and rolling – so keep watch for them, because they’re excellent.