Desiring "More"

Hello. This is a request. A time for reflection, a self-call-to-arms and a time that I'm calling out YOU.  Yes, you, my beautiful friend. This is about desire. But not the type that you think... it's something more deeply ingrained in our hearts. 
 
The last few months of my life have easily been the hardest I have ever faced (and weathered!) Lando moved, and suddenly I found myself engaged but totally "single." There have been more life trails than I care to share about, and through all of this I've been left with a need for "more." I put "more" in quotes because some days I know what that looks like and then my plans change, and other days I don't know what it is at all. I'm scattered and unfocused and want to get my life/life goals on track but have no hard examples of what that looks like. Sure it's easy to sit in my therapists office saying "I need an accountability partner,"  when I really wanted to say scream "I need someone to SHOW me how to do this!"

Then a few days ago, I remembered about The Desire Map. I'm not sure how to describe it, so I'll take an excerpt from the site:

"You want it and you want it bad. Aspiring. Hoping. Plotting. Recurring. Reaching. Bubbling beneath your surface. You crave it — and it craves you. 

So you make a plan to get it. A to-do list. The bucket list. Quarterly objectives. Strategy. Accountability. The goal. Except . . .

You’re not chasing the goal itself, you’re actually chasing a feeling.
We have the procedures of achievement upside down. We go after the stuff we want to have, get, accomplish, and experience outside of ourselves. And we hope, yearn, pray that we’ll be fulfilled when we get there. It’s backwards. It’s outside in. And it’s running us in circles.

What if, first, we got clear on how we actually wanted to feel in our life, and then we laid out our intentions? What if your most desired feelings consciously informed how you plan your day, your year, your career, your holidays — your life?

You know what will happen with that kind of inner clarity and outer action? You’ll feel the way you want to feel more often than not. Decisions will be easier to make: You’ll know what to say no, thank you to and what to say hell yes! to. I bet you’ll complain less. You’ll be more optimistic, more open-hearted. It will be easier for you to return to your center in the midst of a challenge — I promise.

You will do much less proving, and way more living.

And you will have more to give to the world.

For starters."

 The author is Danielle LaPorte, and from what I've gathered, she holds nothing back, and isn't afraid to be blunt. (I guess those are kind of the same thing?)  All across social media, she delivers daily #TruthBombs including this gem: "Turn you longing into a calling." And about a million more that I can't choose from/directly share.

I digress...I'm hoping to start going through the book, "The Desire Map." There's an app that Danielle LaPorte has released called Conversation Starters, and it's for a group to be able to go through the book with a good basis of structure. I love the idea of small groups, but for whatever reason, I can't seem to get stuck to one. I don't know if I'm lazy, scared of vulnerability, or find ways to convince myself that I have very little in common with the other members. (I think with the two small groups I've been a part of recently, all three of those are true, ESPECIALLY the last one.)

 I love the idea of going through "The Desire Map" with women who are close to my age/life situation and are willing to be vulnerable and honest. I think many times, as Christian women specifically, we are too scared to let our souls show. Among my 20-something friends, I am seeing more heartfelt yearnings...the yearn to travel; love bigger than ever; be more compassionate; learn more about ourselves and how God created us to help others. "The Desire Map" shows us just how to do all of those things, and stay focused and sane throughout the journey.

So, who wants in?

The website suggests book clubs as a way to get started. Using the Conversation Starters app, the workbook, Danielle's free audio files and/or just the book.  Meetings at a home, via Google Hangout (Or Skype, whatever), Barnes & Noble, anywhere! The book is $22.00, the workbook comes in packs of

3 @ $30.00 (or $12.00/book), and the journal is $12.50. I'm not sure about group discounts, but I'm hoping to get more information about that!

I feel pretty strongly that "The Desire Map" is what will help us all get what we want. 

Oh, and, if you're into Celebrity Testimonials, Shailene Woodley says: "She reps the sisterhood thing and women’s empowerment… The Desire Map [is] basically charting the things that you want in life, and not just sitting back and saying, “I’m going to manifest this…here’s how,” but actively doing something to manifest your dream."  So yeah. there's that.

Ps: Remember Lauren Dubinsky? Founder of The Good Women Project? Yeah, she's how I first found out about "The Desire Map." So really, that recommendation is worth the perusal.

Join me?

(From daniellelaporte.com)

It's true.

Happy Friday! 

Yikes, I'm terrible at blogging lately, and I truly apologize. Between my boyfriend graduating, random roadtrips around the state, and getting sick, I've been busy, and sleeping a lot! But I'm back, and today I wanted to talk about something scary: Feminism. 

When I was younger, all I knew about feminism was that in the 70s these women probably didn't wear bras, and opened car doors themselves and declared their independence from the tyrant that is the male species. Had I ever met a feminist? No, of course not, don't be silly. I grew up in the church, and God forbid women be too independent. (To be fair, a lot of the women in my church were very independent of their husbands. but it's the principle of the matter.) 

Before I got to college, I had a friend at my church who went to the same school that I was headed to. She was a few years older than me so I was able to witness how MC affected her growth as a Christian and as a woman. Before she had gone to school, she said "I don't want to end up like the crazy feminists." Three years later, guess what she was: A semi-crazy feminist with alternate views on Christianity. I couldn't believe it. Not only did I feel completely left in the dust and betrayed, I was TERRIFIED that I would go to MC and end up like her. I decided to choose a major that wouldn't involve a lot of theology and social science classes: Music Education. And we all saw how that worked out. (I was in the program for HALF of a semester. Hated it. Different story.) I was determined to avoid my theology class for as long as humanly possible, and I finally realized that I wouldn't be taking too many classes that would force me to have an introspective look at being a female in a "male dominated world." So, in general, I think it's safe to say that I made it out of college fairly unscathed, and with some influences that showed me what true female independence was. 

Last year, I discovered Good Women Project, and I was blown away at this community of Christian women who struggled with sexual issues, dating, abuse, and feminism. At that point in my life I was focused more on the dating/who-should-I-marry articles, but the founder of GWP, Lauren Dubinsky Tweeted something that literally changed my life:

Feminism is what gives me the right  to be the woman that I am,  not the woman that other feminists wish I was or expect me to be. I sat and stared at my screen for a few seconds processing what I had just read. I broke it down into the two obvious parts: 1: "Feminism is what gives me the right to be the woman that I am."  I don't need to be the "type" of feminist who looks at her boyfriend and says "make your own damn sandwich," because that's not who I am as a person. If my boyfriend wants a sandwich, we're going to make that thing together. Because God made me, me Starleisha, as a collaborative being. I don't feel objectified when I'm hanging out in the kitchen, I actually feel empowered. I'm a good cook and I'm going to show off those skills. My boyfriend laid it out when we first started dating that he would NEVER expect me to make him food. That's fine. I'm ok with that. But I will offer, and that's cool too. And  that's what works for me. 2:"Not the woman that other feminists wish I was or expect me to be."  Also pretty simple. Online, I've encountered tweets that imply that people do feminism wrong. How is it doing it wrong if statement number 1. is the very core basis of feminism? Even though I know this to be true, I still struggle with it. Sometimes I think "Ugh, I can't be a good feminist because I still believe that the husband, to some extent, should be the spiritual leader of the household." But those negative thoughts just take up room in my brain where positive thoughts should be! If there are women out there who look at me and think I'm doing feminism wrong because I still like it when my boyfriend opens my car door, to them I say: Your lack of support for me is actually wrong. As Taylor Swift so famously quoted the even cooler Katie Couric: "There's a special place in Hell for women who don't help other women." For this topic, that's a bit of an extreme example, but I think it warrants some discussion. If feminists are to be about women's rights, we need to help each other, not put each other into this place of shame, and make each other feel that we can't express our views. I can be an independent woman and still enjoy it when my boyfriend sends me surprise flowers "just because." You can be independent and still not want anything extra from your boyfriend because you feel like it detracts from your feminist battle-cry. And that's ok! But let's not berate one another. For the longest time, I denied it. I denied even the teeniest ounce of feminism in me. I would even blatantly say anti-feminist statements on Twitter to try to cover up my unsure feelings about the whole subject. Some of it stemmed from the fear that I would someday emasculate the man I seriously dated. And you know, in the 90s, that might have been a legit fear, but there are so many men who are pro-feminist in the world today. I see my boyfriend as his own man, and, really, he's kind of pro-feminist too. Within our relationship, we've leveled the playing field. He cooks, I cook. I'm paying for my own movie today. No big deal. It doesn't mean that he's less of a man, and it doesn't mean I'm castrating his wallet. (Pause for that mental image...ok, continue). It's really ok. It's how we do things, and it works for us. So my Star-Based Feminism pep-talk to myself goes a little something like this: Enjoying being treated like a lady doesn't lessen my value as a woman. I can be independent and still enjoy hanging out in the kitchen.  The playing field is even, and my boyfriend and I should have an open dialogue to keep it that way. I am me, and you are you. Let's help each other. Let's support the different views of feminism. After all...isn't that what it's about?