Day 9 - Acid or Honey
People are still sending me notes about the Adoptees On podcast I did with my ex-husband Ryan. They like how kind we are to each other. Ryan sets the bar really high when it comes to kindness, and one way I see this is that I have rarely heard him say something negative about another person. When we divorced, I had the feeling he didn’t talk badly behind my back. That stuff makes a difference. So I didn’t talk badly behind his. That behavior didn’t come naturally to me. I needed to model someone.
I can be so mean. I remember a long, long time ago I was having dinner with Dexter Van Zile somewhere in Boston, and I had a running commentary about everyone around us. I tore that room apart. Dexter, a marvelous human being, said something to the effect of, “Can you stop it?” and the thing was, I couldn’t. I was so deep in self-hate and life-confusion that tearing everyone else to shreds was the only way I felt I could exist, in that room, in my skin, in the current role of Anne.
I am more aware now of the power of language. I am more aware that most things I say are either honey or acid. I think of my words as those substances, and if I’m speaking to you, I try to consider whether I aiming acid or honey at your spirit. And is it worth burning you? Do I really, really need to say I fucking hate when people tailgate. Granted, it’s not a large statement, but it carries a negative charge, and the energy of it, while maybe it will bring us together in a double railing against society, we are still in a negative space.
This is work for me.
In my 93-day quest for a solid poop, I’m watching out for negative. Acid talk in my mind leads to acid guts, and acid guts leads to crappy poops. Remember, I want a gorgeous poop. Something that did not look like it came out of a soft serve machine at Dairy Queen.
Sorry. Are you still with me?
More than grades at school, what if we were judged on the gorgeousness of our stools?
But I digress. Back to acid or honey.
Yesterday when I was out hiking and I thought about Dr. Mark’s text where he said the next couple of weeks might be harder to stay on course with the clean eating because of my desire to go back to old habits. I thought of what I could do to stay on course, to keep myself challenged and excited and ever closer to my goal of feeling spectacular in my skin on August 1.
I thought about how I’d felt when my friend called earlier in the day and I asked her how she was and she’d said, “Wonderful!” My own energy elevated just because hers was high. I’m not asking that she call and tell me she’s wonderful when she feels terrible, but I am saying that word choice matters. There is balance. There is, here comes that word: moderationwhen it comes to how much acid I am going to throw at people with my language.
If I throw it at them, I am also throwing it on myself, so it’s a thing for me to say That guy is a real jerk when I could have said nothing at all. Do I needto acid myself and others? Sometimes, yes, I have negative things to say and it really helps me to get them off my chest or I have information to deliver that will sting. But I’m working on awareness. I’m working on how to say things to people that I feel need to be said in ways that sound more like honey than acid.
Why do I want to talk negatively about others? What do I get out of it?
What happens if I say nothing?
Now, most of you know me, and you know I am not an advocate for silence. I am all about speaking your truth. But, as we know, truth is beauty, and, in my mind, beauty is honey. If I tell you that guy is a jerk after he cut me off, I’m throwing that energy into the universe. Maybe the guy cut me off because he’s bleeding to death and needs to get to the hospital. So I wasted all that acid on a dying man. It wasn’t true he was a jerk. He was just bleeding to death.
Dr. Mark and I made a pact to try to talk honey all week and see what happens. I’ll check in with him next Monday and we’ll compare notes.
On Friday I’m meeting with my coach, Katie Peuvrelle. I do NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) with her, and I have learned so much about the power of language. I’m going to record our session and then transcribe it so you can get an idea of how it works. She has a new self-help book out calledLeap. The story of how she helped me leave California and go to NYC to write my book is chapter one. She’s marvelous. I can’t wait to share her work with you.
All of this is to say, I’m grooving on honey.
See you tomorrow.
xoxo
