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What Brené Brown Brings to the Stage

By Laura Zera 12 Comments

Rising Strong book coverMy, how time flies. It has already been more than three years since I wrote about how much I was diggin’ Brené Brown and her vulnerability study. Not that what she said in that TEDx Houston talk ever left me in these intervening years. No, no, no. Her message about reaching wholeheartedness through vulnerability—reinforced at times by the wisdom in her books–has been like a beacon, a light that shines brightly at times, and at other times all but disappears in the fog. But when the fog clears, it’s still there, and I’m still going toward it.

So, one thousand two hundred days later, when tickets for her Town Hall Seattle appearance went on sale, I was on that web site right when the clock struck 10 a.m. (Good thing, because it sold out in less than 20 minutes.) She came through as part of the tour for her new book Rising Strong, and, given her inimitable way of explaining important-to-your-life concepts like you are buds sharing stories over a cup of coffee, I think everyone was totally bummed when the time came to wish her farewell.

There have been a number of heartfelt and humorous book reviews written for Rising Strong, like this one by Jill Dahl and this one by Dr. Courtney Stivers. I’m going to talk about the live version of her message that if we are brave enough, often enough, we will fall. What Brené has explored in this round of research is what it takes for a brave soul to get back up and keep going.

Her answers to this line of inquiry aren’t comfortable. (They haven’t been in the past, either.) She asks us to look squarely at our emotions and undertake our own line of inquiry. Awareness is great, but how much deeper can we go? How willing are we to noodle around inside that emotion like a calm and objective aunt, instead of a panicked squirrel? Brené has found that our willingness to go through this process is directly correlated to our resilience. Likewise, our courage to own our stories – the stories we make up for and about ourselves that are usually tied to a bigger, uglier emotion – is correlated to our ability to rewrite the story ending. After the pain comes the power.

Brene Brown Town Hall Seattle - cropWhen she appears on stage in her jeans and black jacket with the white shirttails sticking out (like a coffee date outfit), and kicks things off with a few swear words (like a coffee date that bleeds into a wine date), and then yanks open her heart and shares her honest and authentic and vulnerable self, it’s pretty dang hard to walk away untouched. And in this lies one of Brené’s many gifts as a speaker: She grabs you in a big Texas hug, and she holds on to you through the uncomfortable part until you can relax into it. Until you are okay with it. Until you understand on a cellular level that the hard stuff she’s asking you to surrender to doing is really what you have been seeking all along. And you trust her, because she is so earnest.

She is also funny like Tina Fey, which, for her audience, has the effect of softening the angst around what you will encounter should you choose to go noodling. She laughs at herself so we can laugh at ourselves. She turns decades of interviews and research into relatable stories so we can get it, “it” being that if we don’t face all of the things which hurt us the most, we are always going to hurt. Taking the easy road out is only easy for so long, and then it turns into a highway to hell. But Brené has faith in us. She knows we can do it. And we can feel that, so we’re willing to give it a try, this reckoning and rumbling with our emotions and the stories in our heads. For her. For ourselves. For humanity.

One of Brené Brown’s early goals was to use her writing to ignite a national conversation on shame. With what she brings to the stage, she is stoking the fire of something more: a global action toward healing. And that may be her biggest gift of all.

Brené, thank you for holding on to us and not letting go.

A Little Inter-Artist Love Song: Show Some Respect

By Laura Zera 10 Comments

Andrew (left) with my other stellar nephew, Matt
Andrew (left) with my other stellar nephew, Matt

In a world full of free-flowing information and opinions, there is one piece of advice that has stuck hard in my brain, presenting itself for use during the most perfect times. This nugget of wisdom didn’t come from Oprah or Maya Angelou or Brené Brown; it is something I learned in 2013 from my then-20-year-old nephew Andrew. Sadly, it took a year for it to finally sink in to my old noggin that his perspective was sage advice for me, too, but at least I got there. Hopefully this blog post will be so convincing that it will shorten your adoption process by 11 months and 29 days, if you aren’t already preaching the same.

Our conversation was about music. My nephew is in a rock band called Little India, and I went to see them play in a competition where they had made it to the top three. Even though I thought they were the mostest awesomest act of the night, they came in third (sometimes even Hooting Aunty—almost like a “hootenanny,” but different–can’t swing the vote). The next day, we were debriefing, and I made a comment about one of the other bands, something to the effect of how they would have been better suited to an audience of tween girls. My nephew’s response was diplomatic and sincere. And it blew me away. He said, “They’re just doing their thing. It’s not my thing, but you know, they’re good at it, and it’s their thing.”

As a writer, I come across a fair amount of other writers’ work. I read a lot, and I have a wonderfully active community of writer friends. Yet what I realized (a year) after that conversation with my nephew was that I still sat in judgment, even condemnation, of other writers’ work. I didn’t like this genre or that genre or if someone was too commercial or too inaccessible—the list went on and on. I was COMPLETELY forgetting that yes, while I am a consumer of the written word and am entitled to an opinion, what is more important is that as a fellow artist, the more empathetic response is to offer my writing peers respect for doing their thing and putting it out there. Just like my nephew extended to his music peers. Just like sculptors and dancers and painters and filmmakers can do for their peers. Because that shit is hard! Creating something from scratch that is extremely personal to you, and then sharing it with everyone else in the world – HARD!

Little India at Squamish Valley Music Festival
Little India at Squamish Valley Music Festival

It serves you to take the high road, especially if you are an artist. I just attended a day of the Squamish Valley Music Festival, there to see my nephew’s band play (see? Karma is Reason One. Look where they are now). While watching a different band, one of the members made a sarcastic comment about “the advantages” of playing on the same day as another artist, one for whom he clearly had no respect. His remark wasn’t funny, it didn’t make me respect his “real music” music more, and it made him look like an asshat. So Reason Two: you won’t look like an asshat. And, by the way, up until that point, I had been thinking of buying some of that band’s music on iTunes. Now? Not so much. Reason Three: you’ll sell more music/books/paintings/movies.

The fourth reason is so important that it gets its own paragraph. I only came to understand this one through some distillation with my life coach. When you sit in judgment, you dilute your own strength and power. We are all in this world – artist or not – trying to do our best. To understand our purpose and fulfill our potential. No one can say what that is for another human being. That determination is so much bigger and far beyond us that to even apply judgment to what someone else is doing is like insisting that out of all the billions of stars in the sky, and from millions of miles away, you know which star is the brightest. Im-freaking-possible. Reason Four: Just as you are entitled to find your purpose and fulfill your potential, so is everyone else. And in some cosmic way, theirs may be intricately intertwined with yours. You never know.

But holy crap, letting go of judgment is so hard, you say. I concur. And I still judge. Daily. Other people’s clothes, hair, food choices, parking jobs (didn’t they have to pass a driving test, for God’s sake?). Mostly, I judge myself, with my husband running a close second (sorry, hon. Love you). So yes, it is hard. And it is worth working on, for everything. Thankfully, this blog post is only about mutual artist respect, so we’re going to compartmentalize for now and dole out “get out of jail free” cards for the rest. Go crazy and get it out of your system. Get it all out. Here’s a good place to start.

One final note: when I shifted my thinking around other writers’ work, I also changed my stance on posting book reviews. I know many writers who have already weighed in on this practice, so I’ll just state mine quickly. If I don’t like a book, I won’t rate it or review it. If I can’t give it at least three stars on Amazon or Goodreads—which, by the way, is a *great* rating, in my opinion, even though I know some writers feel apoplectic if they get anything less than a four—then I just bite my tongue. The author is doing their thing, like I do mine. Let the pure consumers be the critics; they’re coming at it from a different place. They have invested money, and while of considerable importance, it is slightly less vital to survival than (an artist’s) blood.

What do you think? Is this a wussy approach, constrictive of free speech? Or do you agree? And do you have a piece of advice that has become core to your daily functioning that you can share?

p.s. If you are curious about Little India, my nephew’s band, check them out on Soundcloud. They play alt-pop and rock and my plan is for them to become hysterically successful. They’re doing a good job of that on their own so far, too.

(Photo of Little India courtesy of Dallyn Hunt, drummer)

I’m Diggin’ Brené Brown and Her Vulnerability Study

By Laura Zera 15 Comments

Fun and funky, Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor who studies vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame and how they relate to a person’s sense of what she calls ‘wholeheartedness.’ I first got turned on to her when Molly Greene posted a link to Brown’s TEDx Houston talk in one of her blog posts.

The clip is 20 minutes long, which often is about 17 minutes longer than my attention span; however I’ve now watched this particular video four times and have emailed it to several friends. I like what this woman is saying enough that if there were still tickets to her upcoming talk in Portland in July, I’d drive the 175 miles to be in the same room as her for an hour.Continue Reading

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