A Younger Self, Older Self and Wildest Dream walk into a bar

When I first took A Little Bit Much on the road, it was to Fringe festivals. Going from selling out local theatres to smaller rooms with a smattering of empty seats felt like a bummer. When I’d come out from backstage and see those empty seats, I could feel my energy drop, a part of me fixating on the empty ones instead of the people. Then I’d feel ashamed for caring.

My solve was changing the way I open the show. Instead of hanging backstage, I started greeting the audience, moving around, sitting in seats next to them, focusing on connection, on who was there. Not who wasn’t.

This transformed my experience from performing to an audience, to performing with the audience. It’s one of my favourite parts now, that beginning connection.

But you know what I also truly love? Full theatres.

I’m touring in Eastern Canada in just a few weeks, and there are seats to fill!

Maybe with you? Maybe with someone you know? Will you help spread the word?

Who do you know in (or near)…

Ontario: Toronto… St. Catharines… Guelph… Ottawa…

Quebec: Wakefield…

Nova Scotia: Wolfville… Lunenburg… Dartmouth…

Will you reach out to them and share this page? https://cheladavison.com/show

If you have a newsletter, social media or a network you’d like to share with, and want images, swipe copy and location-specific links, hit reply or comment and I’ll get them to you!

Thank you to everyone who generously shares this art with their people. I’m so grateful and can’t wait to be in rooms together, laughing, crying, oversharing.

Little by little and then all at once. This seems to be the way of things, be it skills we’re trying to grow, goals we’re trying to hit, or conversely, addictions, afflictions or harmful habits catching up with us.

Midlife is where bills come due, and we see the fruit of what our younger self put their time and attention into. My younger self was always trying to live in a way that wouldn’t leave me with regrets. Trying to outpace regret is one of my regrets. But I have far more gratitude than beef with younger me.

Here are some things that enthusiastic, naive and intensely overthinking, overdoing, over-functioning young woman prioritized that are paying off for me now.

I did hair before I was licensed, started my first business at 19, coached before I was certified, taught as I was learning, and just went for things sourced from curiosity and passion (and naivety, audacity and youthful arrogance), assuming I could figure things out as I went.

And I did.

I also failed and fumbled. I skipped steps and didn’t build foundations that would have helped. I would eventually circle back around on the places I needed more training, mentorship or structure to ensure I was embodying what I was trying to carry out.

Moving into action, instead of trying to gather more information or skills before acting, quickly showed me where I needed to grow and develop. To self-start and deepen has given me some things I really value now:

Courage to reach for things: New dreams, new territory, putting myself into pools where I may be out of my depth but know that reps will get me across. Because I did things when my inner voice said “who are you to do that?”, now when it comes up, I say “who are you not to?”

Confidence AND Humility: I don’t think I’ve ever believed in “faking it till you make it”. Faking isn’t really my vibe. But going for it until you become it, yes please. I’ve found that people appreciate and respect when I own what I’ve got and what I don’t. I know that I have talent, skill and capacity, and it doesn’t serve anyone to downplay that. It’s also incredibly humanizing to just be real about where I fall short, don’t know something or need help. I understand the impulse to want to hide these kinds of vulnerabilities. Maturity has shown me that revealing them builds trust and invites champions and support.

You just never know: Most of the biggest opportunities that have come my way haven’t been things I could have foreseen or planned for. They came after I bet on myself, showed up and went for things. Doors appeared that I wouldn’t have seen without risking and moving. I trust magic and synchronicities. I can leap without nets, not because they always appear, but because sometimes they do, and I know how to land in myself when they don’t.

One of the gifts my younger self gave my today self was developing emotional range and the capacity to be with really challenging emotions. To name what I’m feeling, to stay with what I’m feeling, to be able to express what I’m feeling, and to even have a certain kind of neutrality around my emotional preferences, which is hard because peace and joy seem cool, but grief and shame and rage feel terrible.

I knew I couldn’t effectively be with others if I couldn’t be with myself.

I started to relate to emotions like weather that comes, goes, and brings information or wisdom with it. When I started to understand, experientially, that it wouldn’t last forever (which is often the fear), I could meet it.

Sometimes it’s weather you want, nice sunshiny days and peaceful winds. Sometimes it’s big-ass storms that feel like they’re going to take you out.

I learned how to make my being bigger than the weather itself so that it actually has room to arise, expand into the fullness of whatever is trying to work its way through me and then pass away.

This capacity expanded my ability to handle life and to be in charge, not in control, but in charge of how I direct my attention and my energy. When I’m trying to get away from certain feelings, they take the reins.

In a culture where full-feeling women are called “too much” and “crazy bitches” and full-feeling men are called “pussies” and “simps”, it’s no wonder that humans shy away from the full spectrum of our emotional selves. But developing emotional range and capacity not only allows us to fully feel our lived experience, but it gives us more command of being able to navigate our lives consciously and skillfully. Because controlling, suppressing or denying our feelings just pushes them into the basement. What’s in the basement takes control of the whole show.

I’m in a life stage where I have more confidence, power and capacity than I did in my youth. I also have a longer history with my patterns. Working to unravel those patterns and heal wounds that go way, way back can be hella emotionally activating.

This gift my younger self gave me means I’m able to simultaneously move out into the world in ambitious ways, taking risks that activate all sorts of feelings, while doing deep healing and growth work.

This past year in particular has had me excavating, going inward and outward. This emotional range and capacity has helped me know that I have myself, can identify what I need and when, and offer myself grace when I find myself in darker corners.

In my 20s, coming out of the heroin-chic ‘90s, owning a beauty salon, I realized that I could either do the gruelling work of learning how to love my body no matter what I look like, or I could forever be at war with myself trying to attain something impossible.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean I feel great about myself all the time. I can pick myself apart. I can look in the mirror and think “whoa, oh no, lots of problems going on there!”, feeling shame and disgust. But there’s a part of me that refuses to believe those thoughts and feelings. Those thoughts and feelings are not mine; they belong to a culture that wants me small, palatable, believing that my body is a problem and a project, spending my time, energy and money turning myself into a product.

NO.

My younger self (I don’t know why, but I’m so grateful) understood the assignment. I could spend my entire life in a battle with my body, or I could battle the internalization of beauty standards and norms that are not on my behalf, that are not on your behalf, that keep us preoccupied and obedient.

I’ve done a lot of work on it. I continue to work on it with every life stage and body change. The anti-aging industrial complex is fierce. I feel a lot of rage and indignation about it while also feeling vulnerable to its machine.

But I did not fight that hard when I was young to recover from an eating disorder, learn how to move in a way that was pleasurable instead of punitive and eat in ways that were deeply nourishing instead of restrictive, to fall into self-hatred now.

I do want to look and feel good, and put energy into that. But my younger self did not work that hard to come into this era to be told to commit a bunch of violence to myself or disappear.

NO.

When I look in the mirror, I try to look myself in the eye instead of whinging about my neck. Instead of saying “you’re looking old, fat and tired,” I say “alright you hot cunt, what kind of shit are we going to get up to today?”

I was a personal development glutton, and I’m not mad about it. I developed a ton of self-awareness skills and capacities. But the real gift I gave myself was not doing it on my own.

I got in rooms with other people, and I did work with others in community. People from different countries and cultures, from different generations, from different socio-economic backgrounds. Being with others, doing depth work, spiritual work, inner work, relational work, helped with perspective taking, growing trust and healthy attachment, and understanding and appreciating sameness and difference in humanity.

It can feel vulnerable, scary and awkward to do inner work with others. I did some weird-ass stuff (not to be mistaken for weird ass stuff. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself).

With the rise of technology, and especially post-COVID, it seems like more and more of us spend time on our devices, growing, learning, and developing on our own, engaging with technology instead of being in rooms with each other where we are co-regulating, where we are exploring and risking, where we are sharing, where we are being messy and human and real with others.

Self-help and personal development are often commodified as another way for us to perfect ourselves as products. To self-improve into being rich, happy and hot. Capitalism dressed as spiritual wellness. To me, the whole point of doing inner work is to serve our relating, collective resourcing and liberation.

Doing inner work with others helped me deeply value (and trust) community, connection, co-creation and our shared humanity.

She did not embody or sustain this.

I wish she had.

When I was younger, wild and joyful creative energy would propel me into action. It was so fun, playful and pleasurable. It was also magnetic. This sword had edges. I could easily get something in motion, attract excitement and support, but I didn’t always know how to handle what I was growing. The initial pleasure and excitement would turn into weight and pressure.

Over time, I started creating from pressure. Over the last several years I’ve been unravelling many of the patterns around it. For a few years there I even denied how strong my ambition and creative desires are so I could learn how to rest, winter and rot.

I had some early experiences of receiving attention (and worse), as well as rejections and isolations when creating or expressing from pleasure, joy and eros. I’ve been in a push/pull with it ever since. Feeling, understanding and wielding my creative power, and then being terrified of it. Pulling back, hiding, burning myself out, dissociating from it.

When I create from pressure, it’s being fuelled by some deep and tender wounding. Fear, anxiety, shame. When I create fuelled by connection, pleasure, and joy, it feels like being plugged into an energy source that feels infinite.

I know I need to move slowly enough to identify what fuel I’m using before I hit the gas. That’s the practice.

I saw a meme recently that said: “What if your dreams are manifesting you rather than the other way around?”

That’s what my life has felt like lately. I can see where I’m headed, not specific outcomes but the shape of it. I don’t feel like I have visions for myself; I feel like the visions are courting me. I don’t feel like I’m trying to make the art; I feel like the art is asking something of me.

It feels at once impersonal and deeply personal, where I’m a disciple of the call. Listening and sourcing the correct fuel.

I feel like I’m being asked, once again, to grow, to unravel, to expand, to change, not because I’m not good enough or don’t have what it takes, but because I do. Because something far bigger than me wants to collaborate with me and my energies. It doesn’t want to collaborate with my wounds, conditioning or misery.

It wants to collaborate with my erotic lifeforce, to offer something connecting and meaningful in the world, and it wants me to have a great time while we do it. There are a lot of ways in which I trust myself now. The gifts my younger self gave me built that trust.

Learning to trust myself to create from pleasure over pressure, to do less and trust that I’ll be resourced, to trust myself to move and express and be in the fullness of my creative potency and to understand that while there may be forces or people who will want to extract or feed on that in harmful ways, I know how to protect myself without closing, collapsing or retreating into unhelpful patterning.

How bout you? What glory and challenges are you dancing with these days that your younger self helped set the stage for? I’d love to know.

Love,

Chela