Something has shifted

coming right out of the self-help seeker closet and renaming my Substack patch

As you know from my last post I’ve found it hard to get back in the arena—to rise strong (in Brene Brown’s words) from the fall I took after Find Your Way was published.

Since writing about that experience —coming clean with you by sharing my story and ‘speaking shame’—something has shifted.

It seems that in the telling of my truth I found the strength to rise again.

And every day since I have felt a little stronger in myself and in my resolve to do the work I have for many years felt called to do—to encourage others to seek their own healing and growth through the writing and sharing of my own journey.

To answer this call I must be the person I am and allow you to see her as she is with her flairs and her foibles and her flaws and her fascinations—fully and freely.

But the shame I have felt about being her—the perpetual borderline-obsessive student-of-life with the covert addiction to self-help books—has stopped me from letting her be and letting her speak.

In private she is free to be who she is—devouring several self-healing, thought-provoking, spiritually opening and enlightening books at a time and bingeing umpteen episodes a day from her beloved podcast pals Glennon, Liz, Brene, Elena and Rob¹.

my treasured self-help book collection in my home office/sanctuary

She’s filling journals with her feelings and thoughts and questions and ideas and marking the insights and ahas with arrows and underlines and five-pointed stars.

She’s working on multiple manuscript ideas and creating digital courses in notebook form about journaling and wondering how to tie in her hypothesis: that journaling is the antidote to self-abandonment—the medicine for showing up for oneself and ones life.

She’s dreaming of the journals she aims to publish that reflect her vision and mission to inspire people to be there for themselves and write their way through their experiences and find the hope and meaning and healing and compassion they are looking for.

And of community—she yearns to be in community spending time and space with people who want what she wants: to get closer to themselves and honour who they are while supporting them in their personal journey of becoming.

And then there are the words—the words she longs to type here for you. The words she toils over and tests and rearranges and deletes until she finds just the right word, just the right sentence, just the right message. You should see her when the right word escapes her and is then miraculously found—she’s like a kid whose just been reunited with her favourite toy!

But shame has her living her life closet-style—safety is paramount when shame is running the show. She’s only permitted to come out every so often and for just long enough to remind you she is still here. And when she wants to share her wisdom—wisdom hard learned and earned through decades of studying her physical pain and associated heartache, the old ‘what do you know and who do you think you are to speak up’ tape plays.

But something has shifted.

My/her most recent podcast-listening binge brought an unexpected but timely and salient point to light:

Your greatest gift to the world comes from what you had to work through and heal from.

It was a show-stopper moment. I paused the episode, grabbed a pen, wrote it down and for the next few days responded to its inherent question: what have I had to work through and heal from?

And here is the answer—straight from my heart and page 98 of my digital journal:

I think overall my greatest pain has been accepting the physical issue and not blaming or criticising myself for it. To stop resisting it and denying it—and myself. To allow myself to be as I am. And to be there for ALL OF IT.

How to be there for myself with the physical pain, with the uncertainty.

How to let it be here and let me be me.

Let there be anger. Let there be grief. Let there be despair. Let there be joy. Let there be love. Let there be pain. Let there be peace. And not judge any of it. And not judge myself for having it.

Accepting it all. Allowing it all. Being with myself for all of it.

Because I have abandoned myself for most of it. I have seen and felt the pain whether it be emotional or physical and said no to it. And that has caused great suffering. I didn’t know how to be there for it so I left. I could be there for everyone else’s stuff but not my own.

My greatest pain has been the physical issue and how to let it be here. And be kind to myself about it.

My greatest pain has been to accept the gut and its pain—and the emotional pain that has come with it—and be kind and wise about it.

It is WISER and KINDER.

Wiser and kinder.

Wiser and kinder.

I have been so unkind to myself. I have been so harsh. I have expected so much. I have been such a bitch to me and so kind to others. I have been so supportive of others and so nasty, negative, critical and mean to myself. And how many times did I leave myself. I shunned, I negated, I picked on…and I suppressed, denied, tortured myself over stuff that I could not control.

And what’s the thing I actually live by:

That we can learn from and through our experiences; that we are becoming the most and best ‘us’ we can possibly be. We can learn something from everything. We can grow and heal from everything. The pain is not in vain if you use it to open you up—let it break you open and help you become wiser and kinder.

Something has shifted.

I want her—the exiled to the closet me—to come out and find a safe place to share more of who she is. Of who I am.

If I’m going to answer the call I need her—I need me to be me fully and freely.

And I feel this platform will allow me to do that. There is still an element of safety here, unlike other social media platforms, and the capacity to create a community—a place we can grow wiser and kinder together that is safe and special.

Once that shift settled I realised my Substack patch needed an update, starting with a name change that went from ‘Honour the journey’ to ‘Wiser and Kinder’. And with it a logo I created that you’ll see up on the top left and on the landing page that represents the writing and journaling throughline of my work and life.

my new name and logo…what do you think?

I also took the advice of the Substack gurus and have written a proper ABOUT page that I’d love you to check out.

When I started writing this post yesterday I had a vague recollection of a reference to the phrase ‘wiser and kinder’ but couldn’t put my finger on it.

Yes, I knew Elizabeth Lesser’s work of great wisdom spoke of such a concept, in particular from page 55 of her book Broken Open—treasured teachings that have for many years helped me to stay on the path.² But after frantically flipping through old journals and skimming the pages of a few other books I turned to my own work of wisdom Find Your Way and read this on page 6:

After all these years of learning from and through life’s challenges, I know they have much to teach us. I know first-hand we can emerge from our difficulties not just intact but more open and loving, wiser and kinder, with ourselves and each other, if we see life as a journey and change as an opportunity for growth.

I had written those words back in 2020, but until this moment forgotten them—and forgotten how significant becoming wiser and kinder was to me.

But something has shifted and I was open to seeing the truth—that this concept of us all becoming wiser and kinder was already a big part of who I am and what I have come here to work on and help others with, in and out of the closet.

So welcome. Welcome to the journey and the destination. It really is such a joy to have you here. And please don’t hesitate to comment on anything I’ve shared in this post—this is a small community and in the spirit of growing wiser and kinder together we can all learn from each other’s experiences.

With love and gratitude,

Gena xo

PS Even though this is the place the e-newsletters and community will sprout from, my website is the home of my books—the FREE and Find Your Way—plus a lot more of my story and other helpful articles about journaling.

AND please consider forwarding this email to any of your loved ones if you think they might be interested : )

1. I am referring to Glennon Doyle and her incredibly healing podcast called We Can Do Hard Things; Elizabeth Gilbert and her podcast Magic Lessons, but also the many wonderful guest appearances she has made on other’s podcasts; Brene Brown as interviewed on many great podcasts; Elena Brower whose podcast called Practice You is a balm for the soul; and the hilarious and super down-to-earth spiritual teacher and pastor, Rob Bell’s podcast called The Robcast.

2. This is the quote I have clung to at times, on page 55 of Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser:

“The transformational journey is a voyage with a hundred different names: the Odyssey, the Grail quest, the great initiation, the death and rebirth process, the supreme battle, the dark night of the soul, the hero’s journey. All of these names describe the process of surrendering to a time of great difficulty, allowing the pain to break us open, and then being reborn—stronger, wiser, and kinder.”