Starring The Boutique: Acting & Advocacy

Styling in a dramatic foot-pop to show off holiday gift wrapping at the Austin boutique. I'd like to believe the deer approves. 

*** 

“You’re my favorite vagina.”

I beam in the Chipotle line. I feel like I just won the academy award.

Since my debut as the Happy & Not-So-Happy Vagina in Eve Ensler  revolutionary play, The Vagina Monologues, I have basked in a glorious after-glow of campus stardom.  

I blush and bow in response before redirecting the conversation to the goods waiting to deliciously fill the burrito bowl.

Years later, I brush up against my former college-self.

I stand at the front of the boutique on the iconic South Congress strip, I spin and tap around in my glittery Toms to a remake of “Jingle Bells.” My acting training serves me here.

One foot back, softness in the knees, connect the ring finger to the tip of the thumb (gives the hands something to do, so the body is at ease and the lines flow effortlessly).

I press into my feet. I engage my belly. I speak from my gut.

“Good Afternoon,” I croon. “Welcome in.”

And then a big grin. My smile is sincere, but like a good actress, I choose to exude the emotion needed to enhance the scene.

Behind the screen of greeting guests and spontaneously twirling (because my new tennis shoes are so comfy and fun to whip around in), I dive into currents of thought on purpose, passions, effortless bliss.

And I bump into the Happy Vagina. 

That college gal was/is truly happy. That Happy Vagina emerges to speak. She’s got a monologue ready-to-go. She’s coming to remind me that I can merge advocacy with the arts. That I can utilize dynamic gifts - a voice restless to rise, a heart yearning to reach out and embrace, a muse impatient to create - to shape a life-role rooted in purpose and service and lifting the vibration higher, and this life feels like bliss.

I know the feeling because the feeling has been felt. There have been life chapters where parallel rivers of energized interests coincided and connected and the result initiated a cascading flow of embodied excitement and intuited knowledge on how to proceed.

In retrospect, the timeline shimmers in crystal-clear clarity.

The curiosity to take the gender women’s studies class, which leads to a new circle of great women to befriend, and the uncovering of the covert narratives shaping masculinity and femininity, which sparks deeper introspection on the unquestioned ways I move and fear and interact with women and men, and express or don’t express my own masculine and feminine energies.

And the class leads to sign-ups and auditions for the college production of The Vagina Monologues, and the invitation is to step into the collective feminine pain (which includes the pain of men who have been forced to brutalize their own emotional selves), and through movement, through the powerful art of humor, through strong and loud voices birth the stories the feminine shakes to share.

Standing on that stage, twirling after giving a bow, I emanated a happiness, a bliss, a contented joy that continues to exist in a body now restless and a heart heavy with desires and dreams and questions on how to make those creative entities breathe.

There will always be two sides of me: the academic and the creative. The intellectual and the free-spirited artist. The deeply serious advocate and the light-hearted creatrice.

In college, I nurtured the advocate through my studies, and infused my yoga classes with creativity, and I acted, and I wrote.

My post-college-life has been a hot mess of attempting to appease either side through compromise, and I simply do not feel complete unless both the intellectual and the creative are acknowledged and incorporated into the daily play of life. 

Moving to Austin did not ease this fight. The intensity of the two sides grabbing and yelling for attention has escalated, and there’s a pressured realization of time. There’s no self-established deadline, but there’s an unnerving feeling that time is extremely precious, and I need to scoop up time and use those rented moments very wisely.

And standing in front of the boutique, booming my voice to greet, I know this is an experience calling forth times from the past to train and inform the next scene.

The twenty-seven-year-old wistfully musing by the Texas tees is grateful, and a bit in awe, of the trust my college-self naturally leaned into to feel into an aligned step.

In listening to my past self, the monologue of passion meeting purpose, I immerse into the feeling of contented bliss, and the feeling shimmers into existence as I tune into a podcast on improv classes for refugees, called Improv Without Borders  (star-kissed thanks to the superstar humanitarian who sent a text of inspiration my way).

An audience to the podcast, to my former self rising to present a remembered truth, a return to enlivened feeling, I can listen and bow to relinquish the fight, and surrender to trusting feeling.

So, I’ll channel the Happy Vagina to sing greetings and hellos, and keep my heart open for the spark of insight on how to step onto the next stage to advocate, to perform. 

Lessons In Gift Wrapping

Ganga White's poem sets the tone for the trauma-informed training hosted at the Samadhi Yoga Center in Denver, CO.

***

“Gift wrapped, please.”

Gift wrapped.

The polite request I dread to hear.

I inwardly cringe as I stand behind the cash register and feel like Buddy the Elf as I force a wide grin.

“Yeah! Of course!”

Please, I pray, if there is a Buddy the Elf come rescue me NOW!

I glance down at the curly creature of a coat that reminds me of the snipped remains of a golden doodle’s mane.

How am I going to gift wrap this hulk of fuzz?

Silent panic ensues.

Unlike me, my inner critic excels at gift wrapping. The perceived challenge prompts her to leap to center stage. She whips and whirls and triple-knots familiar narratives dramatizing my inadequacies, tangling up my mind with fear and blocking me from clarity.

There is though a slither of space in between the ribbons of anxiety for an illuminated truth from Denver to resurface and soothe:

Find refuge in the body.

I step back from the swirling mess of narratives and feel back into the body.

I find the breath. The breath finds me. I breathe. I feel the discomfort and instead of escaping into racing narratives, I stay with the anxiety burgeoning across my chest.

 Befriend the discomfort. Breathe.

I slow down my movements, becoming mindful of the touch of the credit card in my fingers as I finish the payment, the cushioned padding beneath my feet, the rustle of keys as a coworker walks away to unlock the jewelry case.

The breath slows, steady and smooth. I watch the reaction, and in the watching there’s space for mindful thinking to solve the gift wrapping dilemma.

“How do you react to challenge?”

The question posed during a long-ass held humble warrior pose.  

Profanities and sweat drop onto the mat.

Heat builds in my cheeks. I think they could pop. My thighs rage in a fiery burn.

In the throes of challenge, of staying close to the breath in moments of extreme intensity, the initial reaction is to check out of the physical experience and dive into scapegoating with judgment, criticism, anger, blame.

She’s holding us here too long. 

The teacher is the lead facilitator of the trauma-informed yoga training. She’s magnetic, lively, grounded, talented. She walks into the training emanating a natural ease, a confidence rooted in compassion, and her voice is clear, like sunlight, her words concise and catchy, drawing the room of yogis close and closer to listen and receive the wisdom of trauma-informed teaching.

I know I am in the presence of a true teacher. I respect and admire her. And right now, though, in this super long hold (meaning, the yogis hold the pose for a stretch of 10-20 breaths), my ego-driven mind is flipping her the bird. (But please, don’t take it personally.)

“How do you react when there’s challenge?” she repeats, and stops to stand by my mat, as if she’s in tune to my chatty mind begging and angrily protesting this paused part of the flow.

“Because how you react to challenge here on the mat is a good indicator to how you react to challenges and stresses off the mat.”

In the fire of intense sensation in this humble warrior one pose, the breath is still accessible and deep. There’s an aha, an epiphany singing and revealing the truth behind the reaction.

I retaliate with anger. I push back with blame. I jump back away from the experience with fear.

And in my reaction I forget that I have the power to advocate. I react with fear because my skills in self-advocacy are weak. They just need to be stretched and strengthened.

And self-advocacy, self-trust can be stretched and strengthened here in this humble warrior one.

The reaction reveals the pain point.

Humble warrior pose is a standing forward fold, positioning the sacred wisdom of the heart above the head. An invitation to let the wisdom of the heart center govern the mind. 

I find refuge in the body. I breathe. I trust that when my body informs me that it is time to leave the pose – when the breath is no longer steadily available and sensation leans toward sharp and harsh – then I trust myself to know when it is time to go.

Oh. A lesson learned on the mat illuminating the reaction off the mat.

The customer asks for the coat gift wrapped.

I’m fearful of making a mistake. I’m angry she asked. I’m looking for someone else to blame.

Find refuge in the body.

I practice humble warrior here – in the hustle and bustle of the boutique. I do not have to be great at every aspect of this job. I just need to show up, do the best I can do, and gently and honestly respond with compassion and integrity.

I ask for help. I leave the coat in the hands of superb gift wrapper and watch to take note.

Later, I slip upstairs for lunch. I sit on the back porch, listen to the leaves, bask in sunlight.

The silence fills me up.

I unpack the gift wrapping scenario. Breathe to cleanse the residue from the reaction.

The reaction reveals the pain point.

The line repeated throughout the trauma-informed training.

The line repeated as I interact with customers at the boutique – the stressed customer wanting the gift receipt, the mother searching for a winter formal gown for her daughter, the friends drinking wine as they try on jeans – my reactions and responses to them, and their reactions and responses to me can all be received with compassion.

I’ll never know the complexity of their story. And slowly I am beginning to see the intricate weavings of mine. My reactions are daily. So the micro-healings are daily.

All micro and macro-reactions are signals for deeper healing. The anger, blame, criticism, judgment of others, of self, stems from a grief yet to be grieved.

And when I sit with the grief, the wails that need to be heard, the fears that need to be met with kindness and grace, there’s a gradual opening of space for lightness, for the present, for expansion.

The fearful reaction from asking the coat to be gift wrapped lifts up a grief that I carry – that I am not good enough, that I am not enough, that my differences in skillsets and talents are not valued, and the experiences circling those narratives linger in my body.

“Baby, healing is an ongoing process.”

She cradles my hands, and for a moment, she takes the weight of my questions about staying or leaving, on purpose and place.

This moment alone is enough. A healing moment from Denver that continues to ripple across time and cradle me in softness.

This conversation with a spirited light-worker affirms the magnetic yes pulling me to travel to Denver for the trauma-informed yoga training. And trauma-informed yoga is truly people-informed yoga.

Healing is an ongoing process.

On the mat, off the mat, in Denver and in Austin, at the boutique, and here under the trees.

A series of moments continuing to ripple and rise and rinse a heart clean.  

I lean into the sun, the wind, and breathe. I find refuge in the body. I stay closer to my center by staying present with what is.

I know under my feet that the boutique is in full swing. There are coats and jewelry-holder cacti waiting to be gift wrapped, and there are lessons in compassion, in unconditional compassion, in deeper healing waiting there too, to be lovingly wrapped with a bow and bright pink tissue.

***

November Tunes:

*You Can’t Rush Your Healing – Trevor Hall  

*So Close – Tom Misch

*Saved – Khalid

*Don’t Move – Phantogram

*High On Humans – Oh Wonder

*1998 – Chet Faker

*Plans – Oh Wonder

*Deliverance – RY X

*The Woods – Daughter