On What Matters

ON WHAT MATTERS

Hello!! Tonyalynne here. Coming to you rare, raw, and au natural to say hello and welcome you to July!

We’re now stepping into the second half of this year. How do you feel?

We’ve been learning who we are at the deepest level in this first half of 2020. It’s hard, good, raw, brutal, and revolutionary.

It matters.

It matters that we keep going too. We have more to learn & unlearn. More to unwrap, more work to do. More to heal, more to be made new. Courage is the way.

Pushing for greater health, racial equity, justice, and true peace will require our sweat, our explicit commitments put into consistent practice, and fucking up more often than we’d like in the process.

Here’s the honest thing about fucking up. Unconscious fuck-ups while stretching in the direction of deeper consciousness is growth and the kind of badassery we actually need to evolve. Simply put, let’s be willing to fuck up, learn, and keep going (to do better next time) instead of fucking up and then going silent again.

THERE IS NOTHING MORE HOLY THAN BEING FREE

In this month of Independence Day here in the States, let’s talk about freedom for a moment. As an intuitive coach, consultant, & energy healer with The Courage Practice, I spend my days exploring life, love, leadership, and career transitions of every kind with clients from every walk of life. Six consistent themes have emerged in the sessions of the first half of 2020. Each one points to a single central truth: There is nothing more holy than being free. Here are the themes (in no particular order) that have emerged from this community thus far this year.

1. We’re so fucking tired of not being ourselves. Our real, raw selves without filters, labels, and expectations. We long to be seen, loved, honored, valued, and held as we are instead of who the world told us to be.

2. We’re weary of constantly pushing up against expectations, judgments, blind ignorance, societal constraints, bias, dogmas, and the rhetoric of fear that lies in every corner of the internet, our workplaces, communities, and yes, even the mirror.

3. We’re exhausted by our egos running the show, driving our decisions from a place of fear, scarcity, and constant second-guessing. We’re weary of not measuring up to the ridiculous standards we place upon ourselves and each other. We long to lead, communicate, and love from a place of spirit rather than wound.

4. We’re no longer willing to abandon who we are at the deepest level in exchange for a false sense of belonging and the absence of tension disguised as peace. We long to make friends with our courage — not for a moment or two but to make courage our life-long practice.

5. We want to recognize our privilege and actively work toward creating more freedom for everyone, particularly the most marginalized among us, recognizing what true oppression really is and how pervasively we have upheld it—consciously or not—in our lifetimes.

6. We know the choice to stay in our comfort zones in life is by nature the very definition of privilege. It’s past time to get uncomfortable for what matters.

As these themes continue to emerge in sessions this year, it powerfully illuminates that while our practices of courage may be uniquely ours, all of us are being called to deeper practice this year. 2020 is offering a reckoning & a revolution for true freedom if we choose to look our fear directly in the eye and not look away from it, even when we’re weary.

STANDING ON SACRED GROUND

What will you do this second half of 2020 with what you have learned and unlearned?

These truths within The Courage Practice community have challenged and inspired me to consider precisely what I too am called to do and how I can better show up and serve.

As I’ve shared in previous blogs, I’ve been called to unlearn the ways I’ve upheld systems of racial injustice my entire life through the work of Rachel Cargle, among others. Black Lives Matter. Full stop. I have been looking my own privilege in the eye lately. I recognize that because I’m a member of the LGBTQIA+ community in no way means I have felt the true depths of oppression.

As a human and a femme, I’ve been called to fight more consciously for equity, building a conscious business from its origins. I’ve been called to cancel professional opportunities with The Courage Practice which do not uphold true inclusion and instead invest in opportunities which move beyond inclusion to fully embodied diversity and equitable outcomes as the foundation of the work. I’m gonna mess up. I already have. Yet it’s not about my feelings and certainly not about my comfort. I’ve been called to drop the filters and speak a little more freely too.

GIVE MORE FUCKS, NOT LESS

You heard me. Give more fucks for what matters to you instead of less. The concept of “giving no fucks” has never sat well with me. What we do matters, it’s personal and, as we are all connected, it impacts our collective humanity. So let’s not feign a kind of casual & rebellious disregard. Let’s instead actually give a fuck, friends.

Let’s stand on sacred ground, be entirely ourselves, and champion what is essential to us, even if we’re standing alone. External affirmations and platitudes are a poor route to false belonging and they sure as hell are a slow way to kill the authentic fire within us.

May we establish practices of courage in our everyday life which ground and empower us to be our raw, beautiful, and unfiltered selves. May we be willing to take a risk for the greater good instead of waiting to exercise our courage merely when it’s convenient or the stakes are low. We might be waiting awhile anyway; the stakes are pretty damn high.

This year has been hard, yes, yet sharing collective pain also leads to collective healing. As Brené Brown says, “Not enough of us know how to sit in pain with others. Worse, our discomfort shows up in ways that can hurt people and reinforce their own isolation. I have started to believe that crying with strangers in person could save the world.” I couldn’t agree more. It’s powerful to reach for each other, even when we are six feet or worlds apart.

No matter the challenges that lie ahead, may we give an actual fuck about our dreams and start releasing all that keeps us spinning in place. Here’s to seeking not for perfection in our courage but more honesty within our practice of it. 2020 has shown us who we really are. As we step into the last half of it, let’s show 2020 in kind who we know we were born to be.

Wherever you are in your courage, keep going. I’m going to keep going too. Rest, rise, revolutionize, repeat. May we never, ever, ever stop showing up and fighting for what fucking matters.

With you in this practice,

Tonyalynne