Write Your Life: How Transparency Leads to Intimacy
How are you today? Are you feeling everything at its height as I am? Don’t things continue to get more and more intense?
After Mia and I’s nearly 6-week Asia trip this summer, I returned to Ojai to find my life story didn’t work for me anymore. Gerard and I needed to transform our marriage, my son had a major—final—operation leading to the successful closure of what had been a lifelong health-challenge story for him. My mom had a heart attack, which is a story of not caring for one self because she’s too busy caring for others. Magic Hour wasn’t entirely working and I had to rewrite it too while still running it. I had gone through a big cleanse in Thailand and went vegan again, which once back in the states put lots of weight on my body (maybe my superhero name should be “opposite girl?”) and I had to make some big decisions about everything, all at once. Weight gain is my “go-to” when I’m stressed. I wish it was running, oh dear, I wish it were hiking, but no, it’s simply weight gain-as-coping-method–another lifelong story I will rewrite now.
I’ve been looking deeply and taking clear action on everything and have realized that writing projects, including the conception, first draft, umpteenth drafts, editing, cutting, and “proofreading” are all the same process no matter if you are writing a marriage, a body, a business, or a book…The process is the same!
In writing and marriage, 1,000% Transparency is Intimacy. Gerard & I have now been together since 2004. Neither of us have ever been with another person for this long, and although that is normal for married couples, the intensity of dealing with issues in a confined space can be breathtaking. We got stuck in a “rinse & repeat” mode that was boring to both of us. Every day was starting to feel like the movie Groundhog’s Day. We were saying the same words, going through the same motions, and having the same conflicts. It seemed we had given our magic up to logistics and the mundane aspects of chores, obligation, and not being entirely honest about how we were feeling.
Transparency gets messy. Intimacy takes falling apart and having the secrets we don’t even know we’re keeping shatter the old version of ourselves so we can be renewed. I had this old version of me wanting to break through, but breakthrough can only happen where we fall apart, crack open, shatter, then collect the pieces of ourselves that we choose now to bring to our new form of relationship—leaving the old pieces on the cutting room floor.
It takes a 1,000% commitment to being transparent on both sides of relationships for us to form a new relationship while being in an “old” one. Renewal can only occur once you allow the old draft of a book, a marriage, or a business to be edited, cut apart, then rewritten. We had to delete some of our old stories in order to write a new one, but that took discovering, admitting, and owning those old stories of shame, hiding, and fear. You can’t edit a book if you don’t have what Hemingway called, a “shit detector” and that’s the same with any creative project, relationships being the highest form of creative project.
Looking honestly at yourself is HARD. I am here to tell you, it’s worth it. While we had a few months of REAL messiness, we are now feeling more committed than ever to each other and to our family. We are working together on Magic Hour—before, I could never work with him without feeling claustrophobic, but now it’s harmonious, fun, and dare I say sexy. Because we gave space to the relationship, letting it break, open, and not hurting each other with anything other than our desire to make it work, we finally feel like we’re writing partners, writing a Great American Novel called marriage.
The other side of our breakdowns lead to breakthroughs if we are transparent about them. Not only can breakdowns save our relationships, but grow them into a new form, a new means of joy, wonder, and discovery—as long as we are committed to the breakthrough inevitably on the other side of COMMITMENT. But, it takes the courage to tell the truth, even if your script sold well in the past and is super comfortable, it may just be old. This makes me think of my friend Peter Farrelly. He wrote Dumb and Dumber, Something about Mary, and other comedies. He had a breakthrough with The Greenbook last year—going into another genre altogether, and guess what? He won the Academy Award. Bam.
When editing a book for a client or editing my own work, it takes a commitment to the art to allow the breakthrough to occur. In business, same same. With Magic Hour, we had to realize that not all people drink as much tea as we do, and next year, we are rewriting how the subscription works. It takes transparency to create intimacy, with a reader, a client, a customer, child, lover or friend. No matter what you will need to cut, rewrite, edit, cut more, fall apart, rewrite, rebuild, all before you publish, launch, or renew your marriage.
So, if your relationships or creative projects are feeling stale, go to the editing room and fall apart. Give it the transparency, the admission, that it’s not optimal, not fun, not easeful, and from that honest editing process, cut the chapters that no longer fit your story arc.
What I am editing now, in all transparency are these stories:
My Motherhood Story. Sage is well. We are healing. We are no longer struggling. We have rewritten an epic, 19 year story and put the final touches on perfect health and vitality. This was a big novel and our final chapter here is a HAPPY ENDING!!!
My Body Story. I have decided to become a certified yoga instructor and to apply that to my business. Tea ceremony will now be laced with asanas (yoga poses). Because I am obsessed with Magic Hour, I haven’t been exercising, so have concluded I have to rewrite my work ethic to have body-care into the next draft. I have to take care of myself WHILE working if I am going to stick to a new draft of my body. So, here we are, I start the program in January, and I’ll share with you what I learn J.
My Business Story. Magic Hour is now a retail location, not just an online subscription or online tea shop. I wanted to share in a new way, this is the edit. I love it. I am happy every day. Scared too, but happy, every, damn, day…it’s risky, it’s “small” but I do know now that the world needs less mass-success stories that use up resources and more intimate connection stories of love and sharing, one cup at a time. One workshop at a time. One book signing at a time. One connection at a time. I am rewriting the idea we have to “GO BIG OR GO HOME” I’m saying, GO SMALL TO EXPAND INFINITELY. Yes, it’s a new story, we are writing it here together J.
My Writing Story. After being a publisher at a top 5 publishing house in NYC for 4.5 years, I am choosing to “self” publish my next book, Love in Detail. I have been asked why on earth I would do this, with all of my connections. My answer is this: I have faith in my own ability to share my work with the world NOT ON AMAZON. I want to change how publishing works, and I am not selling it on Amazon. Will it work? I don’t know (but many of you have pre-ordered, THANK-YOU). This is an experiment in writing a new story that supports small business, independent booksellers (who are the core of communities), and in accepting the mantle that I want to rewrite the book business. Will I fail? Maybe. Will I succeed? Maybe. Will you benefit from what I learn? HELL YES!!!
We are all writing the book of our lives. From our marriages to our diets, to the way we get the kids to school, to how we answer an email. Each thought, moment and action is a draft of the life we want to live—or the life we need to break open and through. Transparency creates intimacy with your readers, clients, kids, mate and with your soul. Keeping yourself honest takes a big dose of courage, but I know you have that, or you wouldn’t be with me here.
What will you write today? What will your character say or do? How will you rewrite it if you don’t like how it “reads?”
Please SHARE your ideas, stories and rewrites with me here. Or better yet, come to Ojai and have a cup of tea with me, I’ll put the kettle on.
With You in Mind & Heart,
Zhena
