How to Claim Your Inner Vixen in a Statement
My Vixen statement, the one that currently defines me, is:
I am a fairy godmother who loves Prada and has lost my wings.
This statement reflects my love of helping people live authentic lives; beautiful things (nature, people, purses, shoes); and adventure.
So how did I get to this statement? How did I end up defining myself, my life and my vision in a sentence that, quite frankly, won’t make sense to anyone but me? I learned to accept, forgive and love myself.
How to Accept Yourself
COVID definitely accelerated self-acceptance in my world. The hours spent at home, often isolated, made it hard or damn near impossible to hide behind anything. As I sat at home, dealing with the fluctuating markets and trying to keep my business afloat, I started thinking about my dating patterns. For some reason, at a certain point in my dating life cycle, I stopped showing up as my full self. I started presenting the light pink version of April, one that downplays the most powerful and real aspects of who I really am. I do this to “keep from scaring people off,” but why? Why do I hide parts of myself? What’s wrong with these parts that I feel like I need to hide them?
I’m an oldest child both in birth order and personality. I definitely suffer from what psychologists call Oldest Child Syndrome, meaning that I have been conditioned to achieve, lead, study, teach, nurture and pay more attention to the more serious things in life. When I was a kid, I strived to be the perfect child. When I got older, I went to Vanderbilt, got my JD from Notre Dame, worked for the biggest law firm in Atlanta, Georgia and then started my own financial services company. My goal was to do well and never let others down while also helping take care of them. While I may have fallen into the behaviors of those suffering from Oldest Child Syndrome, were those behaviors serving me? They did to a point, but were they still? Did I still need to put on a show for others?
COVID said, hell no. I said okay and started moving toward change, but as is the case with change, my journey zigzagged, a three steps forward two steps back kind of thing. That’s normal for anyone embarking on a hero’s journey.
The Vixen Hero Journey starts with questioning what you know so that you can become who you most want to be. Over time, the journey challenges your ideals, your daily practices and your idea of what’s possible. By the end of the journey, a major transformation takes place with you becoming the woman you were most mean to be. Completing the hero’s journey requires self-acceptance.
Self-acceptance is unconditional. It means loving all parts of yourself. It means looking at the good, the bad and the ugly, deciding which of them are working for you, warmly embracing the ones that are even if they’re “uglier parts” and honoring and then letting go of the ones that no longer serve you.
Feeling responsible for everyone, which was my largest takeaway as the oldest child, caused a lot of trauma for me, particularly when I couldn’t protect others from themselves. While that part of me got me to where I am today, COVID showed me that I don’t need it anymore. I am working toward thanking this piece of me, honoring it and releasing it. Some days this is easier to do than others because this is all a process, right? As we progress, we also backslide and that’s okay!
I’m saying this part of me didn’t just go away. It still shows up, but when it does, I don’t beat myself up over struggling with it. I recognize it, honor it and again try to let it go. Self-acceptance means constantly accepting every single piece of yourself, even those you want to let go.
How to Forgive Yourself
Once you’ve accepted all parts of yourself, you can forgive yourself for anything, really. As I just mentioned, my tendency to take responsibility for others is a pattern that I have to consciously recognize and move away from.
Do I still catch myself feeling responsible for other people and their outcomes? Absolutely. Working with your parts is never a one and done affair. It’s work. But since I’ve learned to accept all of me, the self-talk when this part tries to take over is vastly different than it used to be.
When I was younger, self-doubt never really showed up. However, as I’ve gotten older, taken on more responsibilities and been more conditioned by society, negative self-talk takes over pretty quickly. If I make a mistake, I have to catch myself and redirect from thinking, “Wow, I’m really messing up my life and causing myself a lot of pain by doing this. What the hell am I doing?”
Instead, I try to say, “I’m a human being. I thank this need to be responsible for getting me this far, but I’m also going to take care of me and do what I need to do today. I forgive myself for the pain that part caused.”
Forgiveness really is saying to yourself, I see you, I love you unconditionally, now let’s start making some changes!
How to Love Yourself
The first time I remember really showing love for myself was in 2007. I was in Italy with my then-husband and it was not going well. He had a cocaine addiction and being away from our support system was tough. We were supposed to be having a great time in a beautiful and romantic part of the country, but the whole thing was clouded by his addiction.
One day I was crossing the street surrounded by this marvelous history and architecture smelling just incredible smells and I thought to myself, “It wouldn't be that bad if a car hit and killed me.”
Now, I’ve never dealt with depression before. I’m usually a pretty positive person so feeling that scared me into making a change. I realized that nothing I did in my life was for myself. I’d get up in the morning and cook my husband breakfast, make sure he got to work, cook him dinner—everything. I wanted to make his life easy so that he wouldn’t use. In doing that, I completely ignored my needs, my life and my self-growth.
When he and I separated, I visited my parents in Mississippi for three weeks. When it was time for me to leave, I was on the verge of mental and emotional collapse. My parents refused to let me get on the plane. I listened and ended up staying with them for three months. I returned to Italy for my anniversary and Christmas. That’s when I knew I would need to divorce him. However, it took me four more months in the states and A LOT of walking to actually do it. Finally, I divorced my husband, which was hard because we both really loved each other.
Of course, healing from that was hard. I had to do a lot of hard work to understand why my husband didn’t love me as much as he loved his addiction. Over time, I understood that addiction is a chemical reaction that is more powerful than love. However, for someone who loves physical touch, being deprived of that and leaving someone you love is a hard pill to swallow.
While I was going through this, I met a new guy. Because I was so yearning for physical attention, we got involved. Not long after he started stalking me and broke into my apartment. So I was going through all of that and could have put up a giant wall—I mean I got into both of those situations by being vulnerable—but I thought, “vulnerability is a beautiful part of being a woman and I’m not going to lose that part of myself.”
There’s a scene in the movie, “Under the Tuscan Sun,” where the main character is at a crossroads where she can choose to be vulnerable, or shut herself off from love. I will choose vulnerability every time.
Loving yourself means loving your humanity. We all make mistakes. We all wish we could have done x, y, z better, but that’s part of being human.
When you learn to accept, love and forgive yourself, you can define yourself in a sentence, even if that sentence is about a fairy godmother and Prada.
Try the below exercises to help you find self-acceptance, self-forgiveness and self-love:
- Start working on positive self-talk. When you feel yourself saying something like, “I’m an idiot, I can’t believe I did that again.” Remember your humanity. Turn the statement into something more useful such as, “I made a mistake. I’ve made it before. It’s okay to make a mistake. I’m going to learn from it this time.”
- List some of your positive qualities
- List why people like you
- Talk to yourself like you would a child. Try starting conversations with yourself that start with: I love you because…
