First things first – a thank you. Thank you for the heartfelt, thoughtful birthday wishes. I couldn’t respond to each one individually, as there were hundreds, but I’ve been reading them over the past two weeks and have been so filled up by them. Thank you for taking the time to write, and for the love.

Okay, on to today’s post.

I’m fascinated by this recent New York Times article about women and money. And of course nothing about money is ever just about money – the research findings discussed there included.

There were a number of interesting little tidbits: Some evidence that the “women spend more than men” stereotype is false — a recent Gallup study found men spend more. Then there’s the news that Americans, male and female, struggle with basic financial calculations more than many of our international neighbors…

But the part I really want to tell you about was around women’s self-concepts. When women and men were given a short quiz that tested their financial literacy, men scored higher.

That doesn’t shock me. After all, many women feel like they are bad at financial stuff or can’t understand it – so they stop paying attention to it, reading about it, studying it. Like so many stereotypes, the one about women not being good at math can be a self-fulfilling one.

But here’s where things got interesting. When asked to assess their own financial literacy, men overestimated how knowledgeable they were (relative to their actual test performance), and women underestimated their level of competency. Oh, sigh.

Even more interesting? When the “I don’t know” option was removed from the multiple choice questions, women started getting more and more questions right, narrowing the gender gap in performance.

I’m writing all of this to remind you that one, you probably have more of a foothold of competence in the financial arena than you think you do. Time to stop playing bewildered and build from where you are, honey.

This post is also a little nudge to look for those places in your life and work when you are saying “I don’t know” when you have a hunch.

You see, I think women say “I don’t know” on these tests is because, in the moment, it feels true, and in some sense, it is true. We’re not sure. We don’t “know” for certain. And yet sitting it out – whether it’s taking a stab at answering a question on a test or one from your client or boss isn’t always the best path either. When “I don’t know” really means “I’m not 100% sure” or “I’m just having trouble trusting my best guess, my leaning, my real thoughts, my intuition” or “I’m nervous about getting it wrong,” maybe it’s a good idea to answer anyway.

Maybe you don’t know. But maybe, like the many women who took this test and checked the “I don’t know” box, if you had to choose an answer, you’d choose the right one.

Got it, my dear?

Before I sign off, one more thing: I’m holding LIVE one-day writing workshops this summer in San Francisco and New York! So excited. In person, small group, summer writing days. If you think you might want to attend one, sign up here to get details and updates.

Love to you,

Tara

Image: Certainty, by Georgiana Paraschiv

These events are unlike anything I’ve ever done before.

Words in Bloom Writing Workshops
4 Dates.
SF, NY.
Natural beauty, and
a small circle of us.

3 Reasons To Say Yes:

1. You deserve a day of relaxation and rejuvenation this summer.

2. You think it would be pretty darn fun to come hang out with me and a circle of other likeminded women.

3. You love to write – or you don’t love to write – but something in you would like to write more easily, more fluidly, more powerfully.

Get the scoop here…

It’s okay to let the pain and discomfort grow till you reach that point. It’s part of the process.

It’s okay to be in the uncomfortable stage.

It’s good to know this is part of your path, and part of everyone’s path, actually.

When do you make the changes your soul is longing for, you will look back on all this discomfort with fondness. You’ll want to thank it for showing you what your right work was and wasn’t.

So much of what we really need know in this life is how to let our lives unfold. And then we need the courage to keep showing up to look at what that unfoldment is showing us.

Love,

Tara

p.s. Last day to read and post Grandmother Power Posts is tomorrow!

I’m off for a day of hiking, good food, good art, and time with my dear ones.

Every year, I try to ask myself: what do I really want? And then I do my best to give myself the gift of making that thing happen. It’s been such a process- and still is – to learn that it’s okay to want, to create, and to receive a beautiful celebration – whatever form it takes each year.

This year, one of the things I wanted was for all of you to know – hey, it’s my birthday! And yes, one of the things I’d love to receive are birthday wishes from you. After all, I spend a lot of time writing to you every year – you are important in my life!

Birthdays are so good for practicing:
-slowing down enough to discern what I really want (not what’s conventional, expected, convenient – but what I really want)
-once I know it, asking for it from others
-once know it, setting about the task of helping to make it happen
-receiving the love that is there in my life
-facing the sometimes difficult things birthdays magnify about my life, my age, and my community of friends and family

How good to get to practice all of that.

When you open to receive more love, well, you literally receive more love.
And you show the people in your midst how they might open to receive more love in their lives too.

On a different note, I also want to remind all of you about the Grandmother Power Blogging Campaign. The idea here is to get lots of us recognizing, discussing, and highlighting the incredible power of grandmothers – not just biological grandmothers, but of all elder women. If you are a blogger and haven’t yet joined in, I hope you will – details on how to write your post HERE.

And if you aren’t a blogger, I hope you’ll come by here and read a few of the 70+ beautiful grandmothers posts.

Wishing you a beautiful day -

Love,

Tara

About a year ago, I went to a blogging workshop taught by my friend Britt Bravo.

The room was filled with wonderful women – artsy women with beautiful blogs, women writing for social change, women considering starting a blog…but just not sure.

Sitting in a cirlce, we introduced ourselves. Five or six people in, I heard a woman say, “I’m Paola Gianturco and…

What? Paola was here?!

I was 14 years old when my beloved childhood dance teacher opened up her photography book in class one day, before our wide eyes. The pictures showed craftswomen from all over the world. The photos emanated a mystery and grandeur that I still remember.

Then, over the years, again and again I’d hear women referring to Paola’s work documenting the unseen, hopeful truths about women’s lives.

After the blogging workshop, starstruck though I was, Paola and I got to talking. She told me her latest project was about Grandmother Power: the power of grandmothers and grandOthers – of all older women – to change the world.

Paola’s photos about Grandmother Power revealed a little known, world-wide phenomenon: activist groups of older women making positive change.

I decided that this would be the topic of my next blogging campaign, where I invite bloggers from around the world devote a day on their blogs to writing about an important big idea. (Some of you might remember when I did this in 2010-11 on The Girl Effect).

From today, May 7th, through May 14th, bloggers all around the world will be writing about Grandmother Power – about the unique power of all elder women. If you are a blogger, I really hope you’ll join us, and if you aren’t, I hope you’ll enjoy the reading some of the diverse posts – there are already more than 40 to check out!

Today, I want to share with you one remarkable Grandmother Power story, from Paola Gianturco’s Grandmother Power, from powerHouse Books.

You and I don’t think about it much, but light means everything to a community. Midwives can deliver babies at night. People can charge cell phones and preserve food in refrigerators. Children can do their homework without getting black lung disease from kerosene lamps.

But of course, many live without all of this.

Leaders at a college in India had an idea for a solution: they would teach young men to be solar engineers, hoping they would bring light to their rural villages.

The plan didn’t work: after they got their training, the men went straight to the city to find jobs, not back to the villages that so desperately needed their expertise.

The training program made a course correction: they invited village grandmothers to learn how to bring light to their communities.

The grandmothers were illiterate and existed on less than fifty cents a day but they were mature and gutsy, and wouldn’t dream of moving away from their grandchildren. After six months, the student grandmothers could build, install, repair and maintain solar lighting systems. They could assemble solar lanterns, solar water heaters and parabolic solar cookers.

The Indian grandmothers brought light to a whopping 9,833 households in 16 Indian states. Some stayed and became teachers for the grandmothers who took the training next.

The UN began sending grandmothers from other developing countries to learn from the Indian grandmothers. Together, grandmother solar engineers have brought solar electricity to 45,000 households in 64 countries in the Middle East, Africa, South America and Asia.

Grandmother solar engineers are VIPs in their communities. Bunker Roy, head of the Barefoot College where the training happens, said, “I meet them as grandmothers. But they return to their villages as tigers.”

The concept of Grandmother Power excites me for so many reasons. We see so much “Grandfather Power” – older, male power – in our society (think Congress, think the Fortune 500 CEO’s) and we see almost no older female power. We see a barage of media images of young women, and almost no images of older women. There has been a lot of conversation about empowering girls and younger women (women in their child-bearing years) in the developing world. There has not been much conversation about the impact of educating and empowering older women – and yet it’s clear the impact of that would be immense.

And, a Paola has taught me, there have never been so many healthy, educated, and economically empowered older women on the planet. This moment is unprecedented in terms of the potential for this group to lead change.

If you are a blogger, I hope you’ll write about Grandmother Power this week and join us in the campaign. (Lots of great writing prompts here)

If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog – hey, this is the time to start! You already have your first post topic! Get tips for writing your post here.

And if you are a reader, I hope you’ll join us in exploring the topic this week and in spreading the word about the campaign. You can browse the other Grandmother Power posts here – more and more will be added through the week.

For today, I invite you to consider: what does the phrase “Grandmother Power” mean to you?

Love,

Tara

The task of our time is just not to help women participate in positions of power.

The task is to empower women to transform the communities and institutions of which they are a part.

The task is not just to help women participate in the system as it is, but to enable women to transform it.

And here’s the thing I think and am scared to say:

In a world shaped by masculine consciousness (which I’d argue politics, business, and our major systems still are), every woman who does her work with authenticity is a force for change.

Yes, every woman who does her work with authenticity is a force for change. That means you.

A visionary. A change agent. A rebel.

I know maybe you didn’t sign up for that, but if you are really showing up, you’ll be a force for change because the questions, ways of working, and ideas you’ll be bringing into the arena at work will be quite different from what’s already there.

It’s as if the status quo of your industry/workplace/community has long been blue and now you are showing up with red.

Okay, that’s big. Let’s just breathe through that one for a sec.

Of course, being a force for change entails struggle:

the times when it feels like your new way of thinking is as small as the head of a pin, and the status quo is a MOUNTAIN

the times when you have to face your fears of being seen as naive, stupid, or crazy for your ideas and ideals

the times when the desire for change burns so intensely in your heart and you try to figure out, “how do I follow that burning while there are the kids and the aging parents to take care of, not to mention the laundry?”

Rather than getting lost in that heaping pile of overwhelm (which feels kinda like that heaping pile of dirty laundry, doesn’t it?) today, let’s refocus on the simple stuff:

You are a force for change. Struggle – and amazing moments – go with the territory. You are not alone. You are actually in the company of millions of fabulous women, who, just like you, are in the struggle of trying to at the same damn time make change and fit in enough to be allowed to make that change. We’re all up to that together.

What’s one of the things you would most like to see transformed in your company, community or industry? Think about it for a minute, and then tell us in the comments.

Love,

Tara

Bloggers, take note! Join me for a fabulous blogging campaign to highlight and celebrate Grandmother Power. Learn more HERE.

Recently, I was being interviewed, and the interviewer asked me this:

Why do women have such a difficult time with criticism?”

There’s a hint of a blaming tone in the question, so first things first, let’s set that aside. But then, can we look with curiosity at why criticism – or the fear of criticism – seems to hold back so many brilliant women?

In the interview, I shared my usual responses about how women are distinctly affected by criticism:

1. Many women value and are deeply attuned to relational harmony and connection, so criticism feels particularly troubling to them. If your life is centered on positive connection and finding common ground with others, criticism hits you differently.

2. Women have been socialized – whether by family, peers, school, or the general culture – to not rock the boat. To be likable and always nice. Doing things that bring criticism is the opposite of that! It challenges our deeply ingrained conditioning. Being criticized also puts us in a tough spot because it’s difficult to stand up for one’s own ideas in the face of criticism, while also maintaining the respectful “nice girl” persona the whole time.

3. Third, research* suggests that women read facial expressions and negative body language with greater precision than men, which means at all times women are literally getting more information about how people are reacting to us. This can be a strategic advantage, but it can also distract us from persevering with a project or idea when others are uncomfortable, resistant, or just not fans.

In the interview, I gave those answers, but then I realized I felt like I hadn’t gotten to the heart of the matter yet.

There was something else there, something I don’t normally talk about, and I wanted to try. So I said this:

“On an even deeper level, my sense is that women cope with living in a highly patriarchal world by trying to find safety and legitimacy through their own competence, through doing everything right.

Criticism can feel like a gash in the middle of something very important we are building – something that will shelter us and keep us safe.”

I know that’s been true for me. Let competence and hard work and doing what the teacher says be my ticket in. Let it be my island of safety too.

I’m feeling my way through this idea. What is that thing we are doing? That I am doing?

It feels to me like always being in scurrying mode, always hiding a little like it’s duck and cover time, and hiding by studying super hard, working super hard, getting it right. Doing it right. Producing work of the highest quality. Yes, because we are smart and competent and we can but also: to be safe. To be on solid ground.

And my sense is that this behavior in me and in other women around me has something to do with trying to find refuge, legitimacy, that ticket in – in a world that has been shaped by a masculine perspective and values.

I want to know how this resonates for you, even if you, like me, don’t quite have a clean or crisp way of articulating what exactly is going on there yet.

Thank you for reading and being on this journey with me.

Love to you,

Tara

*A few of the many studies on gender differences in reading facial expressions and body language are discussed here, here, and here.

Bloggers, take note! Join me for a fabulous blogging campaign to highlight and celebrate Grandmother Power. Learn more HERE.

One of the most remarkable things about this particular gathering is that there are a lot of older women there – women in their sixties, seventies, even a few in their eighties.

Yes, they do a little less jumping than the younger ones, but they are still moving, dancing, and looking radiant.

I started to notice that one of my favorite things about this class was dancing with older women.

Moving with them, looking into their eyes, beholding them was profoundly healing for me.

We throw around phrases like “was healing for me” a whole lot so I want to slow down there and say, no, I really mean it, it healed something for me.

I realized, dancing with them, how deprived I was of seeing older women’s faces. After all, in the many images I enounter everday on TV, billboards, magazines, web ads, pinterest pics, you rarely see a real older woman’s face. Wrinkled, radiant, and healing to behold. Beautiful in the way we forgot was beauty.

Women need to see those faces, for reasons I can’t quite put into words but that I have experienced. They bring it all back into balance. I think you know what I mean.

We don’t just need grandmothers’ faces. We need their voices too. Look at most institutions and you’ll see at lot of “grandfather power” – the power of the older male figures in our society. We need “grandmother power.” We need the wisdom, abilities, and love that older women bring.

I learned this phrase “Grandmother Power” when I met documentary photographer Paola Gianturco, who has been featured everywhere from Oprah to The New York Times. Her latest work is on Grandmother Power. She’s inspired me to launch a project, The Grandmother Power Blogging Campaign, which I share more about below.

If you don’t have a blog, I hope you’ll participate in the project as a reader – stay tuned for the Grandmother Power blog posts during the week of May 7th. And if you are a blogger, I hope you’ll participate by writing a post for the campaign – details below.

Love,
Tara

A Special Invitation to Bloggers

Above: Grandmothers study solar engineering so they can bring light to their villages in India.

If you have a blog, I have a special invitation for you. I’m organizing a “blogging campaign” – a collaborative effort when hundreds of bloggers from all around the world will join together to write about a single topic at their blogs.

What’s the topic that I am so jazzed about that I couldn’t resist working to get women around the world talking about it?

Grandmother Power. Grandmother Power is about the power of older women to change our world.

You can write about “Grandmother Power” in many different ways. You can pay tribute to a grandmother or another important older woman in your life. If you are an older woman, tell us about your vision for your grandchildren. Or, use one of the amazing stories & photos we’ll be sharing of activist grandmothers around the world – drawing from the book Grandmother Power by Paola Gianturco.

We’ve got more than 10 writing prompts like these to get you going!

If you’d like to participate, sign up HERE and you’ll receive all the details!

Love,

Tara

Do you ever feel like now there’s a whole new set of things to judge yourself about?

I’m supposed to be all about soul, so now I feel like I’ve failed whenever I get lost in ego.

I’m working on being calmer, but I keep failing and getting caught up in stress.

If I were more spiritual, I’d feel more daily joy and gratitude. When I have those somber couch potato days, I feel like I’m falling short.

Sound familiar?

On the journey to greater wellbeing, we learn a lot of distinctions – like these:

Soul vs. ego

Ease vs. striving

Vulnerability vs. defensiveness

Love vs. fear

After all, we are learning about new territories within ourselves, and it’s helpful to have language for them. But – and here’s the problem – it’s easy for our ego-minds to take those distinctions and twist them into a mental reality that sounds like this:

“Being in soul, ease, vulnerability, love is ‘good.’ Being in ego, striving, defendedness, and fear is ‘bad.’ When I’m in the space of the good things, I’m doing good. I’m getting it right. I’m measuring up. When I’m in the space of the bad things, I’m bad. I’m falling short. I’m failing.”

Have you been there? Are you there now?

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about the benefits of identifying with soul and the challenges that come with identifying with ego. I believe in what I wrote there 100%. But this post is a necessary follow up- because I don’t want those ideas to become fodder for you to feel bad, or like a failure, when you are identified with ego.

That kind of thinking is just a new version of the ego’s endless asking/judging of “do I measure up?” But now the ego gets gnash you to pieces with this question in the sneakiest way: by smearing it all across your diligent, intimate work on yourself.

So the question is: how do we hold on to helpful distinctions like “ego” and “soul” without their becoming structures for self-criticism to hang itself on?

Here’s what I think: When we find ourselves acting out of the not-so-helpful modes (like striving, like defensiveness, like fear), we can respond not with judgment but with compassionate inquiry.

That sounds/feels like putting your hand to your heart or giving your shoulder a squeeze and saying, in a loving voice – aloud or silently: “Okay honey, what’s going on?” You become super curious, truly curious, about what little fears or wounds sent you into fear and ego-reactivity.  And when you find them, you respond to them with compassion, love and reassurance.

Any time you are operating out of ego-reactivity, fear, striving, defensiveness, that’s not a call to self-judgment.

It’s a call for compassionate inquiry. It’s a sacred opportunity to learn what fears are lodged in you, and  heal what needs healing in you.

In doing that, you grow, heal, and change yourself. But in a mysterious way that is hard to articulate, I also believe you raise our collective consciousness. Because one of the things humanity most needs to learn at this time is that fear is what causes us to do harm. When you come to know that by looking deeply into your own experience, you do your part in moving the collective into an understanding of the truth.

What’s one spiritual or emotional ideal you’ve been beating yourself up for not achieving? What will be different if you bring a, “Oh honey, what’s going on?” when it comes up – instead of a story about your own failure?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Love,

Tara

Today, I want to share one of the things that helps me.

We have lots of choices about how we identify – different ways we can think of ourselves, different concepts we can hold of who and what we actually are. For me, often the key to lessening suffering lies in changing the very way I’m thinking of myself.

Here’s what I mean:

There’s ego identification: being identified with all your ego/personality/life biography characteristics and thinking of yourself primarily in terms of those.

For me that means: I’m Tara, the woman in her thirties with brown hair and brown eyes, about five feet tall, who writes and teaches and lives in San Francisco and is married to Eric, who has these friends and these interests and this life history…

That seems normal, right? How else could you possibly think of yourself?

Well, there’s another way I can identify. I can identify as a soul (feel free to use the word “being” or “consciousness” here if you don’t click with the word “soul”). A soul that is not of this world but is temporarily in this world. A soul that is here to learn and to bring light via the life experience that is playing out in front of me.

I know for myself this is true: When I am thinking of myself in that first way – thinking of myself in terms of my ego/personality/life story, I have lots of complaints about how things are. I always want this or that aspect of the story to be different. There’s a sense of never being quite enough. There’s more comparing myself to others, more mean voices rattling off critiques of me in my head, more striving and more pressure to accomplish.

Most important, when I’m in this mode, the hard stuff hits me very hard. It feels more devastating, overwhelming, frustrating. It’s an invasion on my biography! It’s an attack on a frail egoic self that is oh-so-afraid. It’s an unfair assault.

But if I am thinking of myself as a soul who has been around for a very long time, and is here in this particular life to learn, experience, and bring light where there is darkness, well, then the hard stuff feels different.

I can approach it with a little less gripping, less intensity, because I’m connected to a part of myself that is bigger than what is happening, and bigger even than this lifetime. It’s like widening the camera lens, so that what seemed really big starts to shrink into proportion – even if that proportion is that its an excruciating, unwanted experience I’m having in this life. But the camera lens is much wider than “this life.”

When I think in this second way, I can replace my immediate judgments of what’s happening with curiosity: How is this here to help me learn, and to help me serve? What is this experience really about – in terms of my soul’s learning?

This is not about dissociating. Emotions still come, big emotions. But the emotional drama, and the emotional looping lessens.

Do I know that this second way of thinking is “true?” No, but I believe it is true, and I know it relieves suffering.

Making It Practical

If you’d like to try this, here’s what I suggest:

1. Place your hands on your heart, and connect with a place in your chest that feels like your soul, or like the heart of your being. Just connect with it. Feel how it is vast, wise, and connected to something much bigger than you. Feel how it’s existence in time is much longer than your chronological age.

2. Try on the idea that the real you, the core of you, is a spark of being here to learn and serve. A being that came into this biography for just those reasons. Consider the idea that whatever life is presenting you is for that learning, and service.

3. Return your attention to a painful or difficult situation in your life. Ask, “What is this here to teach this soul, or allow it to experience?” Ask, “What opportunity to serve is this calling me into?”

You can do this right now. It only takes a minute. And I’d be honored if you leave a comment to share what you discover.

Love,

Tara