What happens, you ask? Well, let’s take one small step back.

What happens when you decide you’re writing a book? Any book?

Your inner critics go ballistic. After raving inarticulately for a manner of time, they start to rhyme off all the reasons you can’t (and likely won’t and definitely shouldn’t) write the book with startling conviction. Like they’ve been waiting their whole existence to filibuster “Project Don’t Write The Book”.

What happens when you decide you’re writing a book about the Impostor Complex?

Well, you’re met with the same (somewhat generic) inner critics to be sure. You can’t. You won’t. You shouldn’t. Blah de blah. But you’ve been doing the work of inner critic management for a while, so you’re able to stand in, “Oh no you don’t. I am totally going to write a book”.

But then it gets even more specific and personal when the second line of offense shows up. These guys have placards directed at you that may not be catchy, but they are clear: “Don’t Write That Book about Overcoming Feeling like a Fraud because you Actually ARE a Fraud, you Fraud.”

Their case is really compelling. You don’t have the clinical background. You don’t have the degrees. You may not even have the writing chops. And while your stories are good, yours is not the really fascinating backstory to end all backstories. You just have this little thing called a burning desire that feels like a second beating heart. (You can’t recall which clever writer, far more clever than you, came up with that metaphor, but you know it feels true. So so true.)

So, you hide out. Behind your vocation. Behind your beloved clients. Behind the other writing and speaking and family and obligations and house maintenance and friends and more family and you feel lucky and privileged and really well graced. And a touch…incomplete. And then decide you should feel guilty about that. Because everything else has been tended to and you still need to hide out some more. And truly, feeling guilt is a fabulous way to kill time.

*****

You remember these words?

Lazarus wrote this sonnet to raise money for the construction of the pedestal upon which the Statue of Liberty would stand. It was read as part of an exhibit to great acclaim, but was promptly forgotten and wasn’t included in the opening of the statue in 1886. It wasn’t included on the pedestal, even. It just was…absent.

She died a year later.

Can you feel that? Can you feel the pain of something written that was celebrated in a moment, known then forgotten. Looked over. Looked past.

Vital and alive. Then insignificant and abandoned. Seen then unseen.

But there is more, of course, for how else would we know this famous sonnet?

Because a woman named Georgina advocated on the poem’s behalf. On Emma’s behalf. On behalf of all that the statue could come to represent, should the sonnet be re-remembered. She called in favours, lobbied hard and worked tirelessly to have the meaning mean something.

In 1903, Georgina succeeded, and a plaque bearing Emma’s words was created and installed in the pedestal.

It was then that the Statue of Liberty stood for something. On something. What was conceived as a French token of admiration for the American way of life became a symbol of hope and welcome for weary refugees in fourteen scant lines.

Maybe it was for you.

Maybe it was for me.

But I’m pretty sure it was for all of us.

++++

I’m standing in a house I don’t recognize, talking to a woman I don’t know.

In her arms she holds a wicker basket of clothes. The basket is overflowing with clean laundry.

She’s struggling to keep the basket level, but even as I ask her if she’d like me to share the load, or suggest that she set it down, she shrugs it off and instead, asks me what I do in my work.

I say succinctly: I help people find the parts of themselves that they have dropped along the way. The parts that, when reintegrated, make them whole.

Oh, she says. That sounds good and important. Sacred work.

It is, I agree earnestly. And I am so deeply honoured to get to do it.

In that time, I notice that she has dropped a pair of socks.

I bend down to pick them up. Here you go, I say.

Oh thank you. Those are my favourite socks. They were given to me by my beloved great-aunt, may she rest in peace. Feel how soft they are. Cashmere. They are my luckiest ones and make me so happy when I wear them. I honestly can’t live without them. I reach over to add them back to her basket, but they slip off again.

Can you hold them for me, she asks. I just can’t seem to keep them in my basket.

Sure, I say.

We chat for a while longer. Me holding her socks. She holding her basket of clean clothes. I see generic white tube socks poking out. Tube socks that aren’t tied to her ancestry. That don’t bring her luck. That aren’t part of her soul. They may be functional, yes. But they are not essential to her joy.

And then I have another thought.

The truth-telling trobairitz from San Francisco, pissed off at the customs border lineup here in Toronto. (She called it the “punishment line”.)

Riffing with her signature reverence to (and irreverence about) faith, creativity, grace and surrender, Justin Trudeau, what Jesus would think of duct tape (spoiler: she thinks he’d dig it), and doing your anger, doing your grief and doing your life. It was an evening honouring Henri Nouwen, beloved theologian, and writer of deeply respected texts. Namer of the “God-shaped hole” and “twilight of your soul”.

She was fabulous. Of course.

She’s Anne Lamott. A name synonymous with fabulous. But what makes her so fabulous? Her unflinching ability to stand in her authority.

Even as she called herself out for feeling like an impostor on occasion. Talking spirituality under the soft and kindly gaze of Nouwen’s projected images. With nuns in the audience. Lots of them. She noted that ALL creatives feel like impostors from time to time. Well, you KNOW I couldn’t agree more. Creatives and parents and spiritual teachers and students and leaders and and and.

But you know what else I heard her say?

That she has made peace with her Impostor Complex. Not that she has surrendered to it, nor has her 62 years on the planet made her magically impervious to its sting.

No. I heard that she, whether consciously or not, uses the three strategies I speak to all the time when it comes to dealing with the Impostor Complex. The three strategies that EVERYBODY  talks about when it comes to dealing with the Impostor Complex, whether consciously or not.

It’s like this. Overcoming the Impostor Complex starts with breaking it down into its three essential elements.

1) Our Impostor Complex tries to set us up for failure – meaning that its goal is to keep us out of action.

Solution:

Meet the critics head on. External AND internal.

We see Anne doing this all the time. On social media. In her writing.

The marmalade-loving, welly-wearing bumbling sweetheart found by the Browns at Paddington Station with a “please look after this bear” note?

Yeah. He was my main squeeze. Literally. I was given him at the age of five. Maybe six.

I loved that he was soft and gentle and sartorially splendid in said yellow rubber boots (that you could actually take off!),  jaunty red bush hat and blue duffle coat. I loved that he loved elevenses and enjoyed two birthdays a year, “just like the Queen”.

But most of all, I loved our adventures.

We had a big cardboard box that transported us everywhere. We’d fly to the mountains of Nepal, the badlands of South Dakota, the outback of Australia and the moon. Obvs. At the end of every adventure, we’d cry “tally ho to Darkest Peru”. (Neither of us knew what the hell it meant. Which was more than fine.)

It felt cruel and unusual to hoard such delight from my loved ones, so Paddington and I would often reenact our adventures on the stage that was the living room after dinner.

Into the box we would climb and regale (ahem) our audience of friends and family with the sights, sounds, smells of our escapades and keep them rapt with our witty repartee (he was the naïve sillyheart to my sage straight man). And, always knowing how to keep ‘em satisfied, we’d ask them to shout out where they’d like us to go next. To Marrakesh! To Mimico! To Miami! And we’d see what we could see and get ourselves into scrapes, as only a bear and a little girl in a box could.

When it was clear that the audience had had too much of a good thing (my mother’s wrap it up gesture and the guests’ glazed-over countenance were the telltale cues), we’d “tally ho to Darkest Peru”, take our bow and retreat to my bedroom where I’d remove his boots, hats and coat (long since lost), and we’d rap about the performance and plan for the next day’s adventures.

In short: my parents were the most excellent kinds of parents.

They fostered my uniqueness,

You are twelve.
You are TWELVE.

Unlike my letters to you on your eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh birthdays, I choose to start this one with an apology.

It came to me over the weekend as I tidied up the mounds of stuffed animals you hauled out for your girlfriends in advance of your slumber party (just in case they forgot theirs). I had an immediate pang that maybe next year, you wouldn’t be quite so concerned about such things as stuffies.

And I did a quick mental scan of all the places that pang was so familiar. Worrying about what next year might bring as you move into middle school. Worrying about what the summer might bring if you choose (or DON’T choose) overnight camp. Worrying about all the worrying.

And of course, in doing so, I have been trying to hang on to your youth. An exercise in futility, to be sure, on every level.

I’m sorry for that, Darling One.

I’ve been trying to bottle perfection, you see. It seems that every birthday that comes around, I am struck by just how ideal you are. Right here. Right now. How can anything be better? And yet, every single year, you manage to top yourself.

You deepen into your humour, your brilliance, your wisdom, your generosity, your bravery, your power and your creativity. You expand your capacity for love and acceptance and independence and kindness. And you challenge the ideals of perfectionism that I seem to be so hell-bent on capturing.

On this last point. Every day in my work, I see the effects on people who have spent their lives in the painful and elusive pursuit of perfectionism.

I am glad you are questioning the world around you. I am glad you are questioning me. I am glad you are finally seeing me for the flawed human being I am. That Daddy is. That (gasp!) your friends are. And, even, that YOU are.

This will serve you well.

You can be entirely wondrous and imperfect.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Respect your uniqueness and drop comparison. Relax into your being. – Osho

It’s probably true. I’m wanting to reinvigorate my yoga practice, so when I had the chance this morning, I probably should have done the WHOLE yoga practice.

That would have been impeccable of me.

But my mind was restless and my heart was only half in it and my lungs had checked out and my body was bored and asking for more. Much more.

It wanted to shake and flail and release and stomp and pound and that’s how I ended up dancing (more like, flailing clumsily) for 30 minutes, starting with Spirit of the West’s ‘Home for a Rest’. (A mainstay of all Canadian wedding receptions everywhere. Turns the dance floor into a raving mob of high-stepping lunatics. Guaranteed.)

So I should have deepened my commitment to my practice and I should have worked on my arm balances and I should be well-deep into savasana by now. Glowy.

But I didn’t. And I’m sweaty. Like…really sweaty.

Onward.

Over the past ten years that I’ve been doing this work in the on-line space, I’ve been thanked for being approachable. Accessible. A model of grace in imperfection. I deeply appreciate the gifts of every last acknowledgment.

But I’m not gonna lie: every time I get thanked for the last bit, a part of me bristles.

The part that wants to be perfect. Impeccable, even. Committed to her yoga practice. Shiny haired. Polished.

The part that still believes after allthistime that those things matter.

Because that’s how the patriarchal system has worked, you see…for thousands of years. (Being the best mother, friend, sister, daughter, wife, careerist etc. whilst looking impeccable wins all, with extra points for glowing, not sweating.)

And every time I bristle, I am surprised. Of COURSE I am. I know the system’s bullshit. You know it’s bullshit.

And then I have to go through a process of all my own tools,

It was the only fish shop open in Toronto on Good Friday. I was waiting for my purchased red snappers to be cleaned by the fishmonger, lost in thought about how to cook them for the Easter dinner feast.

I felt her energy before she joined me at the counter with her dozens of teeny fish. Sweet little old Italian women. You can already picture her, right? Four foot nothing, standing solidly in sturdy practical black shoes, nude stockings, midcalf skirt, black coat, short curly hair and glasses that amplified her loving eyes that have clearly seen their share of babies born and relatives passing.

I asked her what she planned on doing with all those fish. She did her best to hide her surprise at the inanity of my question, but recognizing my lack of understanding about Old Country ways, she told me patiently, but in great and elaborate detail about the soups she would make, the frying she would do, the stocks. But most of all, the frying. Her Antonio, her son and her grandkids liked it best. And it’s Good Friday after all. (Here, she made the sign of the cross.)

And just like that, I fell in love.

She told me that this was her second trip to the fishmongers in two days as they had sold out of the fish yesterday…the day of a freezing rain storm. The day that saw me fall on my ass not twice but thrice on the slippy, drippy, trippy sidewalks. I asked if she had fallen. Just once, she said, but she was so short she didn’t have too far to fall, she laughed.

She had no car, (judging by the thickness of her glasses and her age, I suspect if she ever had her license it had been revoked some time ago) so she took multiple buses and subways to get the fish.

She asked where I lived, and I told her. Of course. So she asked for a ride to the subway. Her morning wait for the bus had been 30 minutes because of the holiday. I have never in my life been so delighted to say yes.

But first, of course, we had to wait for her millions of teeny fish to be gutted and de-headed.

But her eyes…her eyes so filled with hurt and confusion and pain…I let the PG-rated near-curse slide, made a silent prayer to take all the pain and hurt and confusion from her so she wouldn’t have to feel it. But more importantly, that she wouldn’t have to know the truth that she already knew:

Mean people suck.

In truth, I can’t recall how what happened next. If I offered any advice or simply a soft place to land. (I hope the latter.)

I was thinking about this last Thursday night when I went to see Amy Cuddy speak here in Toronto. You’ve likely seen her TED talk on power poses and the body-mind connection.

Her new book speaks to what lives on the other side of the coin of power. If powerlessness is HERE, we would surmise, powerfulness (why is this not a word?) is THERE. Not so. She says it’s presence, which is quite appropriately the name of her book.

I respect and admire her work (and HER presence) and reference both in my work on the Impostor Complex, so I was delighted when asked to hear her speak and then join her party for dinner afterwards. (Smiley proof lives here.)

My date, a talented and big-hearted columnist who has received more than her share of vitriol and I often talk about handling snark and trolls and she was curious to hear what Amy had to say on the matter.

Similarly, during speaking gigs where I walk people through my Step into Your Starring Role process (and we “meet the critics”), I usually get asked about how to handle everything on the wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide spectrum from critics to asshat bosses to haters. (Happened again on Saturday when I spoke at an event for 70 women in engineering – and a couple of brave dudes.)

So when Amy was asked a question from the audience about how to deal with people in power who try to subjugate you and make you feel powerless,