by Jessie Cooper | Jan 25, 2021
So what else is there? What else is Beneath the leaves? This is a question I believe we will all be asking ourselves our entire lives as we navigate from our ego to our knowing and back again. The ego is the part of us that is afraid–the shadows under the leaves. The fear and belief from the ego lurk within us until we overturn each leaf one by one.
As we overturn each leaf, we either learn things we do not like about ourselves or feel feelings that hurt. This is why so many of us stay lost. It’s easier to shove things down and move on. It also drains the life out of us.
Facing Fear
Walking into our fears and wounds takes incredible bravery. It is not ordinary for a person to wake up and decide to intentionally feel pain. I want this for you; the choice to wake up and decide. This past fall a choice I wanted to make for myself was made for me. The pain came with it. I wish I had been brave enough to make the choice for myself, yet I am so grateful for the universe, God, or whomever you shall call her making it for me. I then had my own choice to make. Run and hide or feel it all. I leaned into the pain and found that it hurts but the reality of hiding would have stolen my life from me.
How many of us are hiding? I read this wonderful little book for my sons, ‘The First Book of Feminism,” and at the end, there is a tree. The little girls are all pulling each other up and it reads, “our job is to remember the women who came before us and pull those up behind us until all women are free.” I change the words and say, “people,” because all people deserve to be free. Free of abuse, trauma, neglect, hunger, pain, and the feeling you don’t have a choice to change your situation.
Yet there is so much in this world that is unavoidable that causes pain. We need to fix the problems we can to have the skills we need to navigate the pain we cannot avoid. Then, once we have fixed what hurts in us and learned how to navigate our own pain, we help others. When we are in pain others will then reach back and help us. It’s a cycle, the good kind.
Learning to Deal with Fear
How do we do this? How do we feel it all and survive it? One step at a damn time, that’s how.
At the core of taking these steps has to be the deep-rooted belief that you are enough and worthy. That there is absolutely nothing in the world that can make you more or less worthy. Not a purchase, not a status, not a salary, not a relationship, not what others think of you; nothing. You are not broken, you are gorgeously whole. But if you are chasing the wrong dreams the world will let you know it through your suffering.
How do you know you are on the wrong path? Ask yourself this, “Do I feel like me? Is this what I want to do?” Then really listen to yourself. I am not talking about trying on an outfit and asking yourself, “Is this me?” I am talking about really digging into your gut and taking a hard look in the mirror and asking yourself if you are at home with you. If the answer is yes, rock on, and please teach us because we need you. If the answer is “no” or “I don’t know,” commit to yourself today to be you. Start overturning the leaves, the dark shadows, and learn to feel.
Taking a Real Look at Yourself
It is much easier to numb out and stay away from our feelings. I am an excellent online shopper, ice cream eater, workaholic, and stress cleaner. I used to be a great wine drinker too. I know how to avoid my feelings easily and I know point-blank when I am lost. If you are moving through your world to keep yourself occupied and comfortable stop. Really, stop. It’s killing the brightness inside of you.
Make a list, take an inventory, and as you step into a fresh day ask yourself what hurts and why? Why am I drinking? Why am I eating? Why am I online? Who am I trying to impress? Asking ourselves why we do what we do and if we like it creates a space once we stop doing it. That space is boredom and discomfort and opens us up to ask ourselves the hard questions and begin to feel. We need this space void of the world’s impressions to make our own.
This sacred space of discomfort is where we begin to be made whole because it is where we shed what does not serve us. We just have to be brave enough to go there and get to know the person inside of the hurt. This past fall my son Henry was brushing his teeth and said these words to me:
“Mama you are brave.”
“Brave Hen?”
“Yea, you’re just a person.”
My little prophet. I am just a person and so are you. A person who deserves to live the life you were born to live so the world can be a more kind, just, loving place. Know your worth, give your gifts.
Xoxo,
Jessie
Photo credit: Jennifer O’Leary
by Jessie Cooper | Jan 18, 2021
Last week I wrote to you about being lost within the forest of life. I believe as humans we all get lost during periods of our life for a multitude of reasons. In the forest, there are both light and dark paths. It’s up to us to navigate them. Underneath the leaves that crunch beneath our feet lie the reasons we are lost. The sun guiding us out is the light within us reminding us that we are worthy of love and belonging.
So what are these leaves that have distracted us from our true knowing, worth, and belonging? On the surface, they look simple and can be seen as harm created by the outside world. The world and humans within it can easily present us with pain. The pain that stays is beneath the surface–beneath the leaves. You see, when we are presented with hardship we have two choices. The first is to let it roll off us and move on and the second is to metabolize it and take it as our own.
Working Through Hardship
None of us are born with a guidebook of what is real and what isn’t. We’re born into this world trusting it and the people around us to guide us. When the world and people around us tell us we are unworthy, broken, or can’t provide for our basic needs it becomes a scary place. We then start to look outside ourselves for confirmation that we are in fact worthy, whole, and deserving of having our needs met. This is true for every human being. If you are measuring your worth by taking from others mentally or physically, however, you are not giving yourself what you need. You are stealing and continuing the cycle of abuse.
As human beings, so many of us stay lost like this. Thinking that our self-worth is out there and not in here behind our beating hearts. I know I get lost like this. I want to feel love just like everyone else and have suffered abuse which still makes me feel small and broken. I tend to overperform and overachieve from a place of wanting to prove my worth versus creating because it brings me joy. I’m lucky that I have an amazing work team who calls me on my bullshit and tells me to go take care of myself when I’m trying to pull that crap at the office. I’m even working on building a tribe at home that calls me out on this behavior. As I reflected this past week on why I do this, I found a common denominator; rejection. Let me say more.
Moving Past Rejection
When I’m looking at myself and when I’m overachieving or over-functioning at home I’m trying to create external worth. This is deep-rooted within me as a woman wanting to please people, a survivor of domestic violence, and my own longing to be loved. When I feel rejected it can hurt like hell because I have so much love to give and want to receive it. As I sat with this thought over the past week I began to think about the rest of the pain of the world and the work of Brene Brown regarding shame. Shame tells us we are small, unlikeable, and there is something to hide about ourselves from the world. Shame tells us we are rejected.
I believe when people feel rejected by the world the only way to fully heal is to love ourselves with our whole hearts despite our shortcomings as human beings. To find our way back to ourselves the only way home is to feel the hurt. If we don’t do this we can hurt other people or deepen our own pain. We must acknowledge that we have a need not filled, a desire not met, a broken dream, or feelings hurt. I believe this is the single most important thing those who are suffering can do: hold the pain and honor it. If we do not honor our pain and cherish ourselves we lash out at the world or inward on ourselves; often both. When we lash out at the world due to pain we hurt other people and make them suffer because we are suffering and running away from our fears of never belonging. When the pain is lashed inward it can create conditions like depression and anxiety.
Acknowledge Your Pain
This I know to be true. Being rejected and having your dreams broken hurts like hell. Yet if we don’t acknowledge that we are hurting we will hurt other people. Hate begets hate. When a person stuck in hate finds a person who doesn’t know their full worth, abuse can set in. Each person feels rejected and one is lashing out while the other is taking the lashing. In a situation like this, both people feel rejected. Don’t you see? If the person lashing out stopped and felt their own hurt they would not hurt another person. If the person being lashed knew their own worth they could gently ask the person lashing out to leave. If each person knew their own worth they would take the time to heal because knowing our worth protects our hearts, spirits, and minds.
The only way to unturn the leaves is to be brave enough to look at what’s beneath them and find out what’s keeping us from our worth. As we unturn each leaf of pain we’re able to hold that pain and provide care for ourselves. Rejection is just the outside world’s way of saying, “I’m hurting myself, I’m insecure, I have pain.” Don’t swallow that. Know your worth and walk on–it’s a bright day outside.
Xoxo,
Jessie
by Jessie Cooper | Jan 11, 2021
As a parent, there are a million joys that come from getting to know your little humans. I’ve always been fascinated by nature vs. nurture. The thing that has taken my heart by storm, however, is children’s absolute knowledge and love of themselves without reservation. My number one job as a mama? Don’t let the world take it from them as it has taken from me and so many others. Teach my sons to honor their knowing and worth.
Looking at Ourselves
There is an awakening in coming through trauma. It’s like walking through a forest all night and finally seeing the sun slowly peek in to remind us of the love inside of us. The walk is terrifying but deep inside you know the sun always rises; that your worth is real. Yet so many of us get lost in the forest and are never able to guide ourselves back to the sun.
How did we get there, to that dark forest? We get lost and follow the compass of the world instead of the compass of our hearts thinking the answer to happiness is out there. We listen to the noise of the world around us telling us things like, “I’ve got what you need, you are not enough, you are broken.” That noise is lying and pulling all of us away from ourselves.
With the world telling us that happiness is out there and we are inherently broken, our knowing from within gets buried. Materialism, greed, judgment, and power are running our world dry and hearts dry. Yet how many of us have gone through this life thinking if we get the next best car, outfit, house, lifestyle, job, or position we will in fact be happy? That the desires burning in our own hearts are somehow wrong? Then, from the people lost in these lies, we’re also taught what to value and build entire societies based on their belief of scarcity and self-hate. That everyone else must have something that we don’t. That we should all be afraid and protect what’s ours. That right there? That’s how wars get started and Capitals get raided.
This feeling is an emptiness inside of the righteous who are unwilling to look inside themselves and say, “I feel lonely, I feel unimportant, I feel sad, depressed, anxious–like I’m not enough,” and the like. It’s too painful to look inside and see what hurts, so a shield of righteousness is created. Then, those of us who believed the words the world crafted from fear get lost. When we say that our problems come from other people we are simply fleeing from ourselves.
Getting Out of the Forest
If you are of the opinion that your happiness is contingent on someone else giving you something they took from you know this; you are lost in the forest. The world is full of joy, beauty, and happiness but this joy is found in a leaf crackling under bare feet in the fall, not in your new Mercedes. It’s in seeing a child in need of a meal getting to break bread with their entire family. It’s in learning who in the world is without water and then getting water to them. It’s in extending grace to ourselves when we are unkind, then trying again. It is in the pure knowing that inside of our own hearts is more than we have ever needed. That we are all equal. That when a person is suffering the bravest thing we can do is extend a hand not a firearm.
My grandpa was in the navy during World War II. One year, at a family reunion, he brought his trunk from the war and began sharing its contents with us. As he told us the story of his ship being hit by a kamikaze he pulled a spark plug out of his trunk. Grandpa reflected on how as the Japanese fighter lay dying on the ship, his shipmates began shouting and spitting on him. My grandpa recalled telling his fellow shipmates to stop and have respect; this man had a mother too.
So much of humanity is lost in the darkness of the forest believing they will find the path out through hate, force, self-defense, and self-righteousness. If they continue to believe they will find the path this way they’ll be lost their whole lives. Others are lost believing the stories being told by those lost in hate. Remember this; we were all tiny children who knew fully who we were before the world told us otherwise. I’ll tell you all what I tell my sons, “joy is your birthright.” I’m also in need of a daily reminder to myself because joy is my birthright too.
Changing Our Future
Collectively, I believe we are finally shifting within the world to say these fear-based behaviors are not true. It’s a small voice and a loud voice. Behavior rooted in fear is actively damaging to the world. To shift from this behavior, we have to be strong enough to know ourselves and stand up for love and against the damaging behaviors of others; to those still lost in the forest. The only way to do this is to shut down the noise of the world knowing we are enough just as we are. That we are worth love, belonging, joy, and happiness. That we can step away from any path taking us from the sun and choose again.
Through the discomfort of shedding every single thing that takes you from your knowledge, you can be reborn into who you always were before the world told you lies. For you too were once a tiny child fully in love with yourself and the breeze in the trees.
Xoxo,
Jessie
by Jessie Cooper | Jan 4, 2021
It’s Monday morning and I’m sitting in my office, outside of the house for the first time since March. I also dropped off my son, Dametrius, at in-person school at 7:15 AM today. After three weeks as my son and 10 months of e-learning, my baby finally walked into school. Up until a year ago, I thought the first baby I would give away to school was Henry; it sure doesn’t get any easier, even when they’re 15.
So it’s a new chapter in our lives; Dametrius is out of the house for school and I’m finally strong enough to pick up my writing on a Monday morning and leave my little sons with their grandparents. As many of us are recovering from trauma, leaving the safe space we’re created is hard stuff. It’s also incredibly brave.
The last time I wrote to you I shared that collectively we are all walking through trauma during the pandemic and that when trauma comes change is born. In re-reading “Untamed,” over break, I was reminded that there are two different types of pain. Glennon writes that the first type of pain is the fear that is born from working against the truest form of ourselves and the second type of pain is choosing to burn a life keeping us from the truest form of ourselves to the ground. This resonates with me deeply, I’d like to share more.
Dealing with Types of Fear
I’ve written to you about becoming a love warrior over the past six months; a person who knows in their bones they are good and true despite what the world is saying about them. I don’t know how much this still sits well with me today. I think there is such a truth to this, yet so much more to uncover.
You see, the first pain that Glennon writes about are the fears we all get lost in throughout our lives. It is the fear that propels us to abandon ourselves for the sake of others. The fear that tells us that fitting in and being accepted is the goal of life and once we finally listen we’ll be happy. This fear is a Goddamn liar. I listened to it for far too long.
As a woman, I’ve been raised to believe many lies and am lucky enough to have parents who never treated me differently because I was a girl. My mom is a feminist through and through and my dad is a champion of women. This gave me the courage to know that I was born equally but it didn’t give me the knowledge I needed to fight society as I entered into it.
I think that was part of my fear of sending Dametrius to school today. You won’t meet a wiser, kinder soul than my son Dametrius and my child has walked a path many of you cannot imagine. He’s still himself every day. “Don’t you lose you in there baby” I told him, “don’t fit in.” Me? I know school is where I began to lose myself and built up a series of lies from society from there on out.
Overcoming Personal Fears
Growing up, I believed from a young age that how I looked was the first key to acceptance from my peers. I developed an eating disorder in high school to lose the weight I thought was holding me back from fitting in. I believed that finding the perfect boyfriend-turned-husband would show the world how lovable I was and that marriage was the ultimate community and personal goal.
There’s more. I believed that I needed to be polite, accommodating, and put my needs second to everyone, including my children. I believed that the more I looked and behaved in a way that matched society norms the happier I would be. This is the first fear, this is what took me down the road of abandoning myself for so long.
I wrote to you all that I made the choice to buy a farm in Ohio this past summer in order to follow my true path. In reality, this choice was delivered to me from the universe to burn every fear I had to the ground and build a life worth living. My farm, family, and God have saved my life. When I couldn’t choose it for myself the second pain was chosen for me.
This past fall-into-winter I have done something I have never done before; I felt every single piece of pain I was walking through. I held it, felt it, breathed it in, and let it have a place. It was not pretty. At best it was animalistic. I spent hours crying on the floor while my babies slept, screamed to the skies while walking in my pasture, and succumbed to the raw pain that was needed to come back home to myself. I’m just now starting to see the clearing through the trees, and this clearing is not from the world: it’s from myself saying, “welcome home.” I’ve allowed this pain to shake me to my roots and began believing that the only thing that brings true joy is belonging to ourselves.
Someday I’ll tell you about the life event that has caused such a change in me. I’m not ready yet. What I am ready to do is tell you all that we can in fact do hard things. That this past year has been a collective of grief through the pandemic and personal pains. What pain will you choose?
Choose Your Pain and Come Home
Will you choose the pain and fear that tells you to succumb to the expectations of others? Or will you choose the pain, no matter how raw, that brings you home to yourself? If you continue to follow me, know this; I do not give a damn about what others think of me anymore and will ask myself “am I losing myself,” every second of the day I make choices. I will not put myself second just because I was born a woman or question the skills, talents, gifts, and passions that pulse through my veins. And I will not care if I make you or anyone else uncomfortable because I refuse to be uncomfortable with myself ever again.
We all have collectively been stopped in our tracks because of the pandemic. I believe I asked myself the question “Jessie, are you going to keep living in the fears of the world or come home to yourself?” Right now I’m coming home to myself and leaving the pain behind.
Readers, what about you? Will you walk with me? Would you like to try? I can help you to stay true to yourself. I have walked through pain that I thought was deep enough to kill me and through feeling it I was born. It’s worth it, coming home.
Xoxo,
Jessie
In loving dedication to my sister-in-law, brother-in-law, mom, and dad who have all held me in their arms these past three months.
by Jessie Cooper | Dec 17, 2020
As fall comes to an end I’m sitting on the farm surrounded by freshly fallen snow. It’s as though the universe is painting a visual for this season of life. These past few months have been extremely difficult for me. In the middle of a growing pandemic and the pressing matter of racial inequality, I know I’m not alone. Collectively as a nation and world, we’ve had to adapt overnight to changes in our culture, find ways to address what seems like trauma after trauma, and somehow keep putting one foot in front of the other. Yet life is still around us, no matter the valley we’re in.
As a business owner of a company that makes my heart swell with pride, there are so many things I want to tell you. I want to tell you about the years before Instructional ABA Consultants was born–what it was like to hold the hands of mothers whose children were being institutionalized. I want to tell you how Applied Behavior Analysis changed everything for each and every client I worked with. Of my deep love of a man named David, my favorite client of all times.
I want to explain how through tears, sweat, heartache, brilliance, vulnerability, and grit my company was shaped; this came from me and the employees who built it. I want to create resource after resource for children with autism, families of these young children, and each person in the world who feels like their voice doesn’t matter. All of these things burn inside my heart.
Yet today, my win was that I got up without crying. Was this anyone else’s win?
Taking Time After Trauma
In the middle of trauma or in coming out of trauma it’s easy to expect ourselves to quickly go “back to normal.” I remember this vividly when I was awakening from postpartum depression after Henry was born. I was so joyful to feel like myself again. I wanted to pack my days with everything “Jessie” I could think of. Doing this, while very tempting, would have flattened me. In coming out of a depression I had to honor what my body and mind had been through. To choose wisely what I would add to each day.
So what is normal and how do we choose what to add? Today we’re all so indicated by social media and marketing telling us what our lives should look like. On top of that, we’re socially conditioned to be a certain way or want certain things based on our gender, race, sex, and age. There are so many opinions swirling around us on who we should be and how we should behave. Trauma, like the COVID-19 pandemic, threatens this unnatural order.
Many of us were on autopilot prior to COVID-19. Then we were forced to stop. I believe this is true with any trauma or major life event. It could be a cancer diagnosis, the loss of a loved one, an injustice toward a loved one, a divorce, your own mental health taking an unexpected turn, financial upset–the list goes on and on. Trauma is part of our lives and it’s the part of our lives we don’t talk about enough.
The scariest part? If a person does speak up about their own personal traumas, the systems supporting us or the people around us often bring shame. Shame to keep us small and silent. If you feel pain, scared, or threatened don’t ever let anyone tell you to stay quiet. Speak up every single time regardless of what others say around you.
What We Can Do to Recover
So what can we do? What can I do as 2020 comes to a close and the pandemic we thought would be over by June continues? Wasn’t it just yesterday I was laughing about toilet paper and schools closing over margaritas with friends? We honor the season then get the hell out when it’s time to get out. That’s what we do.
Winter comes every year and our busy-ness becomes harder to keep. COVID took much of that busy-ness already. Personally, I hope it never comes back. This season of stillness is a natural order of things. We as humans are not meant to be on high speed every second of every day. We are also not built to impress and conform. We’re built to breathe freely, live freely, and love fully.
To do this we must honor where we are in life and love ourselves just as much when we’re crying on the bathroom floor as we do when we’ve achieved a goal. Grief comes for all of us. When we can offer ourselves compassion and grace the season is honored. On the other side of winter is spring where the flowers grow. Yet if we spend our lives wishing for beautiful flowers we’ll miss the cold beauty of a bare tree.
A new season is coming. Sit here darling ones. Hold your heart if you’re crying and take a moment to breathe the sweet winter air.
Xoxo,
Jessie
