"Emotional Alchemist and Deep Conversation Catalyst"
Tears rolled down my face as I read that Alana's son Benjamin had been stillborn - and I gasped when I read that she was going to put her coaching blog on hold and share her grief journey with her readers. What open-ness, what vulnerability!
Alana shared her journey (and that of her family) in the blog Life After Benjamin. Later she wrote a beautiful guide Picking Up the Pieces: Thoughts on grief and growth and appeared at a TedX event (which I can almost guarantee will cause YOU to gasp due to Alana's connective onstage presence and her open-ness).
She has called herself a "grief alchemist" and speaks beautifully (I am using the word beautifully quite consciously here) - heart-openingly beautifully about grief and its transforming power!
And she still causes me to gasp! As Alana began answering the question "What is Your Favorite Square-Peg Trait?" my head was bopping up and down in agreement when she mentioned her ability to laugh. Then I literally gasped (I had to stop for a minute and take a breath) when Alana spoke her new favorite trait! Read on, you'll see.
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How Do You See Yourself as a Square-Peg?
As a grown up I feel lucky to have built a community that really feels good - a couple communities actually, to satisfy different parts of my life.
I think that where I'm feeling really Square-Peggish right now is in my business. I'm trying to learn business skills so I can earn money, yet I'm overwhelmed by this desire to lead with my heart and soul.
So I'm feeling this: Hmmm - ok, so how do I take this information, this: "You have to do X, Y and Z to be a successful entrepreneur!", and really make it work for me?
It's scary sometimes to follow our own intuition and our own voice when everybody's saying: "Do it this way! Do it this way! Do it this way!" Especially when the results aren't immediately apparent.
So I don't know, I feel like there are a couple different ways I feel like a Square-Peg. As a human being - a lot of the time! Growing up I didn't quite feel like I fit in - and now, as an adult, making choices that make me feel good about me but don't always fit with what people want from me in my life.
I spent a lot of my life where my priority was figuring out what people wanted from me and giving it to them.
It's been a really big (but gradual) switch - and of course it's not completely over.
How Do You Maintain Your Square-Pegness (in a round-hole world)?
I'm really learning to live in trust, like: "Ok, this feels important to me, this feels right to me. I don't know where this is taking me, but I'm going to take the step and as long as it feels good I'll continue to move in this direction."
But also giving myself permission to change my mind and turn left when I thought I was going right.
For me that practice started a long time ago. I remember a real clarity when I was going back to get my Masters in Clinical Psychology. I said: "I don't know if this is the right direction for me, but I'll continue to move in this direction as long as it feels good and right."
And that feeling took me through my masters degree - and then when it came time to get an intern number, and get my hours - to become a therapist, it was like: "I don't want to do this!
I just spent $30,000 on a degree - but at the same time it's not like it's wasted time - I've learned so much, I've changed so much, but I don't want to be a therapist!"
"Ok", I thought, "I was going to turn right here, but I'm going to turn left."
And of course it's all been perfect. Incredibly challenging, but perfect.
{I asked Alana when this took place}
I went back to school in 2005. I had been living in Los Angeles as an actor, met my husband and we got married in 2004. Then, 5 months into our marriage, it fell apart and we separated for awhile.
The process of rebuilding our marriage made me want to go back to school to become a therapist. It was life changing for me. As hard as it was I'm incredibly grateful for it -
I also think it was preparation for what was to come!
Did Benjamin's stillbirth contribute to your Square-Peg feeling?
You know, it's actually very interesting that you asked that question - because it does. A couple things are coming to mind here:
One, having a stillbirth makes most people feel like they're different because it's still such a hidden loss. It's not talked about even though the statistics are staggering.
There's that feeling of walking around with a mark on your soul that makes you feel - that makes me feel different.
The other thing that's a part of that is that I'm now (even though I've had four pregnancies) the parent of an only child. That was never part of my self-concept!
For awhile I didn't know if I would have children, but when I decided to have children it was like: "Well, of course I'll have two or three."
So I think there's a certain Square-Pegness about choosing to have an only child. And though I feel like the universe made my choice for me, technically I could get pregnant again. But I'm choosing not to because my life was put in danger with Benjamin's still birth - and they don't know that it won't happen again.
I am choosing not to risk my life because I have one child and I want to be there for her.
So there is a sense of being a Square-Peg for me and for many people when they have a stillbirth.
When people say: "How many children do you have?" or "Is she an only child?" I have to stop and think about my answer. Am I going to tell them "No, she's not my only child - but she's my only living child." or am I going to, in a sense, lie because it's easier to say "Yes, she's my only child."
Most people, unless they've either experienced a stillbirth or death of a child, don't have to stop and think about that.
What's Been the Hardest for You as a Square-Peg?
One, growing up I really felt like I was always standing on slightly shifting ground - like the ground was always shifting underneath my feet.
A lot of that had to do with friendships, really formative relationships as a young girl and into my teens, where I would show up at school one day and my friends had decided not to speak to me that day. That could go on for days and I would always be like: "I love you! I don't understand why you are doing this to me."
And I would always take them back into my life when they decided to speak to me again.
What that really played into for me was this fear that who I am is not lovable, so it's interesting because that comes up again and again.
I've made changes recently where I've stopped drinking and eating many things for health reasons, and also for my own personal and spiritual growth.
I don't do gluten, I don't eat dairy, I don't eat sugar, I don't eat meat. These felt like the right decisions to make, but they've also distanced me from certain friends.
So there's a part of me that gets hooked into "who I am is not lovable" because the closer I get to being who I feel like I truly am inside - and the more the outside mirrors that - the more people I lose.
That's a perception, and it's not really true because I've also gained so many more people. But there's a sense over the last decade that with some of my closest friends we're not as close anymore because of some of those changes.
So I think one of the hardest things is hooking into that deeply held feeling of not being worthy, not being lovable for who I am. I don't know where it comes from and it doesn't matter because it's not true.
That's a big one - that's been a challenge for me. And I think the other one is about finding my own way and trusting myself.
There's a part of me that goes: "Ohmygod, I'm 3 days away from being 41 and what have I done? What have I accomplished in the traditional trajectory of: go to school, get a degree, get a job, work at your job, make money, buy a house - all of those things? I don't feel like I can tick off a lot of those."
So part of it for me is not being able to identify with the visible, outward signs of traditional success. What I do to counteract that is sit down and say to myself: "What do I have, what have I done, who am I in the world and how am I bringing good to the world?"
I'm hearing that you talk with yourself when things are bothering you - would you tell us what other kinds of things you do for yourself?
What things do I do? I have a lot of them. I think that my fundamental one is to really stay connected with my body and the information that I get in my body about whether something feels good or right - or it doesn't.
I have a couple of practices that just help me move back into a place of trust. And really, for me that's the crux of it: do I trust myself, do I trust the universe?
I do a lot of yoga, walking, dancing. That really helps me when I want to pull myself out of one of those emotional or thought spirals where I feel like I'm kind of spinning - which happens for good reasons and bad reasons.
It can be the comparison thing, it can be feeling like I'm less than or unlovable or any of those old childhood things that get triggered.
Or it happened to me the first time someone offered to pay me my full fee - I went into this incredible spiral like: "Ohmygosh, do I deserve this?" I am definitely able to talk to myself, to talk through some of those old voices. I recognize them because I've worked with them for so many years now!
The ocean! Getting outside and sitting on the beach is one of my big healers. We live 50 yards from the beach! I'm so lucky, this was a childhood dream of mine - and it took me 37 years to get here. It's amazing!
Sometimes I need to journal to get that out. I'll do that a lot. I did that a lot after Benjamin died, just to get the information out - and then just slowing my world down and giving myself the time and space to be silent and still so that I can then hear whatever is happening.
It's a bit magical and miraculous to me when I do create the time and space and I have a question or a concern - the answers that come are just amazing.
What's Your Favorite Square-Peg Trait?
I used to say it was my ability to laugh, but I think now I would say it's my ability to love.
I feel as though I'm willing to meet people with open arms and open heart. It doesn't matter what they look like, what they're dressed like, who they are or what their background is, I just want to - I really live to see the good in people.
To see that they are, they were, born beautiful - I don't know what happened in their lives, but that's worth knowing: that they are worthy of love.
What Are Your Favorite Books?
Right now I don't do a lot of reading of fiction because I just don't feel that I have a lot of space in my life for that. What I do love is having a collection of books around me that I can just pick up and go to for answers or inspiration or just a breath.
I really like the Channel Series by Sanaya Roman. Opening to Channel: How to Connect with Your Guide; Living with Joy; Personal Power Through Awareness; and Soul Love - those are good resources for me.
The Artist's Way, The Right to Write, Rumi, Hafiz. I have my animal medicine cards.
I really love - well, I have to say one of my favorite books in the world is Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof. Reading that book changed me, and I think it should be required reading! It's such an eye opener!
Basically, it goes through the plight of women around the world - mostly in non-Westernized countries. Wow, the horrors that women endure! What they do {in the book} is describe the situation so that it breaks your heart, and then they tell you about these women who are in the middle of the situation and changing it.
It's so well researched and so well written, so deeply loving and inspiring - it's become a real movement.
So that book, any book that really touches my heart, that makes me feel like we are connected - because we are!
I just have to say, because it was such a life changer for me back when I was a teenager, The Mists of Avalon was the first book I ever read that was told from a female point of view - where the protagonist, all the way through, was a woman!
Visit Alana at Alana Sheeren: Journey to a Luminous You
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Read more Square-Peg Interviews here!
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(Full Disclosure: we're affiliates of Amazon.com - so when you buy from the book links above you don't pay a penny more, but you help support Square-Peg People. Thanks!)
