What is it you c*nt face?

Turns out it's our own power we're really afraid of

I was recently introduced to a book called Anatomy of a Spirit by Caroline Myss. It goes through each of the chakras and talks about the spiritual meaning and real-world connections to each of the 7 main ones, connecting it to rituals in Judeo-Christian religion, but in a holistic way. I recommend it if you’re wanting a deeper dive into the chakra system, as one does.

One of the themes that comes up in her book, and has come up famously in Return to Love by Marianne Williamson (which I learned about through RuPaul, who apparently listens to it every night as he falls asleep), is that most of our problems don’t come from us being afraid of things going wrong. The thing we’re most afraid of, and that causes most of our problems, is our resistance to stepping into our power.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
- Marianne Williamson

This closeting, hiding, staying small, shadow stuff - whatever you want to call it- is something we all struggle with because it is in our human DNA to want to stay safe and resist change. And because if it weren’t hard, it wouldn’t be worth doing. Right? Ugh.

For me it’s shown up as being slow to be open about my true self in a lot of ways - clearly not here on this blog though. Reasons for hiding in plain sight have in the past and present included fear of conflict, being too much or too little, being too boring or too good. For a long time, I chose to stay in a subconscious place which led to all kinds of addictive coping mechanisms, bad behaviors and chaos that would be sure to take up all my brain space while I kept on resisting growth and wholeness. A Saturn return and some life obstacles later, consciousness finds its way in there, like it or not. At that point all there is left to do is slowly and steadily face myself, then others, as the most honest version of me.

When a contestant on Drag Race would get stuck with how to be the most charismatic / C.U.N.T.-y version of themselves (Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve and Talent), RuPaul often quotes Mother Abbess from The Sound of Music who asks Julie Andrews, aka Maria, why she is hiding in the nunnery. What was it that should couldn't face? But with the nun’s Scottish accent, the line famously sounds like she’s saying, “Maria, What is it you c*nt face?”

@relativecreative“Maria, What is it you cunt face?” 🙌🏼🤣🤌🏼😅 @trixiemattel @Katya Zamolodchikova #unhhh #unhhhhmoments #unhhhhtok #trixiemattel #trixieandkatya #katya #funny #dragqueens #dragrace #rupaul

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I prefer a dash of snarkery sprinkled on my spiritual journey. Sometimes you need the c-word to remind you it’s not that big of a deal. You’re just making it a big deal. People have done hard things FOREVER, you c*nt face.

As an aside, maybe the reason drag culture is so popular with Gen Z, and so controversial with Republicans, is that it deftly mixes spirituality with profanity in a way that just gets at the truth and very much resonates with the absurdity of our time.

But back to my original point - what is holding you back, you c*nt face? What can you not look at in your life that is causing all your problems, like the effervescent Julie Andrews hiding in a nun’s habit?

For me the drug hit of validation has been so strong that I have been slowly weaning myself off it, one 12-step program at a time. When I first started, I was so unhappy in my body and in my life, a life that I had created out of a desire to do the right thing, to do everything perfectly so that I would be safe.

The first time I realized that not even adulting correctly would keep me safe was when a friend’s beloved husband died at the age of 37 from colon cancer, we were all in our mid-30s. Steve had done everything right, including being an awesome person and father who everyone adored. He had tons of friends, a good job, aspirations for the future and seemed sensible about the world.

This happened about mid-way into Trump’s first term. Within a year I had left the full-time jobs I was working in San Francisco and began traveling to residencies to find a new frame of mind. Who knew how much time I had left and I wasn’t getting any happier making more money or staying longer in the same beautiful city I called home.

This upheaval flew in the face of my original life plan to get a nice normal job and just be content earning a decent wage and making art on the side, until maybe one day I would make it big enough to quit or get a teaching job.

As I began working remotely, traveling in Mexico and Europe, and enjoying my life in a way I never thought possible, I felt waves of guilt. Who am I, I thought, to try and make it as an artist? To spend much of my days developing my craft and seeing the world?

In a previous essay Who am I?, which you can read at your leisure, I wrote about this idea of not feeling up to it or worthy of sharing our gifts and most powerful self with the world. The other questions that came up around ‘who am I’ and why am I so great, is why should I get to be happy when people before me haven’t been - and when there are people suffering right now? Why do I get to throw caution into the wind, to throw the rules out of what I was supposed to be doing at this age? Plus, who am I going to alienate by choosing this new path and taking it really seriously? And what in myself am I going to have to let go of?

What I found is a new community met me on the road and while not everyone understood what i was doing, and at times it was very lonely, it was also a couple years that I would never trade for anything. I grew so much and learned to flow with change and cope with uncertainty in ways that have helped me navigate the higher stakes changes of the pandemic, Trump Part 2 and my gender transition.

Part of the problem that I face whenever I can feel myself stepping into uncharted growth territory is anxiety around “what if” instead of grounding in the slowness of experience. I get into trouble when I start futurizing or looking for validation for my choices, ones that I might not even have to make. I of course want all my concerns to quieted and frankly just want to be done with this change thing, but still grow as a person and have a fulfilling life. I guess that’s not how it works.

Shame and guilt and perfectionism are probably the biggest barriers keeping me in the nunnery, afraid to go out and shine my full light. Owning our power, while great and all, requires forgiveness for oneself because once we take on the responsibility that we have control and agency over our lives, we have to accept that all our mistakes are our to have made, and to make in the future.

As a perfectionist there is nothing that makes me feel worse than having to own up to a mistake that honestly I didn’t even make, and it wasn’t my fault. (They did it.) What I can’t face is the idea that as I step into my goddess-given power that I might not do it right the first time or that people won’t like it, and that the more I do it the more people might notice and try to take me down, or criticize my flaws, leave me to eat alone at the lunch table. And this is all just a mirror of what I know to be true: that I am deeply imperfect and horrible and wrong. It’s much easier to criticize from the back pew. Pew, pew.

Or, what if I leave the nunnery and people want things from me, too much, and I can’t say no because then I don’t get the people-pleasing validation hit, and then I get burned out and fail and end up alone. Or, I succeed and have to keep meeting up to people’s expectations and now, even though I got there by following my own vision, I feel responsible for everyone else’s needs and it is not the fun, rewarding experience I had hoped for and I end up hating my life as much or more than I did before I went through this whole roller coaster.

The future is wide open.