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Michele Woodward

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love

Dads Are The Sexiest Men On Earth

June 21, 2015 By Michele Woodward 2 Comments

Silhouette Of Father Lovingly Kissing Child On Forehead At SunseKnow what makes a sexy man?

It’s not the size of his bank account or the length of his job title.

It’s not that he’s a road warrior with a fat frequent flyer balance.

It’s not his dark wavy hair, his fast, sleek car or the washboard appearance of his abs.

It’s none of that.

A man is so sexy when…he’s teaching his daughter how to light the perfect fire on an autumn night.

When he shows his son how to not only grow tomatoes and basil but then how to make them into a Caprese salad.

When he listens to his teenager’s worries.

When he accompanies his adult daughter to chemo.

When he drives the carpool, when he brings the snacks, when he springs for pizza, when he discusses the Peloponnesian War, when he cries at his child’s wedding, when he is fully and completely committed to his family.

That is pretty sexy.

And all men – those uncles, and brothers, and cousins, and granddads, and neighbors, and clergy, and coaches, and teachers, and mentors – all of them who take time to give of themselves to young people who need a father figure…well, they’re damn sexy, too.

Happy Father’s Day, you sexy devils.

 

Filed Under: Authenticity, Blog, Clarity, Happier Living, Uncategorized Tagged With: children, connection, dads, families, father's day, Fathers, love, mentor, mentoring

The Thing About Mother Love

May 10, 2015 By Michele Woodward Leave a Comment

 

 

collection of old note paper on white background.I have been known to scrawl down an idea or two (thousand) when they pop into my noggin. Sometimes, it’s something I’ve read, or maybe I heard somewhere. When it comes time for my house to be cleaned out, the biggest impediment will be what to do with the three zillion Post-it notes, four thousand completely used legal pads and three gross of used index cards I have scrawled upon in my daily life.

And that’s just the tally since January 1, 2014.

So, I don’t know where this line came from, but I jotted it down on my desk blotter, which is really just a huge pad of paper I use to blot my ideas. The words form just a fragment, but it’s enough for me to remember and to think about:

“Follow highest excitement”

Did someone say this to me? Did I read it? Did it pop into my head, unbidden, from divine inspiration?

I have no idea.

But I do know what it means. It means that to find your deepest happiness, your most contented joy, your highest fulfillment, you must pursue the thing that lights you up the most.

Some of you know that in this last year I became an empty-nester. Within a few weeks of each other both of my children moved to new places to do new things and I found myself, very suddenly, with a life wide open.

Helpful friends had many suggestions for me. I should travel more. I should get an office downtown so I could be around more people. I should go to grad school. I should be on the TODAY show. I should get married. I should definitely not get married but have a madly passionate dating life.

All well meaning, but as the writer Elizabeth Gilbert wrote: “Someone else’s dream.”

When I look at my “highest excitement”, the thing that lights me up more than any other is something rather mundane. You might even say kind of ordinary.

But it’s not ordinary to me. To me, it’s the most amazing thing in the world.

You see, there is just one thing I will always do first. That I will break plans to attend to. For which I will spend every dollar I have and borrow if I need more. That I will always, always, always make time for.

In fact, my life’s highest excitement is… being a mother to my children.

Sexy, huh?

But, if they ask me to come be with them, I am there.

If they want to talk through things in their lives, I am there.

If they need help, I am there.

If they want to send me a hilarious gif of an Asian baby break dancing with a puppy, I am totally there.

And you might say that now is “me time” and that I’ve paid my dues and it’s time for a big separation and what am I some kind of helicopter parent?

No, in fact, I’m sort of the anti-helicopter parent. I’ve always known that my entire parenting job was to prepare my children to do what they’re doing at this very point in their lives – to make their own decisions, to live their own lives, to love their own ways.

My highest excitement comes from the delicious pleasure of “what next?” in the lives of these extraordinary people. What will they learn that sparks a new way of thinking for them? What will they experience that leads to a greater knowing? Who will come into their lives? How will they be in the world?

To me, this is a sheer and utter delight.

It occurs to me that what I’m really talking about is “mother love”. That encompassing feeling of good will, delight in the moment and happy hope for the future – so maybe my highest excitement is really about me, and my ability to follow what my heart knows is right and true.

But here’s the thing that also occurs to me: this good will, this delight, this hope – exists plenty of places. Examples abound everywhere, and you don’t have to have given birth or raised a child to experience it.

You just have to live to your fullest expression. To honor what’s most fulfilling to you.

Regardless of gender or station, race or education, when you choose to honor and follow your highest excitement, you bring your own version of powerful mother love to the table.

This is the promise. This is the hope.

This is the possibility.

And today, on Mother’s Day, this is my big idea. Now, let me write it down somewhere.

 

 

Filed Under: Authenticity, Blog, Career Coaching, Clarity, Happier Living, Uncategorized Tagged With: best self, connection, empty nest, ideal job, love, Mother's Day

A Blast From The Past

March 1, 2015 By Michele Woodward Leave a Comment

Baby Michele

 

When you look back, what do you see?

Every March, I take a look back – which is pretty natural because it’s my birthday month.

This March I’ll be turning 55 (double nickels, baby) which is older than some and younger than many. I’ve also been asked to moderate a panel for active duty and retired female military officers at a career conferencelater this week. The topic I’m moderating is “A Letter To Your Younger Self.”

Funny how everything’s coming together for me to be even more reflective this March.

In 1960, when I was born, the world was a much different place. Global population was about a third the size it is today, and it felt like there was plenty of open space here and out in the galaxy. We were a year away from a visit to space – the Soviet launch of Yuri Gagarin into Earth’s orbit followed closely by US astronaut Alan Shepard, in a demonstration of the competitiveness of the Cold War.

How surprised would the world have been in 1960 to learn that the Soviet Union would crumble and capitalism would come to Communist nations?

When I was born, the U.S. had segregation – Dr. King had yet to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and even though Brown vs. Board had been settled, few schools had been desegregated.

Could we even have fathomed the relative ordinariness of seeing people of color as CEOs, Presidents, politicians, doctors, lawyers and professors not only in the US, but around the world?

Women, in my childhood, had a slim choice of jobs if they wanted to work: nurse, teacher, secretary, waitress, domestic help or bookkeeper. Even the brightest women faced a thick, impenetrable glass ceiling.

Small Michele might not have believed what’s possible today. Had anyone said that she would grow up to work with executives around the world who want to get better at their jobs, and that she’d do it from home, most often wearing yoga pants and a fleece pullover, while making a very good living, Wee Michele probably would have asked:

“What’s yoga?”

But some things today are exactly the same as they were when I was born. And these are things I’m exceptionally glad for:

People still fall in love.

Folks still have best friends.

Most of us offer help when we see someone in trouble.

Children smile and the world is all right.

We cheer for the underdog and applaud our heroes.

We laugh at each other’s jokes.

Songs are sung.

Meals are shared.

Lips are kissed.

Yes, we humans still see possibilities.

We still make things happen.

We still believe.

And after all these years, and all that change, that’s the world I believe you and I really want.

 

Filed Under: Authenticity, Blog, Clarity, Happier Living, Managing Change, Uncategorized Tagged With: birthday, change, happiness, kindness, love, relationships

Fully Yourself

June 30, 2013 By Michele Woodward Leave a Comment

clasped hand for help

 

 

When it really comes down to it, the only thing that matters is the quality of your relationships.

Young, old. Male, female. Pale, dark. Whatever you are – doesn’t matter.

Also doesn’t matter whether these relationships are at home, or at work, or on the playing field, or at Starbucks.

What I know down in the marrow of my bones about what matters and makes people feel happily fulfilled is this:

That you know someone fully, and allow yourself to be fully known.

The only antidote to all the anxious striving we seem to do in this world of ours is to have a truly safe and secure place to just be yourself. Which is, in my estimation, the best idea of love. The writer Henri Nouwen summed it up when he said, “Love is making a safe place for another person to be fully himself.”

So say what you want about having a flashy car or that fabulous house in the best neighborhood or Kardashian-esque heels, it doesn’t match having a friend who remembers when you both ate ramen seated on the floor because no one had any money for chairs – and loves you as much now as he did then.

Or when you absolutely, truly and thoroughly make a horse’s ass out of yourself – it’s your true friends who wince right along with you and then support you as you pull yourself out of your mess.

Or who stand by you when you have to make a tough set of choices.

Those are moments when the quality and nature of your relationships make a real difference in how it all plays out. On how you get through. Without taking the risk of allowing yourself to be fully known, and accepted, you wouldn’t bounce back as quickly – or maybe at all.

Some folks think so poorly of themselves, though, that they fear that allowing themselves to be fully known would end up…really badly. You know, if other people saw just how stupid, coarse, corrupt, and just plain wrong they are, there is no way they could be accepted let alone “loved”.

They’re sure that there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening.

So they keep their self-perceived flawed true selves bottled up and hidden away like a crazy aunt in the attic, and the snowball really never does have a chance. And, as a result, these folks never feel the thing they want the most – a real gift of total acceptance.

The real crux of it is that they can’t accept, let alone love, their flawed little old selves. So there’s no room for anyone to return the favor. Which has got to be the first step – if love is making a safe place for another person to be fully himself then surely self-love is making a safe place for me to be fully myself, too.

And it sure is funny how when we start to make a little space, suddenly it turns into a large space with plenty more room than we ever imagined.

Enough space to let love in.

If you’re in that place – and who hasn’t been there at one time or another? – where you’re feeling rather alone… rather unloved… kind of unaccepted…sort of lone wolfish…and it feels…bad…

Create a little space for self-love. Treat yourself the way you’d treat your dearest darling or your closest friend, even if  you don’t have one presently.

Be that which you seek to find.

And, the space you make will soon be filled.

With true, real, loving friends. Who totally dig you.

 

Filed Under: Blog, Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Happier Living, Uncategorized, WiseWork Tagged With: connection, find love, friends, friendship, love, self-love

What Really Matters

March 3, 2013 By Michele Woodward 4 Comments

What really matters is not what kind of car you drive.

Or if you choose to walk everywhere you go.

It’s not what size you are or the density of your muscle mass.

It’s not where you live.

It’s not whether you stick to your diet and exercise daily.

It’s not your corner office, your job title or how well you play office politics.

The color of your hair, the size of your bank account, the desirable location of your second home?

None of this really matters.

What does really matter, then?

How you love.

Who you love.

The times we remember our whole lives are the times we loved deeply – even if we were sleeping on the floor with our family, lit by candles because there was no money for electricity or water, and only a little bit for food.

Those lean times are the moments which bond us.

Maybe because those are the times we are especially grateful for the little things. And the big things, too.

The big things like that we loved. That we were connected. That we took care of one another. Looked out for one another.

You and I know in our hearts that this is what really matters.

And you and I know that sometimes we need to re-center in love in order to re-center in our lives.

Watch this, and see what really matters in action. Watch this, and re-center:

Filed Under: Authenticity, Blog, Clarity, Happier Living, Uncategorized Tagged With: brother, connection, family, love, Marines, what matters

Acceptance and Approval

October 21, 2012 By Michele Woodward 2 Comments

 

What holds people back the most?

What keeps them from happy? From centered? From comfortable in their own skin?

I think it’s the powerful need so many of us have for acceptance and approval – from external sources.

I started thinking about this last week when a client was telling me that he needed more feedback from his boss: was he doing OK? Was he doing it right? Was he what the boss wanted? Was he? Was he?

It really struck me that this sort of rumination is a big energy suck – energy that could be used toward creation and productivity. And contentedness. “Why not,” I offered, “just ask?”

Dull thud. Silence. More silence.

I sensed a big swallow. Then the client said, “I can’t do that. I mean, it’s my boss. I shouldn’t have to ask.”

I totally get it.

Psychologist Erich Fromm, in his classic book The Art of Loving, wrote about the different kinds of love including “mother love” and “father love”.

Mother love says to a child: “There is no misdeed, no crime which could deprive you of my love, of my wish for your life and happiness.” This is Acceptance.

Father love says to a child: “You did wrong, you cannot avoid accepting certain consequences of your wrongdoing, and most of all you must change your ways if I am to like you.” This is Approval.

So when my client was desperate for feedback from his boss, you might say he was looking for a father to love him. Even if his boss is a woman.

Whoa. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

I see countless people around the world who struggle with this. Time after time, they choose to fill their internal gaps with external glue. They make choices because they want to feel accepted (mother love) or because they need approval (father love) – and sometimes those choices have powerful consequences. Like marrying someone because everyone likes him. Or taking a job because you “should”. Or spending money you don’t have to send your child to a particular private school because everyone else does.

It’s all external external external anxious striving for an idealized state we may have had in early childhood. Then again, we might not have had it. But we still idealize it.

As humans, we feel the absence and know we need both acceptance and approval to get along in this world.

After all, who among us could live without love?

Yet, placing the power of love in the hands of others – love is something we get externally – puts us at the whim of folks who may be unable or unhealthy. Or worse.

Think difficult bosses, spouses, teachers, neighbors. You’ve had ’em. I’ve had ’em.

We all have.

And you can’t get something from them that they are constitutionally unable to give.

So, it seems to me that the wisest thing any of us can do is give ourselves that which we seek from others.

Fromm says, “Eventually, the mature person has come to the point where he is his own mother and his own father. He has, as it were, a motherly and fatherly conscience…The mature person has become free from the outside mother and father figures, and has build them up inside…not by incorporating mother and father, but by building a motherly conscience on his own capacity for love, and a fatherly conscience on his reason and judgment.”

There’s the idea. If you feel trapped in a cycle of seeking external validation – desiring acceptance and approval (mother love and father love) – become your own parent.

That’s not to say that you have to chuck your own parents over the side. Nor am I suggesting that by parenting yourself you are somehow making a referendum on how you were raised. Or that you’re becoming a flaming narcissist. No, that’s not it.

What it is is this: every day, treat yourself the way you would treat someone you deeply love, approve of and accept. And to get there, of course, you must act in ways that you love, approve and accept.

Act with integrity. Be kind. Watch your self-talk, as well as your talk with others. Say yes when you mean yes, and no when you mean no.

Treat yourself with care. Honor yourself. Be proud of yourself.

And, give yourself a pat on the back now and then. Because you know better than anyone how far you’ve come.

Filed Under: Career Coaching, Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Happier Living, Uncategorized Tagged With: anxious striving, art of loving, difficult people, erich fromm, happiness, love, self-confidence, self-love, self-parenting

Let This Glorious Day Begin

December 25, 2011 By Michele Woodward Leave a Comment

 

 

This morning is still. Quiet.

It’s early yet.

Fleece blanket around shoulders, tea mug in hand, I lean into the translucent morning breathing the crackling December air.

I can see my own breath, and the steam rising from the fragrant tea.

Dogs happily run through frosted grass.

Birds chirp their morning songs.

Close my eyes.

Open my ears.

Senses alive.

Take it all in.

Yes, I feel it.

Deep satisfaction.

Deep love.

Deep connection.

In-the-marrow knowing: I love and am loved.

Lips move into an instant and unstoppable grin.

On this still and expectant Christmas morning, I’ve received the first gift: Profound appreciation for this one precious life of mine.

Silent, prayerful thanks flow like a river coated with ice – underneath it’s constant, steady, powerful.

Reverie.

Until yipping dogs announce it’s time to go inside.

And so I do.

Full to the brim.

Full of joy.

Of hope.

Of love.

I think: Let this glorious day begin.

And it has.

 

 

Filed Under: Authenticity, Clarity, Happier Living Tagged With: Christmas, gratitude, happiness, love, poem

The Bluest Sky

September 10, 2011 By Michele Woodward Leave a Comment

 

I was feeling rather smug that morning.

I stood on the tee box of the seventh hole, under the bluest sky I’d seen in some time, the crisp early fall air like a tonic in my lungs. And I was playing my brains out – 2 strokes over par after the first six holes of a nine hole golf tournament.

I was even nervously allowing myself to think, “I could win this thing!”

I stood on the tee box in the casual pose I’d seen pro golfers strike, arm on hip, hand on the end of the club, leg crossed over. I posed like a woman who was going to win, baby.

But then I saw something. Coming over the ridge, a golf cart. I squinted. It was the young golf pro, and she was barreling directly for me. She screeched to a halt and breathlessly said, “Mrs. Woodward, you have to come in. Your husband called.” She must have read something on my face, because she quickly added, “Your kids are fine. Everyone’s fine. It’s just that both World Trade Towers in New York have collapsed, there’s a bomb at the Pentagon, there’s a bomb at the State Department and something up at the Capitol.” Panic started to well up inside me. “Your husband wants you to get the kids and go home.”  I nodded, processing it all, and threw my bag on the back of her cart and we sped off. My playing partner stepped out of the porta-potty just in time to hear me say, “I concede.  I have to go.”

And I didn’t think about golf again for a very long time.

It took well over an hour to drive the six miles home. I picked up the kids – confused, frightened – on the way. During those gridlocked minutes in the car, I felt like a sitting duck. The local all-news radio station was reporting on fighter planes scrambling, and commercial planes landing. They also reported that there was one more plane, on the way to The White House.

The White House, where I had worked, and where so many friends were working that day.

Crossing the Chain Bridge, I glanced to my left and saw a column of black smoke streaming over the tree tops. The Pentagon burning.

I could smell it.

It was surreal.

Our house is about a quarter of a mile from the Potomac River. Between the house and the river is the busy and noisy George Washington Parkway, which is traveled by 80,000 people every day. Usually, the hum of the cars whizzing past creates a gentle susurrus that can be as comforting as sitting by the ocean. And we also live under the flight path for Reagan National Airport, and the steady rumble of landing and taking off every six minutes is a part of the environment. It’s a noisy place.

But that morning, under the bluest sky, I stood in my front yard and heard… nothing.  No traffic. No planes. Nothing. I held my arms out, as if I could embrace the world and share our pain, when I heard the first one. One deep tone. Then another. The National Cathedral had begun tolling its bells. Then the bells from other churches began to ring. Mournful, yes. But hope, too, in each tone. Hope. Hope. Hope.

I stood there, barefoot, broken-hearted, on one of the most beautiful days of the year. Worried. What could possibly come next?

I did an inventory: I had a husband I loved, I had great kids I could parent full-time. I had my family, my friends. We were blessed. We were safe. We were going to be okay.

That’s what it looked like under the bluest sky. But the reality of the next ten years proved to be quite different than I ever could have imagined.

If a visitor from the future had told me,  that morning out on my front lawn, that in the next ten years:

I would divorce the man whose ring I wore on September 11, 2001, after learning some hard truths.

He would move away, remarry and start a new family.

I would be a single parent.

I would give up being a full-time mom and go back to work.

I would be diagnosed with cancer.

I would struggle financially.

Family and dear friends would die unexpectedly, some painfully.

My children would face challenges which would stop us in our tracks.

If the future visitor told me all that on September 11, 2001, I would have said, “You have to be kidding. It can’t possibly go that way.”

But if that visitor was telling the truth, he’d also have had to tell me the fantastic parts of the coming years:

That I would be known as a writer, with blogs and books.

That I would work with people all over the world – from Asia to Europe, from Canada to Mexico, from Alaska to The Keys – and help them find more fulfilling work, and meaningful lives.

That I’d meet strangers who would grow dear to my heart.

That a certain 8-year old third grader would become a happy, thoughtful, kind, six foot tall college man with a thriving business he created from scratch.

That a little kindergartner would grow into a willowy high school athlete who studies Latin and history, and never forgets a friend.

That I would fund my own retirement account.

That I would own my resilience, know myself and grow comfortable in my own skin.

If the visitor from the future had told me under the bluest sky that I would grow to be more myself – more happy, centered and creative – than I’ve ever been, I would have said, “Dude, you’re talking to the wrong person.”

Because I hadn’t a clue on September 11, 2001. I thought I was happy. What could possibly change?

Only everything.

And always for the better, I’ve learned.  No matter how it seems in the moment.

Looking forward the next 10 years, to September 11, 2021, what will happen?  What change will I meet, and how will I handle it?

I have no idea. None. But I do know this: I am not afraid.

Because even all the pain of the last ten years has been exponentially outweighed by all the love. By all the connections. By all the growth. By all the learning.

On September 11, 2001, three thousand people lost their lives. They had no chance to experience the last ten years of living. But we did. We still do.

Don’t you think we owe it to them to embrace whatever it is that’s coming? And embrace it with love? With kindness? With creativity?

Yes, we do. And I will. I will live with my feet in the grass under skies both blue and gray, and remember the sound of bells tolling, hope, hope, hope.

Stand with me?

Photo: Jamie McIntyre © 2001

Filed Under: Clarity, Free Stuff, Happier Living, Managing Change, Random Thoughts Tagged With: 9/11, change, growth, learning, love, Pentagon, September 11th

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