Elise Fissmer 9/1/22 Elise Fissmer 9/1/22

Specialness

I recently hit the 60K follower mark on Instagram. That’s a lot of people—more than the population of my hometown in Montana—and yet, in today’s topsy-turvy world of “influencers” and multi-million follower TikTok stars, it’s quite modest. And that’s weird.

The words "influencer," "followers" and "personal brand" all give me the heebie jeebies. First, let’s talk about the idea of personal brands. In my conversation with School of Visual Arts professor Debbie Millman, she maintained that people should not, and cannot be brands, since brands lack consciousness: “They don't have a consciousness, they don't have a soul. They're not able to communicate without human engagement. So why would any person aspire to be a brand that's manufactured? Humans can develop their character, they can develop their reputation, and they can own brands. But to be a brand means you're a fixed entity that has no consciousness or sense of purpose on your own. And so I have real issues with, I think personal brand is an oxymoron essentially.” The idea of branding—i.e. stamping your mark on cattle, or a logo’d bag—is actually so very odd in the way that we embrace being "branded" today. And it's not something that we think about all that much. What does it mean exactly that we subscribe to brands, advertise for them, and choose to adopt their identity, using what they stand for in the world as a shortcut for our own values? (Perhaps a topic for a full newsletter as I don't think brands are inherently a bad thing—and there are many wonderful ones—but the way we think about them can become a bit thoughtless and distorted.)

Influencing is equally strange: I don’t actually want to influence anyone. The word makes me feel like a charlatan or Televangelist. I want to present information—interesting thinkers, experts, ideas—and let people determine for themselves what resonates. The idea of bending people’s minds and changing their behavior feels as toxic as the patriarchy itself.

And then, of course, there’s FOLLOWERS. As Yeshua via Carissa frequently remarks: “In my life, I had 12 followers.” (This makes me laugh, every time.) And again, where exactly are we leading people, and to what end? It sure feels like an awful lot of responsibility.

This long preamble leads me to the episode of Pulling the Thread that comes out tomorrow, a conversation with the wonderful Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. If you haven’t read this delicious book, it’s about the human scale of time and how that always gets away from us: There's so much cultural pressure to maximize every minute, and yet we feel like we’re wasting our lives. As he writes, “This is the maddening truth about time, which most advice on managing it seems to miss. It’s like an obstreperous toddler: the more you struggle to control it, to make it conform to your agenda, the further it slips from your control.” With every time-maximizing hack, it squirms away even more.

One of my favorite parts of the book is a relatively off-hand comment near the end, where Oliver writes about the “egocentricity bias,” which is what theoretically makes us so inclined to leave a stamp on the planet and propagate our genes. It’s that pull that suggests our one single life—in the context of this massive, unending universe—matters. He writes:

You might imagine, moreover, that living with such an unrealistic sense of your own historical importance would make life feel more meaningful, by investing your every action with a feeling of cosmic significance, however unwarranted. But what actually happens is that this overvaluing of your existence gives rise to an unrealistic definition of what it would mean to use your finite time well. It sets the bar much too high. It suggests that in order to count as having been “well spent,” your life needs to involve deeply impressive accomplishments, or that it should have a lasting impact on future generations—or at the very least that it must, in the words of the philosopher Iddo Landau, “transcend the common and the mundane.” Clearly, it can’t just be ordinary: After all, if your life is as significant in the scheme of things as you tend to believe, how could you not feel obliged to do something truly remarkable with it?

Oh man, this hits. This hits on every aspect of our strange society and this idea that scale—and other quantitative measures—are more important to a well-lived life than the nebulosity of the qualitative. Somehow, in our pursuits for influence, followers, and fame we’ve culturally diminished the power of just…being a wonderful person. A caring parent and partner, a supportive friend, someone who tends to the environment and local community. Culturally, when did this stop feeling like enough? Ultimately, living a life of service is what I find validating—not touching the most people, but making an impact, even if only for an hour, on someone’s life. Or giving them a new perspective to think about an important relationship, issue, or free-floating feeling.

All that said, it’s hard not to get caught up in the breathless pursuit of more—more impact, more audience, more, more, more. I’ve been watching this scale game in the media for a decade + now—the pursuit of audience numbers over audience loyalty and impact—and am wondering when it will end, even as it’s clear that it’s nothing but a race to the bottom. So many media sites are shadows of their former selves. Our news is a mess. (I talked about this a bit with Brooke Baldwin, her perspective as a long-time CNN anchor is fascinating.) I think we’re collectively starting to see through this, though, wanting the real thing, rather than everything.

If you make content, I want to hear your thoughts; and if you follow a lot of content creators/media sites, I really want to hear your thoughts. What do you all need? And what do you all want?

Elise Fissmer 8/24/22 Elise Fissmer 8/24/22

Try Easier

My friend Jennifer—the self-titled queen of the quip—loves the saying, “Try easier.” She offers me this advice all the time, pretty much in application to every sphere of my life, and yet I don’t think I really got it until this past week, when I returned to Montana.

Understandably, I was feeling some trepidation about riding a horse again, since the last time I rode one, I fell off, knocked myself unconscious, and broke my neck. Immediately after my fall I would have gotten right back on, but as the shock and trauma settled in my body I started to feel very anxious. I felt shaky, and in doubt of my own capacity. After my doctor physically cleared me (“no jumping!”), I faced a choice: I could wait until next summer, or return to Montana with my son Max as planned and see if I could slowly work it out on a horse. The former seemed too scary. I didn’t want to spend 12 months in anticipation, wondering if I would still enjoy something that I’ve historically loved so much. And so we flew back to Montana.

In years past, I have vied for certain horses—typically very fast and challenging ones. Horses who would keep me on my toes, make me a better rider, or at least perpetually braced for the unexpected. This time, I resolved to ride the horse Andy chose for me—one who would undoubtedly keep me safe. He put me on a mare named Tequila, who, as her name suggests…goes well with everything, in every situation.

I started out the week very slow—primarily walking, with a few short lopes to see how my neck felt. Perhaps unsurprisingly to those who ride, the scalene on my left side, which had been very, very tight and sore, actually released, by way of movement. Feeling more sure of myself, I slowly picked up the pace, until I was flying along per usual by the end of the week. Just on a different horse. A horse who didn’t spook, shy, or make any attempt to run away with me. A horse who I didn’t need to manage. A horse who very much took care of me, who let me relax.

Here’s the shocking revelation: Those were some of the most enjoyable rides I’ve ever been on. Try easier, indeed.

I’ve spent the past several days examining my instinct to always make everything so hard; to not find value in however I’m spending my time unless I’m challenging myself, pushing myself, striving and struggling. Why do I think I have to take the AP version of everything for it to count as worthwhile?

I don’t think I’m alone in this instinct, particularly in the mundane way it shows up in my every day. After all, I’m not an adrenaline junkie, at all. I’m just convinced that I must WORK VERY HARD, ALL THE TIME, AT EVERYTHING. Otherwise, it’s somehow not worth doing, or I’m wasting opportunities, a disappointment to myself. What is this thing in me? And can anyone else relate?

Elise Fissmer 8/19/22 Elise Fissmer 8/19/22

LARP-ing

I’m on a ranch with a bunch of 20-something’s this week, many of whom are here working their summer jobs before returning to school or post-grad life. For the 20+ crowd, anxiety is relatively high: Not because they don’t love their summer jobs (many return, year after year after year), but because by choosing to be here, they’re not there, however nebulous that destination may be. For the most part, they’ve forestalled juicy internships and have yet to crystallize a career track. Often because they “don’t know what to do.”

I relate: When I graduated from college I was frantic for a job. I needed income, certainly, but I also felt an intense amount of pressure to not only find a job, but find a job that would transmute itself into a career. It’s a bit like being shot out of a barrel: Aim counts. I very much felt that once I was on a path, there was no getting off, without starting all over. There is no other decade where every year acutely feels like it counts so much. Where a wrong step feels like it will take you down the wrong road, an irrevocable mistake.

This idea of a certain way is a state that we mythologize, in America at least. But as Joseph Campbell wrote, “If there is a path, it is someone else’s.”* I don’t know many people who haven’t faltered in their careers, who haven’t gotten off trains to get on different ones, sometimes landing far, far afield from where they started. And yet: When we’re starting off, we’re so easily convinced that if we’re not moving steadfastly forward, we must be going nowhere at all.

Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee writes in The Bond with the Beloved, “After a lifetime of searching it can be difficult to learn not to look. This is particularly true in the North American culture where there is a very powerful conditioning that you have to aspire to be other than what you are and that your own life is not good enough. This conditioning drives people remorselessly to work harder and harder to change their life and better their material circumstances. It is a pioneer psychology that has helped to develop America and create a ‘land of opportunity.’ But this conditioning has also infected the collective attitude towards spirituality. There is an intense drive to search that overshadows the need to wait.” In Vaughan-Lee’s view, when we wait, we allow an ineffable power to guide us closer to ourselves, and to our gifts.

This searching outside of ourselves is a tragic miss, not only because it’s a waste of our precious time, but because it leads us farther afield from the unique way that we’re each intended to serve. By trying to be someone else, or other than who we are, we’re abandoning our posts.

Vaughan-Lee again: “The song of the world soul is our own song, and yet as we are each unique individuals so is our own song unique. It is written in the Qur’an that ‘Every being has his own appropriate mode of prayer and glorification.’ On the level of the ego the collective denies the individual, and many people repress their individuality in order to fit into a collective social group. But on the level of the soul the collective enhances individuality: our own individual life becomes more meaningful when it is experienced in relationship to the larger pattern of life…Jung defines individuality as ‘that which is unique in the combination of collective elements of the persona and its manifestations.’ Our individuality gains a deeper significance when we appreciate the collective elements that so influence us.” I read this as a call to each do our part, on our own path, for the collective whole; if the world is a tapestry, its wholeness requires each of us to own our thread.

The other night while we were watching our kids play softball, another mom told me that when she went to pack for this trip—cowboy hat, cowboy boots, Wranglers, et al—her high school son saw her bag and said, “God, mom, you are LARP-ing so hard.” LARP-ing, as she explained to me, is Live Action Role Play, like people who dress up for Civil War reenactments. I LARP hard at this ranch, too, every year adding to my collection of diamante-dusted rodeo shirts and Carhart jackets.

As I rode my horse today, I thought about the larger context of LARP-ing, and how we’re all pretty much at it, every day. Do we all not feel like occasional imposters, performing ourselves for the world? Looking around for clues as to how to be ourselves, but better? When I interviewed the stunning Katherine May earlier this year about her late-in-life autism spectrum diagnosis, she told me about the work of Erving Goffman, a sociologist who wrote about the idea that we all have a backstage self, who very few people actually get to see or meet. As Katherine explained to me, “Goffman didn't think that that masking was damaging. He thought that was just a part of how we behave. But actually, when you talk to autistic people, the kind of levels of exhaustion that we endure and the fragmenting of the self comes from, if we can manage it, like trying to ‘act normal,’ massive scare quotes there.” Most of my conversation with Katherine was about the way she feels like she and her community are canaries in the coalmine for the rest of us, not only about how intolerable modern life has become, but also the cost of “passing as normal,” or doing things because there’s an expectation or idea that that’s how it should be done.

To bring it back to the 20-year-olds in my midst this week, there’s only so much one can do outside of putting yourself into the river and letting life take you downstream. It’s scary to be yourself and to not cast your identity and life plan after someone else, but there’s nobody to take your place if you abstain from the role.

*(I first read this quote in the very apt Quarterlife, by Satya Doyle Byock.)

Elise Fissmer 8/10/22 Elise Fissmer 8/10/22

The Language of Empowerment

When it comes to women and marginalized communities, we hear a lot of talk about empowerment. (I’ve certainly used that language, too.) It typically goes: We want to empower women to ________. In recent years, though, it’s come to bother me. I thought it was because, like words like “authentic,” it’s so overused it’s been stripped of its meaning, but I was reading Thistle Farms founder Becca Stevens’ book Practically Divine and she nailed it. Like her, I don’t like the word because it implies that one needs to be empowered by someone else. It’s minimizing, patronizing, and perhaps ironically, disempowering—even though I know that’s the last thing people who use the word intend.

Stevens, a priest, writes about a man who interviewed for a marketing position at Thistle Farms, which she co-founded with other female survivors in Nashville, Tennessee 25-years-ago. It’s a cafe, shop, and residential program for women who have experienced sexual trauma, including trafficking, prostitution, and addiction. Thistle Farms employs thousands of women across the globe to make products—essential oils, teas, jewelry, etc.—that support the effort. During his interview, the young man told Stevens that he was interested in the job because he wanted to “empower women,” and “give them a voice.”

Understandably, this set her off, and she asked him whether the Thistle Farms survivors, who would be giving him a job, wouldn’t actually be empowering him. She writes, “To empower someone is to claim power independently for oneself. It is saying, without saying it directly, ‘I have more power than you. Because I am a moral person, I will give you a little bit of my power, but make no mistake—I will always have more power than you.’ Of course, this isn’t what people necessarily mean or intend. However it is the meaning implicit in the language, and I believe language is important.”

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I believe language is important, too. Empower is an interesting word, because it was used infrequently throughout history until the 1980s, when it picked up steam in business management circles. Meanwhile, the etymology of the word power itself is surprising: It comes from Latin posse, “to be able.” It lacks a punch, which makes the idea of “empowering” someone else feel especially like a form of perverse liberation. You’re going to ensure I’m able to do something? Gee, thanks.

I don’t know what the solution is, except, perhaps, to use more specific language rather than now-empty catch-phrases: After all, what do we really mean? Rather than empowering women, perhaps we want to support the stated needs of women, or highlight and tell their stories, or work in service to their ambition and goals. There are ways of underscoring an intention to be a utility for women or other marginalized groups without making it sound self-aggrandizing, or like you’re a benevolent and generous giant being a "moral person," to quote Stevens.

I don't want this to suggest that I'm not excited by the amount of attention and capital being funneled toward women: We are wildly under-represented on cap tables, executive and leadership teams, et al. But I wish it could sound less like charity and more like the reality of what it is: Hooking wagons to horses, or in the parlance of the day, unicorns, and being pulled into the future. NOT the other way around.

Thoughts?

Elise Fissmer 8/4/22 Elise Fissmer 8/4/22

Rethinking Bad Luck

In Estelle Frankel’s The Wisdom of Not Knowing: Discovering a Life of Wonder by Embracing Uncertainty, she tells a folktale you’ve likely heard before:

A peasant had a beautiful white horse. One night the horse ran away. When the neighbors learn of his misfortune, they come to offer their sympathy saying, ‘We are so sorry for your bad luck.’ They are surprised by their neighbor’s response when he says,‘Could be bad luck; could also be good luck. You never know.” The next day the peasant’s horse returns together with a beautiful stallion. The neighbors come to congratulate him, saying: “You are so lucky. Not only has your horse returned, you now have two beautiful horses.” Again the peasant’s reply baffles them when he says: “Could be good luck; could also be bad luck. You never know.” The next day the peasant’s son is thrown off one of the horses while riding and he breaks his leg. The neighbors again come to comfort the peasant, saying: “We are so sorry to hear of your son’s bad luck.” Again, the peasant replies: “Could be bad luck; could also be good luck. You never know.” The next day officials from the government come to the village to conscript every able-bodied young man to go fight in a senseless war. All the young men of the village are taken except for the peasant’s son, who could not serve in the army with a broken leg. In the end he is the only young man in the village to survive the war—all because of his bad-good luck.

I promise I’m not drawn to this story because it’s about someone who falls off a horse and breaks something significant. I had actually just read this same folktale (I believe in one of Rabbi Leder’s books) when I came across Frankel’s retelling, which made me feel like there’s definitely something in here that I’m supposed to heed. And so I’ve been meditating on it for weeks, turning over this concept of luck and how quick we are to apprise it without any context of time. As this story conveys, who is to say whether something is good or bad in the moment—even when something seems truly terrible.

In one of my earliest conversations with my dear friend, the incredible Intuitive/Medium Laura Lynne Jackson (author of two of my favorite books: The Light Between Us and Signs), she told me how our teams of light on the other side can interfere in remarkable ways to protect us, even if it feels like unwanted interference. (Speaking of broken legs, at a dinner once, LLJ told another friend that she had broken her foot to save her from a worse fate.) Just because we don’t get what we want in a moment—or get something we very much don’t want—doesn’t mean that either outcome isn’t for our highest good. We are all playing something of a long-game.

As Frankel writes, “Like the neighbors in this tale, we tend to judge and label all our experiences in life as good or bad, desirable or undesirable. This is a manifestation of our fixation on duality. Most of us have a running commentary going on in our brains that either approves or disapproves of everything we experience. When things do not match our idea of how they should be, we often feel distress. We are rarely willing to just take life as it comes and wait and see what happens. But, as the story suggests, good and bad are not absolute categories, nor are they readily predictable. Nondual consciousness takes us beyond these absolutes. Light can emerge from darkness, and good can come out of seemingly bad luck. A dark night of the soul may open us up to a realm of light and unforeseen possibilities; the unfortunate things that happen in our lives may conceal great luck.” (p. 72-73)

Clearly, we live in a society that is somewhat fixated on a growth curve that is up-and-to-the right—everything must be constantly improving and getting bigger, more, more, more. But as I’ve come to understand, we all need dark nights of the soul: Growth requires death. (Just as a garden requires compost.) Death of ideas, relationships, jobs, identities, wants and desires, and sometimes even people. It’s not necessarily what we want, but sometimes it is what we need in order to push us into a process of resurrection, where we have to get down on our knees until we learn to stand again.

Frankel also surfaced one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems, A Box Full of Darkness:

Someone I once loved gave me

A box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

That this, too, was a gift.

May we learn to take each thing as it comes, without judgment, but instead as an opportunity to find the lesson—or more importantly, let the lesson unfold, over time.

Elise Fissmer 7/27/22 Elise Fissmer 7/27/22

Allowing the Unknown

I made a video on Instagram last week about the difference between patience and waiting: While they may seem synonymous, waiting comes with expectation. You are biding your time for something you’ve already determined you want, or deserve. The outcome feels assured and certain, so long as you can wait a little longer. Patience, on the other end, is being open to the unknown, to let the future unfold. It’s very difficult. Too often, in our rush for certainty and reassurance, we cut off possibility. We limit the unlimited, according to one of my favorite healers, Anne Emerson. (If you are looking for someone to plumb your subconscious limiting beliefs, she’s the ticket.)

In that same vein, I recently interviewed Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. We spoke about a small moment in his book where he talks about the word decide, writing in a parenthetical: (The original Latin word for “decide,” decidere, means “to cut off,” as in slicing away alternatives; it’s a close cousin of words like “homicide” and “suicide.”) Deciding is a big deal, often monumental. We champion decision-making in our society—we like people who are active and engaged in life. Making decisions is theoretically how we propel ourselves forward. But it is a process of elimination, and we don’t spend as much time contemplating what is lost when we pick a path and move. We cut off potential. Roads not taken. I understand why we don’t contemplate this much because it’s paralyzing. Theoretically.

As always, there’s a balance between momentum and doing and also patience and being. I find myself in an unusual place—an opportunity to be still, to stay open to the unknown, to not really decide anything at all—after a lifetime of moving forward at a sometimes relentless pace. All this doing hasn’t always been by conscious choice—typically I’ve always had obligations and deadlines as cattle prods behind me, moving me through my career, or from project to project. But suddenly, I have a clear plate. My book is moving into production imminently. A ghostwriting gig is miraculously wrapped. Projects have either coalesced into tidy endings or dissolved into dust. I have things steadily marching forward—my podcast for one—but for the most part…I am finding myself free. Open. Not accounted for. And I’m not sure what I want to do next: Throw myself into another book proposal, take on additional consulting gigs, or just…wait. Or more precisely, to choose patience, and allow the not knowing to unfold. “I don’t know” is an invitation to the divine to show me what’s possible. I’ve always rushed to fill time with income-generating activities—all my time, really—and so resisting that urge is another big lesson for me that brings with it scarcity and fear. But I know I must push through. And step into the void. Voids—places of stillness, silence, darkness—are an opportunity for creativity. Absent the womb, there is no new life.

I recently inhaled The Wisdom of Not Knowing by Estelle Frankel, a stunning exploration of many of these themes couched in wisdom traditions and Judaism. I have a lot to say about this book—more to come!—but these words from Frankel ring true: “Now, as an adult, I see how this instinctual fear of the dark manifests as foreboding anxiety about the unknown future—that which I cannot see. We humans simply do not like ‘being in the dark’ about things. We prefer to ‘know’ and to understand things rather than wait for life to unfold and slowly reveal itself to us. The very expression—being in the dark—links our aversion to darkness with our uneasy feelings about the unknown.”

Here’s to allowing the darkness.

Elise Fissmer 7/20/22 Elise Fissmer 7/20/22

The Cutting Room Floor

This month, I’m working through the final revision of my book before it goes into production (copy-editing, et al) so that it can come out next year. This is my last chance to make substantive changes, which in my case, involves giving my manuscript a significant haircut. Looking at suggested cuts is hard. And it brings up lots of resistance. Normally, I walk to metabolize feedback—gaining literal distance on my laptop—but I can’t walk with my broken neck unless I catch a ride down to the flats (we live amongst hills), and so my usual strategy hasn’t been working. Instead, I’ve been pacing around my living room and even losing myself in TV. (I’m proud of myself for this, actually, I need to watch more TV.) With space, I can come back to my manuscript and recognize that yes, my editor is always right. On this round, my brother, also a book editor, chimed in as well. Mercilessly.

When I was in high school, I loved Irving Stone’s biographical novel about Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy. It’s been a minute since I read that book, but the way he described how Michelangelo would liberate his sculptures from marble has stayed with me. The sculpture was there; Michelangelo simply revealed it.

I was reminded of this in Arthur Brooks’ From Strength to Strength, when he writes:

Looking at a massive jade carving of the Buddha from the Qing dynasty, my guide offhandedly remarked that this was a good illustration of how the Eastern view of art differs from the Western view. “How so?” I asked.

Elliptically, he answered my question with a question: “What do you think of when I ask you to imagine a work of art yet to be started?”

“An empty canvas, I guess,” I responded.

“Right. That’s because you Westerners see art as being created from nothing. In the East, we believe the art already exists, and our job is simply to reveal it. It is not visible because we add something, but because we take away the parts that are not the art.”

While my image of unstarted art was an empty canvas, my guide told me that his was an uncarved block of jade, like the one that ultimately became the Buddha in front of us. My work of art doesn’t exist until I add images and paint. His already exists but is not visible until he takes away the stone that is not part of the sculpture within the block.

I think writing a book—even a book of nonfiction—is the same. You throw everything at the page, you mold it into a workable narrative structure, and then the book is actually made when you carve out every sentence that’s not essential. It’s a terrifying exercise though—particularly in a medium like stone—because once it’s removed, you can’t put it back. Yes, with a Word document, you can cut and paste, revert, etc.—but the energy is usually gone. It doesn’t work when reinstated. And the point is not to make it. If something can go, it should. You have to battle your own feelings of preciousness. You have to remind yourself that the reader doesn’t care that you love a sentence or two if they don’t serve the journey of the book.

It’s really hard, and I’ve had to develop a process that’s similar to how I weed clothing from my closet. If I have a sentimental attachment to something and it can’t be donated straight away, I pack it in a duffle, store it in a closet, and then in six months, I go through the bag to see if I’ve legitimately missed anything. When I realize the connection is truly gone, I give the contents of the bag away. With my book, I highlight passages recommended to be cut. I toss what feels easy, and leave the fragments I’m attached to in the manuscript until I’ve passed through the chapter enough to then HIGHLIGHT + DELETE.

Book writing aside, there’s something to be learned from this process. I’ve been put into an intimate relationship with ESSENTIALISM (also love the Greg McKeown book by this name) by virtue of the fact that having a broken neck—and a neck brace—is quite limiting. It’s been an invitation to simplify. Streamline. Strip things down. Weirdly, in terms of the space I’m finding in my days just by canceling everything not-essential, I feel more stable than I have in years.

And as for my manuscript, well, you all will hopefully be the judge of that. I used to fear that overwork would kill the underlying energy, but I recognize now that that was just an excuse for speed. (Typically I’m very fast at writing books; I’ve never worked so hard and so long on anything, ever.) If the energy of a passage dies, you simply move it forward and re-write.

I saw a clip of Olympic runner Alexi Pappas on Instagram this week; she was being interviewed by Rich Roll. And she said something striking about her training and what she’s been taught about the Law of Thirds. (In some ways, going back to my post about Resistance, this is very Gurdjeffian.)

She explained after a particularly bad day of running, her Olympic coach said: “When you’re chasing a dream or doing anything hard, you’re meant to feel good a third of the time. Okay a third of the time. And crappy a third of the time. And if the ratio is roughly in that range, you’re doing fine. So today was the crappy day along your dream chasing. And if the ratio is off and you feel good all the time, or bad all the time, then you have to look at that: You’re fatiguing or you’re not trying hard enough.”

This holds for writing a book, too; It’s hard, often. But that’s what makes it a dream worth chasing. And if it’s not pushing you to the point of defeat, it’s not a big enough dream.

Elise Fissmer 7/13/22 Elise Fissmer 7/13/22

Broken Robot

As it turns out, when I fell off a horse two weeks ago, I actually broke my neck. I fractured my C2 in two places, though it is stable and in place: I’m wearing a brace for four weeks and then should be absolutely fine. In fact, when I asked my neurosurgeon if he thought I’d ever be able to ride a horse again, he told me that I should ride a horse again, and soon. Just no jumping. Chiller horses. But to metaphorically and literally, get back in the saddle. (As mentioned, I also upgraded my helmet to a MIPS trauma helmet.) I’m set to ride again mid-August, back in Montana.

I spent a whirlwind 24-hours last week in the hospital. When I fell, I thought I was fine, because I wasn’t experiencing any significant symptoms. (For the concussion, no headache, nausea, sight issues; for my neck, no radiating pain into my arms, no difficulty breathing.) I didn’t go to the hospital for a CT scan. In retrospect—for my loss of consciousness alone—this was a very poor choice. A ridiculous choice. I walked around for a week with a broken neck, trying to do things, like pack and clean our cabin. I flew, though I let my husband carry our bags. I was in a lot of pain, but still felt like I should, you know, do my part. Because I’m FINE. Don’t worry about me. I don’t want to be a bother over here.

And I felt bad about myself. When we landed back in LA on Saturday, I sat on the couch and watched TV, eyeing our abandoned luggage in the living room. Normally, I unpack right away, do laundry, get the mail, put the house in order. I just couldn’t do it, because PAIN. When Sunday rolled around, my husband unpacked and did laundry unprompted—he’s a great guy, but this is a minor miracle—and I felt terrible and anxious about it. We even ordered breakfast via Doordash. Who does that?

Monday was Fourth of July and I stayed on the couch, watching the full season of Maggie on Hulu (loved! psychics!), hating and berating myself for letting my kids zone out on iPads while I didn’t do the responsible thing, which would have been to begin to work on my final round of book revisions.

Wednesday, I managed to snag an appointment with my wonderful osteopath, who is impossible to see (miraculous cancellation). She asked me for my CT-scan, balked when I told her I hadn’t had one done, put her hands on me, remarked I was totally disordered and asked me to get imaging done ASAP and to see a neurologist for my TBI (concussions are no joke). Long story short, I ended up at the hospital, a variation of a walking miracle. As one nurse said to me: “Someone was holding you when you fell.” I know this is true; I had already felt it. I don’t feel like it’s my time to go. (And yes, I’m incredibly grateful that I’m still here.)

Now that I’m home, I don’t exactly know how to feel. I come from a long line of under-reactors, which makes it difficult for me to understand the right response. I recognize that this is a big deal, and yet, it could be so much worse. I’m pretty fine. I don’t even have to sleep in my brace. I can’t pick anything up off the floor, lift anything with any weight, or look down, but hey, not bad considering. I can type this email. Cognitively I seem to be fine. (Just tired, I’m sleeping a lot.) I’m back to reading books. But how, exactly, am I supposed to feel?

My friend Jen Walsh calls this Broken Robot syndrome. I’ve been literally grounded, and yet I know no other way than to keep carrying on: Trying to be productive to the same standards, even though my body is immobile from the shoulders up. I recognize that this is a problem, and yet I can’t stop. (In many ways, this is what the book I’m writing is about.)

This Broken Robot is still processing: Right-sizing my response seems to be the main lesson. Finding the temerity to say things like, “Hey, I’m not okay.” Daring to be an inconvenience by having needs. Not minimizing my experience because I’m worried it would be a disturbance. Saying that awful two-word phrase with abandon—“I’m fine”—which my friend, astrologer/psychologist Jen Freed says is an acronym for “Feelings Inside Not Expressed.”

Tell me about yourselves, fellow Broken Robots. I fear a majority of women bear this badge. (And certainly some men, too.)

Elise Fissmer 7/12/22 Elise Fissmer 7/12/22

A Spirit Date

Last October, I was at a group dinner with friends—some new, some old—and someone asked me and my friend Richard Christiansen how we first met. I explained that we had actually met almost a decade ago, when I wrote a story about him and some other Australians for Marie Claire, but that he didn’t really remember me. And then we encountered each other on a work project maybe five years after that, but very briefly. At the time, Richard and his creative agency, Chandelier, were doing much of the most compelling branding work around. I’ve always admired him as a visionary genius. Flash forward to the beginning of COVID, when Richard asked me for a call. I didn’t know why, and I hate talking on the phone, but was happy to oblige. We stayed on the line for two hours, talking about books like Erosion by Terry Tempest Williams, our collective runaway consumption habits, the point of life. Shortly after, he sent me a box of vegetables and honey from Flamingo Estate, the gorgeous brand that he spun up in the first months of the pandemic, and we started talking regularly. And then traveling together. In the span of a year, or months really, he became one of my very closest friends—in fact, I didn’t realize that you could make close friends in such a short period of time. Or this late in life.

After dinner, when we were doing the dishes together, Richard told me that I had gotten the story wrong: “YOU asked ME for a call,” he told me. “I had no idea why we were getting on the phone, or what you wanted.”

“Wait, what? There’s no way…you know how introverted I am. Why would I have asked you for a call?”

We stared at each other for a minute before scrolling through our phones to look for receipts on the initial outreach. We couldn’t find any. We still have no idea how we ended up on the phone. I think it was divine intervention. A spirit date.

I offer this anecdote only because A. It’s never too late to make best friends, and B. Pay attention to the ways the universe plays matchmaker, romantic and otherwise. Say okay to phone dates, coffee dates, and real dates. If a relationship feels energetically important—or like it keeps glancing against your orbit—it's probably essential to your growth. I often think of a friend named M, who met her husband the month she made a deal with herself to say yes to every invitation for 30 straight days.

I’ll tell you more about Richard and his genius in the coming months—I concussed myself last week (more on that below) and this is the most I can offer today—but please check out the incredible world he’s created at Flamingo Estate. I use all his bath and body products, write to the flicker of his candles, and his spicy dried Harry’s Berries are the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

Elise Fissmer 6/30/22 Elise Fissmer 6/30/22

Learning to Surrender

I grew up with horses. My dad served as a doctor in the South African army where he fell in love with riding, and after he did his residency at the Mayo Clinic, he decided he wanted to have a ranch. That was financial delusion, but he and my mom did resolve to live somewhere with land, where they could have horses. We lived up a dirt road in a valley with chickens, cats, dogs, and when I was young, two horses named Nadia and Tilly (Nadia after Nadia Comaneci, naturally). I loved those quarter horses. Tilly was round and slow; Nadia, the opposite. It became my primary “chore” to take care of them: To give them hay twice a day, to groom them, and to take them out for rides. My brother and I rode up the creek into the woods daily during the summer. I cannot imagine letting my kids joyride around on horseback in the forest, but it was a different time.

Being in charge of a massive animal—and keeping both of you safe—is a tremendous amount of responsibility for a kid, and that’s kind of the point. It was a privilege. From about 10 to 14, I started doing endurance horseback rides with my dad: These are 25, 50, 75, or even 100 mile rides that happen all over the country, though we rode throughout the Pacific Northwest. You train for months—it’s like marathoning—and there are vet checks every 10 or 12 miles with mandatory breaks for rehydration and rest. I never rode with my dad—he was too fast and competitive—only with lovely older women who wanted to dilly dally with me and baby our horses along the way.

Early in my endurance riding career, it was time for Nadia to retire, and my parents bought me a black Arabian named Ebony, maybe the most special horse I’ve ever known. I loved Ebony. Horses are energetic creatures—they feel with their whole bodies—and I knew him well, but in addition, we had our own special language. He would gently nibble on my toes when my feet were in the stirrups, an equivalent of a feathery kiss. He’d give me knowing looks, little nudges. When I wasn’t riding him, I was in the pasture, grooming him, hanging out with him, braiding ribbons into his hair.

On the last endurance ride we ever did, we were nearing the finish line at mile 49, taking our time at a slow trot, when Ebony put his hoof on a round rock and collapsed forward on his leg. Lameness in horses is usually subtle—this was not. Kay, the woman I was riding with, left me to go and find my dad at the finish line, and I waited with Ebony, in distraught tears. I knew his foot was broken. Because he told me.

Back at the base camp, the vet thought Ebony had pulled his suspensory ligament (like pulling an Achilles heel), but I knew better. And when we got back to Montana, our vet confirmed my suspicion. He had broken the equivalent of his “big toe”—it had fractured when he was a young horse and he rebroke it when I was on his back. My parents will never understand the depths of my gratitude that they paid for very expensive surgery to put pins in his foot—and he healed. But I never rode him again. We gave him back to his previous owner, Deb, and she rehabilitated him. I never went to visit him.

This was nearly 30 years ago. I went to boarding school, my dad stopped riding a few years later, and horses disappeared from our life. And then, in 2019, a friend told me she was heading to a private guest ranch near Missoula and I managed to snag a cabin for my family the same week. I thought it would be a little lame—nose-to-tail walking with some trotting—but that it would be a good chance for Max (six at the time) to get on a horse. Instead, we’ve found a new family tradition where we get to really ride—like full-on ride—through the terrain I grew up in. During our first summer there, after we lit out across a meadow at a near gallop, my husband saw me wiping my face and asked me why I was crying.

“Tears of joy,” I explained.

“Wait, what?” He asked, as he clutched his saddle horn to keep it from driving into his stomach. Rob felt close to tears for a different reason. (He is a non-rider: “Do you know how stressful this week is for me just to not die?”)

No, but really: Getting back on horses after such a long stay away released something in me—a pocket of joy along with the invitation to begin to process my grief about Ebony, which I had stashed away as a tween.

Here’s the thing about riding horses: They give you the illusion of control—you have the reins after all—but when you’re going flat-out, or swimming a river together, or climbing a mountain, there’s really no mystery about who is in charge. And yet, faith must run in both directions, as well as trust. And broken trust—that I was responsible for Ebony and Ebony got hurt—is what I needed to address.

Last summer, I went to Sedona with some friends for a retreat. We hiked to a river and then were led through a long and powerful meditation. Maybe it was the nearby Vortex, maybe it was the crystal palaces in town, maybe it was the Divine, but as I laid on a rock heated by the midday sun, I talked to Ebony. Or actually, Ebony came to me and said: “Thank you for saving my life. Sometimes people get hurt and it’s not your fault. And it’s not always your place or job to rehabilitate them. It is not abandonment: You weren’t the only person who loved me, and you weren’t the only one who could help me. You were just a child. I can’t forgive you because there’s nothing to forgive.” Those were my notes when I came out of the meditation. There’s something about the straightforward, unemotional tone that felt true. After all, I expected to be berated, though the only thing I really wanted to hear was that he would be waiting for me on the other side. And maybe he will be.

I bought a totem for Ebony in Sedona—a carved black horse with little turquoise eyes—and I wear it when I ride. Man, I miss him. But I have so much gratitude for everything he taught me about power, control, and surrender—as well as an early and advanced education in reading energy in the body. For that, horses are our greatest teachers. And perhaps most poignantly, I’m grateful for the late-in-life lesson about responsibility: When is it appropriate, and when is it over-responsibility? It is so hard to find that line. When a creature—an animal, a child, a friend or partner in need, feels like (or is) a dependent—when is it correct to carry a burden for them, and when is it an overreach? And are we always the ones most-equipped to help? This feels like an essential and very difficult question—and I’m curious for your thoughts.

Elise Fissmer 6/22/22 Elise Fissmer 6/22/22

The Power of Resistance

Early this year, I sat at dinner with one of my long-time friends, Taylor, a TV writer, catching up. We chatted about our respective sons, and then the conversation turned to my book. I had received notes from my editor earlier that week asking me to restructure each chapter according to a formula and so I had spent the intervening days sitting on the floor, physically cutting my book up and taping sections back together. “Ugh Taylor,” I wailed. “I don’t want my book to be formulaic. What if this ruins my book?”

He looked at me, amused, waiting for me to finish my tantrum. “I haven’t read your book,” he noted. “But I can tell you that she’s right. What’s the note behind the note?”

I thought for a minute. “That she’s struggling to follow my argument.”

“Bingo,” he replied.

“But I am SO TIRED. I thought I was on the 90-yard line,” I responded.

“No, you’re not on the 90-yard line, you’re in the belly of the beast. You’re battling resistance, and when you get through it, your book will be so much better.” After dinner, I drove Taylor home and he pressed his copy of Stephen Pressfield’s tiny book, Do the Work, into my hands. At a slim 100-odd pages, I powered it down that night. Taylor was right: I was in the belly of the beast and it is the suckiest place to be. Chances are, if you’re a creative, you’ve been there with me, feeling like you can’t possibly put any more work into something, and that the overwork will only make the project worse. Well, six months later, I’m still working on my book, and with every spike of resistance that I’ve learned to work through, my book gets better. (And yes, I really am on the 90 or 95-yard line now.)

At various points in my life and career, I’ve also been the resistance—slowing projects down, pushing them in a different direction, or shutting them down for a re-imagining. And I’ve been able to sense how irritating this can be. “You’re too negative.” “Why are you resistant?” etc. But turning my head away, or telling someone to proceed anyway, or lying and saying that something is ready for the world, is not always true or right. And so I’ve continued to wear this mantle because it feels both honest and important. Rubber stamping our way through life is not what we’re being called to do.

So it was with great pleasure that I picked up one of Cynthia Bourgeault’s difficult but stunning book, The Holy Trinity and the Law of Three. An Episcopalian minister, Bourgeault is one of my favorite writers on wisdom teachers, Mary Magdalene, and an evolving Christianity—and I particularly love her writings about the Armenian mystic G.I. Gurdjieff. (For that, look at The Eye of the Heart—I’ve read Gurdjieff directly and it is tough and heady stuff—Bourgeault’s version is much more understandable.) In The Holy Trinity, she explores the function of The Trinity in Christianity, arguing that we have grossly misunderstood its power. She posits that it represents a ternary rather than a binary system—and that it’s something of an alchemical key to how the universe evolves and moves forward energetically. (Stick with me.)

She writes:

Most of the world’s ancient metaphysical paradigms are binary systems. That is to say, they function on the principle of paired opposites. Yin/yang is an obvious example. In binary systems the universe is experienced as created and sustained through the symmetrical interplay of the great polarities: male and female, light and darkness, conscious and unconscious, yin and yang, prkriti and purusha.

The categories masculine and feminine also belong to a binary system; in fact, they are perhaps the primordial binary system within creation. Life sustains and expresses itself in the tension of opposites, and a slackening of this tension through an imbalance of the parts leads to a collapse of the whole system.

A ternary system envisions a distinctly different mix. In place of paired opposites, the interplay of the two polarities calls forth a third, which is the “mediating” or “reconciling” principle between them. In contrast to a binary system, which finds stability in the balance of opposites, the ternary system stipulates a third force that emerges as the necessary mediation of these opposites and that in turn (and this is the really crucial point) generates a synthesis at a whole new level.

Bourgeault is talking about Gurdjieff’s “Law of Three” here: That for anything to move forward, three forces must be present: Affirming, Denying, Reconciling. The “Denying” force, the “negative,” is resistance. And it is as critical as forward movement or positivity in order to create essential growth.* Resistance is a critical source of momentum.

This revelation has changed my thinking about everything, and I hope it helps you!

*Bourgeault cites a few examples of this in nature. For example, a seed (positive or affirming force) meets moist soil (negative or denying force), but cannot grow without the third force of sunlight (reconciling).

Elise Fissmer 6/19/22 Elise Fissmer 6/19/22

The Best Books About Business, Leadership, and Time Management

Leadership styles are varied. When I led a team, I always prioritized autonomy, since I personally don’t like being managed. I figured my best recourse was to ensure people were supported and had what they needed, had clear deliverables and expectations, and freedom to determine how and when they wanted to do their work. (Within some limits.) I primarily lead creatives, and you can’t turn on creativity like a spigot. I’ve had the privilege of knowing and working with Brené Brown, which makes Dare to Lead an easy favorite. I loved Oliver Burkeman’s 4,000 Weeks, Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing, and Sydney Finklestein’s Superbosses, in particular.

Please, as always, drop recommendations in the comments, I am always all ears for more books to read. The link below will take you to a shelf I curated on Bookshop with my picks—I earn an affiliate commission there, but it is ALWAYS MY PREFERENCE that you shop at and support your local bookseller, so no pressure to buy via Bookshop. This is the easiest way for me to organize and keep picks updated. Happy reading!

Elise Fissmer 6/19/22 Elise Fissmer 6/19/22

The Best Books About Creativity & Writing

Whether you’re trying to get your creativity flowing in general (The Artist’s Way), are contemplating writing a book (The Art of Memoir, Bird by Bird), or are contending with writer’s block and resistance (Do the Work), some antidotes await.

Elise Fissmer 6/18/22 Elise Fissmer 6/18/22

Some of My Favorite Memoirs

Hopefully there’s something for everyone in this mix—Mary Karr, Anne Lamott, Nora McInerny, Jia Tolentino, Roxane Gay. Memoir is one of my favorite categories, so very excited to hear what you love.

Please, as always, drop recommendations in the comments, I am always all ears for recommendations. The link below will take you to a shelf I curated on Bookshop with my picks—I earn an affiliate commission there, but it is ALWAYS MY PREFERENCE that you shop at and support your local bookseller, so no pressure to buy via Bookshop. This is the easiest way for me to organize and keep picks updated. Happy reading!

Elise Fissmer 6/18/22 Elise Fissmer 6/18/22

The Best Books About Civics & Social Justice

This is a wide and complex issue, and I will frankly never be done reading into how civilizations evolve (and equity fails). I also have shelves devoted to feminism & patriarchy, as well as trauma.

Elise Fissmer 6/18/22 Elise Fissmer 6/18/22

The Best Books About Feminism & Patriarchy

These are vast topic spaces, with myriad voices—many voices that have been culturally oppressed for millennia (i.e. women). I’ve tried to reflect a good range, though am always trying to read as widely as possible as feminism, in particular, was co-opted by white women.

Elise Fissmer 6/15/22 Elise Fissmer 6/15/22

Whose Lap Can You Sit On?

I recently drove up to Santa Barbara to spend the day with my friend, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, in part so we could record an episode of Pulling the Thread. As one of my long-time mentors, Jen and I have spent a lot of time together during this period that she calls her “sacred pause,” which is the transitional space between her high-powered career at WME and whatever she brings into the world next. I have been in my own version of a sacred pause, however halting it has felt. It has been one of the quietest periods of my life, yet I’ve also been busy pulling a book out of my throat, launching my own podcast, etc.

After I stopped taping, Jen and I kept talking. She made an off-hand remark about someone being the sort of person with a lap you can actually sit on. I wanted to know what she meant, particularly in how it applies to adults like us. “Do you remember how when you were a kid, and you’d sit in an adult’s lap, there were the people where you could immediately relax, and just let go?” She asked. “And then other people where you were kind of in a squat, holding yourself, afraid to let them feel your body weight?” I immediately understood what she meant. I can feel it now in my body, as I type, that tensing, that fear of being too much, too overwhelming with my own needs.

I’ve always struggled to accept support, particularly at work. Throughout my career, I’ve never had an assistant—I don’t know how to delegate, or feel comfortable passing on work that I could just as well do myself. I’ve always had a great team, but everyone works autonomously, which is how I always preferred to work, too.

A few months ago, I had dinner with the delightful Danielle Robay, who engaged in some reverse mentoring: “You need help. There are a lot of people offering to help you, including me! ACCEPT HELP.” I didn’t know how, exactly, but I told her I’d try. I knew I needed to figure out how to get bigger. And I couldn’t do it on my own. She introduced me to Missy Modell, who I’ve been working with for a few months to get organized around what I’m putting into the world. And every week (or two), she pries a few more things out of my hands. (Like my Mailchimp PW, as insisting I send a newsletter by myself means that I never send a newsletter. The goal is to make this a weekly thing.)

It’s a process, this accepting help thing. Learning to relax into support. Maybe sitting on someone’s lap is a weird metaphor for an adult woman, but it works for me. I hold the image in my mind whenever I feel the urge to pull my weight back from others who are willing to help me carry the load.

Elise Fissmer 6/14/22 Elise Fissmer 6/14/22

The Best Books About Physical Health & Diet

This is a wide topic—for issues like addiction, trauma, etc., which all effect the body, please see those devoted shelves. My hands-down favorite book ever about healing is Cured, by Jeffrey Rediger. A must read. I’ve curated a wider selection across specific diet plans, to books about our collective body dysmorphia, to books about back pain and the connection to the mind.

Elise Fissmer 6/14/22 Elise Fissmer 6/14/22

The Best Books About Mental and Emotional Health

This is obviously an incredibly wide and nebulous category (I also have shelves devoted to addiction, trauma, relationships, death and dying, spirituality, etc. and tried not to do too much duplication here). Which means this is a bit of a mish-mash. There’s Ellen Vora’s book, The Anatomy of Anxiety, Andrew Solomon’s Noonday Demon, and a few books about our favorite diagnosis to give each other: Narcissism. I love Craig Malkin’s take on it, and the idea of healthy narcissism (which is theoretically where we should all be on the spectrum). I also included a bunch of books about emotions: There’s Susan David’s Emotional Agility, Lisa Feldman Barrett’s How Emotions Are Made, Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart, and more. Tell me what I’m missing!

Elise Fissmer 6/10/22 Elise Fissmer 6/10/22

The Best Books About Environmental Health

We recognize we must do something about climate change and the warming planet, and yet it’s a paralyzing—far too big for any one of us, as much as corporations would shift responsibility onto our shoulders. (Recycle!) Ultimately, we must take collective action and find powerful technological solutions to sequester carbon and stop burning fossil fuels, all while recognizing that we will continue to experience a lot more climate disruption. On this shelf, you’ll find pessimistic takes (The Uninhabitable Earth) and optimistic turns (Saving Us), as well as stories from some of our most heroic scientists, like Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree, and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.