Redefining Success and Failure

I am definitely having a moment right now, and if you’re aware of my presence on social media then you’ve been with me on this journey and beared witness to the incredible success I’m having with my current body of art work. Throughout my life, I’ve used my social media platforms to celebrate the joy in my life…and only the joy. I LOVE that we are able to so easily share our joyful moments with each other in this way. I’m grateful for the ability to interact with you and watch your life unfold through Facebook and Instagram. But, as you are watching me have a successful moment, I want you to know that I’ve experienced an incredible amount of failure too. Most of which I’ve never shared publicly.

I’m greatly disappointed in the ways in which we tend to define success today and the comparisons we make to one another. I’m disappointed and struggle with the lenses we use to define success in our own lives and as we examine the lives of others. I know from the outside, at this present moment (according to social media) my life looks like a dream. And it is. Truly. I feel incredibly blessed. But before I arrived here, I had several bouts of failure. I have often felt incredibly insecure. I have often felt like its been a struggle to be taken seriously. And I’ve often felt lost or like I had no idea what I was doing. I don’t just mean as a career, I mean in everything. Parenting and being a wife, etc.

I was a stay at home mom. All too often when people asked me what I did for a living, when I would share that I was a stay at home mom, I was suddenly no longer interesting or intelligent. When I answered stay at home mom, the conversation would end. No follow up questions. And their replies to my questions would also immediately become really short and to the point, as if I wouldn’t understand what they were talking about or perhaps I wasn’t viewed as important so leaning into the conversation wasn’t important to them. I would describe myself as a support person…and it felt like few people cared. That’s just not interesting and it’s not generally viewed as success. We have created an environment where what you do “for money” defines who you are.

I gave up on a masters in special education, lacking the follow through and direction to complete it. I tried to sell Nerium as a side gig, I sold 0 product. None. Not one. I tried to sell books for another “work from home” company. Again, I sold 0 products. Not a single one. I opened an aerial arts studio, teaching circus arts to adults and children. I generally tell people that I closed this business because I couldn’t find balance between the business and my family life. That is 100% true. But what is also true is that I lost money with that business….every single month….for two years. I couldn’t sell the business, and had to liquidate all of my equipment at a fraction of it’s worth. Failure. But I don’t see that as just simply failure. I learned so much through that experience. And I gained so much through engaging with my community with that experience, and that felt like incredible success. And as a bonus, my kids watched me go out on a limb and have the balls to try something crazy. They saw it not work out. And they saw me recover from that, an incredibly important and empowering lesson to learn.

I still have not achieved financial success as defined by our culture. But all of these experiences have encouraged me to redefine success. I put myself out there through my art. I could have just as easily experienced a series of rejections and failures yet again, and that could easily be what my future holds, but this time…you supported me. I was vulnerable and you leaned into that. I’ve had so many beautiful and powerful interactions with people about what I’ve created and because of that, I am experiencing the “success” of a lifetime. It’s been so incredibly powerful and moving and meaningful that… I don’t need more than this. Connecting to my community this way has meant the world to me. Success. I’d like to encourage all of you to redefine success and failure. I’d like you to recognize that we all experience both of those things over and over again. That we need each other as support in both of those experiences. And most of all, I encourage you to lean in when you see someone being themselves, going out on a limb and putting themselves out there. Rally behind them. Show up for them. It’s scary and its hard to open yourself up like that. And if you find that you want to share of yourself, to follow your dream, to put yourself out there, I hope you’ll let me know so that I can show up for you. I want to be in your corner cheering you on.