فصل 03

CHAPTER 3

The Lie

I’M NOT GOOD ENOUGH

I am a workaholic.

And I don’t say that lightly. The words are heavy; the knowledge makes my heart hurt. Though if I give myself a little grace, then the truth is I am a recovering workaholic.

I am a recovering workaholic, and I say those words with the same trepidation and shame that might exist were I to tell you that I had any other kind of addiction.

I looked up the definition just now, even though I’ve been certain of my diagnosis for a couple of years. My online dictionary app describes workaholic as “a person who feels compelled to work excessively.”

Compelled.

That’s a pretty strong word, isn’t it? I can’t be the only one who hears it and immediately thinks of The Exorcist and holy water and a terrified priest. But compelled feels accurate, like something inside of you that won’t take no for an answer, like something you do without conscious thought.

Did I feel compelled to work nonstop?

Without question.

Even now I am typing this workaholic chapter at 537 in the morning because waking up to get my word count in at five o’clock is the only way I can actually manage to write books, run a media company, and raise a family at the same time. I still feel compelled to work until I’m exhausted, physically ill, pissed off at the world, or unable to focus my eyes—but at least they don’t all happen at the same time anymore. I feel like I’m gaining on this problem.

Part of the reason I work so much is simple I love my job. No, I freaking love my job. The people I work with are some of the kindest, coolest, most creative cats you’ll ever meet. Each person on my team had to be vetted, and each role had to go through a couple of people before we got it right. Everyone had to be trained and had to train me right back on how to manage them and be a boss. I’ve spent years building this team. When I walk in and it’s running well, when one person is creating the speaker lineup for our next live event, and someone else is taking the prettiest pictures you’ve ever seen, and the business team is booking new partnerships with some of the biggest brands on the planet, I feel proud. Proud to the very bottom of my toes that I—a high school graduate from the sticks—have put this together. Beyond that, my heart wants to burst because all of these people are working their butts off for my dream.

I had this fluffy, country-mouse idea that we could create a space on the internet that lifts up women from every walk of life, that makes them feel encouraged, that makes them feel like they have friends, that offers them help and advice and does it with positivity at all times. And you know what? It’s totally working!

When I started blogging, only my mom and a few fiercely loyal aunts read the website. Now my digital reach is somewhere in the millions and climbing every day. My online tribe is awesome. I admire them, and on most days I think they admire me too—and I’m proud that I’ve created a business manifestation of my faith in action. Huzzah!

Then I go home.

At home, Sawyer is fighting with Ford over who gets which Lego piece. Jackson has a little attitude he picked up from someone at school, and if he rolls his eyes at me one more time, Lord Jesus, I’m going to rip off both his arms and whack him over the head with them. The baby is teething and fussy, and tomorrow is pajama day at preschool, but I’m going to miss it because I have a business trip. Dave and I are ships in the night, and we haven’t had a date night in weeks—and yesterday I snapped at him over prepackaged lunches and then sobbed all over my pajamas because I felt like such a jerk. And, and, and . . . being a mom is hard work. I struggle with it all the time in a hundred different ways.

But being at work? Oh man, I have that in the bag! I excel at being at work. I am the Babe Ruth of knocking it out of the park in the lifestyle media sector!

So when given the choice between crushing it at the office or barely hanging on at home, I got in the habit of working, working, and working some more. Every time I succeeded in business, I counted it as validation that I was making the right choice.

But wait, folks. There’s more . . .

You didn’t think a major problem like this was caused by only one thing, did you? No way! Nobody’s psychosis is one layer deep. I am a Vidalia onion of issues. I’ve got a cartload of emotional baggage, so let’s unpack some.

I am the baby of four children, and by the time my parents got around to my childhood, their marriage was deeply in trouble. Even though I was the youngest, I was a very self-sufficient child, and I think the combo of those two things meant that I was largely ignored—unless I did something good.

If I got an A on a test . . .

If I scored a goal in the soccer game . . .

If I got a part in the school play . . .

When I succeeded, I got praise and attention; I felt liked and accepted. But the moment the audience stopped clapping, it all went back to the way it was before.

What this taught me as a child—and what I carried into adulthood, as I discovered amid a load of therapy—is the belief that in order to be loved, I felt I needed to produce something.

Fast-forward to me in my thirties, and you’ll see that it’s nearly impossible for me to sit still. I am constantly moving and going and rushing through life. The second I achieve one goal, and I mean the second it’s accomplished, I immediately think, Okay, what next? I struggle to celebrate or enjoy any victory, no matter how big, because I’m always mindful of something bigger I could be doing instead. At work I’m constantly at it. When I get home, I do dishes and organize cabinets and make a list of to-dos that will be impossible to accomplish in this lifetime or the next.

This need to prove my worth, coupled with the fact that I’m good at my career, made me one heck of a workaholic—yet I had no idea that I was one, or that my work was grievously affecting my health and the happiness of my family.

The very first time I had facial paralysis, I was nineteen years old. I was at the tail end of the first long, hard year with Dave, and I knew the end was in sight. Not the end of the year—the end of our relationship altogether. He seemed more and more detached, and the long-distance relationship that we were trying so hard to make work just wouldn’t. I could feel it coming—just like Phil Collins in that one song with the big drum solo—and I started to get anxious. I handled that anxiety the way I’d handled every other kind in my life I doubled down at work. My already full plate became fuller. I wasn’t even conscious of what I was trying to do; maybe I told myself that if I didn’t stop to think about something bad happening, then it likely wouldn’t.

One morning I woke up and noticed that my left eye was blinking half a second slower than my right. I assumed I was tired from work and wondered if I needed glasses. By the afternoon, my tongue started to tingle and then lost feeling completely. I went to the doctor, worried I might be having a stroke. That was the first time I’d ever heard of Bell’s palsy. A quick Google search informed me that it was a sometimes temporary paralysis that causes damage to the nerves that control the movement of facial muscles. Within days I couldn’t close my left eye, move my mouth, or feel anything on the left side of my face. I don’t know why it’s only one side of the face, but I can tell you, it only adds to the overall charm.

I had to wear an eye patch—which, by the way, is super sexy and basically every nineteen-year-old girl’s dream. Because I couldn’t move my lips, my speech was slurred and hard to understand. When I chewed I had to hold my mouth closed with my fingers for fear that food would fly out and kamikaze to the floor. The nerve damage causes neuralgia, which is also incredibly painful. During that time I felt so sorry for myself.

Even though it was fifteen years ago, I remember exactly how I felt when I looked in the mirror and realized how disfigured my face actually was. How I tried—in vain—to put on eyeliner or mascara, as if adding makeup would somehow make the paralysis go away. Or how each time I got the makeup on, I would inevitably cry it right back off. I spent those weeks perpetually worried, weighed down by the doctor’s prognosis that this could last a few days or months on end. There was no way to be sure.

In retrospect, I never thought of myself as conceited. I never wore makeup or styled my hair until I was an adult, but having Bell’s palsy made me hyperaware of the way I looked. I became completely depressed. I only got out of bed to go to work, and as soon as I got back home, I got back under the covers. I never wanted to leave my bed or even answer the phone. On the rare occasion that a friend talked me into leaving my apartment, I was mortified at the way people stared at me or pitied me when I tried to speak.

In the midst of it all, the bullet I had been trying to dodge found its mark. Dave broke up with me.

Okay, yes, breaking up with a girl with a paralyzed face was not his finest moment, and I feel the need to point out that sometimes we do stupid things that hurt our loved ones when we’re trying to figure ourselves out. Since the moment we got back together, though (which happened when my face was still broken, by the way), he has been an incredible partner. The point is that I’d made myself severely ill trying to keep something inevitable from happening. When the palsy finally subsided a month later, I was beyond thankful, relieved that the worst was behind me. I chalked up the experience to a onetime bout of terrible luck.

A few years later Dave and I decided to take our first trip to Europe. This was back when we were child-free and could just dream up plans like, “What if we went to Europe?” With no babies or dogs or real responsibility, we just got ourselves a flight and toured old churches with our passports buried under our clothes for fear the “gypsies” we had heard about would rob us. God bless us.

When we made it to Florence, it was everything I dreamed Italy would be. We ate loads of pasta, walked the cobblestone streets, and made out like it was our part-time job. We spent whole afternoons imagining our future and what we would name our unborn dream children. It was one of the most romantic experiences of my life.

By the time we got to Venice a few days later, my tongue had started to go numb.

I stood in an Italian hotel room and sobbed because I knew the palsy had come back. Our beautiful vacation was now being marred by the stress of trying to get medical help in another country. As an aside, using my English-to-Italian translation guidebook to explain to a Venetian pharmacist that I needed an eye patch is still one of the most comical experiences of my life! Also, the eye patch—plus my paralyzed face—meant that we got to go to the front of every line in customs. Silver lining.

Ever the comedians, Dave and I made jokes about the assets of such an illness. For example, I did an amazing Sammy Davis Jr. impersonation! Also, the pirate jokes were endless. Yar! It wasn’t until we arrived in Paris—a lifelong dream destination of mine—that even jokes couldn’t lift my spirits. As we walked through the Champ de Mars, I realized the photo I had always dreamed of—me in front of the Eiffel Tower—would forever be a reminder of this illness. As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve never felt sorrier for myself than in that moment. In that old photograph (which you can Google, by the way, because I’m not afraid to share any pic on the internet, apparently), I’m standing alone in front of the tower, bundled up for the weather. I’m wearing sunglasses to try and hide the eye patch, and since a smile would have only worked on one half of my face, I just did nothing at all.

When we got back home, the doctor put me on steroids and sent me to see a neurologist to make sure the palsy wasn’t a symptom of something greater. After the doctors didn’t find the brain tumor I was sure was there, they gave me an interesting prognosis. Both times I’d gotten palsy I’d been under extreme stress. Like many women, I was working so hard and not taking good care of myself. I argued that this couldn’t be the case. After all, I’d gotten sick again while on a romantic vacation. That’s when Dave pointed out that it was the first vacation we’d taken in three years. Three years of sixty-hour weeks followed by one two-week break does not a decompressed girl make. I was also at the beginning of launching a business, and I was staying busy, desperate to prove myself. We were trying to get pregnant at the time, and though I was only twenty-four, month after month after month had passed by without a baby. Rather than managing that stress, I had just given myself more things to do.

Our bodies are incredible. They can do unbelievable things. They will also tell you exactly what they need if you’re willing to listen. And if you’re not, if you try to do too many things without rest, they will absolutely shut down to get what they need.

About three years ago I started to develop symptoms of vertigo. I’d stand up at work, and the room would sway around me. I felt dizzy throughout the day, my eyes had trouble focusing, and I spent most of my time feeling nauseous. For weeks I assumed I must need more sleep, more water, or less Diet Coke. When it got so bad I was afraid to drive with my kids in the car, I decided to see a doctor.

I saw so many doctors.

Internists, allergists, ENTs . . . Nobody could quite figure it out. I ate well. I was healthy. I ran marathons, for goodness’ sakes. They all agreed I had vertigo but couldn’t definitively tell me why. Eventually the ENT suggested it was seasonal vertigo brought on by my allergies, and since no one else had a better idea, I went with it. “Take an allergy pill every day,” he told me. So I did.

Every night, without fail, I took my pill. Sometimes when the spinning got really bad, I took a second one, which made me crazy drowsy, but at least it calmed the vertigo. I did this for over a year and resigned myself to the fact that life would be a little dizzier forever. It wasn’t a big deal, I told myself. It only meant that instead of giving 100 percent, I now would need to give 130 percent to make up for not being able to work as fast anymore. It sounds crazy to write that, but in my overachieving mind, it made absolute sense.

Then, about two years ago, I heard about a homeopathic doctor who specialized in vertigo. I’d never gone to a homeopathic doctor in my life, but at that point if someone had said I could cure my constant nausea with voodoo and the sacrifice of a spring chicken, I would have seriously considered it.

I went to meet with him, his ponytail, his shirt made of organic hemp, and his life-sized statue of Ganesh, and I tried to keep an open mind while he talked into the air beside him instead of to me. I laid out the whole story of when I got sick and how it affected me, and he asked a hundred questions about my emotions, my childhood, and the deeper reasons why I felt a certain way. I kept thinking, When is he going to prescribe some medicine? Why are we still talking about stress? And, What’s the deal with that little collection of crystals? Before I’d gone to him I assumed homeopathic doctors tell you to stop your sugar intake, or, God forbid, stop eating dairy because it messes with your chakras or whatever.

But after two hours of me talking, he abruptly interrupted and announced to the room, “No more. I know what’s wrong!”

Then he blew me away. He pointed out that my vertigo had come on for the first time when I was under extreme stress at work. And every time it got so bad that I couldn’t even lift my head off a pillow? It was because the stress had gotten worse.

That time I had a big turnover of staff at Chic? Vertigo. That time I was so excited to write my first contracted book but then was positive it was terrible and I’d be fired and have to pay back the advance? Vertigo. In every single instance, my vertigo was a physical response to an emotional problem. A physical response to an emotional problem.

I didn’t even know our bodies did that!

Okay, I knew it in the same way that every other God-fearing, law-abiding woman who watched Oprah and heard about self-care knows it, but I grew up in the country. I got a shotgun for my thirteenth birthday. I may have lived in LA for fourteen years, but my rub-some-dirt-on-it tendencies run deep. His words hit me like ice water, and now that I knew he was right, I immediately wanted to know how to fix it and get back to normal.

“Go home and do nothing,” he told me.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Go home and do nothing. Sit around, watch TV, spend an entire day on the sofa. Discover that your world doesn’t implode without you going a hundred miles an hour. Get up the next day and do it again.”

Verily I say unto you, dear reader, his words made me want to throw up. It sounds crazy—it is kind of crazy—but the idea of doing nothing makes my skin crawl. Even when I’m at home I’m constantly doing something. If I’m not taking care of the kids, I’m organizing the house, cleaning out my closet, or giving myself a DIY facial.

“What would happen to you if you stopped moving?” he asked me.

I shook my head in blind panic. The image of a shark floating to the surface of the ocean, dead from lack of movement, came to mind.

All I could think was, I don’t know, but it will be bad.

Talk about life-altering moments. Talk about someone holding a mirror up to your face and making you realize you’re not actually the person you think you are at all. I spent my days thinking up ways to help women live a better life, and the whole time I truly believed I was qualified to teach it because I was actually living it. Meanwhile, I wasn’t doing the most fundamental thing a woman needs to do before she can take care of anyone else take care of herself!

I needed a drastic life change.

I forced myself to stop working so many hours. I went to the office from nine thirty to four thirty and was shocked to discover that the world continued to spin on its axis. I pushed myself to rest, to sit and do nothing. It gave me massive anxiety, so I poured myself a glass of wine and kept right on sitting there. I started volunteering at the local homeless shelter. I took a hip-hop dance class. Turns out, I’m terrible at hip-hop dance class, but I love it so much I laugh like a toddler through the entire hour-long process. I looked for joy. I looked for peace.

I stopped drinking so much caffeine. I played with my kids. I did a lot of therapy. And then I did some more. I prayed. I looked up every scripture in the Bible that talks about rest. I had dinner with my girlfriends. I went on dates with my husband. I taught myself to take it one day at a time, to stop obsessing over the next victory, and to appreciate the simple parts of today. I learned to celebrate accomplishments, not with big flashy parties, but with taco nights or a great bottle of wine.

I acknowledged my own hard work and the achievements of my company, and I learned to rest in the knowledge that I will still be okay even if both of those things go away tomorrow. I studied the gospel and finally grasped the divine knowledge that I am loved and worthy and enough . . . as I am.

Learning to rest is an ongoing process. Like any other lifelong behavior, I constantly fight the desire to slip back into the role I’ve played for so long. They say the first step is admitting you have a problem, and two years ago I did just that. I learned that I am a recovering workaholic, but through this process, I also learned that I am a child of God—and that trumps everything else.

THINGS THAT HELPED ME . . .

1. I went to therapy. This could be the first thing I list for every single element I’ve worked through, but it’s especially real in this case. Were it not for my therapist, I never would have understood the connection between my childhood insecurities and my adult accomplishments. Were it not for my therapist, I never would have realized that the drive for accomplishment can actually be harmful. I cannot recommend therapy enough, and if I had Beyoncé’s money, the first thing I’d do is pay for therapy for every woman I could find. Ask your friends to recommend someone they like, or ask your gynecologist to refer you. A doctor for your lady parts knows the right kind of counselor for a woman. Trust me.

2. I hustled for joy. Work just as hard for fun moments, vacation moments, and pee-your-pants-laughing moments as you do for all the other things. I encourage you to take a walk, call a friend, have a glass of wine, enjoy a bubble bath, or take a long lunch. All of that work will be there when you get back, and a little time away can recharge your batteries and give you the energy to battle that ever-growing to-do list.

3. I reordered my list. When I ask most women to name the things on their priority list, they can throw them out there no problem kids, partner, work, faith, etc. The order may change, but the bullet points rarely do. You know what also rarely changes no matter how many women I talk to? Women actually putting themselves on their own priority list. You should be the very first of your priorities! Are you getting enough sleep, enough water, the right nutrition? You cannot take care of others well if you’re not first taking care of yourself. Also, one of the best ways to ensure that you stop trying to run from your problems is to face them head-on.