Unacceptable Woman: Introduction

INTRODUCTION – A Message from Kathy When I say this book is a labor of love I truly mean it. Self love. The concept of The Unacceptable Woman came to me a few years ago when I was feeling like a complete failure. I was struggling to feel good about myself, and my life coach at the time asked me to close my eyes and tell her the first word that came to mind when I thought about myself, and I said “unacceptable”. I had no idea where that word came from because as instructed I hadn’t even given the answer too much thought – which was probably the point of the exercise. But there it was. It was an “ah-ha” moment for me. As my coach probed and asked, “So what about you is unacceptable?” At first, I shrugged. But as I took the time to think deeper, I realized that throughout my life there were a lot of things about me that, at one time or another, I believed made me unacceptable – that I felt ashamed of or was made to feel self-conscious about; my height, my weight, my shape, my skin color, the way I talked, the way I acted, the way I thought, the way I dressed, the things I wanted for my life, the things I hadn’t accomplished, you name it.

Add to that some of the things I had done, the likes of which don’t really need to be mentioned here, and it was quite the recipe for unacceptability.

Over the years, every time I walked into an environment, especially with people I didn’t know (like a networking event) I would swear the people could smell the unacceptability on me, and that they were judging me for it. They had picked me out as the fraud in the room – they knew I wasn’t good enough, that I was flawed in some major way - and they were all talking about me behind my back, discussing how they would never want to be my friend or do business with me.

I wasn’t to be accepted in their crowd. Off with her head! Of course, this is an exaggeration. But it is an exaggeration of what others were thinking about me in those situations, not of what I was thinking about myself. Here’s something that just blows my mind; More often than not, if someone actually got the opportunity to talk with me, they would compliment me, or listen to my words with sincere interest. They would compliment my ideas and tell me they wanted to hear more about what I was doing. Or they would say, “Oh, you’re bound to be successful!” You would think this would make me feel better, that it would be encouraging. But quite the contrary, compliments or any type of admiration would send me into a panicked depression because I knew the truth. I was completely unacceptable.

During the first conversation I had with my life coach – just a free consultation – I cried. I was desperate for help – pouring out my soul about how I was disappointed in myself and extremely unhappy. I felt like a failure and didn’t understand why I couldn’t achieve the things I wanted to achieve. I wondered why I was always making choices that took me in the opposite direction of where I wanted my life to go – let’s call this self-sabotage. Oddly enough, outside of my husband, you would have been hard-pressed to find anyone that would have said I was the least bit unhappy. And even my husband wouldn’t have been able to tell you just how unhappy I was. But I was drowning, to the point where I was wondering why I was here at all. The point I want to drive home is that my unhappiness and disappointment was something I felt in the pit of

my stomach. I woke up every day feeling like I was supposed to be so much more, that I was supposed to be doing so much more, and that I was a fraud. I was haunted by my own dreams of this amazing life that seemed so out of reach for me. It permeated my life. And each day was worse than the previous one.

On the outside, or “on paper” as I like to say, I should have been happy. I had a husband, a home, an amazing daughter, my own business, and seemingly a lot of positive things going for me, and going on in my life. I am always preaching we should be grateful – and, trust me, I could see clearly my blessings, and was truly grateful for them. But I wasn’t happy. I had positive things going on, yes. But I was falling way short of the goals I had set for myself in many of those areas. Penelope Cruz delivers a line in the movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona which I was beginning to think perfectly described me, “…It’s like an illness. Nothing will ever be enough for her... chronic dissatisfaction.” I was well into my thirties by this time and I was beginning to fear I would never experience the feeling of genuinely being happy; that I would never get to where I wanted to go; that I would be chronically dissatisfied. And this was not an isolated occurrence. I had experienced these feelings on and off for many years. You could say I was in an abusive relationship with myself – tearing myself apart with my own thoughts and feelings. But I refused to leave. I’m sure there was desperation in my voice when I called that day. Would I ever feel like I fit in my own skin? Would I ever feel good about being me?

And then that word popped out of my mouth. And when it did I think I actually smiled. I smiled as though I had stumbled upon the Holy Grail, but could not quite believe it. I can remember the feeling of relief that came over me like I had just confessed to something that had been troubling my soul for years. And as bad as it was, I was thrilled to have it off of my chest. It was an unburdening. I know it sounds corny, but it was that type of moment. Have you ever spent a great deal of time looking for something important that you believed you would never find (but you had to keep looking anyway) – your keys, your misplaced wedding ring, etc – and when you did find it you experienced this overwhelming feeling of jubilance, relief, tinged with a small amount of disbelief? That was me. I know I am making a big deal of this, but it was really a turning point. To put a name on my feelings. To actually understand where they were coming from. For it all to make sense with just one word. I could hear all of the negative thoughts, analysis, and self conversations of the past in my head and every one of them was telling me that I was unacceptable.

My assignment from my coach was then to write a play, or some type of story, about this woman who was so unacceptable, but to take the things I thought were unacceptable about myself and talk about them as positives. So I conducted my dream Vanity Fair interview on myself, complete with all those flattering adjectival statements you want someone to say about you (“she was taller and thinner than I expected”). And this exercise changed my life almost immediately. It gave me the space to look at myself without judgment, without the lens of disappointment and negativity, without knowledge of the shame. I can’t put my finger on

specifically what it was, but I could see clearly that many of the things I thought were unacceptable about me – that I looked at as a negative – could just as easily be looked at as something positive. The Vanity Fair interviewer saw me as unique; someone who didn’t look like other women, someone who didn’t think like other women, and she found this fascinating and refreshing. She said I would stand out in a crowd and command people’s attention. I was sure to be a success at anything I chose. She loved my height, my disproportionately leggy body, my humor. She found the fact that I was running a little late, as well as the fact that I cursed like a sailor, charming. She found me intelligent and thoughtful, and said as much in her interview. To be honest, I believe the interviewer was a little jealous.

As time went by, I began working on accepting those “unacceptable” things about myself not just on paper, but in real life. My coach would pose questions to me regarding how the woman in the article would live her life, and feel about herself, and so on. And I began to see myself in a different way. Slowly but surely, I forgave myself for past transgressions and made peace with myself. I stopped being afraid to show up as myself. I stopped being afraid that people would not like the real me, or accept the real me. I stopped being afraid to speak my mind. I stopped being afraid to say no. I stopped being afraid to speak up when I didn’t like something. I stopped beating myself up over past bad choices, behavior, and the like. And I stopped carrying around the guilt and shame. I started to realize that everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – about me was the way it was for a good reason. And everything that happened in my life was meant for my own good. I started to realize, feel, and accept my own power. Believe me, it is a process that I am still engaged in on a daily basis, but when I look back at the person I used to be I can’t help but wonder ‘Who was she?”

This is how The Unacceptable Woman® came to be. As a life coach who is committed to helping women discover their power, I knew that if I was battling this issue there were other women who had to be going through the same thing. I knew there had to be other women walking around with feelings of shame, guilt, and unacceptability, falling short of their dreams and goals. I knew there had to be other women with feelings of chronic dissatisfaction – or disappointment even – who were unable to put their finger on where these feelings were coming from. I began addressing these issues in my coaching sessions, and random chats, with women and it was astonishing to see how the conversations deepened. It was like we had been talking around the subject forever, but now we were finally talking about it. It goes without saying that “unacceptable” is a play on words. It is taking something that has a negative connotation and flipping the script. But in the bigger picture, it is flipping the script on how you view yourself. It is about taking a new look at the things you once considered unacceptable about yourself and uncovering the power in them and in yourself.

The goal of this book is to show you that as women not only do we deal with the same issues; those feelings of unacceptability – and all that they encompass – at some point or another, but it is also to show you how to start turning things around for the positive and start living without

shame, disappointment, fear, and regret. I will show you step by step how we start out on the path of feeling that we are unacceptable. From there, I will then walk you through how those feelings of unacceptability manifest themselves and play out in our lives. And then I’m going to show you the process and the strategies you can use to start to embracing your unacceptability and discovering your true power. In a nutshell we’re going to look at how we can transform your im-per-fections into im-power-fections! What is an im-power-fection? It is something you once looked at as an imperfection that you eventually see as a source of power – something meant for your good. When you can accept and feel good about yourself – when you can feel good about all of who you are – you are inevitably more powerful. And when you feel powerful, you feel as though you can do anything, be anything, and achieve anything. And that is a lifechanging moment.

Before we get started, I’m going to say two things to you that were meaningful to me, albeit a little difficult to accept at first. And they are important to address because no change, or healing, can take place unless you can truly embrace them, without question. The first is: There is nothing wrong with you. Part of the pervading feeling of unacceptability is the festering belief that there is something wrong with you. You feel you should be doing more, you should be happier; you should have a better life, or something along those lines. And the reason that you are not is because you are flawed in some major way; unworthy, lazy, unfocused, undisciplined, not good enough, unlucky, not smart enough, or something else negative. I’m almost ashamed to admit to myself, and you, how many years I spent feeling like there was something wrong with me. If it weren’t for my understanding of how even those feelings are meant for something good (an imperfection that is now an im-power-fection), I would be embarrassed to mention it here. When you feel there is something fundamentally wrong with you because you can’t achieve your goals, or maintain a healthy relationship, or figure out what your life is really suppose to be about, these feelings of discontent and disappointment sit in the pit of your stomach like a fist and they lead you to make choices and take actions from a place of fear and weakness versus power. And in what direction do you think choices made from that place will take you? This book will help you embrace the fact that you, like every other woman on this earth, are perfectly and powerfully imperfect. And that is amazing!

The second thing I am going to say is: You are exactly where you’re supposed to be.

Sometimes we question whether we have made the right choices, or taken the right path in life.

We question whether or not we’re where we’re supposed to be, or doing what we’re supposed to be doing. We question whether or not we have missed our chance to have the life we truly want to have, should we have made different choices, better choices. The answer is you are exactly where you are supposed to be. You’re doing what you supposed to be doing. If you were supposed to be somewhere else – doing something else, you’d be there, doing it. This may be a difficult concept to swallow, especially if you are in any way disappointed with yourself or with your life, or if you are starting to question whether you’re too old – or if it’s too late – to change or start pursuing your dreams. The truth is, it’s not too late – it never is. You haven’t

missed your opportunity, because what’s yours is yours. You have to learn to trust that fact or else you are just setting yourself up to view your life with regret, pining for what might have been versus looking forward to what can be. And that is not a good look. In this book I not only want you to see how our negativity toward ourselves can keep us from our opportunities, but also how accepting and embracing ourselves, just as we are – where we are, can give us the power to create the life we truly desire to live.

My highest hope is that The Unacceptable Woman® become like a battle cry for women’s empowerment. Sort of an, “I’m not perfect and I love it!” movement so that as women we can finally get comfortable being ourselves, and realize there is freedom and power in doing so. I want us to stop worshiping and trying to emulate unrealistic images being fed to us of the ideal woman, and start seeing ourselves, individually and uniquely, as the amazing creatures we are.

I want us to stop trying to make ourselves into something that we clearly do not want to be just to please other people. I want us to stop chasing the idea of what’s acceptable and start aspiring to be the best us we can be. I want us to stop punishing ourselves, criticizing ourselves, and sabotaging ourselves, and start allowing ourselves to create lives that will truly bring us joy and fulfillment.

In order to make that happen, I’m going to take you through the five stages of unacceptability.

But I want to give you a heads up that although there are five stages; they do not necessarily happen in order. They can occur in order but, more often than not, they occur like a Ferris wheel – they spiral. The first stage, Becoming Unacceptable, is where you get on the ride. The next two stages, Staying Unacceptable and Manifesting Unacceptability, are like the wheel itself cycling around and around. In these two stages you have many overlapping experiences. Stage four, Embracing Unacceptability, is where the Ferris wheel begins to slow down. And stage five, The Power in Being Unacceptable, is where you get off the ride once and for all and start moving your life forward. And if any of you are familiar with how life really works, this mirrors that process. Most of us make the same mistakes (same guy, same debt, same weight) over and over, which are built upon some flawed or limited thinking, and only until we can truly slow down enough to determine the root of our thinking, are we able to make better choices and take our lives in a different – and hopefully better – direction.

The last thing I want to share with you is that writing his book had been a dream of mine for many years before I ever put one word on paper. Then more years passed, as well as several versions, before I felt good about what I was seeing on that paper. What I finally realized was I was plagued with writing to be acceptable – to be perfect. I wanted you to like me, like the book, and be transformed by it, but I was having a difficult time showing up as myself because I thought the real me was unacceptable. Thus, guided by my feelings of unacceptability about myself, I believed what I was writing was unacceptable too (as I alluded to before, even I am still a work in progress). Writing this book has been a battle between my sheer enthusiasm and excitement around the subject and my feelings of not being good enough to deliver the

message. It wasn’t until I attended a book-writing workshop, and through a free-writing exercise, that it became crystal clear to me that I was STILL doing the very thing I was writing about not doing; trying to be acceptable. Why did that happen? Because it was meant for me to share it with you to let you know that even though I am who I am, doing what I’m doing, I’m no different than you. I’m still on the battlefield. I am occasionally plagued by insecurities, fears, and the question of whether or not I am good enough to take on what I am endeavoring to take on, and worthy of great things in my life. The difference is that I now understand clearly where those feelings are coming from, and how they are contributing to my flawed thinking. I also understand that I have a choice as to whether or not I’m going to allow those thoughts and feelings to stop me from moving forward (the answer being a resound “NO”). And, believe me, understanding that - knowing that - is powerful.

I hope you enjoy the book.

Kathy