Free the boob & authenticity trending

I stood next to Callie’s bike, her little girl in back. After talking about sparkly backpacks and Black Rock and unicorn gas that can turn our life experiences into star nebulas to birth new stars, she shared about her daughter’s recent 9th birthday and how grown up she is becoming. Callie shared the wonderful list of gifts her daughter received, including a hand bag that she enjoyed sporting. Her daughter asked, “How do I look?” Callie told her, “You looked great before. And you still look great.”

The previous day I’d also run into another woman friend who is the nanny for the kids whose mother empathetically pronounced that some people can be shitheads when she approached Callie and me on the day I had a bad experience with a friend who lacked the ability to move past her programming to hear my views without cutting me off with trope from the CDC that holds less water than the Sahara desert…which incidentally, would still be enough to power the air gen generic free energy discovery of the Umass Amherst Scientists, that would be way better than wind or solar. Anyway, we’ll call my friend the nanny Isabella. It was hot that day and I mentioned I wasn’t taking off my long sleeve shirt because I wasn’t wearing a bra on and I had on a wool tank that would have been see through. She mentioned there is now a thing going around on social media called “Free the boob.” She observed how it has elements of goodness - like the idea that women shouldn’t have to wear a bra if they don’t want to - but also elements of creepiness, of women shoving it in your face and being all weird about it. I fully agreed with both sides of that equation. Years ago I tried to bring up that conversation - the one about bras and also the one in general about women not being over sexualized or repressed - about women just being authentic, while also being sensitive and respectful of others where doing so does not violate their soul. Isabella and I chatted about the *shoulds* of a society that can get internalized. She mentioned her eyebrows and how years ago she would have taken a different turn instead of stopping to talk to me because she hadn’t “done” her eyebrows. I mentioned how, for a short time when my bills were bouncing because of my now many years ex husband’s illicit phone sex activities that I didn’t know about at that time, I started doing Mary Kay. Incidentally, it was my now husband’s now long ex girlfriend who got me into it. But I was so weirded out when they talked about how after using the products many people felt they couldn’t bring themselves to go to the mail box without putting on “their face.”

I thought, “God, I never want to feel so uncomfortable with my face that I already have, just as it is that I can’t go to the mailbox without covering it up and decorating it with products!”

The good thing about Mary Kay is that I first got to touch my now husband’s face when at my debut, where he demo’d the Mary Kay after shave compared to “the other brand.” No one bought anything at my debut because they only came to see my new baby, but obviously I wasn’t destined for a pink caddie.

Back to the present. Well, the day before yesterday, to be exact, Isabella agreed that being comfortable with yourself is important, and that it is a journey.

Meanwhile, moving up up day toward the present, Callie expressed how important it is for her Daughter, Janae to feel comfortable with who she is, with or without accessories. Callie told me that it is becoming “a thing” to be authentic. Like a social media “thing.” I asked her what she thinks that means and said expressed that she feels like people feel relieved to know that no one is perfect, that they can take the pressure off and be real. She gave examples of influencers who buy the right clothes or clean their houses a certain way that isn’t realistic for most people. She explained how she hopes the authenticity “thing” doesn’t just become a trend. I added that I see these influencers all over the place. I think they are more like infiltrators, personally. Our conversation at one point touched on my son an his music and how I’d heard from my son that her daughter asked my son, “Are you famous?” He relayed how he said “No, but that they could listen to a few of his songs online.” I told him about some of my favorite substackers who love his music. I told him - and relayed to Callie - that he has three Canadian fans, a fan who is a former director of international studies at Yale and that children love his music. A smile spread on Callie’s face. “That’s much better than being famous.” She talked about how having an impact on just one or two people that is authentic is so much better than fame. I wholeheartedly agreed. I also shared how I think when we are boldly who we are here to be, people do remember us. I have on several occasions had my husband come home from this or that place I used to go and tell me that so and so remembers me and misses me or appreciated something I said or how I was in some way. I hardly ever go out into most places anymore because I am so energetically sensitive, and I hope someday that I will either be able to be able to weather it better or the energies will be more supportive of my being, but regardless, the imprint of when I did go out more remains. This is true of all of us, whether we hear about it or not, when we choose to be authentically who we are. This is the true influence we have, and it comes from Source flowing through us in the unique way each of us are here to embody Source.