never discount the value of your voice.

i’ve spent 20 years (unintentionally) amassing an endless library of notes.

literal towers of scribbles, actual gigabytes of files and voice-memos.

but for this,

the first of many field notes 

[distilled from the encyclopaedic (but much more fun) version (you can soon find) on bear bones—where i gave the un-curated me

(and her “william faulkner: eat your fucking heart out” writing voice {often layered with enough footnotes and explanatory tangents—replete with nested brackets, such as these—to make even the most seasoned of readers lose their fucking minds})

a luxurious home of her own],

i will not dive into the tower of ‘old’ notes.

[though ‘old’ is relative, especially in this work—which can age you several lifetimes between breakfast and lunch.]

i'm starting with what’s alive,

right now—

because i don’t want anyone thinking i'm sharing wisdom from high in some ivory tower, where “i’ve made it”.

though my life is, in fact, jam-packed with glitter and rainbows and unicorns

i want to make sure you know my wisdom does not come from some imaginary place where the work “ends”

because probably the most valuable message i’ll ever share =

there’s no such thing as ivory towers

(so stop waiting to “arrive” before you share that irreplaceable voice of yours).

in everything i teach, i’m right alongside you—deep in the trenches—learning deeper and deeper (and—christ almighty! does it ever end!?—deeper) shades of those same lessons.

[because no, it doesn't ever end—but it does start to get fun.

(like surfing: somewhere between being rag-dolled by total wipeouts and bailing to avoid the former, your focus shifts from bracing against the waves to riding them, and body, board and breath start to become one with the sea, whether you're shredding a tunnel—or being spit out by one.)]

for the longest time i couldn’t understand why i was saving towers of scribbles that couldn’t possibly be of any value to anyone but myself.

“luckily”,

grace intervened (to keep those pages from turning to ashes on the wind)

'til the tide turned

and the day came (almost six years ago) when i finally saw the value of my voice.

the mary morrissey story that let me see.

that day came—and it went.

but the lesson returned, wave after wave, until i tasted the waters of that truth so many times i lost count—so many times i stopped questioning and started expecting it.

between the tides of many other teachings, i learnt to not only see but feel the value of my voice.

and now, that library grace knew to keep stashed in the wings isn't just being shared one-on-one as stories i tell my clients—it's rising with the swell, spilling into lovely pint-sized field notes—like this—and even lovelier free-flow videos—like the one above—each a ripple cast from my voice, lining up to give those waiting on me the lift i’m meant to.

you see, it wasn’t thanks to “nuggets of wisdom” that everything changed for me.

that debt is owed to the fellow student-teachers who used those nuggets to cast ripples with their own voices—

because, time and again, a truth i already knew

only changed everything

after i heard it from THEM—

at just the right time

(which—as myron golden would point out—i could do because they were there, waiting for me).

so here i am—paying it forward; laying the stepping stones across the marsh for whenever it is you get here.

lesson number one (out of fifty nine million, and change):

never discount the value of your voice.

sometimes a single drop of water at the right time can make the difference between life, and death.

share your light at every opportunity (because it might just be the drop of water that changes everything for someone on the brink).