One night in roller derby practice, I had to jump over the back seat of a Chevy Corvair on roller skates. The prospect of it terrified me but the end result of taking a risk and having success was life-transforming.

In this 6 minute video taped at Agape Toastmasters, I talk about how jumping over that car seat, even though I was initially convinced I couldn’t, was proof to me that my mind doesn’t always tell the truth and maybe I shouldn’t take it so seriously. When I hear the words “I can’t” in my mind, I ignore it. If you want less fear and more joy, check it out.

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For step-by-step guidance to overcome failure mentality or fear of failure, purchase From Sabotage to Success.

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The speakers I’ve heard so far are Barbara Max Hubbard, Jean Houston and Diane Musho Hamilton. The overall tone of the series is to embrace the feminine and also to embrace leadership, authenticity and creativity. I’ve learned a lot from listening and look forward to upcoming calls. If you like it, pass it on.

You can come to the track and join with other Fresh Meat on Tuesday and Sunday nights. You’ll learn derby skills and meet some really cool people who will challenge you, yell at you to do better and believe in you when you don’t believe in yourself. If you’re interested, e-mail freshmeat [at] derbydolls.com That’s what I did over a year ago and I’ve hung around ever since.

Although I couldn’t skate in this particular practice, that didn’t stop me from cheering on the Fresh Meat, yelling things like: “use that ass” and “wooo hooo”. Meanwhile Rinkrat toyed with the lighting in preparation for the next public event. Here are the results of the test photo shoot. If you’ve seen Rinkrat’s previous photos, you will immediately notice the difference this new lighting technique makes. I can’t wait to see it put to use at a live bout.

While Tara Armov tortures Freshies in the next room with her insane version of Russian-inspired plyometrics (aka Tarametrics), I stand on the track so Rinkrat can figure out the best place to position his flashes. For a moment, I feel like a star.

Here is Tough Cookie, Axles of Evil practicing shoulder blocks with Thomas Referson. At one point, she almost knocked him down. Tara Armov yells, “I know Axels went easy on him” right before her mouth breaks out into a devilish, pirate-style grin.

Tilda Whirl gets up close and personal with the camera and shows us her grin from behind the mouthgaurd. Roller Derby just brings a smile to all of our faces.

Fresh Meat have fun beating each other up.

I’m so happy to see Zoe (soon to be Buckingham Malice) back on the track. She was out for 4 months with a knee injury. Her number will probably be the British Pound sign. You know, that fancy L looking thing with two lines through it.

I am so glad Kitten (middle person in the back) made it to Fresh Meat practice. I haven’t seen her in forever. As soon as we made eye contact, I had to hug her. She is in graduate school and working very hard. (Freshies, I forgot what subject she’s studying, can you remind me?)

Remember, you can come to Fresh Meat practice too. Sundays 6-8 and Tuesdays 7:30-9:30 at the Doll Factory, 1910 Temple St., Los Angeles 90026. e-mail freshmeat [at] derbydolls.com for details.

In Vaishali’s article, How Spiritually Healthy Are You? I found two quotes that were a little lengthy but too powerful to keep to myself:

“You can take all the vitamins you want, eat healthy, fresh foods, exercise regularly, drink plenty of water, sleep eight hours nightly, but if you go through your day criticising yourself and others, finding fault and blame in yourself and others, intimidating, disrepecting or bullying yourself or others gossiping from a mean spirited heart, or witholding help and compassion from yourself and others, then you are deeply Spiritually unhealthy. Disenfranchising God consciousness is a Spiritual illness, and the primary symptom of this malady is unhappiness.”

The other quote was, “Take a step back and objectively look at your life. How often are you recreating your old issues? You know the old, outdated sources of suffering you love so much to indulge in: worrying, telling yourself you will never be happy or truly loved, building a monument with your awareness to how there is never going to be enough time, love, money or opportunity. Ask yourself how often are you recreateing these perceptions? How often do you reach for the worry drug of choice and justify the addiction?”

I think the two above quotes are eloquently stated and need no elaboration.

Turn the page and you’ll find the article Making Sense of Men. Vivian L. Geffen interviews Alison Armstrong, creator of PAX Programs and author of Making Sense of Men – A Woman’s Guide to a Lifetime of Love, Care and Attention from All Men. Visit www.understandingmen.com for more.

Here are a few quotes from Alison Armstrong:

“If a woman asks herself “What would I do if he were my friend?” she’ll get the most honest, straightforward, authentic partnership oriented answer to the question.”

When Vivian Geffen asked if “women project their insecurities onto men’s behaviors,” Armstrong responds, “(Women) project everything. We project our motivations on to them as if they are their motivations. Rarely do men do things for the same reasons as women.”

“Women don’t know that men absolutely love women. As a starting point, they LOVE us. They think we’re beautiful and fascinating and magical and possess mysterious abilities that are beyond their understanding. They need women. They need women’s attention and our care…They know they need us and they don’t try to resist it. They are empowered by our happiness.”

The final article is about The Benefits of Basil. I already love Basil. I don’t have to be convinced to eat it. In fact, just this week I ate an awesome beef/basil Thai dish at May’s Thai Kitchen in Long Beach. About 16 people from the Your Next Victory team were in attendance. May treated us all like kings and queens. If you have a chance, you should stop by for a meal. Tell May Sheri sent you

In my last post, I told you all about The first 11 pages of The Ray. 11 Pages?? It’s insane that 11 pages of one magazine inspired an entire blog. This magazine required 4 blogs! (New ones coming soon).

So let’s move on to Gina Ratliffe’s article, Why Women Love Money. I love this quote, “As I have learned from the exquisite role model, Queen Esther from ancient Persia, the goal for us as wise, empowered, feminine women is not to “become” Queen. It is our duty, our response-ability and our opportunity to BE Queen, for only from this place of power can we fulfill our purpose.”

Ratliffe outlines 8 Reasons Women Want to Make More Money That Have Nothing to Do With Money.
1. Basic needs,
2. Romantic Relationship,
3. Personal Expansion & Momentum,
4. Creative Expression,
5. Career Advancement,
6. Greater Self-Confidence,
7. Community and
8. Power.

I love what she said about community, “Money is needed for the cultivation of community as it is required for membership fees, gas to drive and meet a girlfriend, pay for a cup of tea and ultimately have the funds needed to powerfully exist in social, professional and sacred circles.”

Regarding power Ratliffe says, “Our world needs the savvy, smart and talented woman to not just be great at her profession, but to also be wise and asstute to harnessing the power of money.”

I say Amen Sister.

And I’m only on page 16.

I was already pumped up by the ads before I even got to Sierra’s Editor’s Greeting because everything about this magazine is empowering. Toward the end of Sierra’s greeting she shared a question with readers that she asks herself when she’s evaluating relationships in her life. The question is: “is this relationship gaining interest, breaking even, or putting me in debt?” She empasized that sometimes the relationship that we need to evaluate is the relationship that we have with ourselves.

Flip just one page and you’re at an article by Byron Katie with Michael Katz titled Your Most Intimate Relationship. Here’s my favorite quote from that article, “The irony is that the struggle to win love and approval makes it very difficult to experience them. Chronic approval seekers don’t realize that they are loved and supported not because of but despite their efforts. And the more strenuously they seek, the less likely they are to notice.”

At the close of the article Byron Katie writes, “I don’t let go of thoughts, I question them and they let go of me.” You can find out more about Byron Katie at www.thework.com.

Flip only one more page and there is an article by Lenore Perry titled “Relationship Reflection”.

One simple quote in this article was VERY impactful for me. I thought about it over and over again even hours after I read it. Are you ready?

“I have heard it said that 5 years in a healthy, connected and deeply intimate relationship can undo a fair amount of the damage done in our childhoods. It can literally heal old wounds. That is why we look for people who have qualities reminiscent of the worst traits of our parents. We want another shot. And we get it. We see things in ourselves through the most unrelenting mirror.”

This SO describes my marriage. Only it has taken me 12 (not 5) years to figure out that my husband is not the enemy, I am. I have lived in the victim mind set for so long that I drew a picture in my mind of who I “thought” my husband was and I interacted with him as though my thoughts were the truth.

I had reasons to get stuck in the victim mode. An entire childhood of good reasons and lots of juicy stories. To illustrate, I might even post a blog of me with a broken arm when I was 2. You won’t believe how it happened. But here’s the most important point of all, I was 2 years old 40 years ago.

Part of the victim/”I gotta protect myself” mindset is that I thought I was so smart if I realized “he’s just like all the other guys.” I was “smart” by not listening to him. I was “smart” by pretending that I knew what was best.

I resisted and resented my very best tool in the world. I had it at my disposal most every day and every night for 12 freaking years. It was my way out of prison and I could not see it and I could not walk through.

If I was awake, I would have to acknowledge that my husband believes in me more than I believe in myself. He wants me to succeed. He wants me to be happy. But my own ingrained thoughts of fear, insecurity and mistrust prevented me from seeing the signs. Instead, I viewed him thorugh a filter of fear and insecurity. It’s as if there was a decoder between the two of us and by the time his message got to me, I jumbled it up in code and turned it into a nasty plea for victimhood.

I am just now ready to break out of the victim mode and be present in my life. Living in the past and the future has eaten up many years and lots of potential. I want to live my remaining days to the fullest.

I’ll write more about The Ray in an upcoming blog and I think I’m gonna post that picture. I want to create awareness of the impact of trauma and also talk about some ways you can heal.

During the workshop, we talked about what makes us leaders and how we’ve utilized (or underutilized) our leadership up to this point in our lives. We wrote a list of some of our forms of resistance to change then shared them with each other. My list actually caused me to laugh out loud. It said things like: “I can’t be successful because I don’t have a country club membership.” I realized at a deep level that part of the reason I fear success is because I would have to become like the people my ego has equated with the word “success” and frankly, some of those stiffs are downright boring and arrogant.

I realized (and by the way, not for the first time) that I could create my own definition of success. May I add, this little tid bit was in a book I wrote and had published in 2000. How is it possible to write a whole book and forget what it’s about?

I have no idea.

The point is, I know now. I woke up, even if it was only for a few minutes.

Before leaving the workshop, we all chose an index card from a layered deck. Mine said “Never be the same.” I interpreted that to mean that I should stop trying to “fit in” and just be myself. Turns out, I think it means even more. My life will “never be the same” after that powerful meeting with feminine leaders. In fact is is only and always as a result of constructive, empowering gatherings with women (like my Master Mind meetings or even Derby Doll practice) that I am able to become more of who I am.

L to R Sierra (editor of The Ray magazine, more about The Ray in future blogs), Marilyn, Paula Easton, me, Carla Browning, Laura Swan, Kathe Shaaf, Julia from Unity Bridges and Tracy.