🌊 The Plunge #7: Do I Look Happy?

Notes on authenticity, the Oscars, and a chicken joke to end all chicken jokes

"I must force myself to laugh at everything lest I be obliged to weep."

- Figaro in The Barber of Seville

Last week, I had lunch with a friend I hadn’t seen in a few years. He’s been reading The Diving Board, which has led to some digital catching up, and it felt like high time for some analog catching up.

As we dug into our respective Mediterranean platters and several years of lost time, I said (probably with a perky smile) that last year was “hellish”. His jaw dropped. “Really? I would never have guessed. You seem so happy in your newsletter.” I winced a little.

I’ve gotten similar feedback before, even smack in the midst of misery. “You always have a smile on your face.” “Your positive energy really brightens up the room.”

On the one hand, I’m glad to hear it! On the other hand, am I full of shit? For all of us, and for me, there’s so much swirling beneath the smile. I often wrestle with how much of that “so much” to share. Nobody likes a buzzkill, except people who watch The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for entertainment. #notjudgingokImjudging

Between bites of gyro meat, I told my friend how in this newsletter, I’m toeing the line between “personal essay” and “professional development guidance”. I want to be honest with you, but I also want to give you something of value for you when you read. I know you’re not here to read my journal entries, unless they happen to reveal my secret ancestral recipe for the Elixir of Life or the 6-digit passcode to the Matrix.

Poker Face, or Professionalism?

When I was getting ready to launch The Diving Board, I met with an author friend of mine who’s been at this whole “writing in public” thing for years. I asked her how she writes through life’s ups and downs, how she discerns the Goldilocks amount of personal disclosure for her readers: not so little as to be fake, not so much as to be in poor taste.

We talked about how, in my case, my writing is an extension of my professional role as a coach. She helped me consider that I don’t start my coaching sessions with a total dump of the crap-and-rainbows salad I’m currently eating, and that doesn’t make me an inauthentic coach. It makes me a coach with good judgment.

In this newsletter, yes, I can be somewhat more personally transparent than I would be in a coaching session. But where’s the limit? After my long-lost friend’s lunchtime comment made me think Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” should be my walk-up song, I decided I could risk being a bit more real in today’s post.

Me, sans smile.

A Sob Story [Edited]

Here’s the real deal. Here’s (some of) the truth (see me using discretion??) about my hellish last year:

• My 9-year-old son has a brutal auto-immune illness called PANDAS which makes his body attack his brain. (We went public with his story in this Star Tribune article.)

• His symptoms lead to rage, violence, suicidal ideation, manic dysregulation, and intense anxiety – all followed by bouts of deep shame, remorse, and self-loathing.

• He left his school and spent 7 months in outpatient treatment last year. He's lost friendships and struggles to make new ones. He’s deeply sad about this.

• My family lives in a perpetual state of PTSD and hyper-vigilance.

• My daughter started showing early, mild symptoms of this same illness last January, so we’ve launched a full-scale treatment plan for her to try to keep this shit at bay.

• In June, we moved out of a house we loved “just in case” after discovering high levels of environmental toxins in the house that could exacerbate our kids’ health issues. We then spent 6 months in exhausting, chaotic renovation mode in our new house.

• We’ve recently undergone a family separation period of having our kids live apart for a while to give all of us a break from the trauma. We’re slowly reuniting for more time each week.

• I’ve had to grieve the life I thought I’d be living as a mom and accept the one I was given. I’ve had to grieve the loss of the childhood my kids deserve and won’t get – one where they get to be kids with kid-sized problems rather than kids with supersized problems, feelings, and fears.

• Major Medical Issues + Major Move = Financial Strain

• I almost had an actual breakdown before the holidays. I was irritable and scathing and on edge for weeks. Then, one day, I was a puddle who couldn’t microwave another godforsaken chicken nugget through my sobs. (My husband tells me this was not “almost” a breakdown, that I can go ahead and check “experience a nervous breakdown first-hand” off my bucket list. Hurrah!)

So, yeah. Hell on top of hell. Maybe hellish doesn’t capture it, maybe it’s too noncommittal a word. It’s been hellful. Hellacious. Helltacular.

Am I Happy? It’s Complicated.

So, am I happy? Am I faking the smile?

Yes and no, to both questions.

I am happy, lots of the time. I’m not consciously putting on a front. I really do feel both joy and pain, light and darkness, in this little life of mine. My family is walking a rocky road (resisting the urge to insert an ice cream pun here), but we experience plenty of moments of joy, peace, and connection, too.

I wish I could say that the smile, the upbeat spunkiness I wear, is purely due to my inner light. I’d love to claim that divine joy from the Great Source itself just beams right through my chest, like an exuberant lightsaber.

I do hope that’s at least partially true, but I also know that in addition to being a Jedi, I am an Enneagram 3. This means I unconsciously avoid my true feelings in favor of chasing goals. (It’s way more fun! Slam dunks feel better than sadness, am I right?) Without intending to, I wear a mask of sorts - I instinctively show up in a way that’s more likely to win admiration over pity. Hi, I’m Peppy the Robot!

My own inner work involves getting in touch with my feelings, being more authentic with myself and others, doing less and idling more, and letting the ugly be seen. (I hope you like my ugly, too.)

How Does Authenticity Work…at Work?

Authenticity. Now that’s a leadership buzzword if there ever was one. In fact, it was Merriam Webster’s 2023 Word of the Year.

I know I’m not alone in wondering how to be appropriately authentic as I go about my professional work.

Leaders I coach ask me how to balance authenticity with composure at work, how to be real while applying discretion in what they share with their teams and colleagues. Share too little, and you’re a fake. Share too much, and you’ve got bad boundaries.

I often point these leaders to Brené Brown’s guidance on appropriate vulnerability in the workplace, which you can digest in this conversation with Adam Grant or in her excellent book Dare to Lead. In short, we can share authentically, to varying degrees of transparency (depending on our comfort level), without working our shit out at work, to paraphrase Brown.

Be human, ask for what you need, and do your inner work outside of work so you don’t unwittingly goad your colleagues to play therapist.

So, yes, I’m human. I’m alternately happy and sad, hopeful and despairing. I need compassion and care. I need to do good work that lights me up, even when life is dark. This newsletter allows me to do that, so thank you for reading. Also - I’ve got a great therapist, so you’re off the hook. ;)

And You?

Whew. There you have it. Maybe now you can read my, can read my, can read my Poker Face just a little better than before.

If I shared anything today that resonates with you, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What complexity lies behind your own smile? How do you navigate authenticity-without-oversharing - at work, and in general?

P-p-p-p-p-p-poker face…… bet you’ll be humming that all day. You’re welcome.

Now, get back in there.

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📰 Here’s another great read addressing the “how much is too much authenticity at work?” question: The Authenticity Paradox by Herminia Ibarra, from Harvard Business Review

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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🐔 Want to turn that frown upside down? This is my new favorite joke, and the very best chicken-themed joke I have ever heard. (You have to watch the 10-second video to get the joke, otherwise I’d just type it up here for you.) P.S. Yesterday, I spoke with a client in food services who had literally been in meetings all day about “chicken strategy”. I told him this joke, since it seemed business-relevant. I love my job.

🏆 Claire’s Uninformed Oscar Recap:

1. In spite of the earlier start time this year, the Oscars were still on past my bedtime, so I had to catch up the next day like all the other grandmas.

2. I love Emma Stone (and still desperately want to see Poor Things, which I didn’t catch while it ran in theaters). But I was really rooting for Lily Gladstone and her gravitas in Killers of the Flower Moon. I’ll be following her career from here!

3. No one’s asking me, but I give America Ferrera “Best Dressed” and Ryan Gosling “Best Smolder” (only because my husband didn’t walk the red carpet this year).

Photo Credits: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images; Mike Coppola/Getty Images

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🎵 Happy Birthday to Mabel! 🎵 As promised, today I’m revealing the top secret surprise we gave my daughter for her 7^th birthday. In my last post, I hinted that it would be “a girlhood rite of passage” (no, not that one). I know you’ve been on the edge of your seats:

She’s been begging to get her ears pierced for a year, so she was thrilled, except for ~45 seconds when she was anguished. And Amos was the sweetest big bro - cheering her on, comforting her, trying not to pass out when they fired the needle gun…. We all made it through.

😂 And I’ve got one more laughable update for you here: Rob and I did something this weekend we’ve never done in our entire marriage – we went to see a live Comedy show. We watch plenty of Netflix comedy specials…so I’m not sure why we never thought to go in person?? I bought us tickets on a whim for date night. We ducked into Comedy Corner Underground, a cramped basement wallpapered with playbills just like I pictured, and we laughed a lot, groaned a little, and generally enjoyed ourselves. The whole thing was medicine.

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Well, how’s that for a newsletter with laughter and tears throughout? Thanks for reading The Diving Board!