It is The Day After the launch of Flock. Now that I’ve birthed something new out into the world the post-pregnancy hormones are turning into a big boiling pot of neurosis stew. All my gremlin voices are chattering away at me, and my insecurities are looming large.

The monkey-ish part of my mind is telling me that everything is going to fall apart: I’ll get sick again and not be able to keep up. No one will pay for my services and skill. And the loudest message of all: “Everyone Else is more Helpful than You.”

I’m embarrassingly predictable.

Part of this pattern is attributable to my religious upbringing, which drilled into my subconscious this If/Then clause:

If you ‘step out to do God’s work’ then you will ‘come under attack.’

I point this out because I know many of my readers are in the same boat. I think part of what we do here together, is to re-write our inner narratives so they reflects more health, more shalom. When my voices loom large and I start defining things as “attack,” it helps to remember that this discombobulated feeling is actually a normal part of the creative process; that many of my artistic friends express the same phenomenon; and that like the physical reality of childbirth, eventually these hormonally-things level out.

In the wake of this gremlin uprising, I decided to check in with some of my favorite writers. Once a week or so I go through the blogs on my RSS feeds. I follow about 50 people, and checking in on them is one of my favorite things to do when I feel stuck, or overwhelmed, or lonely. There is so much beauty in these writers and artists, so much wisdom, and hope and breakthrough. Today was no different. Everyone seemed to have cooked up good stuff over the holidays. But this time, instead of inspiring me, those rich, winsome posts started getting me down. “See,” said the monkey gremlins “I told you Everyone Else is More Helpful than You.”

I started getting whiney. Whiney, insecure, and jealous. I don’t want those feelings. I don’t even feel like they belong to me. They belong to my miserly, selfish, un-generous Evil Twin. The real me is grateful and generous. The real me celebrates the success and wisdom of Other Women. The real me is Dangerously Giving. The real me is madly in love with Abundance and throws things out into the universe two handfuls at a time.

So in an effort to quite my Gremlins, settle my Monkey Mind, and banish my Evil Twin, I decided to sing. (Tra La La!) As an antidote, I am Singing the Praises of kind bloggers who have brought wisdom, insight and beauty into my life today. I’m honoring their Passion and Attentiveness. I’m saying: “Hey, look over there at what THEY did!” Most of all, I’m being grateful. Because at my core, that is my truest self.

May you find all these good things and more today.

Much Warmth,

Rachelle

Bloggers to Banish The Gremlin Blues

If you need to banish fear from your life: write a Dear Fear letter with The Penny Has Dropped. (She starts with “Dear Fear, fuck off….). And for more on fear, have a cuppa with the ElderWoman (via Anchors and Masts).

If you need a rite of letting go for the New Year:  Pink Coyote has a powerful one. (It involves fire!)

If you need to set aside all the rush and emotion and ups and downs of The Holidays and just celebrate possibility, The Bliss Chick can help.

If you are dreading re-entry to your work/school/normal routine, The Girl Who Cried Epiphany has some good thoughts on dealing with other people’s energy. (A constant growing edge for me.)

Who gave you the food you needed today? Share some link love in the comments below and pass the goodness on!

Do you ever get ready to do something great, and suddenly everything seems to go to hell? Things fall apart and those voices in your head, well, they get really loud.

That’s happening with some of us who are gathering for Soulsisters ‘09 this weekend. We are workin’ on it! But I’m sure you have ideas about what to do too. So here’s a re-post fromthe Soulsisters blog –  ‘cuz we need Magpie Girl readers to add to our Giant Pool of Wisdom. Can you help? ……

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So I’ve heard through my Twitter and email that our Gremlins are chattering away at us and they aren’t being very nice. Gremlins, for those of you new readers our there, are the little voices in our heads who tell us un-true things. Most of the time they are trying to help, but they are a little mis-guided. But sometimes they are just downright being nasty.

According to Jen Lee, she of the Lovebombers–a group which was the inspiration for Soulsisters–the Gremlins like to get chatty right before we gather up with other powerful, creative women. And one of the things they like to say best is:

 ”You don’t belong here and nobody is going to like you.”

 Yeah, you’re right back in Jr. High. Sucks.

 So what can we do about it? I like to build my Gremlins a house where they can sit down and have a nice Gin and Tonic and SHUT UP ALREADY. I also write down all the things they are saying to me and put those quotes away for them. That way the Gremlins know I’m listening to them and sometimes quieten down. It also helps to say a little affirmation. My Gremlins are pretty silly, so I like the silly affirmation from Bill Smiley (was that his name?) on SNL:

 ”I’m loveable, I’m capable, and doggonit, people like me!”

When all else fails call a Soulsister and ask her to tell you *8Things that are Great about You. (She won’t mind, honest.) And remember, if your Gremlins are talking a blue streak, it’s a sure sign that something good is trying to get itself born.

Are your Gremlins coming out? (They also like to mess with your relationship with your significant other; sneeze on your children so they get strep throat right before you leave; and pour sugar in your carburetor.) What are your Gremlins up to? What are your tricks for dealing with the pesky little buggers? How can we help?

Oh, my gremlins are so noisy today! And although I’ve written all their voices down on the fortune cookie paper strips, they are still clamoring. Maybe you can tell me true things that will help?

*8 Things my Gremlins Are Telling Me

1) You can’t do anything to help the people you love.

2)You can’t live a cushy life and you can’t keep to a schedule, therefore you are doomed.

3) There’s no way around your insomnia. It will always suck all your time.

4) Depression will always have it’s hooks in you.

5) The people you feel passionate about could care less. You are making a fool of yourself by caring.

6) The work you feel passionately about doesn’t want you.

7) p.s. you are fat.

8) p.s.s. and lazy.

Jena says I should ask my Soultribe for what I need. So please, please send advice and encouragement my way today. Love, Rachelle

‘’she was not at all happy that Blythe had allowed the gremlins to propigate…”

It’s almost a new year and I feel all prickly with happy anticipation. As my soulsister Jen Lemen always says, “Something hopeful this way comes.” To paraphrase Harry Met Sally, “She’s right, she’s right, I know she’s right”….and isn’t it about time?

So here’s what I think my soulsiblings: if we are going to build tribes, launch book projects, fill our portfolios, have babies, beackon the lovely, and just generally make space to get things born, we’d better get ready. And for me, the number one thing I need to do to get ready is to get my Gremlins to QUIET THE FUCK DOWN!

You probably need that too, right? What’s that you say? What are Gremlins? WHAT ARE GREMLINS?! Oh, you SO need to know this terminology. Sit down, sistah.

“Gremlin” is the term coined in Taming Your Gremlin by Rick Carson. It’s a way of describing the little voices in your head that tell you untrue things. This American Life did a great piece on Gremlins called The Devil In Me. In the second act Nancy Updike asks people what the little voice inside their heads is telling them. The answers are at turns tragic, stunning, and most of all, utterly familiar. Go ahead and have a listen. We’ll wait…

Are you back? Did you hear your own Gremlins in there? I know I did.

When my life coach, Jena Strong, first suggested that I started working with my Gremlins, I wanted to throw the book at her head. I couldn’t pin my Gremlins down long enough to find out if they had girl parts or boy parts; I couldn’t read their name tags; and doggonit, they were LEGION! My Gremlins? They were very, VERY noisy.

Then Jen suggested that I take all the voices in my head and make hash marks. In any given day how many times did my Gremlins say something nice to me, and how many times did they say something negative? I tried this. After 48 hours I did not have one single hash mark in the positive column. The negative column on the other hand was quite lively.

Jen said that since my Gremlins were so very busy, maybe I should build them somewhere to go after work. After all, they did have my best intentions at heart. They were trying to protect me – to keep me from doing anything scary, or potentially painful, or too awfully adventuresome. So maybe I should give them a nice shag carpet and, in the words of Jena “sit them down and pour them a stiff drink already.”

So I did. I made them a crash pad in the charming urban-decay style. Wall paper, gilt mirrors, and battery operated twinkly lights…I spared no expense. As I worked on this mansion for the little demons, my un-namable Gremlins began to take dimension and shape. They became less ethereal, and more manageable. Soon the legion was happily ensconced in a pretty little Gremlin dollhouse.

Now that I was a full five feet taller than they were, I felt empowered. I could totally kick their butts. Like Jen says, if they misbehave I could just send them to paperdoll Gitmo.

I rapidly discovered I was not at all pleased that Gremlin Blythe had allowed the other Gremlins to propagate, so I made her put everybody on a neat little leash. The next step was to let the Gremlins take ownership of their own messages, so they didn’t rattle around in my busy little mind. I’ve always adored those little slips of paper that come in fortune cookies, so I cut a whole stack of them and put them next to a tin in the Gremlin dollhouse. Here are just some of the messages that filled that tin up in the first few hours:

“Where you are is not good enough.”
“You never get enough done.”
“Your passions aren’t strong enough.”
“You can’t climb out of this confusion.”
“You never finish anything.”
“WHIMP.”

Now, keep in mind that I have been writing, reading, and carrying around affirmations to counter these messages for weeks. But something about writing them down in their negative, shitty versions was totally empowering. Now they belonged not to me, but to this third person – the Gremlins. They weren’t mine to have and to hold, and they weren’t mine to carry. Now Blythe and her crew could tuck them away on their bookshelf and keep them dusted and alphabetized. Not. My. Problem.

I cannot tell you strongly enough how much of a breakthrough this has been for me. My noisy Gremlins are much quieter these days, and when they do start getting chatty I act like a staff writer from the Evening Post—I just make the report. The quote gets shorthaneded onto a slip of paper and tucked into their dollhouse. End of story.

Since the Gremlin Dollhouse had debuted on my shelf of shrines, it has captured several pairs of eyes. Catie has one now—a whole Gremlin village—and Mabes has worked up a version that looks a like a set from Skins. …What about you? Do you need a place to put the voices in your head? Do your naysaying demons need a crash pad? Start gathering images and items that seem Gremlin-ish to you, and see if you can make a place for that negative self talk to take a load off for awhile. This–this silly game of cut, color and paste–thiscould be your breakthrough for a brand New Year.

What are your Gremlin’s name? Do they have a favorite color/outfit/theme song? Let’s get in charge of these whippersnappers! Talk to us in the comments or send us a picture in our Gremlin Dollhouse Flickr group.