DAYNA DEL VAL – intersecting remarkable & so, so ordinary

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Pursue your dreams (and change your life) in just three days!

“A Personal Systems Disruption retreat inspires and motivates people to shake up their day-to-day, to find what’s beyond their current reality.”

— Dayna Del Val, Personal Systems Disruptor

You have dreams you want desperately to pursue. You’re also being pulled in a million different directions, and your plate is likely already full to overflowing.

How in the world will you ever figure out how to make those dreams a reality much less take the first step?

Through a Personal Systems Disruption retreat!

Thank you for providing the platform and the tools for me to disrupt my personal systems, tools to help me define my ‘next,’ for introductions to some amazingly talented, creative, fun, loving people and for affirmations of who I’ve been, who I am, and who I can become. It was a wonderful journey that was easily accessible.
Pegi, PSD retreater

The PSD retreat is a powerful 6-part, three day series* where you will:

• Articulate your dream (long-held or brand new, professional or personal, large or small–all dreams are welcome)

• Uncover your fears around pursuing your dream

• Develop a multi-layered framework to achieve your dream

• Define the first step(s) to take to pursue your dream in 48 hours, 90 days and three years

This platform is rich in discovery and making space for your mind to get in touch with your creative spirit and your truest self. We did this whole retreat on zoom so it was convenient, and we were able to connect with others from all over the country. Personal Systems Disruptions retreat was a real gift, and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to dig deeper for their purpose.
Nicole, PSD retreater

In addition, you will:

• Participate in meditation

• Share and provide feedback with each other

• Take time to reflect in writing after every lesson

• Develop a new, supportive network of people invested in helping you pursue and achieve our dreams

• Be invited to join a private Facebook group of past PSD retreat takers who are ready and excited to get to know you and help you continue down this path of dream pursuit

PLUS, you’ll receive an extraordinary pre-retreat welcome package to put you on the pathway to pursuing your dreams before you even get started!

It was helpful for me to break down my huge vision into manageable goals, as simple as they are, compared to my ultimate plan.
A PSD retreater

Register Now!

FAQ

Q: Who is a Personal Systems Disruption retreat for?

A: YOU! Whether you’re a recent college grad, mid-career and wanting to shake things up or looking ahead to what’s next in retirement, there is no wrong time to develop an actionable plan to pursue your dreams.

Q: My dream is pretty small. I don’t want to change the world, I just want to make a small shift in my own life. Is this the right retreat for me?

A: There is no dream that’s too small. We’ve had people sign up who dream of figuring out how to leave work earlier than 7pm every day or who want to consistently build exercise and self care into their daily schedules. If it’s your dream, it’s worth pursuing, and this retreat will help you do it.

Q: Is this retreat only for women?

A: Nope. Your gender is irrelevant; everybody is welcome to do this work because everybody has dreams they long to pursue.

Q: I don’t want to do this work with a million other people. How many people will be at the retreat?

A: There are only 12 spots for any retreat, so you really get to know the people you are spending the weekend with. You’ll be delighted by how quickly you become invested in each other and everyone’s dreams, too.

Q: I like the idea of this retreat, but I already spend most of my days on zoom. Will I really get the most out of a virtual retreat?

A: As with all things, you will get out of this experience what you put into it. We spend time right away talking about how to be present and engaged with your fellow retreaters. One benefit to a virtual PSD retreat is that you will connect with people from across the country–something much harder to do in person. And there’s a lot of diverse activity in each session, so the time moves quickly.

I am soooo appreciative of this opportunity you gave us all. Move forward with more of these to help more people go after and achieve their dreams!
A PSD retreater

*Schedule for the PSD retreat (all times central)

Friday:

7-9pm Welcome and Lesson I

Saturday:

8-10am Lesson II
12-2pm Lesson III
7-9pm Lesson IV

Sunday:

8-10am Lesson V
12-2pm Lesson VI and send off

“A Personal Systems Disruption retreat helps you get (more) comfortable being uncomfortable, articulate your dreams, overcome your fear of failure and provides practical tools to immediately get you started pursuing your passion.”

— Dayna Del Val, Personal Systems Disrupter

2021-02-19T19:00:00

days

hours minutes seconds

until

you pursue your dreams at the next Personal Systems Disruption retreat

Register Now!

February 1st was our second chance at life and love

In many ways, I did become a widow that night. I did lose the husband I had had from May 31, 2008 to February 1, 2017. That man began a six-week journey of dying and being reborn simultaneously, Phoenix-like. And, actually, I did, too.

It’s February 1. A day, which for the great majority of people, unless it’s their birthday or anniversary, is just another day on the calendar. And until 2017, that was the case for me, too. I can’t tell you about a single other February 1 in all my years except that one, extraordinary day.

I’ve been blessed in my life to have multiple moments of absolutely evident divine grace. Moments where the heavens crossed that abstract threshold that divides the living from the hereafter: the angel who visited me the morning my son was born and the direct inspired articulation of my next and, I believe, most important life’s work, Personal Systems Disruption.

No angel appeared to me, no inspired voice spoke inside my head on February 1, 2017. Instead, the Universe created a messy, bloody scene in our bathroom, dramatic in its gore but utterly unremarkable in its generation. Dr Marry had had a nosebleed so intense that after more than 12 hours, he woke me up to finally take him to the emergency room.

Even with all that, February 1, 2017, wouldn’t be all that memorable had we just gone home, bone tired, as the sun was coming up over the low, flat horizon. Dr Marry could have had his nose cauterized to stop the bleeding, like he did that night, and they could have sent us home. We could have somehow managed to muddle our way through the work day until we fell into bed, exhausted by the disrupted previous night’s sleep.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, I drove home alone, bone tired as the sun was coming up over the low, flat horizon. I had to let Lilly out, and Mazz wanted me to pick up a few things because he had been admitted to the hospital for further assessment.

I have often wondered what that ER doctor and nurses really knew that night that they didn’t share with us. They could tell something was wrong with his liver, and yet they never pursued questions about his alcohol consumption. Or if they did, he told them his standard answer: “I have one whiskey at night.”

Liar.

Does anyone else live under the childlike assumption that divine grace is always gentle, warm and positive? From a Christian perspective, it makes little sense that we think that. Consider Mary’s encounter with Gabriel. The Bible tells this story as if it’s a kindly uncle telling his niece that a lovely present is coming. Now really think through that story. If it’s true, if she was just made pregnant by the holy spirit, that’s alarming, to say the least. If it’s a cover up, then that poor girl was almost surely raped by a Roman soldier, a member of her village or Gabriel himself.

What about Saul on the road to Damascus? He’s thrown off his animal, made blind and reprimanded by a great big voice from the sky.

Moses is met by a riotous orgy when he descends the mountain with the 10 Commandments. He destroys the tablets in his fury and is denied access to the promised land, his goal for almost his entire adult life.

Divine grace is actually rarely that still, small voice we are led to believe it will be. And it’s often not the end of the story but the beginning. It’s that transitional moment that disrupts the journey we are on and puts us on an entirely different path, but not always a smoother one.

It was really no different for me. I realized within the first month of our marriage that Mazz drank more than he claimed he did. You see, for nearly six and a half years, we had dated but never lived together. Mazz came over after work every day, ate supper with us and stayed to play LEGO, read Harry Potter, watch movies, etc. We spent both days of the weekend together as a little family of three. But late at night, when I got tired, I’d send Dr Marry home to sleep in his own bed. In all those years, he rarely spent the night at our house.

So I believed him when he told me he had one whiskey a night. I had no reason not to. Until June 2008, our first month married. He hardly got out of his pajamas that month. He moped around the house, watching incredible amounts of television. He missed the window to add Quinn and me to his work insurance, so we had to pay for an additional year of private insurance. Not every night, but often, one whiskey was two. And that was while I was awake. He almost never came to bed when I did.

I wondered what was happening; I was confused by this behavior. He was depressed, but I reluctantly passed it off because his dad’s birth and death days are in June. That month had often been tough for him, even in our dating years.

By the time 2017 rolled around, the rails were completely off the track where Mazz and our marriage was concerned. And yet, something kept me from realizing what was real. When I say I had no idea he was an alcoholic, I truly mean that. It’s as if a thick, hazy fog was placed over my eyes and my understanding to keep me from being able to see and comprehend clearly.

Maybe it was simply denial, but I don’t think so. I think I was kept from understanding our reality for reasons I still can’t quite articulate. I do have certainty about a few things:

Had Mazz died from that nosebleed, like he very nearly did, I would have become an even more bitter, angry person because that’s the path I was most definitely on by the time we hit February 1, 2017. His death would have confirmed for me that marriage is ridiculous and that I should never have entered into such an antiquated and stifling contract in the first place.
It would have confirmed that I was “right” about him. That even though I had no idea he was an alcoholic, I knew he drank too much, and I would have been vindicated. That would have fueled my bitter anger because that’s not the kind of vindication that erases the trauma or pain of the lived experience.
I would have never known that absolute joy and certainty that can come of having an invested, equal and present partner to move through live with.
Quinn would never have witnessed a true partnership, a model that is so important for children to experience before they enter into their own adult relationships.
I would never have critically explored my own pieces of this journey to that night. I wasn’t the one drinking the whiskey but that doesn’t exonerate me from having played a significant role in the years leading up to February 1. Without a reason to examine myself, I would not be where I am today. That would be a shame because I have a far better understanding of what it means to be a fully complex human being, and I am a far more empathetic person because of having lived through something so difficult.
I would have missed out on these glorious last four years: the adventures, the ups and downs, the laughter, the repaired relationships, the fear of failure and joy of success and so much more.
I would never have understood the immense pride I have in saying I am partnered to Dr Andrew Mazz Marry and seeing a student’s eyes light up.
I would never have allowed my heart to venture anywhere near the edge of loving or living again.

So this anniversary is remarkable because my husband began the journey of returning to me, and we began the journey of forgiveness, hope and healing together. But it’s also a powerful reminder that divine grace comes in all forms, and almost never as you think or hope it will.

Congratulations on four years of sobriety, Dr Marry. I bless this day because it celebrates turning a corner and disrupting our lives in the most glorious of ways. And I continue to be so, so grateful for the gift. I would go through it all over again to find myself right here, next to you.

Featured image: Dr Marry’s 49th birthday party, February 16, 2019.

7-card stud, Texas hold ’em, 5-card draw…

In keeping with my last post/commitment to growing my network, I want to share this not-so-small victory.

I was scrolling through LinkedIn earlier this week and came across a picture of an AA chip.

sidenote: Isn’t it funny what matters to you after something happens in your life that you would never have paid any attention to before? I wouldn’t have even recognized an AA chip four years ago, and now I stop to read the accompanying success post of every single one I see.

I didn’t know the man who posted it, but I saw that we had four tenuous connections. I sent him a message to see if he would be a guest on Daily Dose. Here’s our exchange:

Hello ________,

I see that we have a few fabulous people in common. I wanted to first congratulate you on your 33-year sobriety chip. My husband will get his 4-year chip on Feb 1, and I know how meaningful and hard-earned those chips are, so well done!

I wanted to reach out with an invitation as well. My husband and I have a livestream called Daily Dose of Dr Marry & DD that we do every weekday around addiction, recovery and finding joy in our lives. Our mission is to share our experiences with addition so that others feel less alone. We have guests on with us on Thursdays, and those episodes are among our and our audiences’ favorite days. I’m wondering if you would ever join us for a live, informal conversation around your addiction and sobriety journey?

I hope you are well and staying safe during this crazy time. Thanks for sharing your chip post–I know that you are making a difference in someone’s or many people’s lives.

Thanks,

Dayna

He wrote back very quickly:

Hi Dayna, Sounds good – only know I rarely have spoken about my sobriety in public over all these years. More of Who I am than what I do sort of thing. Happy to share on your show, yet know I am not an AA bible thumping guy in the least. More straight forward, no bullshit approach.

I responded:

Thanks for your speedy reply! We don’t have an agenda and don’t care about a specific treatment plan, or indeed one at all. Everybody’s path is different and that’s what makes these conversations so interesting. So looking forward to meeting you and learning about you!

And then he connected me to his assistant. And I knew we were in trouble.

You see, the purpose of an assistant is to be a gatekeeper, which I totally get. My staff play that role for me from time to time, much to my great relief. But I knew he was going to ask what our audience numbers are. And as soon as he found those out, we were not going to be talking to this man on our show in March.

The assistant and I communicated, and it went exactly like I predicted it would.

Crickets.

Hmmmmmmm. What to do?

The way I saw it, I had two options:

Let it go. After all, this man has standards and we hadn’t met them. I’m seeing more and more of that happen as I reach out. People like the idea of my personal and our joint content, but as soon as they realize that we have few followers and small viewership, they aren’t interested in us.
Throw caution to the wind and say, “What the hell do I have to lose by getting a bit more persistent?”

I went with option 2:

Hi ____________________,

I wrote to [your assistant] and am sure that our audience is too small for you to consider joining. I’m just writing directly to you to see if you would be willing to forgo that and help us grow a bit? We are in that hard place of needing influencers to pay attention to us to build an audience and not having the audience in place that matters to influencers. Just checking because I know the answer if I don’t ask.

Thanks and be well,

Dayna

Literally, six minutes later, I got this message:

I like you. Yes. What date time are you requesting for 30 min spot?

I stared at it for a second, ran into the kitchen to read it to Dr Marry and started writing:

___________!

I just did a very happy dance in our kitchen. 😃 You have confirmed for me the power of being a bit tenacious, so thanks so much for that!

I can’t thank you enough for saying yes. We won’t forget this, and as we grow (which we will!), we’ll pay your kindness forward to someone(s) else!

Dayna Del Val and Mazz Marry

Thirty-one minutes later:

Check email 👍

The moral of the story? You won’t win every single hand at the Poker table, but you’re guaranteed to lose if you never even pick up the cards.

Pick up the cards.

Cross pollinating my recognized expertise

I’m naturally curious, love learning and have a persistent tenacity about my own development. I thought about starting a blog for years, but I finally went from wanting to doing in 2019. For nearly two years, I’ve used my blog to discover who I am under (or perhaps it’s more accurate to say in addition to) this arts advocacy mantle. I couldn’t have articulated it until recently, but what I was fumbling around with was a way to shock my own system.

Then & Now

When I started as Executive Director of The Arts Partnership in 2010, I was pretty much an absolute nobody. I didn’t come from a family name that mattered in my community, I hadn’t done anything that identified me as a powerhouse and I wasn’t married to someone whose name, title or reputation held any particular significance. In short, I had to build my credibility from the ground up.

So I did.

I made one phone call after the other, read one leadership book on top of another, drank one seemingly never-ending cup of coffee (eventually moving entirely to tea), introduced myself to one person and the next until people started to know who I was and what I was about.

Incidentally, I accidentally discovered who I was and what I was about along the way as well.

Today, 10+ years later, I’m a recognized expert in arts advocacy in my community and across the region. Along the way, not only did my name start to carry weight but my title shifted to President & CEO because I’d become, through time and consistent, dedicated work, the thought and action leader of my organization and the sector.

I appreciate all that this job has afforded me. The phrase “you don’t know what you don’t know” is unbelievably apt for where I was when I began. I’ve been fortunate to have a number of excellent people dedicate time to mentoring me, give me personal and professional opportunities and invest in both my organization and in me.

And that’s really how I became the world’s first Personal Systems Disruptor.

I’ve had a few cosmic clarion calls in my lifetime, and you better believe this was one of them. The ground practically quivered under me when that idea struck. And what’s so interesting is that, nearly five months later, I still feel the same certain rightness to the idea. I know this work is what I am meant to do because it’s who I am meant to be. It’s who I already am.

Now & Going Forward

Building the Personal Systems Disruption framework is in so many ways a beautiful accompaniment to my arts advocacy work. It takes all that I have learned about advocacy, communication, creative problem solving, development, networking and strategic planning for growth in the arts and transfers all of that to helping people discover and develop growth in themselves.

In the online Recognized Experts group I belong to, founder Dorie Clark asks people to pursue competency in these three areas:

Social Proof—as of today: I’m well on my way to getting there. Two PSD retreats since Nov 2020 and one coming up in February, a number of talks, my blog, podcasts, social media, livestreams, etc.
Content Creation—as of today: ✔️ and only more to come…
Networking—as of today: this is where I’m going to put my immediate focus. My current, powerful network knows me for my arts advocacy. Can I invite them see this lateral repositioning and utilize them here, too? How do I grow an entirely new network of people who will benefit from this work but don’t currently know me at all? Who can be my best allies, connectors and guides in this new realm? I’m caught in that hard place of not having an audience large enough to garner attention from people who are influencers and needing influencers to give me a chance so I can grow my audience.

Making this discovery this weekend was like finding a compass in the middle of the forest. How will I grow this network? I don’t exactly know, but prioritizing this first marching order gives me a direction to move towards.

I haven’t been a recognized expert in the arts for so long that I’ve forgotten what it takes to get to that point. Here’s to reaching out and setting virtual meetings, reading books, listening to podcasts and watching videos and putting myself out there, over and over again. And here’s to doing it while also keeping the success and growth of the arts sector front and center.

I better go put the kettle on. I’m going to need a great big mug of tea to pull this off!

*Thanks to Emily Williams-Wheeler for the glorious mug.

Short & Sweet, aka Keep Going, Dayna!

My next retreat is February 19-21, and there are spaces available. I hope you’ll sign up. But if you don’t, I’m still going to do the work because I care, it’s generous, helpful and absolutely worth the journey–mine and yours. But I can’t control your journey, only mine. So I’m here.

I get Seth Godin’s daily email. I read probably 75% of them and find maybe 10% of what I read provides one of those intake of breath moments. You know, the ones where the nail is hit perfectly on the head? Today was one of those.

From Seth:

Your big idea

It’s probably not completely original.

It’s probably not breathtaking in scope.

It’s probably not immediately popular.

But… it’s definitely worth pursuing, consistently and persistently for years and years.

If you care. If it’s generous and helpful and worth the journey.

All the big ideas that made a difference follow this pattern.

My Personal Systems Disruption work is all of this. All. Of. It.

So today I commit to keep going.

My next retreat is February 19-21, and there are spaces available. I hope you’ll sign up. But if you don’t, I’m still going to do the work because I care, it’s generous, helpful and absolutely worth the journey–mine and yours. But I can’t control your journey, only mine. So I’m here.

The end.

A potential shooter, curtains and my early morning habits disrupted

But as I reread the emergency alert, I wish for one half of one second that we had curtains. And I hesitate to even write that because Dr Marry will use that sentence against me for the rest of our lives together. But it’s true.

I’m not sleeping well lately. I mean, truthfully, I haven’t really slept well in 25 years and 10 days because that’s how long I’ve been a mother.

When you’re a young, single mother, you don’t sleep well because any new parent will tell you to be prepared to wake up, beyond the regular times that baby wakes up to eat or get changed, about every 25 minutes to make sure the baby hasn’t died of SIDS. You’ll shoot up, for no apparent reason beyond the extreme silence in the room. Silence that shouldn’t be there because you’ve grown accustomed to the little grunts and gurgles of your baby. Fear will grip your heart, but you’ll screw up your courage and slip silently out of bed. You’ll lean carefully over the bassinet and spend anxious moments, holding your breath, searching in the blue black dark to see that little chest rise and fall. Come on baby, breathe!

And when it does, relief will flood your body; you’ll chide yourself for being so over-reactionary. The exhilaration of that little breath will have woken you up entirely, but you’re so bone-tired that you’ll fall back into a restless sleep anyway, only to be woken up shortly after by the plaintive wails of said little baby.

And, somehow, restful sleep just kind of never returns to you.

Or maybe that’s just me.

So I’m up at 4:24am. Again. This has become my body’s natural alarm clock lately.

I’ve made my first cup of tea, nearly gone now. I’ve used the peppermint green washcloth hanging on the PVC pipe near the furnace to suck up the extra water created by our furnace that stops the heat from kicking in about 70% of the time until we extract the water from the little runoff dish. Incidentally, this is the first time I’ve ever done this successfully. Like so many things, our furnace recognizes Dr Marry’s competent hands and rumbles up immediately. When I’ve tried this in the past, the furnace kind of spits out an, “As if!” and deliberately ignores me by stubbornly refusing to start up.

I’ve taken to reading in the living room of late. I turn on the fairy lights that frame the big picture window and the little lamp near my great grandma’s overstuffed rockingchair that we had recovered from great big, gaudy 1960s green cabbage roses to a subtle caramel and cream tweed this spring–a COVID project. One of many we either tackled ourselves or paid someone else to take care of.

So, tea in one hand, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird in the other, I’m rocking and reading and warming up. Lilly, my pup is dutifully lying very near me, her favorite place to be regardless where I am in the house, and the silence is glorious.

My phone buzzes at 5:17.

*Warning: an armed suspect is in the area. Stay inside and avoid windows.

I immediately look at the big picture window, invitingly lit up by little white lights, and realize I’ve beautifully framed myself for anyone walking outside to look in, and in this case, take aim.

Now might be a good time to note that I detest curtains.

It might also be important to note that Dr Marry loves curtains.

You can imagine that, particularly on our 14+ years of dog walks, we have spent more than our fair share of time talking about the merits, or lack there of, of curtains as we move through our neighborhood, observing windows either shutting off views to the rest of the house or inviting us to look in.

You’ll be warmer.

They make me feel entombed.

They’ll decrease our heating bill.

What we save in dollars there will have to pay for the therapist I’ll need to deal with the crushing feeling I get about curtains.

They create a cozy environment.

I like to look inside.

Jane Austen had curtains. (That’s a low blow effort to trick me into saying yes, Dr Marry!)

In this particular instance, Jane Austen can suck it.

You get the idea.

I shut off the little lamp next to me, I uncurl my legs and move to turn off the fairy lights.

Suddenly I can see outside, the stage and audience roles reversed. There is no lurking man, walking with a Rambo-like gun, patrolling through my quiet neighborhood. But the text was unsettling, and I’m not interested in ending up in the crosshairs of a gun.

But I still want to read.

I move to our extra bedroom, the one we call the gold room because of the beautiful metallic paint on the walls. This room is filled with my favorite items from my grandma and grandad’s house: a mustard yellow, velvet chaise lounge, the desk my grandma paid for on layaway in her early 20s, a chest of drawers she painted in black shellack and covered in great big roses cut out of seed catalogs and a skinny peaked bookcase that I yearned for as a child.

I move into that room and sit down on the chaise lounge, which is right next to the windows–a problem in light of the alert’s advice. But in this room, I have made a concession. There are pale green curtains with gold flourish and heavy gold rope to turn them into hourglass shapes. I unknot the gold rope and the curtain opens up, covering the window.

And I feel immediately like all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room. Or at the very least, there’s now a finite amount of oxygen, and every breath I take uses up the precious last…whatevers (drops? molecules?) of oxygen that exists. Never mind that the door is open to the rest of the house, and we don’t live in a vacuum chamber. My chest feels heavy, like a weight has been placed upon it. The walls slowly move in closer, making the space suddenly feel small and getting smaller. Also, because these curtains have been hanging, undisturbed, since I purchased them 14+ years ago, dust floats into the precious oxygen-filled air when I kind of puff them open to cover the windows.

I certainly realize there’s no legitimate comparison between possibly being shot in my own home by a stranger outside and my psychological predisposition against curtains, but I can’t deny that I hate having the curtains shut.

6:14am.

I’ve tuned my ears to listen for the crunching of footsteps outside the windows behind the curtains. I’ve sneezed about 15 times thanks to the dust motes floating in the last (particles?) of oxygen. I’m feeling sleepy as the adrenaline rush of that text wears off, not to mention the dwindling oxygen that is surely affecting my brain. Likely, I’ll nestle into my chaise lounge and grab a little more sleep before Lilly needs to go out and Dr Marry wakes up and we start our day.

No, I’m not sleeping well at all these days.

*An important note: we live in a perfectly lovely, safe, quiet little neighborhood, and this alert was highly unusual. I didn’t read it and have any true concern beyond choosing to heed the advice to move away from the windows. I realize my great good fortune that this is the first time in my life I have been alerted to a dangerous situation where I live. I’m saddened that this is a common occurrence for far too many citizens in this country. Again, I despair at the rabid determination by so many people to uphold the second amendment and allow guns to be such a present, and dangerous, part of our day to day lives.

Lead from the Outside, ruffled feathers and the attempted sound of silence

This assignment asks us to be vulnerable, honest, brave and willing to both praise and censure ourselves as well as accept praise and censure from others. What could happen in your life if you got honest with yourself and if others were willing to go to a place of loving honesty to really give you the opportunity to reflect and grow as a person? Could you take it? Would you hear it and ponder it, or would you ruffle your feathers and defend your actions?

Earlier this week, a small package arrived in our mailbox. It wasn’t something I had ordered, and it was addressed to our son. I could tell from the shape and feel of it that it was a book. I remembered Quinn had texted to say he’d ordered something that would be coming in his name, but that it was for me.

I opened it and was delighted to see he’d sent me Stacey Abrams’ Lead From the Outside. I knew of this book but hadn’t yet read it. I sadly put it aside because of work demands and didn’t really get to pick it up until the early morning hours of today.

Short review of what the first quarter: Run, don’t walk, to get a copy of this book. If you see yourself fitting anywhere outside the stereotypical paradigm of straight, middle-aged, white, male leader, this is a book for you. And really, to be fair, there are plenty of men who fit that description who also have insecurities, doubt their ability to lead and have to find ways to unite those they are leading. This book is for everyone who longs to lead. Period.

I have now held a couple of Personal Systems Disruption weekend retreats, and I just announced the next one. They’ve been very successful, but there’s one session that hasn’t worked quite as well as the other five. I’ve been searching around for a way to add more content. This assignment from Ms Abrams got me thinking about an adaptation of it for the retreat. I share it here as both a taste of the book as well as a preview of sorts for why you should sign up for the next PSD retreat.

Here’s my take on half of the second assignment she provides in the book:

Why I’m awesome:

I’m a fierce advocate for what I am passionate about
- The arts
- Personal Systems Disruption work
- Those on the sober side of the addiction journey/those who live with addicts enjoying sobriety

Examples of trait in action:

The arts:
- *I have brought the arts to more important community tables, often from sheer ability to slip through the door as it was closing and sometimes forcing it back open before the lock was turned
- I have guided the growth and understanding of the larger value of the arts sector
- I have grown our own budget directly through creative advocacy. This has allowed us to much more actively support artists and arts orgs
- I consistently speak and write publicly about the value of the arts, and that is helping to shine better light on their significant value
- I use qualitative and quantitative evidence, I weave stories, I share compelling research, I seek outside sources and experiences, I give personal examples, I am inclusive

*All of this is, of course, a group effort from TAP staff, present and past board members and others in the arts sector, but for the purposes of this assignment, I went with the singular

Personal Systems Disruption work:
- I overcame my fear of failure to develop this work from my own personal experience to create a three-day, six-part virtual retreat that has reached women and men, young and not so young in CA, MT, IA, ND and MN
- I write and speak publicly about aspects of this work
- I share personal stories of success and failure in an effort to shine a light for others to own and embrace their own successes and failures, too, in my blog extraordinary
Sober addicts/those who live with and/or love them:
- Mazz and I shared our story with tens of thousands of people through The Forum—the most public way we could have launched it—to celebrate his three-year soberversary on Feb 1, 2020.
- We created our nine-part, 27 episode series
- We developed Daily Dose of Dr Marry & DD and have recorded 135 live episodes to date

Why I admire this trait:

Too few people are really willing or able to go to bat for these issues:
- Artists intuitively know that the arts matter but don’t always have a way to articulate that to an audience who doesn’t understand the value
- People are mostly afraid to own their dreams, and not just naming them but pursuing them with a ferocious tenacity
- Addicts are often considered “throw away” people; we aim to dispel that misconception by shining light in some very dark corners and normalizing those who struggle and live with this disease. We are intentional about living our mission to openly share our experiences with addiction so others feel less alone.
My skill set is beautifully aligned to do this work—I am:
- A natural-born and trained actor
- A vivid story-teller
- A passionate writer
- A detailed researcher
- A curious seeker of knowledge
- A quick thinker on my feet/able to improvise
- An engaging public speaker
- An open book—there’s very little I won’t discuss, dissect and address head on about myself in an effort to solve my own challenges and hopefully help others do the same for themselves.
- A fighter. I love nothing more than advocating for the underdog because I have so often been the underdog, and I longed for someone to advocate for me. In the absence of those people (not always but often), I learned to do it for myself and for others along the way.
I don’t believe that the pie of success, happiness, wealth or change is finite. I believe we all can think bigger, dream more audaciously and pursue our deepest passions. The challenge is that we often need guides to help us do it—we need those who have power to look around and see whom they can lift up, whom they can support, whom they can empower to create their own success so that we all keep moving forward, together and better because of it. I have developed and inherited some power now, and I am determined to use it to light the path for others.

What others say:

Examples of trait in action:

Why they admire this trait:

Why I’m less awesome:

I’m impetuous, and sometimes my emotions throw a coup on my rational brain. This rarely serves anyone, including me. It’s the flip side to all my strengths: I think and act quickly—for good and for bad. I feel things so deeply that I often can’t take a deep breath for the weight of injustice, dismissiveness and (what I perceive as) outright stupidity as well as beauty, deeply developed rhetoric and overcoming insurmountable odds to succeed. The challenge becomes to discern when it’s the right time to take that impetuous energy and move forward and when it’s the right time to take a breath and sit with the raging emotion for a bit until it simmers down.

Examples of this trait in action:

Recent Facebook post and my personal fallout
I’m loud and assume everyone thinks like I do until they prove me wrong (which happens about 15 times a day). But I’m not terribly interested in those who don’t think like I do, particularly about some very visceral points for me (politics, organized religion, the immense genius of Schitt’s Creek [you think I’m kidding about this. Trust me, I am not.], gun control, the treatment of women and minorities in America and across the whole damn globe! to name a few)

Why I dislike this trait:

Honestly, I don’t dislike this trait. But others do, and that creates problems that I have to overcome in every situation of my life. What I do dislike is that by not exhibiting some judicious caution in saying everything that comes out of my brain in the exact second it appears, I alienate those whose points, agendas and ideas I might find valuable. I shut the door to dialogue with those who don’t think as quickly as I do or who see the merit in pondering a moment before speaking. I alienate those who feel under attack by my verbal barrage approach. And, ultimately, I do a disservice to those for whom I am advocating, including myself.

What others say:

Examples of trait in action:

Why they dislike this trait:

I’m going to spend the weekend thinking about who I can ask to honestly fill the other half of this assignment in. And then I’m going to attempt to prepare for honest answers. I’m also going to preen my feathers in anticipation, so that when they get ruffled, and I know they will, they are at least ready to go. And finally, I’m going to try to be quiet for a bit. Whose voices and experiences have I missed? What opportunities have passed me by because I’m so busy being the loudest voice in the room? Who am I not able to serve because I have alienated them or others who could help me reach those who need me most? What joys am I missing out on because I bulldoze through life?

Lots to ponder. I hope you take some time to do this for yourself, too. And if you are feeling ready, sign up for the PSD retreat. You’ll never regret investing in yourself, and you’ll never know how your life can change if you don’t ask the questions, take the risk and do the work.

25 trips around the sun with my boy

Even in that moment, holding this tiniest, most perfect of little persons, my mom didn’t say yes or no. It wasn’t that all these people didn’t have opinions, but every single one of them knew I was going to have to do this largely by myself; that answer had to come only from me.

I looked down on little Quinn John, and I decided to be his mom.

Twenty-five years ago today, my beloved boy was born. Four and a half weeks early, and with absolutely no reason to arrive before his Valentine’s Day due date, my world turned upside down, and I became mom to this most glorious of humans.

I had been so afraid to make a decision about what to do with this unplanned pregnancy. I had vetoed abortion for my own reasons, so that left adoption–which I sought out in both southern Utah where I lived for the first 5 months of my pregnancy and in Fargo. In fact, I had a lunch date on Saturday, January 13, 1996, with a young woman I vaguely knew who had given a baby up for adoption a couple of years earlier. That lunch date never happened because by noon, I was moving towards the end of my labor.

Labor over a child for whom I didn’t have a plan.

I had no name for this little person because to name this baby growing inside me was to claim it for myself, and I wasn’t prepared to do that. But around 5am, I asked my mom if she liked the name Quinn.

She pondered for a minute and said, “Yes. I do like that name.”

“Great. If it’s a boy, I’m naming him Quinn.”

At 2:34pm, January 13, 1995, I gave birth to a robust preemie. At 6 lbs, 9 3/4 ounces, one of the first things the doctor said to me was that I had to have been incorrect about when I got pregnant because he was so big. Believe me, I was absolutely not incorrect about when I got pregnant (perhaps a story for another day).

I never got that moment where someone lays the gloopy baby on your chest because of his early arrival. The nurses took the baby away to make sure he was healthy and ok. When they brought him back to me about 30 minutes later, I was still pretty hopped up on the drugs they had given me to speed up my contractions and then to manage the pain of that intense speeding up.

One of the nurses asked me what I was going to name this baby.

And I drew a complete blank.

I looked around for help, but there was no one who knew what I had been thinking. My mom was calling my dad, and my best friend Nicole, who had been with me for hours, was in a sort of stunned stupor somewhere in the hallway. And I simply couldn’t remember through the hazy fog of pain medication. So his bassinet card looked like this because it wasn’t until a few minutes later that it came to me in a flash of clarity, and I shouted out, “Quinn. His name is Quinn.”

When they did bring him back to me, all cleaned up with his full head of hair swept over in the sweetest of comb overs, I held this tiny baby and said to my mom, “So, I guess he’s coming home with me, huh?”

One of the best things that happened during my entire pregnancy was that the people who mattered in my life never expressed their opinion of what I ought to do. They listened to me, they let me cry and moan and wail about this, that and the other. And they kept their mouths shut.

I looked down on little Quinn John, and I decided to be his mom.

And that was the single best decision I have ever or will ever make.

Today, that downy-headed preemie is a 25-year old man. And we navigated the arduous journey of growing up, both of us in so many ways, together. On the day of his birth, Quinn already had showed a kind of steadiness that was nothing he inherited from me. He has never wavered in that calm, logical, rational self. I depended on him, more than was likely fair, to be the steady one in our relationship.

I said to him once, when he was 11 or 12, “Quinn, I appreciate how level and even keeled you always are.”

And without missing a beat, he said, “Well, there really wasn’t room for us both to be dramatic.”

Fair point.

To wrap this up, I want to share 25 things I adore about my boy:

He is a gifted composer, musician, artist and writer
He patiently explains how the gears of my bike work every single summer because I never quite understand it and absolutely never remember it
When I called to tell him Mazz was in a medically-induced coma for alcohol addiction, he immediately offered to drive home from college and called me every day while Mazz was away. He checked in regularly during our recent bout with COVID, too
He takes good care of his grandparents and cousins

With all his living grandparents on his college graduation day. December 2018

With his grandmas at his high school graduation. June 2014

At the lake with his only cousins on my side. 2020

He is fiercely loyal to his friends and family

With his goofball friends from Fargo–all fabulous young men and still connected. August 2016

He has long, healthy legs that used to run to keep up with me and which now carry him effortlessly through the world and demand that I pick up my pace to keep up with him
He has a very clever sense of humor
He found a community orchestra in LA to keep playing his violin

Playing with a really good community orchestra. November 2019

He works hard at what matters to him
He actually has a very tender heart
He values family

With nearly all of my family at his Senior Year Orchestra Concert at the SD School of Mines & Technology. April 2018

He’s inquisitive
He’s kind
He’s adventurous

He’s reliable and consistent
He has an admirable drive be successful
He enjoys afternoon teas and evensong services in Cathedrals with me

He views the world from a STEAM perspective

He’s thoughtful and full of thought
He’s learned to appreciate and #SupportLocalArt

One wall in his apartment with both FM and LA-based artists’ work.

He is invested in our little family of three

He loves his girl, Lilly

To be fair, Lilly’s pretty delighted with Quinn, too.

He has incredible integrity
He has dated some extraordinary young women
He has always been a steady and joyful supporter of me

At an event for The Arts Partnership. May 2017.

Just because this picture makes me laugh. May 2018

Happy birthday, Quinn John. You have been and continue to be the delight of my life. I can’t believe how this time has flown by, and I can’t wait to see where you go in the next 25 years!

Love to you,

~ mom

A three-tiered birthday cake with homemade toffee from years ago.

*I never show photos of me from the days around Quinn’s birth because I broke every blood vessel in my face delivering him and look so beaten up, but look at that sweet little chickadee of a baby! Focus on him. ❤️

Really Facebook? THIS is what you’re choosing to focus on today?

*Watch Gratitude Tuesday: grateful free write ep 132 here.

For the first time in 132 episodes, Daily Dose apparently isn’t available on Facebook because I started playing “Linus and Lucy” from Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the powers that be determined that it was a violation of copyright.

I’m not saying it’s not a violation of copyright, although we aren’t making money off of it, and we recognized the composer and the album.

Makes me happy every single time I hear it.

As a side note, it seems to me that Facebook has larger fish to fry than our little Daily Dose and playing a song that is practically a piece of the public realm.

So I’m trying to post it here to see if it’s watchable this way.

And going forward, we won’t play music that doesn’t belong to us–which would basically be all music since neither one of us composes music. And we might explore other streaming options as well.

I hope you take some time to free write your gratitude list–it really is a lovely way to spend a few minutes.

#DailyDose

*So we had to bootleg record our own content, which feels a little bit weird, but it was our last resort. Good idea, Dr Marry!

A crisis of conscience

But this post was on my personal page. And this moment was something I never expected to live through. Going forward, Dolley Madison saving the portrait of George Washington won’t be the last time there was a literal attack on our most sacred institutions. The history books now will say that the Capital was breached in the early days of 2021. And I can’t pretend that that wasn’t instigated and fueled by the man who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Recent events in Washington, DC have created a true personal crisis for me. And I am struggling mightily with it.

I have one quality that I live by more than any other: Integrity. I own what I say and do; I don’t hide behind excuses or past experiences in an attempt to justify my actions. I recognize that I can be seen as too aggressive or passionately impetuous (I think this is more of a response to my gender than my personality, but that’s for another post). I sincerely apologize when necessary for rash decisions. I will quickly change course when I can see that my initial response was perhaps inappropriate, as long as changing course doesn’t ask me to compromise my personal sense of integrity.

For the first time that I can recall, I compromised my integrity this week. I am shaken deeply by it, and I can not reconcile what I have done with who I have always believed myself to be.

After the storming of the Capital on January 6, 2021, I wrote an angry post on my personal social media page. I wrote it recognizing that my job could very likely be at stake and that I would potentially cause irreparable harm to relationships with people in my extended family. I hit send anyway. Some moments are bigger than those things.

Believe it or not, for the past four years, I have carefully considered what I put on my personal social media page because I run a nonprofit that depends on community good will. My personal opinions can not be the reason that the arts sector suffers for support. I know there are many in my community who think I have stepped over the line more than once, and I am sure there are leaders who won’t fund my organization because they think I am “too political.”

I struggle with the notion that my personal life is so interwoven with my professional profile. I often say that I don’t hold it against funders and leaders I work with for being Republicans and conservatives, why do they hold my Democrat and progressive stance against me? The work we do is good and meaningful to our community whether they and I vote D or R, isn’t it?

I am assiduous about keeping my organization apolitical. Go back and scroll through all 10+ years of posts. You won’t find a single one that leans one direction or the other. The only even quasi-political posts I have ever put up were when the current administration zeroed out funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Humanities and Public Broadcasting three years in a row. I had no choice but to ask people to reach out to our federally elected officials and ask them to overturn that decision. My job is to advocate for support for the arts, and that threat to federal funding would have been catastrophic.

I’m proud to say that I have met with staff of both Senator Hoeven and Cramer’s offices in Washington, DC and had fabulous conversations about the importance of the arts to our state and Metro. I’ve talked with Governor Burgum many times about his value of the arts. We proudly received the Governor’s Award for the Arts in 2017 and the Main Street Differentiator Award in 2019. I know many Republicans support the arts because I have been on the receiving end of that support.

And yet, for the sake of my work, I changed course, removed the post and put this up in its place:

I wrote two posts earlier in a pique of fury. I have since removed them. I apologize for hitting send. My feelings are my own, and I own them, but I have larger things to consider than my response to this national tragedy.

And then I wept.

I cried so hard I broke multiple blood vessels in my face, something I have only done three other times in my life: the night I discovered I was pregnant, the day I gave birth to my son and the night I sat in the ICU with my husband who was in a medically-induced coma for alcohol addiction.

It’s easy to say it was just a social media post. Who cares? Social media is not a “real” place of discourse. Except we know that that’s no longer true. We know that much of this unrest was fomented on social media.

Perhaps my post was just adding fuel to an already burning fire or was going out to the chorus of those who agree with me. The comments from some indicate that not everyone was in agreement with what I had to say. And that’s ok. I didn’t say it with the expectation of no push back. I said it because it’s how I felt. It was my personal reaction to what I was watching unfold after years of an attempt to normalize this kind of vitriol around progressive ideals and even basic democracy.

But I took it down. I set aside my integrity for something outside of myself. I acquiesced to a stable salary and the overarching conservative lean of my community.

So my struggle this morning, and the struggle I will have to wrestle with for the foreseeable future, is what do I do with that? Who even am I and what do I stand for now that I have abdicated my integrity over something as simple yet combustable as a social media post on my personal wall?

AP Photo/Noah Berger