We live in a society in which so many of us are made to feel invisible.  Victims of date rape on college campuses are shamed into silence, while rapists like the Stanford swimmer get out off with 3 months of prison time. Presidential candidates are allowed to body shame and demean women repeatedly, even during the debates, and the victims are criticized for speaking up. People on the margins, from the homeless, to the drug addicted, to the abused, are not valued because they broke the rules for how to behave, and therefore they have no voice.  Older women, who no longer turn heads, are made to feel invisible, as though their looks is all they have to offer the world.  And women like Hillary Clinton, who dare to run (and possibly win) for president are made to feel shame for campaigning rough and dirty like a man.  She is not just a pretty face– and in fact never was– but she is smart and she is tough and she is very threatening to a lot of people, because she is daring not to be invisible.  At all.

As a woman raising kids, I often feel invisible.  Somehow my kids’ doctors and nurses feel comfortable calling me “Mom.”  I have had to remind many nurses in many offices that the only people allowed to call me that are my kids, and to remember that I have a name, which is Melinda. It is demeaning not to call someone you regularly see by their name.  Before Civil Rights, white people felt entitled to call a black man “boy”, which is thankfully no longer acceptable.  For the years that I was pushing a double stroller with two young kids, I was invisible, because nobody wanted to deal with the hassle and the noise that two babies bring.  I was kicked out of the library multiple times for my baby crying, even though libraries are for kids.  So I wrote letters reminding the library staff that I paid taxes for access to children’s books that my kids wanted to read.  I refused to be invisible.

But on the small things, it’s so easy to remain invisible.  If someone says something that hurts us, how many of us actually speak up?  How many of us share with people that we are religious or passionate about art or care about politics or are struggling with something in our lives?  Or do we instead post happy pictures on Facebook and let everyone think that our lives are perfect?  That’s making yourself invisible by playing small.  To be honest, many of us are so scared about fitting in and being liked, even as adults, that we don’t really show who we are.  I have noticed over the years that since most people know me as a mother and a life and vocal coach, I haven’t talked a lot about my music, even though I have two albums out and I’ve been a professional musician since my late teens. (You can check out my music at www.melindastanford.com.) The fact is I got busy with raising kids and I was surrounded by busy people who didn’t have time to listen to my CD’s so I gradually stopped talking about it.  I became invisible.

Not anymore.  Now that my kids are older and I’m finally coming up for air, I’m making myself heard and known in a way that I haven’t been able and willing to before. The fact is, the greatest gift we can give our kids, other than our time, is the example of putting ourselves out in the world again and again, even if it means stumbling and falling over and over. What other choice do we have? Giving up should not be an option.

Here is one of my favorite quotes from Marianne Williamson, which I’ve written about before:  “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure… We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?” To claim your world stage, notice where you are invisible and take one step to change that.

This is a giraffe hiding, but animals do it for the right reasons

This week for me, in the whirl of back-to-school for two children at two different schools, my life seemed to be filled with endless little rocks:  piles of laundry, gifts for last-minute parties, orthodontist appointments and other drudgery.  In the past, I made the mistake of thinking that the goal was to take care of all those endless little things, and only when they were finished attend to the big things that matter, like getting in shape, building my business, and singing.  So many of us are perfectionists who feel somehow even now as adults that we are still being graded on how we live our lives.  We want to be good and do the right thing and respond to emails within the hour and be all things to all people.  But we’re tired.  And after a certain point, if we’re lucky, we realize that the little rocks don’t fill our spirits; they just crowd our to do lists.  It’s the big rocks that matter.

This week, if you had come by my house unannounced, you would have found laundry that was partly folded for days and kids digging through it to find their soccer uniforms.  You would have seen very strange meals of leftovers for a few nights since my husband and I had evening commitments and no time to cook.  You would have seen our kids eating way too much ice cream, not to mention the backlog of emails and the ongoing clutter in my office. But you also would have seen lots of snuggling with my kids, lots of talking and listening, time for walks, lots of laughter, and connecting with family and friends.  This week I noticed the leaves were turning into a brilliant red and delighted in a bright orange sunset, went on an evening flashlight walk with my son through the neighborhood, and spent extra time talking with my teenage daughter about life before I dropped her off at school each morning.

To find your world stage, identify what your big rocks are.  For me, it’s family and close friends, music and writing, coaching, travel, and spending time in nature. One great way to identify your big rocks is to make a list of what matters most and keep it where you can see it. In addition, watch out for your small rocks, because they will flatten you and steal your joy if you try to do them all.  Take time to enjoy nature as it enfolds each year, and take the time to really be there for your friend or spouse or child.  The less time we spend on our phones and on social media, and the more time we cultivate our inner spirits, the better.  Once we start focusing on our big rocks, we give permission for the people around us to do the same.

We have this idea, however, that trail blazers know the trail ahead of time, even though they are, in essence, forging ahead through a thick forest with no path that they can see.  They just have to keep walking forward, and sometimes backwards and sometimes perhaps in circles to find their way to the other side.  The trail blazers who came before us didn’t have brightly colored blazes to follow, and yet today when we’re trying to create our own path, we think we have to have it figured out before we start.  If we don’t have a clear map or trail, why bother?  The reality is that nothing great is accomplished without a series of failures, attempts at a trail that end up nowhere.  The difference between someone who succeeds and someone who doesn’t is often the ability to persist no matter what.

Whenever my kids have a setback, I tell them about all the failures and setbacks that Abraham Lincoln experienced in his lifetime.  In 1832, at age 23, he lost a job.  The following year he failed at his business.  Two years later his fiancee died.  A year later he had a nervous breakdown.  It wasn’t for ten more years that he was elected to Congress, only to lose the nomination two years later, and be defeated for the Senate six years later. He was then defeated for the Vice Presidential nomination two years later, then defeated for Senate two years later in 1958, when he was almost 50.  Then he became President two years later, a product of part-luck and part-timing.  I believe that it was only when he was forced to contend with the Civil War, that the country was able to see his true greatness.

I’ve heard often the phrase, “What would you do with your life if you knew you couldn’t fail?” but I think it’s unrealistic and harmful to let people think that the perfect path is an easy path clear with blazes.  I prefer asking,  “What is the thing that you must do before you die no matter what?”  That’s the thing you need to do, even if you’re lost in the woods with no sign of a path, even if you look silly, even if your friends think you’ve lost your head.  That’s what you need to do.

Remember as you forge a trail, there is no clear path to start, just woods at first.  But if you keep walking forward, eventually a path will appear by your movements and by your forward motion.  You will get clues along the way as to whether you’re on the right path, but there won’t be blazes set for you until you have found the way.  The blazes are to show that you were there and to light a path for the next person. This week look for clues as to what moves you, makes you happy, and what fills you with excitement and joy.  Those clues will help you know where to step next.