Gingerbread Dreams
When I read Tara Mohr’s book ‘Playing Big’ I discovered the concept of an inner mentor. Someone to balance the inner critic. This was such a comforting thought to me. Tara takes you through a visualization exercise to help you find and get to know your inner mentor. I had tried visualization exercises before with no image resulting. I was envious when another participant could describe herself in a bejeweled blue dress. So, I decided my first time listening to the exercise would be at bedtime. I hoped my semi-sleep state would keep my reality-focused brain from taking over. I don’t know how much of the exercise I heard but I woke up during the night with a start. My inner mentor was a writer. This may not seem any great revelation since I am a professional writer. That persona, however, is really a researcher (the grant doctor) who uses writing as a tool. Being a writer at heart felt different. An inner mentor who was a writer would be kind to me, would keep me safe within the pages of a book.
I then repeated the exercise in my favorite new garden swing chair, in the evening sunlight that makes me feel like a cat luxuriating in the warmth at the end of a day. Tara takes you through each step along a path out of your house, out of your neighborhood, out of your country and out of this world. You then come back 20 years in the future. You go to meet yourself in the future, in your future house. Your future self is your inner mentor. I imagined myself on a conveyor belt and when I returned 20 years in the future I was in the English countryside (I am originally from the UK but live in the US). I knocked on the door of an old English thatched roof cottage. Sounds corny but it wasn’t. An old lady in a flannel shirt with long grey hair like Jane Goodall opened the door. The cottage was small and dark, but warm and cozy. The walls were lined with books. She took me through the house to a sunroom. We sat in two comfy chairs looking at the garden. She gave me a cup of tea and a piece of gingerbread. As directed in the exercise, I asked this older version of myself her advice. She said, “Worry less what people think. It’s ok to be a little eccentric.” We spent a little time together in companiable silence. When I left, she handed me a present of a beautiful leather-bound journal. “Write” she said. “It will make you feel better”. It was such a treat to meet this softer, gentler version of myself who was so comfortable in her skin. I would love to grow to be such an old lady.
Tara provides several ideas how you can continue to engage with your vision and your mentor. You can imagine what she would say when you have a problem. You can imagine what choices she would make. One suggestion was to eat the food that your inner mentor had given you during the visualization exercise. I made a cup of my English tea, but homemade gingerbread… that was a whole other matter. I love baking and had made gingerbread before, so it wasn’t a confidence issue. It was an ingredients problem. Gingerbread is made from treacle. “What’s gingerbread?” my husband asked. “Is it like a gingerbread man?”. “No, it’s moist, like a cake.” I replied. “What’s treacle?” he asked “Is it like molasses?” I replied, “Yes, it’s dark but it’s more bitter I think”. It was weeks before I made a trip to the English food shop, 30 minutes or so from our house. I walked past the tearoom into the store. There was golden syrup but no treacle. I was devastated. No treacle! I asked the cashier. No treacle. What did this mean? Was my dream to be foiled? When I got home, a little more distressed than warranted my husband said, “Let’s just order it online.” Genius. It arrived a few days later. Two tins of it. One had already leaked some of its dark sticky contents.
At last, a quiet weekend. Not much to do. A few brown bananas in the fruit bowl. I’ll make a banana and carrot bread. Oooo… and my gingerbread. I enrolled my daughter to help sieve and stir and mix. When I put the ginger into the mixture she declared, “Pew, that is a strong smell”. She enjoyed seeing the dark treacle glooping around the eggs and flour. It was a thick mixture. Dark like chocolate. I put it on to bake. It had taken me a while to make. The ingredients weren’t easy to find. Probably no one else would appreciate the taste. It reminded me of coach Juju Hook’s advice about marketing products, “It’s like you’re selling bacon. You have cared for the pigs organically and cured the bacon with high quality maple syrup. But first you have to ask your customer, do you want bacon with your eggs? It’s not your hard-earned delicious bacon, they are rejecting, they just don’t want bacon with their eggs.” Not everyone would like my gingerbread. Not everyone would like my writing, my podcast, my business ideas. That was ok. I would still enjoy making it. It would take a while for me to find the precise ingredients and recipe that would make my writing, podcast and business taste just right. But I also realized, as the delicious smells wafted from my oven, that I was making it for myself. Both the book and the gingerbread. They would both help me. As a working mom, there are not many times when we dedicate time and effort to ourselves. It felt good. It tasted even better.
