Unraveling, with Brooke Baldwin

Week 5: Fear, intention... and Oprah! 📚

Dearest Unravelers and Unravelers-to-Be —

Last night I dreamed I was doing yoga with Oprah. We were at some magical weekend retreat together. “Oh hey Oprah.” Now Oprah wasn’t a total yogi in my dream. And I tried to reassure her: “It’s cool Oprah… for me, yoga is less about DOING and more about BEING.” And she was like: “Ohhhh. Brooooooooke. <<you know, big booming Oprah voice>> I see that. Thank you.” It was clear there was going to be a pathway to friendship too which made me very excited because, well, Oprah. I was also doing handstands on my yoga mat in my dream and I CAN’T do that without an assist in real life so… 🤷🏼‍♀️ But I’m telling myself today: “BB, if you dream it, you can be it.”

Also side note: if you have not watched Oprah recently interviewed by Jamie Kern Lima, here you go: watch part 1 and part 2. I told Jamie it’s the best interview I’ve ever seen of Oprah. One of my favorite parts (there are many) is when Oprah talks about how we all have the choice to “step into the Dream” — she explains how we can listen to our intuition in order to live our purpose.

<<Y’all… I’m inserting this because four days after I wrote those words above, I was in a room with Oprah. Yep. The Universe, baby. She’s always conspiring. I’ll tell you where we were and why at the bottom of this letter — and why you, too, need to go. But for the sake of what I’m writing here: I told her how much I appreciate how she spoke about intuition and our callings — and to trust that voice within.>>

I watched that part of their interview 4x and then transcribed it into the notes section of my iPhone as I was sitting in the grocery store parking lot. 🤓 Here are my rough notes to myself:

In that interview when Oprah talks about the “answers showing up” – that’s exactly what I was writing about last week with the Breadcrumb Trail. Be awake. Look for the signs. Watch for the pattern. Trust yourself. How do we do that? How do we do that especially when life is handing us a sh*t sandwich? When that work opportunity we were banking on… fell short. Or when we're married to someone with unhealthy amounts of anger and we feel stuck. Or we’re really struggling with someone in our family because they’re voting for That Guy in November. Or we keep getting sick. Or we’re doom scrolling on Instagram… Or. Or. Or.

At various times in my Unraveling — been there. Felt that. Sucked. I was talking to (read: getting into it with) Peter just the other day about feeling my edge. And no not in that way, instead in the “ughhhh, I’m deeply uncomfortable regarding certain aspects of our current circumstances, when is this going to end???” I might have also uttered these words to my man, which, looking back, I think I’ve just felt so secure in our relationship that I could be this honest: “I love you, but I really don’t like you very much today.” Ouch. I know. I apologized to him later that night. But not before I felt all the feels and meditated and journaled and phoned a friend and listened to old voice memos from Peter just after I’d met him (does anyone else do that — go back to the beginning just to remember?). He was on the west coast, and I was in New York. And after I’d go to bed, he’d still be up in LA, and he would record himself reading passages from When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön… and then text them to me to listen to the following morning. (Yup. This was a key part of our courtship… a first for me, really. But at that point in my life, I was ready for this jelly.) Here’s the passage that recently had me sitting up straight: 

“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth. When you start to look at your fear and recognize it for what it is—just fear, nothing more, nothing less—then you can start to use it. Fear is like a wake-up call. When you look at it and work with it, you discover that fear and pain are not really personal. They are part of the natural process of being human. If you can stay with it and not be overwhelmed, you’ll see that fear doesn’t have to be a problem; it can be an opportunity to wake up and grow.”

As I write this, I am in fear. I’m watching what’s happening in Georgia, my home state, where four students were killed in yet another school shooting, and the 14 year old suspected gunman and his father who bought his son the gun, have been arrested and charged. I covered far too many of these in my years on the anchor desk. I would get outraged — I still do. I fear for our children. I fear for our country and the direction it could take depending on what happens in November. (Vote.)

But to Chödrön’s point — fear is a wake up call. Sounds crazy, but try to talk to it, ask it what it wants from you, what it’s really about. What are we really afraid of? Then get intimate with it: there’s so much more information in fear than in other emotions. Peter has a sticky note on his computer at all times: “Trust obstacles.” What do fears and walls have to say to us, what story are they telling us about ourselves?

I was talking to my dear friend and former coach Treena Huang about some of my own fears over zoom this week. Treena helped me Unravel before I knew Unraveling was even a thing. I was so skeptical, like “what is a… life coach?!” Sounded cheesy. But our dear mutual friend Bevin raved about her, so I gave it a shot as a birthday present to myself when I turned 40. After one session, I was hooked. I suppose looking back (Treena coached me for a solid four years – now we’re good pals), she was one of my Unraveling Sherpas. Y’all, we all need one, ideally several. Find someone who’s ahead of you in life in terms of experience, wins and more importantly losses. Wiser. Maybe older though not necessarily. I’ve had plenty of younger gals teach me a thing or two. (You know who you are!) And, one last point, you can consider someone a teacher who you’ve never actually met! I’d be honored to be one of your teachers. I pinch myself that I’ve met most of these women, but it’s not like I have any of these ladies on speed dial (I wish). But I often lean on the teachings of Oprah, Martha Beck, Maria Shriver, Liz Gilbert, Maya Angelou, Brené Brown, Viola Davis, Brandi Carlile and Michelle Obama. I’ve listened to hours of them on podcasts or TV. I’ve read their books. Their wisdom has seeped in me. Find someone who can help guide you, whose words will remind you that you are not alone. 

This week Treena and I actually recorded our conversation because I thought I might like to share bits of it with you. We started out by talking about meditation — how a bunch of years ago she was the first person to say to me (spinning-TV-news-anchor-running-90-mph-still-not-really-saying-no-enough-NYC-dwelling me): “Brooke. You’ve GOT to find time to get still. Close your eyes. And breathe.” I was a terrible meditator at first. But I worked up to five minutes, then ten, and now 20 or more. Then our conversation turned to fear and what to do about it. Here’s a clip: