Being a Wise Woman on a stormy day
Sep 30, 2026
This week I had a very stormy day. My personal version of Alexander and his, "terrible horrible no good very bad day."
I share this deliberately, not because I need other people to validate me, but because authentic mentoring matters. I'm being intentional in my mentoring in two points.
First, it is a powerful thing to O.W.N. our real experience. Dr. Daniel Siegel, a psychiatrist, professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, pioneer of Interpersonal Neurobiology, and acronym-loving mentor, teaches that O.W.N. stands for observe, witness, and narrate.
Being able to observe something is synonymous with standing on the riverbank watching the self in the experience as it passes by, rather than being stuck in the river, flooded by emotions, and pulled by the current of automatic reactions from self and others. This is an important quality that reflects a degree of maturity and separation from what might have been a trigger before.
To witness something means to hold a place of acceptance. We are honoring that it is happening without needing to fix it or change it.
To narrate something means to wrap words around it and be able to share it in a meaningful way. Often, telling our story increases the growth that comes from the experience.
So, for me, writing is a choice to narrate about my challenge and grow from it.
The second reason I share intentionally is that I believe living with authenticity is equally important on both the sunshine days and on the stormy days. Social media offers a disproportionate amount of sunshine examples and not as many of navigating complicated emotions and experiences with wisdom and grace.
I'm not setting myself up as a perfect mentor. In fact, I think "perfect mentor" is an oxymoron. Every single one of us is human, even amidst our strengths.
A mentor is someone who teaches us to navigate a path in a different way than we have seen before.
Growing up, I saw three ways of handling days that are rocky from the inside out.
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Stuff it down and pretend to everyone on the outside that everything is fine on the inside (even though it is obvious to everyone that you are not okay).
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Blow up at people around you who are not the source of your angst but happen to be human alongside you.
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Hide in your room and refuse to engage with the world while life ferments on the inside.
I've done all of these myself. None of them ever made the bad day better for me or anyone around me.
However, this season of my life is about replacing old coping behaviors with new whole-souled ways of dancing with life.
That approach pretty much guarantees clunkiness. So, Monday was clunky, but ironically, I went to bed in a state of equanimity.
Here are three things I did that I know made a difference.
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I was authentic and open in sharing with colleagues where I was and how it was impacting me physically and emotionally. No victimhood. Just openness. In every case they were exceptionally supportive and helped me adapt what we needed to accomplish together according to what I had to give.
The benefit of this was two-fold. It created a way for us both to move forward and for me to not run faster than I had strength.
The both/and solutions rock!
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I did not pretend I didn't have needs. I listened to each aspect of my soul without shame or guilt. I took an afternoon nap. I did some tai chi based in rehearsing an anchoring verse of scripture. I let myself cry, both by myself and with a friend. I accomplished the most needful things, but I did not get the to-do list done...and I did not feel guilty about it. I worked on a puzzle. I did not eat sugar (a self-parenting moment, even on a hard day). And, I went to bed early.
We can still be whole-souled in the storm.
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I asked for prayers and let myself be held by close collective relationships without having to change. It's hard to explain that experience, but it required trust and honesty with others. It has taken time and deliberate growth to develop these kind of friendships. Monday I felt the fruit of those choices though. The best way I can describe it is that it gave me permission to be me and to be safe in accepting my own humanness. It let me give myself grace because others around me were offering grace so freely and I let myself receive it.
There was a power in passing through the storm surrounded by a collective rather than isolating myself or fighting others away. This choice was undoubtedly reinforced by the witness of my friend NiCole who recently discussed this very idea in her own life circumstances with me. It's a powerful podcast episode.
All three of these choices were both healing and sustaining at the same time. I believe that is why I could go to sleep with equanimity even though it was a really hard day that started out in a dark place.
Light shined from the outside in, even though the storm was raging from the inside out.
I hope you file this away and draw on these rays of light next time you have a stormy day. It will come. And you can navigate it differently as a Wise Woman in small and simple ways.
No pretending.
No yelling.
No hiding.
It may feel clunky, but it will also feel good in your soul.
After all, soulfull alignment is about how we live on both sunshine days and stormy days.
Shine on!
Emily
