Amy Swift Crosby

Fifteen years ago, ten years ago, five years ago…you couldn’t say this word much less print it on the cover of a respected publisher’s book cover. It was (and still is) verboten. It makes people uncomfortable, particularly women. But spend any time with Regena’s work, and all preconceptions about what it means or doesn’t mean will fall away.

But first, let’s talk pre-Pussy.

When Regena published her first book 15 years ago, I remember she went all over the morning shows, including The Today Show, and somehow (quite creatively) got around verbalizing her “hero product.” Can you imagine having to avoid the very word that anchors your professional message? The work you’ve studied and lectured on and delivered to thousands upon thousands of people across the world? Your science and teachings – censored? Asked to tip-toe around? It would be easy to blame everyone in the world for not moving your message forward.

Whether she was asked not to say it (by a producer) or chose not to say it (she wisely wanted to be invited back) —it wasn’t welcome. Alarms would have gone off. Cameramen would have fainted and executive producers would have spilled hot coffee on expensive suits. And she got that. But she didn’t get mad at that.

Regena, instead, took the long road. This is the art of restraint, of waiting, for just the right moment, of wrapping her hand around the control levers but patiently, lovingly, joyously pulling them within the environments and ecosystems where they could be digested, accepted and celebrated. When I think of Regena, through all these years, delivering hundreds of workshops, classes, talks, other books — it’s like watching her hair fly in the wind of slow, needed change, all the while quietly (and privately quite riotously) driving an entire culture forward. And despite the resistance, the shame, the push-back, and the fear — she never resorted to finger wagging or angry schoolings on why anyone/everyone was “wrong.”  This flavor of feminine doesn’t make anyone wrong.

Here, I give you, a woman who is going to blow your mind.

She will show you how to have it your way.
In your relationships.
Your sensuality.
Your business.
Your truth.

If you’re ready for that.
And it’s okay if you’re not.

But this is a party that for me started in New York City in 1999 — and isn’t stopping anytime soon. Grab the book now and get all kinds of generous bennies here.

It’s time to reclaim a few things.

Remember way back when? You were new at that thing you do, and you made mistakes, but you corrected them, and then after a while you had surges of confidence when someone said “good job,” and you felt amazing, and then right after that, like the next day, you made humbling fumbles where you felt like an idiot and were embarrassed to be in the same room with yourself?

Ah, to be a virgin again (professionally speaking.) It may be hard to remember, but those pendulum swings that were frequent early on, become less and less as you mature into your talent. A certain stability in your output reassures you that you’re good, if not really good, and your stuff makes people happier / wealthier / more effective — in their own worlds — without much error. So you forget about those days. Because mostly work is good/great-ish.

But something can happen, it happened to me this year, where suddenly some of your regular game becomes unpredictable. You get curve balls thrown, the rug gets pulled out, you think this but really it’s that. It’s not devastating necessarily, although it could be, but what can feel like a sh&t show might really just be virgin territory — a growth spurt. You haven’t done this — like this — before. Maybe you haven’t structured a deal like this, or worked with a client…like this, or taken on a role…like this.  Or had a partner…like this. Or found your own company in a particular position — like this — until now.

Stepping up or out, or even just new relationships/processes/risks, has reminded me of what it feels like to be new at something again. There have been frustrations. And joys. But that pendulum has been back — after years at a steady pace. It’s uncomfortable.

Privately, I’ve condemned  myself for not being better, smoother, less emotional. Maybe you, too, have wondered how you got here. And mistakenly, you think you’ve regressed.

But ease up. I’ve got a campaign going on myself right now where I just say, “calm the __ down” when I feel that uncertainty. I agree, not that poetic — but it works for me. Consider that the movement you feel is likely not reverse — but, in fact, 5^th gear.

The cool thing… about doing a new thing/feeling/situation/circumstance, is it either opens a new door, which means new territory, full of potential – or – gives you information about why you won’t do it again. You get to decide.

Doesn’t have to be your-amazing-everything or your failed-whatever. Don’t give it more weight than that.  You don’t know how it fits into your future until you have time to digest where it fits into your past.

Calm The F$&K Down. It’s gonna be okay.

In the 50’s, a person’s career was established (and halfway over) at 40 years old. Now, many of us have had 5 careers/endeavors/identities by the time we read this blog. It’s also natural to wonder if you can do whatever you do — for ten more years, twenty more years — and do you want to / need to — and if not — then what? The “then what” used to concern me — but I find myself sort of excited about it lately.

The defining question I asked myself when I read Peggy’s book was, can I do, or do I want to do, what I do… forever? Or, could I still do my work, in a different way, and venture into something totally new?

Some questions…and by the way, none of these are more virtuous than any others:

Do you consider your work a phase of your life that will one day stop? (Hello retirement and cruises! Safari’s! Matching tracksuits! Canasta!)

Do you consider your work just one expression of a thing that you do that could be applied to other mediums, industries, circumstances or people? (Graphic designer to painter, copywriter to novelist, entrepreneur to volunteer board member.)

Do you consider your work a single chapter in your life that when finished, will open the door to a new one? (Sell a company, start a radically different one. Close a company, read all the books you didn’t have time for and become a professional volunteer.)

Aging feels like another opportunity to explore something — to impact people — to express yourself. And maybe you’re someone who wants to keep doing what you’ve been doing as long as you possibly can. But let’s think about it, not just dread it or react to it. Let’s financially plan for it, set ourselves up to make those years interesting and intentional, so you can become a medical assistant to a midwife in rural Africa if that’s what you’ve wanted to do your whole life.

I love thinking about Peggy, in her cottage in Martha’s Vineyard, culling thoughts from her day to be captured on paper.

Here’s to our own versions of 65, 75…105. And, at least for me, continuing to write while learning Canasta — with winters spent in South America doing I — don’t — know —what, but humanitarian work in some non-advertising-oriented way, where no one has heard of the word “brand” — and no one cares.

And, here’s to left turns — anytime you want to take one.