The Speak Up: Know yourself to your core 🌈

When I was in high school I was obsessed with fashion.

My influences came from Japanese street style, Gwen Stefani, and rockabilly culture.

Beginning my first day of Freshman year I kept a marble composition notebook called The Clothing Calendar. Inside I marked what I wore each day and made it a goal to try not to repeat an outfit for as long as possible.

I loved bright colors.

I loved synthetic fabric!

I loved Lip Smackers on a chain that color-coordinated with each outfit.

Planning what I wore to school, concerts, and my part-time job was a very big deal to my teenage self.

Here's what I wore to senior prom:

Over the years my style has evolved to a more subdued look - especially when it comes to color.

As a mid-to-late thirties version of myself, my ideal color palette was three shades of grey, a ton of black, and a dark wash of denim.

But then a glimmer of The Clothing Calendar years arrived on my computer screen.

🌈 A rainbow sweater. 🌈

It was from a brand called Lazy Oaf. I owned a few items of theirs already -- likely the most subdued items from their collections.

But the brand itself felt dear to me because their entire aesthetic is everything that High School Hillary would have loved. She would have spent her entire paycheck from Tower Records on clothes from this company.

I so desperately wanted the rainbow sweater and it was on sale!

I ordered it.

It shipped from England.

And when it arrived I folded it up with the stack of grey and black sweaters in my closet.

A few weeks later, I had evening plans of going to a comedy show with my boyfriend and a birthday party to follow.

I thought to myself: I'll wear my new rainbow sweater!

I threw it on over my all-black outfit and immediately felt self-conscious.

I felt like a buttoned-up, professional thirty-something-year-old, who loves Scandinavian minimalism, wearing the costume of a wild and free high school student marching to the beat of her own drum.

High School Hillary was trying to break free but grown up Hillary was putting a stop to it.

I changed into a grey sweater and went on my way.

While biking to the comedy show with my partner, we were stopped at a traffic light.

Waiting at the intersection, I started to talk about the rainbow sweater, and how I wanted to wear it, and chickened out. I described the sweater and my insecurities in great detail.

I was sharing my sweater story with him in a jokey way, but the feelings of uncertainty were real. I truly felt like I couldn't pull this sweater off that night... and maybe forever.

As the light turned green and we started to bike off, I heard a voice yell, "You should wear the sweater! It sounds really awesome!"

I look over and an unassuming man is walking his dog. He had heard the entire conversation and was cheering me on with an encouraging grin.

I smiled back and said, "Thanks, I will!"

For some reason that stranger's encouragement was enough for me to snap out of the worry of whether or not this rainbow sweater was meant for me.

It was like the voice of true wisdom had emerged from my head and landed in the throat of the dog-walking man.

The sweater was meant to be worn!

High School Hillary could shine through once again.

The truth is, High School Hillary is always there and is a guiding light for a lot of the things I do.

High School Hillary published five issues of her own zine, Bizarre Ink, and had paying advertisers.

High School Hillary sang musical theater at the top of her lungs, tap danced, and quit playing the trombone after getting stuck in a revolving door with the instrument case.

High School Hillary was photographed for a Japanese fashion magazine because of her wild and wonderful style.

These are moments that I capture and carry with me into adulthood and a simple reminder of it all is contained within that rainbow sweater.

There's a bit of a Sliding Doors spin to this story...

The day that I clicked to purchase the rainbow sweater there was another layer to my decision to buy.

Sure, it reminded me of High School Hillary, but it also fell into an ethos of dressing to please yourself -- something I had consciously practiced for two years leading up to buying it.

In the Summer of 2018, I took an eight-week online course with Jenn Armbrust and her company, Sister. It was a business design class called Concepts and Conceptions and it was a chance for me to realign my business with my mission, vision, and values and shift my focus to serving individuals over corporations.

In addition to the course serving as professional development, it also provided a tremendous amount of growth in the area of personal development. (This was something I did not anticipate when signing up.)

A few weeks after the course ended I received a lovely handwritten thank you note from Jenn in the mail.

And in the envelope was a card.

It was shaped like a tarot card with an illustration of a peacock. And with the card was a typed-up description of its meaning:

Peacock: Inner beauty that radiates outward. Compassion. The ability to assimilate and digest life. Deep acceptance of self and others.

Turns out this was a card from Kim Krans' The Wild Unknown Animal Spirit Deck. At this time, I was not schooled in tarot or anything metaphysical, really. (If you'd like, you can learn more about that spirituality conundrum in this ​audio piece​.)

Even without a full buy-in of woo-ness, I was drawn to the card -- both the illustration of the peacock and the full description of its meaning.

As you can see from the image above, the card's description included a way to bring yourself into balance, if need be.

It read:

Nourish yourself with food and art. Dress to please yourself.

I held on to the Peacock card, keeping it tucked away in my planner for two years.

It served as a reminder of how I move through the world and what I need to do if I feel out of balance.

Thus "dressing to please myself" became a thing.

That card helped me to abandon my previous belief that I needed to wear a blazer if I was showing up as a "professional" and a "leader".

When I created the 5 Key Elements of Personal Narrative (more on that later) I named the third element "Beyond the Blazer" as a reminder that we are not defined by our work.

We are so much more than what we do.

From there things went even deeper with the Peacock card.

When I was amid a visual brand identity refresh, I shared the card (and the story behind it) with my designer. She was able to pull the blue, teal, and yellow from the illustration as Tell Me A Story's three main brand colors.

All of this is to say that the rainbow sweater is more than a sweater.

The sweater (and this story) reminds me of who I was, who I am, and how important it is to get to know yourself to your core.

In the next newsletter, I'll tell you a bit more about my storytelling philosophy and the Tell Me A Story® Framework.

See you then,

Hillary