Badass Pollyanna

Well, let me tell you. I’m a Southeast Missouri-raised kid who started

out in Southern California. My brothers and cousins and I got into all

kinds of mischief in the woods and creeks surrounding my

grandparents’ home when we were young. We created stories and

adventures and lived them until my grandmother blew her whistle

signaling it was time to come in for supper. And then we were back

out in the soft dark amongst the fireflies, listening to grown ups’

stories, playing flashlight tag, looking up at the stars, and soaking in

the night air. My hometown may have been small, but my world

was expansive.

Until it wasn’t. Until I reached that certain age, the age where a girl

runs smack dab into all the supposed-to-be’s. An age where girls

don’t . . . so many things. I couldn’t work out who I was in the midst of

all that oughta-be. I began to tell myself stories to help me make

sense of it all. Stories that kept me from living outside the lines.

“I’m too much.”

“I’m not enough.”

“I’m not worthy.

“I don’t belong.”

Eventually, “I don’t belong” grew into “I am an abomination.”

And I spent decades of my life living as though all those things were true.

Thing is, though, I’d experienced magic when I was young. My

grandfather had brought the mysteries of the universe to life for us

kids. And his magic flowed in my veins. That magic, that core of who I

am, wasn’t settling for no stinking status quo—my will to keep myself

small and safe be damned.

That magic kept making alliances with that not-to-be denied rebel soul girl who was too big for the britches she was supposed to fit herself into.

Finally, I learned to embrace it, mix in a hefty dose of joyful trickster energy and a big dollop of curiosity, and I put all that to work in ways that saved me and serves the world.

It wasn’t easy work, but it was worth every angsty drop of sweat it

took to do it. Worth nurturing every story seed about who I really was,

what I am here to do, what was really possible. Worth digging up every

painful, choking indictment about who I was and could be. Because

that work has made possible the person I delight in being today, the

woman who’s been through what so many other women struggle with, the woman who can help others journey from their own particular sense of abomination to their own particular awesome.

That's who Jamie Mayo knows she is!