All three members of the family are writers, and the mother is someone I follow consistently. Her words never cease to inspire and amaze me.

The most recent post on her blog is one I feel very compelled to share with all of you:

http://mamanongrata.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-will-i-dance-now.html

Please take the time to read it as I feel it is very important we are all aware that things like this continue to happen.

What is suppression?

Why do we insist of the mundane of beige same-ness in order to make ourselves feel complacent?

Where did the celebration of something evolved, different, or simply honest go?

My heart aches for stories like this. Since being in Prague, building this play with all the people I am working with, I have had the honor of watching some of the most amazing and honest expression i have seen in a long time. The people I am working with are people who understand what it means to know themselves, to be and feel alive in their imaginations, and go wild with it.

The show we created is an example of all our wild ideas combined. The music, the dancing, the costumes, the story, the purpose are all things that came collaboratively and organically out of each of us sharing and expressing ourselves.

I learned, very obviously, that I have such an intense fear of being honest in this way. it is so interesting, because this is how I used to play. My best friend Jenny, my brother, and I would spend day after day calling each other different names and seeing the lamp posts change and morph from light sources in the literal sense to magnificent jungle trees. I brought this imagination and expression to my work, and so I was successful. I built a life and a career around make believe, around sharing my insides with the outside. But somewhere in the last 10 years, I feel I have been lost. I feel I have ignored the value of my own internal representation. I chose to follow the rules of what is wanted from me rather than step to my own rhythm.

Consequently, I lost a part of me. A huge part of me. My sense of my self.

Insecurity abounds.

But in this last week, I have been surrounded by examples of artists that dance under the magical jungle trees until the wee hours of the morning. Artists that laugh at their failed ideas because they see it as the valley leading up to a mountain of inspiration.

My muscles are sore and my skills are atrophied, but I am so excited to get back to the practice of honest expression. I look forward to the film I am doing in June and I look forward to taking all that I have learned thus far on the journey back to Clark and Lois. I am grateful for the way lessons are taught in this life time. All you have to do is listen.

watch and listen.
impress and express.
think and create.
be joyful and grow.
evolve and dance.

xo
a

I think I am only now beginning to understand the joy in self-empowerment. The intense value in owning your own shit, and then making the necessary choices and steps in overcoming whatever struggle you are having in the moment.

It is incredible how quickly we can grow and evolve when we remove all our lies (including pride and ego) and actually put effort into building an honest sense of ourselves vs. clinging so tightly to the masks we wear that we can’t even see through the peep holes.

Wow, the result of honesty? Deeper and better everything. Who would have thought?
xo
a

This is a new progression in my personal evolution. Oh yeah, I used to be cool as a cucumber, quick witted with the ability to totally sass back to any and everyone. But that all changed when I decided to be honest. Now? Watch out! The most awkward girl ever is named Allison Mack and she is going to be forgetting sentences and tripping over her own heels at a theatre near you very soon.

Oy, I so look forward to the day when grace, humility, and honesty are things I live consistently. When the muscle of my ideal self is strong enough, through the practice of upholding, that I no longer feel like a 9 -month-old breaking away from the coffee table for her first round of right foot, left foot.

That will be the day!
xo
Allison

Written by one of my most favorite actresses and about some of my most favorite topics: life, work, and doing shit.
As I enter the new year I have been spending lots of time thinking about where I am and where I am going. Who I am and what I want my life to be filled with.
Never before have I ever stopped this long, been this quiet, and thought about myself this clearly.
I took some time off of everything over the holidays and really started to look at all the things I spend my time on. I suddenly realized that I am a big fat liar.
So many of the things in my life I claim to want or have are only because of the way this looks. Like I am always simply playing a part.
How silly, what a silly waste of time.
What would happen if I disregarded the “character” I am attempting to portray and actually lived for me.
This was a huge “aha!” moment I had in Ecuador.
Traveling with my girlfriends I started thinking about why I do anything.
Why keep a clean house if it is not for the company that comes over?
Why wear make up if it is not to have someone think of me as beautiful?
Why write a blog if it is not for someone else to read it?
Why play a part if it is not for the applause?
As I started to ask and answer these questions for myself, I started to see why I do these things, really.
What type of experience I am seeking for me.
Yes, we are an interdependent species. We are creates of effects and we cannot disregard our responsibility in this world.
But that being said, we must take charge of our own experience and know and understand our own journey for us.
Know and understand your own journey for you.
Know and understand my own journey for me.
That way, when I am in the experience I am in it for me.
Living it with no fear or attachment to the outcome, only the experience.
This will be the practice of 2009.
A practice free of obligation and filled with honesty.
A year of truth that will be the start to a lifetime of depth!
xoxo
allison

It was a really sweet, MTV-like doc made by a rockin’ female film maker that follows the stories of a jock, a princess, a geek, a weirdo, and the heart-throb through their final high school days. The film itself felt a little forced and not totally honest in it’s (documentary claim)… but still it was enjoyable.

I also had the fantastic privilege of going to a farmers market today. I don’t know, maybe I am alone on this one, but I feel so satisfied when I eat something that is a beautiful color, and freshly picked out of the ground! I feel such a sense of ease looking at the faces of the farmers growing and selling their wares to us. Tthere is an honest exchange that happens in those moments that is so human.

Something about dirty hands that is so beautifully truthful… That was one of my most favorite memories in China: playing in the dirt in rural China with a little baby and using the dirt as a tool for the play, instead of brushing off the dirt as a hindrance to play.

I think if we all got a little more dirty, the world would be happy, moderate in temperature, and enlightening.

But that’s just me!

xoxo
Allison