Last week I was talking through the pros and cons of a big decision with a friend who offered a very helpful exercise. He asked me to imagine that I’m holding a board meeting with all the parts of myself that have a vote in this matter. Who are they and what do they have to say about it?
It was just a simple little exercise. Didn’t take more than ten minutes. But it made me reflect on the very different ways in which I’ve shown up in the world over the years. I had my small-town troubled teen era. My Hollywood actress era. My struggling single mom in London era. My corporate media era, when I was the Arts and Life editor at a Vancouver newspaper. And for the past ten years I’ve been in my entrepreneur era, which has mostly played out in Los Angeles, less than a mile but a thousand light years away from the apartment building where I lived as a young actress trying to make it in show business.
Each of these personas is authentically me, and each one gave me an opportunity to express different aspects of my personality, interests, and values. But they haven’t always sat comfortably together at the table. In fact, there was a time when I was secretive and maybe even a little ashamed of my past selves. As a thirty-something manager of surly arts journalists who were all much older than me, I didn’t want anyone to know about my acting past because I thought it would make them take me less seriously. I was going by my married surname at the time and kind of got a kick out of living incognito among reporters who had no idea a couple of them had actually interviewed me as a teenager.
One day the unthinkable happened.
I’d recently reverted to my maiden name and come clean about my youthful showbiz career. One of the reporters was digging through the paper’s archives for a story he was working on and came across one of those early interviews. He printed out the article and put a copy on the desk of every reporter in the arts department. When I picked it up and read the lede, my stomach dropped. It said: Parents, look away. Teen actress Margaret Langrick is a high school dropout.
I was mortified—and more than a little afraid of getting fired. Not only had I not gone to J-school, I didn’t even have a high school diploma. Surely it was against the rules to have an undereducated rube like me in the newsroom, let alone managing grizzled old-timers?
Luckily my boss had my back and reassured me that what mattered was my job performance, which was solid. If any of the reporters in my section looked down on me after that, they kept it to themselves. The only real repercussion of that disclosure was that I reclaimed that disowned part of myself and became a little bit more whole.
Before becoming an editor, I ran a stall in London’s Portobello Market selling skirts and tops that I’d made myself.
Every Saturday morning before dawn I bundled my toddler into her stroller with a sippy cup and a bunch of picture books, and hung huge bags of homemade merchandise off the handles, taking care not to let it tip over backwards under the weight of its load.
Its little plastic wheels creaking and splaying out to the side, I pushed the loaded stroller three blocks from our single-room flat to the covered market under the Westway, where we joined the mob of causal vendors milling around hoping to get a stall in a plum location. The market boss was a squat, ginger-haired guy named Jimmy, a hand-rolled cigarette perpetually clamped between his thin lips. For the first hour of the still-dark early morning, we trailed after Jimmy in a pack as he strutted up and down the length of the market row doling out market pitches like a cockney Father Christmas.
The fashion market at Portobello was a cool vibe; a riot of vintage clothing, unique creations from indie fashion designers, and cheap printed tees and dresses that some enterprising hippie had brought back from Thailand or India. My designs were trippy and eclectic, a cross between boho style and rave wear.
One day an American dad was browsing my stall with his teenage daughter. She was interested in a floor-length column-style skirt made of black pleather with a band of hot pink quilting across the bottom. (Hey, it was the 90’s.)
I watched their conversation with fascination. She pleaded with him to buy her the skirt, but instead of just saying yes or no, he kept asking her, “What would Mommy say?” The girl mumbled in response, and the dad demanded sternly again and again, “What would Mommy say?” I thought it was super weird that he was putting his kid in the awkward position of policing her own choices through her absent mother’s opinions. This guy was clearly afraid of his wife’s disapproval, not only of their daughter’s sartorial experimentation but of his parenting.
Looking at the skirt, I’m thinking: Mommy would definitely say no. To be honest, it wasn’t my finest design. Kind of ugly, even. The hems were wonky. And I had no idea if it would stand up to any kind of laundering. But it fit that girl perfectly, skimming her broad hips and lengthening her legs. Plus it was a bona fide Portobello original, straight from the hands of the young designer who’d sewn it in her kitchen.
As he pressed her again for like the fifteenth time, “What would Mommy say?” I wanted to tell him, Mommy’s not here. And that’s exactly why you should say yes. Be your daughter’s hero. Give her a chance to experience herself as she wants to be, not as Mommy sees her.
This girl was trying on more than a skirt. She was trying on a new persona. I could imagine her back home in New York or Chicago or wherever, wearing this wacky, black and pink textural mashup of a garment to school, proudly telling her friends: I got it in London.
I was in an artsy, experimental phase too. Only 28 myself at the time, I wore giant, chunky platform boots everywhere and had hot pink slices in my short, spiky hair. It was my little rebellion against years of having to maintain a neutral style as a professional actress, ready to slip into any role offered to me. It felt so freeing to be able to express myself however the hell I wanted.
I no longer have pink hair but that colorful wild child is still alive in me. In my board meeting last week she offered a strong opinion: whatever I decide to do, she doesn’t want me to compromise my freedom, especially the freedom to be weird. I promised not to put her in a pencil skirt.
Then there was my artist self, who wants me to jealously guard my creative time, including time for writing these essays. Her role in my life is sacred and I won’t hide her away in a closet ever again.
My CEO self is thinking about income and status, and strategizing how my next move will set me up for future opportunities. I thank her for keeping a roof over my head all these years, and for walking me across every big ambitious threshold.
And my breast cancer survivor self is just craving comfort and peace. She knows better than the others how precious our time on earth is, and the terrible cost of chronic stress.
None of these perspectives was an earth-shattering revelation, although there was one surprising insight: I realized my cancer survivor self has special status in this group. She sits on a throne and has the power of veto over all the others. So, it is settled. Comfort and peace will rule the day.
We all have this multitude of selves inside of us, each with its own important mission to fulfill. I believe we are most content in our lives when we’re taking the counsel of all our internal board members and attending to their various needs.
I don’t know exactly what era I’m entering into next, but I know that it entails reclaiming and embracing all of those lost or discarded parts. Maybe I’m in my integration era.
I used to agonize over which of my personas is the “real me”. I felt fragmented and phony, in a constant state of compromise and incompletion. I don’t have that problem anymore because I’m sitting in the seat of my core Self. This unchanging being is more than just another character around the table. It watches over the others like the sky and holds my whole story in its gaze. A jewel with many facets and no single face.
xo
I love this piece so much. And YES to no bad parts. <3