Lessons, p.10
Lessons, page 10
In fact, one morning last year when I was making the kids breakfast, out of nowhere Benny, who was at the table, said, “Mom—what’s a celebrity?” It took me a moment—where had he even heard that word?—but finally I told him, “A celebrity is someone who works at a job that’s more visible that other jobs. Doctors, dentists, teachers, farmers—they all do very important work.” Daddy, I reminded him, has a very visible job playing for a professional football team whose Sunday games are often televised. “It doesn’t mean the person doing that job is more important,” I went on. “It just means that what they do is more visible.” Benny seemed to accept this—oh, okay, Mom—but it made me think about what he might be hearing at school about Tom and me that he doesn’t tell us about. Later I told Tom how important it is to talk to Benny about what Mommy and Daddy do for a living. It was time. So we did. Tom told Benny how hard he works and reminded him that he was one of the last people picked in the NFL draft back in 2000. It wasn’t like I was always good at this, Tom said. I studied. I practiced and then I got better and better at it. Benny, know that as an eight-year-old kid, the more you dedicate yourself to something, the better you become at it. In response to the question Benny didn’t ask, but must have wondered—How do people even know my dad’s name?—Tom told him that people know his name, and like him, because they like what he does, or because they love sports. But that doesn’t mean they really know him, not the way our family knows him.
Think back to the words other people have said to you. Those words had the power to hurt you, inspire you, motivate you, frighten you, comfort you, cheer you, make you doubt yourself—or make you feel understood, appreciated, and loved. Like most people, I’ve used words both positively and negatively. I’ve said things in anger and spoken words with love. Most of the time I try to set a steady emotional tone, but still I’ve said things I wish I could take back. I am far from perfect, but the good news is I keep on practicing and I do learn from my mistakes. Again, what are we all here on earth for, if not to learn? It’s important to remember that whenever you treat yourself unkindly or critically, you are only hurting yourself. Change doesn’t come from being judgmental or from putting yourself down. It comes from inspiration, from the desire to want to do better, to try again, to give it your best. When you learned how to walk, did you immediately run or jump onto an escalator? No, you took a single step. Maybe you stumbled and fell. You got up again. Next time you took two steps. Then three. That’s how we all learned how to walk. That’s also how we learn about ourselves and how to navigate life.
No doubt my most negative words have been reserved for family members, especially my sisters. Unfortunately, family members know one another’s tender spots, and all too often can cause emotional hurt. I remember a fight with Pati on Skype, although I forget the exact details—it had something to do with me thinking Pati was being overly controlling or disrespectful. I got really angry, in fact I was barely aware of what I was saying—the words flew out of my mouth before I could stop them. I began with, Well, then, let me tell you what I think about you!
My intention was to hurt Pati, and I did. After all, hadn’t she hurt me first? In the silence that followed, my twin sister was speechless. I was, too. I felt regret right away. That was such a cheap shot. The call ended. We both hung up feeling terrible. I couldn’t get to sleep that night. I kept thinking what an idiot I was. I love all my sisters. Why had I been so mean? My justification—But Pati was mean to me first! She started it!—suddenly seemed lame. There were so many other, better ways I could have dealt with the situation, like saying, I’m sorry you feel that way about me, or Why don’t we speak again tomorrow? I didn’t need to slam my sister, but I had, and I spent the next day or two incredibly upset.
How do we apologize to someone we love, whose feelings we’ve hurt badly? A few days later when Pati and I spoke, the first words out of my mouth were I’m sorry. Pati thanked me and accepted my apology, but for the next week or so there was a definite strain between us. I knew it was my fault. I hadn’t been self-aware enough to set the right tone, and I hadn’t acted in a loving or respectful way, which is how I like other people to treat me.
There have been situations since then when I’ve gotten angry, but I’ve mostly learned to pause and reflect before speaking. Tom and I don’t argue much, but sometimes, when I feel anger rising in me—growing, growing—I become aware of what’s going on. Instead of reacting in a way I’ll regret later, I remember to breathe. Then I’ll tell Tom it’s better if we talk later and I leave the room. Meditation has been key in helping me with my own reactivity. I think of my anger as a visitor, and I can see that it is potentially destructive, so I make the conscious choice not to engage with it. The next time Tom and I are together, we can revisit whatever we were talking about in a loving, respectful way, and we always do.
Sometimes instead of verbally reacting, I’ll write a letter. My dad taught us that whenever we felt confused or unclear about something, we should seek out a quiet space and put our thoughts and feelings on paper. When you are done, he said, read it and you will see things more clearly. Once, when Tom and I were having a rough time, I got an email from him that hurt my feelings. He was in Boston at the time, and I was in Costa Rica. Instead of retaliating by sending a hurtful email back, I took out a pen and a piece of paper, and for the next hour I wrote down my thoughts and emotions, the things that made me angry, the things that made me frustrated—everything I was feeling at that time. I didn’t censor myself. It was nonstop, no restrictions. When I finished, I was shocked to see I’d written almost three pages. I also felt relief.
It’s much more helpful to me when I write my thoughts out in longhand. It’s between me, my pen, and my paper. Writing by hand also eliminates the danger of impulsively pressing Send and then not being able to take my email back. The words in front of me felt honest and intense—crazy-intense, actually. Just writing them down made me feel a hundred times better. In the end, I never sent the letter. I let a day go by. Then I read what I’d written a few more times. That night, I rolled up the letter and burned it. It was as if by writing the letter, my turmoil had left me and gone into my writing hand, onto the sheet of paper—and then the fire burned it all away. The next morning I sent Tom a brief email telling him I was only willing to be in a relationship that was based on love and respect, and that I looked forward to us talking whenever he was ready to speak to me in a loving and respectful way. A day later, we did just that.
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One of the greatest benefits of self-awareness is the access it gives us to our own inner voice. We all have one, even if at times we ignore it or remain totally unaware of its existence. Our inner voice is very private and unique to us. Its purpose, I’ve always believed, is to protect us, help us stay true to our values, and urge us to do the right thing. I believe each of us has a higher, more evolved self within. Often, if we listen to our inner voice, we come to realize that our higher self already has the answers to our questions.
When I was young, my grandmother told my sisters and me that we each had our own star in the sky. How do I tell which star is mine? I asked her. It’s the one that shines the brightest to you, said my grandmother. No matter what you call your inner voice, or what form it takes—your star, your guardian angel, your creator, your God, your highest self—it is always looking out for you.
Your inner voice is always there to remind you that you are not alone. Its goal isn’t to ensure we play it safe or never have fun. Sometimes, in fact, it pushes us to take risks. These days, before I make any decision, I check in with my inner voice. It needs to signal to me a quiet Yes, this is the right thing to do, before I move forward.
Trying to find space in the bed, 2008. That’s Vida in back, Willie up front, and Hazel relaxing next to Tom. (Of course, this is before we had children.)
As our self-awareness gets stronger, our inner voice does too. Today I’m still relatively young and lack the self-awareness I hope I’ll develop in the future. Still, I do realize this much: the better we know ourselves, the easier it is to find out what we’re good at, what motivates us, and what brings us the greatest joy. As everyone knows, life can have a lot of chapters. A doctor can decide to become a philosopher. A firefighter can choose to become an actor, or the other way around. And a girl who grew up believing she’d play professional volleyball, or help sick dogs and cats, can become a runway model. Some things do stay the same, though. I still love animals, and on the rare times you find me behind a volleyball net, I’m as intense a player as ever. (If my shoulder didn’t dislocate every time I played, I would do it more often, but I’m fixing that problem, so pretty soon I’ll be back having fun and playing all the sports I love.)
My maternal grandfather and grandmother in front of their house—my favorite place to spend holidays when I was a kid—with my sisters and me, 1982.
Once you recognize and appreciate the things you’re good at, it becomes much easier to focus on what exactly it is that you want to make happen and, even more important, why. That process begins with paying attention to your inner voice—though first you need to make sure that voice is really yours. Not the voice that tells you you’re supposed to do something or act in a certain way. Not the voices of your mother or father. Not the voices of your teachers. Not the voices that trickle down from society, from your peer group, or from any organized belief system. Not even your inner critic, the one telling you all your faults. No, your inner voice is the one that more than any other gives you a kind of knowing.
I admit that sometimes it seems confusing, because a lot of voices can be talking at the same time. One voice might be saying one thing while another says something else. How do you know which voice to follow? My advice is first to become as quiet and still as possible. Then pay attention to what your body is telling you. When you think about what the first voice is saying, do the muscles in your shoulders stiffen? Does your stomach feel funny? Now consider what the second voice is saying. Does your body feel more relaxed and open? Does your breathing get steadier? Listen to your body. Ask yourself, Will the voice I follow keep me up at night—or will I be able to go to sleep feeling good about myself? I follow the inner voice that fills me with peace, lets me sleep well, and makes me feel good about myself the next morning. If the decisions I make are based on love, and the actions I take reflect that love, then I’m being true to my inner voice. But there have been plenty of times when I’ve ignored that voice and paid the consequences, small and large.
For example, I’ve had wavy hair since I was a child. But when I started modeling, straight hair was the trend in fashion. So a friend took me to get a flat iron that made my hair straight, and I used it every day. I just wanted to fit in and look cool, like all the other girls around me. At sixteen, when I moved to New York, I was suddenly surrounded by a lot of girls who weren’t straightening their hair, and I finally felt it was okay to stop. It was a liberating feeling to let my hair be just what it was. It’s so funny that today something I’m known for is my natural hair texture.
Another time was when I was fourteen and decided to move to São Paulo. I thought I knew myself pretty well. I was a good girl. I had my head screwed on straight. I knew the difference between right and wrong. I wasn’t going to fall off the rails. I also felt protected somehow. Someone or something was always looking out for me—I was convinced of it. Before I left home, my parents made it clear that they trusted me. They knew I was responsible and dedicated. I was a strong student, the captain of my volleyball team, and a good helper around the house. They also knew I would never do anything to disappoint them. Plus, a month earlier my dad had even written a long letter to Elite, my first modeling agency, to tell them he was entrusting them with his daughter.
My first guitar. I always wanted to play just so I could sing along, as one of my favorite memories from my childhood was when my dad would play for us. Home in New York, 1998.
I packed a single suitcase and backpack with everything I owned, and my dad put me on the bus, though not before giving me fifty Brazilian reais for taxi fare once I arrived in São Paulo. Twenty-seven hours later, the bus pulled into one of São Paulo’s four massive terminals. When I got inside the station, my first response was, Whoa. There were more people in that one bus station than there were in all of Horizontina. It was overwhelming.
I wandered around the terminal for a while, dragging my suitcase, just staring at the people and the signs. My dad had given me strict instructions. When I got to São Paulo, I was to use the reais he’d given me to take a taxi to the models’ apartment. Immediately. My inner voice couldn’t have been clearer or more in agreement that this was the right thing to do. In fact it was the only thing to do. Find a taxi. Go to the models’ apartment. Just then I was aware of another voice: Gise, if you’re planning on going to castings, you need to wear the right clothes. I didn’t own even a single pair of jeans that fit me right. All I had in my suitcase was my school uniform and a few T-shirts and pairs of pants I’d inherited from my older sisters. How could I go to castings looking like that? Clothes had never mattered to me, but now, surrounded by well-dressed city people who looked like they knew what they were doing and where they were going, I felt the need to spruce up my appearance. Why did I have to follow my inner voice?
As I stood in the middle of the station, I came up with a new plan. If I took the subway to the models’ apartment, I could use the money that was left over to buy a few pieces of clothing that actually fit me, and that would actually be mine.
In those days—1995—there were no such thing as cell phones. I couldn’t call my dad and go over my new plan with him, and even if I could, I probably wouldn’t have. I felt independent, and in charge of my own life. I followed the signs for the subway, bought a ticket, and stood on a crowded train car with my suitcase next to me and my backpack hugging my shoulders.
São Paulo is an enormous place. It’s so big that it can take three hours or more to get from one part of the city to another. I asked people for directions, changed lines three or four times, and, by the time I got to the subway station closest to the models’ apartment, I felt both incredibly intelligent and incredibly proud of myself. I’d outwitted the voice in my head and found my voice. But when I took the backpack off my shoulders to get my wallet, it was gone.
I’d left my backpack shut, but the top now flapped open. My wallet with the money in it hadn’t dropped out; someone had stolen it. As if I was in a dream, I left the subway station and went outside. The streets were hot and smelly. I crouched down on my suitcase and burst into tears. It wasn’t just the missing money that upset me, though that was bad enough; it was that now I had no ID either. Thank God I still had the slip of paper with the address and phone number of the models’ apartment. But I didn’t have any money to make a call at the pay phone. A woman passing by saw me crying, and when I told her what had happened, she gave me enough change to call my parents. My dad answered the phone. Hi, Dad, I said. It’s Gise, and I started crying again.
My dad was furious with me, and who could blame him? I’m sure he must have been incredibly worried, too. I had ignored my inner voice—not to mention my dad’s outer voice—and as a result I’d made a stupid decision. It was a devastating thing to do to my parents. They had trusted me, and I’d let them down. Even if they’d wanted to help, they were twenty-seven hours away. Fortunately I had enough change left over to call the chaperone at the models’ apartment. I was by the subway, I told her. Would she mind giving me walking directions?
It took me nearly an hour to get to the apartment. São Paulo in January is sweltering hot, and I dragged my suitcase for ten very long blocks, red-faced and sweating and feeling like a failure, though luckily most of the route on Teodoro Sampaio was downhill. No one seemed to notice I was crying, and I remember how strange that felt, since in Horizontina people would have stopped and asked me what was wrong and if they could help. I finally reached the models’ apartment, met the chaperone, found my bed, and settled in.
From that point on, things got better. Three other girls were living there, and though at sixteen and seventeen they were slightly older, we all got along. I slept in a bunk bed. The first few nights were scary, since it was the first time I’d slept in a bedroom without my sisters. The modeling agency paid my rent and gave me an advance for my living expenses. The other girls liked me in part because I was always cleaning the apartment. (Even back then I couldn’t help myself.)
I went to a fashion retail store and bought a new pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, which I wore every day and washed on weekends, and it became my new uniform for all my castings. I bought a map, and began figuring out the times and locations of my castings. I spent hours analyzing what subway or bus I needed to take to get here or there. Pretty soon I’d memorized almost every bus and subway line in the city. Within a month, I knew São Paulo cold. Whenever new girls showed up in the models’ apartment, I was able to take them under my wing and tell them the best ways to get around.
