AMA with AMA: Answering YOUR questions!
Marcel the Shell + The Feeling of Marriage + Handling Comments about Looking Young
Dear Kula Diaries,
I hope that all of you are having an absolutely beautiful week! It’s Wednesday, which means that it is time for my ‘AMA’ (Ask Me Anything) column. Each week, I peruse the Kula Diaries Vault and pick some fun questions to answer — I truly appreciate all of the questions that you’ve submitted, and I really enjoy answering them. Please keep in mind…
I am not a therapist. These are my words, opinions, and advice. Please use curiosity while reading them and take what works for you, and feel free to ditch anything that doesn’t. Above all things — trust yourself more than anybody else (including me).
Ok, without further adieu… let’s get into the questions!
Dear AMA,
If you could ask Marcel the Shell anything - what would you ask?
I love this question so much! If you haven’t seen the movie Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, I simply cannot say enough good things about the film. It’s delightful, witty, and surprisingly profound. The main character, Marcel, is a small mollusk who resides in an AirBNB with a community of friends. You can see the trailer for the movie here:
I don’t want to spoil anything about the movie, but I will say that the movie touches on themes like self-love, loss, the joy of being, and what really matters. In the beginning of the movie, Marcel states, as a matter of fact, “My name is Marcel, and I'm partially a shell, as you can see on my body, but I also have shoes and a face. So, I like that about myself, and I like myself. And I have a lot of other great qualities as well.”
Similarly to Marcel, I think that I do a lot of things very well. I always joke with Aaron that he married me because of my ‘features’ — “Where else could you find a pee-cloth-company-founding motorcycle-riding mountain-climbing dancing wife who makes the world’s best chocolate chip cookie?”, I’ll say, laughing. I’m mostly teasing — but I am really proud of a lot of things that I do, so it would probably come as a surprise to some people to know that I still struggle with a smidgen of doubt about myself. Perhaps it’s a lingering ghost of my ‘older child syndrome’ perfectionism — but, I still sometimes struggle with a sense that I’m not doing enough… or that I’m not good enough. If I were to spell out my resume and the things that I’ve accomplished in the past few years — on paper, my sense of insufficiency would seem somewhat ludicrous. I know in my logical mind that starting a business from nothing is not nothing. I know that I’ve done extraordinary things in the past few years — mostly, because I believed that I could do it. And yet, as somebody who grew up searching for affirmation and validation outside of myself — I was unintentionally conditioned to look for a sense of meaning in external conditions — my work, the things I accomplished, the impact that I made, my business, what other people thought about me… you know, the usual suspects.
Over the past decade or so, I’ve made great strides towards releasing this need for external validation, but I know that hints of it are still there sometimes — which is also OK, because it’s simply a part of the process of awakening to what is real and what is true. Ultimately, it is the experience and the adventure that my soul came here to accomplish — and each day that I recognize those moments in which I look outside of myself — I take a little step forward. If you’ve ever climbed Mt. Saint Helens when it isn’t snowy, you will recall that the upper mountain is almost entirely composed of very loose dirt and/or scree. Sometimes it feels like you are (literally) walking 3 feet up… and sliding 4 feet back. But guess what? Eventually, you get there — to the crater rim of Mt. Saint Helens, and you look back on what you accomplished, even if it wasn’t as simple as walking up a flight of steps. As PNW climber Fred Beckey says, “The view is different for the man who pays for beauty with the currency of toil.”
When I started thinking about this question — my first instinct was (honestly) to ask Marcel the Shell if I was doing OK. I’ve had a tough few months… and I’ve struggled with a lot of self-doubt. In my mind, I had this clear visual of me crouching down to eye level with the little shell and telling him about my life and all of the hopes and dreams I have… and then saying… “Am I doing a good job? Am I doing enough?” But, as I pondered that question — I instinctively knew what he would say. He would look at me with his googly eye, and tell me to sit quietly. He would tell me to listen to the breeze… and to feel the wind tugging at my hair… and to allow the answer to come. Sure, it would feel good to hear an adorable shell with shoes on telling me that I was doing my best… but I knew, deep down, that this knowledge needed to come from me. It wasn’t going to come from anybody else… it wasn’t going to come from my business… it wasn’t going to come from any accomplishment or any goal. In fact, it is not from any outside source that I’ll ever get enough of the answer I’m looking for. Sure, maybe it would be a temporary balm, but as it washes away and dissolves, I’d wonder again… and start looking for that unknown thing that feels like it is ‘missing’. Marcel would know that nothing is missing. Marcel would know that I was connected to everything in a way that I couldn’t understand — but could feel, if I was able to still my heart and mind and sink below the story that tells me that I need to be any different than how I am.
And so, I think I’d probably ask, instead…”What does it feel like to handglide with a Dorito?”
Dear AMA,
What does being married feel like?
I’ve been pretty open about my ‘history’ with marriage on The Kula Diaries: I’ve been married twice — my first marriage ended in a divorce after only a couple of years, and I’ve currently been married for 8 + years to my husband Aaron. Both marriages have been completely different experiences — and I think I’ve finally been able to understand why. My first marriage took place when I was very young… we were dating when I was 26 years old… and there wasn’t a lot of thought and/or discussion about marriage — it just ‘happened’. Because… that’s what you do right? If you’re dating somebody when you are 26 years old… you’re ‘supposed’ to get married to them? Well, apparently that’s what I thought — and, in retrospect, I can see that I was much more interested in the idea of having a wedding… than even remotely understanding what it mean to be married to somebody. My ex and I had very little in common: he enjoyed watching television in his time off, and I liked hiking and backpacking and mountaineering. So, you can probably imagine that we were somewhat disconnected from each other before we even tied the knot.
In my first marriage, everything felt very awkward to me — like I was playing a ‘part’ in some sort of a play… and that somehow I had auditioned for the wrong character. I didn’t like changing my last name (it felt very traumatic to me)… I spent most of my time escaping into the mountains… and I while I have absolutely nothing bad to say about my ex (in fact, we split very amicably), I definitely don’t think we were a great fit for each other. After our divorce, I decided that I never wanted to get married ever again.
When I started dating Aaron, I told him that I’d likely never get married — but gradually, I changed my view on that opinion. We decided to get married in a much more intentional and conscious way — we only lived together for a few months prior, and for much of our relationship, we lived about one hour apart from each other. We went to counselling prior to getting married, and I really felt like we went into the relationship with a different idea of what we were getting ourselves into. That being said, I still don’t think that I had any clue what I was doing. I now realize that I was highly identified with my mind during the time when we first got married — and after a few years, we both slipped into our repeating and unconscious patterns: I was triggered by almost everything, and needed Aaron to adjust his behavior constantly… and Aaron felt like he was walking on eggshells around me (understandably). We did have a lot in common, however, and we spent much of our time hiking and backpacking and going on some pretty special adventures. In hindsight, I really feel like that deep connection — regardless of our struggles — created a solid foundation for the chaos that would come.
Aaron and I got married in Tahiti — we eloped and had a wedding on the beach with just us and the Tahitian officiant. It was really simple and beautiful. A few days later, we were in the hotel and one of the hotel employees had to stop by our room to check on something in our bathroom that wasn’t working. When she knocked on the door, I opened it and she explained why she was there and I started to tell her that Aaron was in the shower and would be right out so that they could do their work. I remember stammering as I said it, “My boyfr… I mean… husband…. is in there. I’ll tell him to come out!” The first few times I said, ‘husband’ … it felt like I had a sock in my mouth. Not because I didn’t want a husband… but, because… what did that even mean? I wasn’t sure that I really knew, but I wanted to find out.
When I left my job in 2017, Aaron continued working at the railroad, but I started doing more and more things to create my dream of building a business in the outdoor industry. I spent all of my time hiking or planning or putting energy into what I was doing — and Aaron and I started drifting apart. He worked 14 hours shifts… and I was usually gone doing something outside. Most of our communication was reduced to text message, and he wasn’t able to be involved in a lot of the excitement that I was experiencing — not that I didn’t want him to be, but when somebody is working a 14 hour shift… it’s nearly impossible. This was also during the absolute height of my social media and cell phone addiction, and so as our communication dwindled… the fake world became more real to me than the one that I was actually living. Slowly but surely, our marriage began to erode. The thing about erosion is that it’s not noticeable at first… until it is. And then, you wonder how you let it get that far — and you don’t know if you can get it back.
I don’t have any strong beliefs about whether or not anybody should get married or not get married. I think that each person needs to decide for themselves what is best for them. I will say, from my own experience, that being married… when it all came crumbling down… made Aaron and I both want to try to repair what we had. It wasn’t as simple as just ‘ending it’. We knew what our relationship could be like, and we had both collaborated equally (in different ways) in the feeling of disconnection we were having. If we weren’t married, I don’t know if we would have tried as hard — or if it would have made it easier to walk away, but I’m really glad that we didn’t.
A few weeks ago, I saw an unfamiliar cat on one of my 4am walks in the dark. I took a photo of it and sent it to Aaron and jokingly told him that the cat was named, ‘Sprinkles’. I saw the cat a few more times — and figured that maybe one of my neighbors had gotten a new cat, but I forgot to ask them. A couple of weeks ago, our security camera went off in the evening, and when we watched the video, we could very clearly see that Sprinkles was running across our porch. I texted my neighbors — and discovered that nobody had gotten a new cat. We also perused local Facebook pages for lost animals, and didn’t find any matching Sprinkle’s appearance. We live in a very remote area, so I started to wonder if the cat was feral. That night, I put a dish of cat food out on our porch… and the next morning it was gone. The next night, Aaron set up another security camera to watch the porch… and we got our first footage of a very skittish Sprinkles visiting the porch to eat some cat food. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been taking care of our ‘digital cat’ — Sprinkles is so skittish that we only ever see them on the security camera, but they have visited our house a few times per day for food, and we’ve started considering ‘Sprinkles’ our 4th cat… that we will likely never get to meet in person.
Why am I telling you a story about a feral cat named Sprinkles? Well, because it is about to perfectly illustrate what it feels like to be married. Yesterday, I walked into the kitchen and Aaron was sitting at our table on his computer. I looked over his shoulder to see what he was working on (thinking it might be something for Kula Cloth)… and do you know what it was? He was searching on Amazon for a small, insulated outdoor ‘cat hutch’ and a heated pad so that he could make Sprinkles a ‘tiny home’ in our driveway to keep him out of the cold. In that moment, my heart was overwhelmed with so much tenderness and love for Aaron — I felt like I was falling in love with him all over again.
And that is what marriage feels like to me: it is a cacophony of moments, where you have the opportunity to truly see and witness the beingness of another. It crumbles down, and you build it back up — except this time, you fortify it. You get to see your spouse in their worst moments… and you pick them up off the ground and love them… even if they feel entirely unlovable. And then you see them in unexpected moments that the rest of the world doesn’t see — you get to watch the goodness of their soul… it’s like the chance to peek into the window of another heart, and to share that sense of kindness and friendship with another. And then, it is the normal moments — the chores, the random disagreements about nothing, the way that Aaron aggressively pets Cinder every night while he is brushing his teeth… the little things that we get to share every single day… those are the things that I love the most. It isn’t some windswept romantic epic of unrealistic proportions — it’s just consciously choosing to love yourself through the ups and downs… and then sharing that reflection of love with another person… and seeing what happens.
Marriage is not easy — and I am certainly not an expert. When I think about both of my marriages, it’s hard to compare them. An unconscious marriage based on trying to ‘control’ the other person’s behavior and giving them the responsibility for your own happiness is not fun or sustainable. Looking back on my marriages, I can see now that they both went through the same repeating cycle of disconnection and erosion — except that Aaron and I had a strong enough foundation that we were able to pick up the pieces and put them back together. In fact, I think that our relationship is what it is today because we had that experience. Going through a period of deep pain and suffering is ultimately a catalyst for a deeper sense of awakening and awareness. It is through that suffering that conscious love can bloom — not just the ‘honeymoon’ type of love from movies — but the type of love that is based on truly seeing a person for who they are. When I first read this question, I asked Aaron what marriage felt like to him, and he thought about it for awhile. “It just feels comfortable,” he said. “It does,” I nodded, “It feels like we are home.”
Dear AMA,
I get told that I don’t look my age (I appear a lot younger). Does this ever happen to you? How should I deal with it? It’s like the person tries to recover by making it into a compliment but I just feel like I’ll always get treated more like a child than an adult. I know of men that grow beards to appear older but I don’t have this option. Actually, I don’t really want to change the way I look - I guess I just want to change how I feel about these conversations where people are shocked to hear my actual age.
This happens to me all the time — and always has. I’ve always looked very young for my age. I will also add that it’s never really bothered me. I wouldn’t say that it feeds my ego much — I suppose that I’ve never thought too much about the comments, since they happen all the time. However, even though our personal experiences of dealing with these comments sound like they might differ - hopefully I can still offer some insight as to how you can shift your own experience into the realm of acceptance, rather than resistance. For the purposes of this question, I’m going to be making the assumption that these are well-intended comments, and not intentionally ageist.
First, I want to start by saying that, as a culture, I completely understand that commenting on people’s age and/or appearance is a ‘norm’ in some respects, and I imagine that most people (including you) would also agree that telling somebody how ‘young’ they look is intended (in most cases) to be a compliment. Unfortunately, our society has put ‘youthfulness’ on a pedestal — while, sadly, missing opportunities to compliment aspects of a human that might be more meaningful. So, if you are somebody who loves to compliment your fellow humans — intentionally choosing aspects about a person that are not related to their age or physical appearance might be a good place to start.
Your question exhibits a wonderful amount of awareness in that it was not focused on changing the behavior of others. To attempt to shift a widespread cultural paradigm overnight is highly unlikely, and trying to stomp out undesired behavior in others (that they couldn’t possibly know is bothersome to you) would be like playing an endless game of whack-a-mole. So, I believe that until we have a massive shift as a society — your best hope for acceptance is, as you correctly indicated, changing your perspective on the comments. That doesn’t mean that you have to like them — but acceptance of something is far better, and less damaging to your own inner space of peace than to feel frustration every time it happens. Keep in mind — shifting your perspective is a gift to you. It’s not about letting other people ‘get away’ with something… it’s about seeing things through a different lens so that you aren’t allowing others to pollute your own sense of well-being. Finally, while it might be impossible and/or unreasonable to try and control the behavior of others (particularly those with whom you don’t have a long-term relationship), it would be appropriate to set a boundary if you have a friend or relative who constantly turns your appearance into an conversation topic. I highly recommend
‘s The Book of Boundaries as a great resource for developing a script that you could use to confidently set those boundaries.I don’t think that you’ll ever be able to enjoy or like people commenting directly on your age or your appearance — but I’d like to make an argument that maybe they aren’t… maybe they just think that they are. And, don’t worry, I’m going to back this up with some photographic evidence. Over the past few years, and particularly since I started my dance experiment, I became interested in something that I read in The Power of Now — there is a passage where Eckhart Tolle is talking about the luminous radiance of presence, and how it exudes a sense of eternal beauty that goes beyond any age or number. I’ve been on somewhat of a ‘spiritual journey’ for the past decade or so, and, particularly in the last few years, I’ve paid close attention to something that I hadn’t ever noticed before: As my sense of inner peace grew deeper, my physical appearance changed… noticeably. And when I say that it ‘changed’ - I’m not talking about necessarily in a physical way… I’m talking about a way that can’t really be described. When I look at photographs of myself from years ago, I appear dull and listless in the photo. If I were ‘judging’ myself, based on those photos, I’d say that I looked much older — even though my age was younger. Now, when I look at photos, I see a youthfulness… or rather eternalness… that wasn’t visible before. It has nothing to do with my age or physical appearance — and everything to do with my energy and how I feel, existing as a human soul in my body.
Now, as I’ve indicated, this difference between how I was then then and how I am now is not something that is entirely articulable. I know that I’ve always looked young, but as I’ve aged, I genuinely think I’ve started to look more vibrant, beautiful and happy. I’m currently 43 years old — and I feel more confident with my own physical appearance than I ever have in my life. Since I’ve been experimentally observing this change over the last few years, I am confident that what people are seeing when they proclaim how young I look… is not actually 100% related to my physical appearance. I believe that my physical appearance is a direct manifestation of a deeper energy within my own heart that has been generated over the past decade of finding more peace in my life. Of course, most people don’t recognize that what they are seeing is not something that they are seeing — but rather, an invisible energy that they are noticing and interpreting as being related to my physical appearance.
So, in your case, while perhaps you genetically do have a more traditionally ‘youthful’ appearance than most (because maybe that’s just how you look) — I would also venture a guess that people are seeing something more about you… and that a more accurate compliment would be something like, “I love your energy!”, or, “You are so radiant!”, or, “It feels good to be around you!”. The next time somebody makes a comment about your age, see if you can do the translation for them: silently, in your mind, remind yourself that they are seeing something very special about you — an eternal beauty that radiates from within. Once you find a place of acceptance in these moments, it will simultaneously shift your energy — from a place of expectance that they will treat you differently… to a place of lifting your head high and embodying the energy that they are seeing — this is the place where you come into true alignment with all that you are.
Here’s some photographic evidence for my theory (and maybe you can do a similar investigation using your photos too!). This is a photo of me in 2004… when I first came to WA to attend the Park Ranger Academy. I was 24 years old when this photo was taken. What do I see when I look at this photo? At the time when this photo was taken I was completely identified with the stories in my mind. I was very stressed out all the time and constantly creating ‘scenarios’ in my head… I would not have considered myself joyful or happy. I was always worried and I did not think very highly of myself — I felt like I was a huge disappointment, because I had failed my MCATs and bailed on the idea of going to medical school. Yes, my physical age was 24 years old… but when I look at this photo, I see something a bit more sad… I see a woman who doesn’t really know herself at all… and is just desperately trying to find a sense of peace.
And this next photo was taken last week… me, posing with one of my couture creepy cat shower curtain designs (I give away one shower curtain per month in our Dance Experiment!). I am almost two decades older in this photo… at least that’s what my calendar would have me believe. And yet, I see something different in this second photo, that I don’t see in the first one: I see a radiating sense of joy from within. It doesn’t matter that I’m 43 years old and wearing a Techno Marmot t-shirt and am designing creepy cat shower curtains for a living… I feel comfortable in who I am, what I look like, and what I’m doing. It may have taken me a few decades to get there… but, most of the time, that’s where I am.
When I was first trying to come up with the name for the Kula Cloth, one of my early name ideas was, ‘The Wink’. I had this idea that people would see another hiker with one of these ‘special pee cloths’ on the trail… and they’d give each other a knowing ‘wink’ — sort of like the way that people in Jeeps or riding motorcycles wave to each other. While I’m glad I decided to name it Kula Cloth instead — the same thing still happens anyway… I hear stories all the time about people meeting each other on the trail because they recognize another person with a Kula. I share this little example, because you have the opportunity to turn a somewhat annoying situation into a moment to give yourself a little wink. You now know a secret: you know that these people are seeing something that is inherently special and beautiful — radiating from within you. Even they are not privy to this information — otherwise, they’d say something a bit more interesting than a mere comment about your age. So, the next time one of these comments happens… and you feel that old, nagging sense of disappointment… see if you can recognize the disappointment, acknowledge it and nurture it a bit… and then give yourself the love that you deserve by offering yourself a secret wink: a little remembrance of that ‘something special’ you possess that makes you, uniquely you. Not only will your experience of the situation change — but I’m willing to bet that the way in which others see you will change too. Instead of shrinking diminutively in annoyance — your inner light will simply burn brighter. And, that, friend is a light that cannot be dimmed. May you shine brightly — all of the days of your life, no matter what day it is — remembering the timeless love that exists within your heart.
Friends — thank you so much for being here and for taking the time to ask questions that are fun, challenging and interesting for me to answer. I hope that I’ve given you a little insight into something. And, if I haven’t, I hope that you will still leave this weekly column with a sense of knowing how truly brilliant, special and unique you are. I’m so grateful for your support and I hope that all of you find ease, peace and joy this week — wherever and however you are right now.
Sending you all a lot of love!
“The Kula Diaries” is a free newsletter written entirely by me, Anastasia Allison. I’m the founder of an outdoor gear company called Kula Cloth. You can join our monthly events and support this newsletter and my writing by becoming a paid subscriber. I appreciate you so much! Love, A.
Thanks for telling me about Marcel the Shell, I can’t wait to watch it with my family! I loved your answers this week! It got me pondering all I can be doing to let my inner light shine. I’ve been missing dancing, so I’m excited to sign back up to the dance experiment for February!
Marcel the Shell warms my heart! I think I'd like to have a conversation with him about raspberries.