In the Ring.

I write this for the woman in the courtroom. I write this for the Ellen’s in the world. I write this for me.

Zach and I had dinner last night and were discussing what it means to choose to live in the ring. And to choose it over and over again.

The woman in the courtroom. He shared a story of one his dearest colleagues going to court to testify… knowing she didn’t stand a chance of winning the trial and going anyway. Doing it anyway with grace, integrity, passion and her full self.

Not only that, but inviting witnesses, your people, who are also in the ring, to your “losing.”

This is winning to me.

Ellen. In Brene Brown’s latest Netflix, The Call to Courage, she shares a story of her 10-year-old daughter, Ellen. The story of Ellen and swimming is very similar to the woman in the courtroom.

Ellen was asked to swim the 100 meter breaststroke in an upcoming meet. She wasn’t a strong swimmer and knew she was going to lose. She considered not getting on the block and scratching the heat. Instead, she showed up anyway and swam the race. Not only did Ellen lose, she came in dead last. Nobody else was in the pool when she finished, and the next heat was waiting for her to finish. She walked over to her coach, goggles on, got some feedback. Then the most powerful thing happened. She walked over to her village, her parents, took off her goggles, eyes full of tears and said two things: 1) “That sucked.” 2) “But I was brave, and I won.”

This is winning to me.

Me. I work at the Women’s Bean Project. It’s a social enterprise and an incredible place to show up and try to live my best life. You are continually surrounded by others who are actively doing the same.

The heart of the Women’s Bean is to support women who have struggled to obtain and/or maintain employment through a transitional workforce program. We hire 5x/year and this time we did something different. We went to Denver Women’s Correctional Facility (DWCF) and said we want to 1) do inreach interviewing with women close to their exit date and 2) offer them a fulltime job, while they’re incarcerated, that they’ll have when they exit.

I was reminded of Brene Brown’s reflection in Rising Strong on living in the ring.

“A lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs from a safe distance. The problem is, when we stop caring what people think and stop feeling hurt by cruelty, we lose our ability to connect. But when we’re defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives. For me, if you’re not in the arena getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.”

I will get my ass kicked. People will doubt me. I will stand alone in the wilderness. The paradox: this is is also where I will come to know who I am.

There were a million reasons not to do this and I heard many of them. The reason these nos were difficult to hear were the most persistent nos were between my ears. I was filled with self-doubt and fear, going into a system I was unfamiliar with in fairly new job and doing something we’ve never done. I found myself searching for guides, gurus and others in the reentry world to help lead the way. I have done this most my life– look to others to lead, when I don’t want to be exposed and stand alone.

It was a long, hard, labyrinth even getting to this point to do in-reach hiring… but with the help of some change agents inside DOC and a whole lot of nos, we did it.

The numbers (which, to me, often miss the most valuable measures):

40 women showed up for the job info session at DWCF

15 women signed up to interview

6 women were able to interview based on their exit date

4 women showed up for their interview

3 women were offered jobs

0 women showed up for their first day of work

Many people would want to know these numbers. For me, though, the real numbers were often those that we won’t capture or be able to measure.

Before doing this, I spoke with an employer who had conducted webcam interviews for the past 4 years in Colorado with men who were incarcerated, offering them roofing jobs before they exited. He also ran down his “numbers” for me.

Then he said something I’ll never forget. “If I offer a man a job and he never shows, but he leaves prison with a little more confidence, a little more hope and a little more motivation that he can get a better job, I’ve done my work. Will I ever know I made that impact? Probably not. But I’m going to keep doing it anyway.”

This is winning to me.

We get it all wrong who the winners and losers are. The older I get, the more I realize it’s the story I tell myself that matters the most. And the story I tell myself is a reflection of me. So who do I surround myself by as I make meaning of this experience and the next round of interviews? What story do I tell myself? I imagine writing this is part of my own meaning making– and knowing others are doing it too.

To the woman in the courtroom, to the Ellen’s in the world, and to all of you that choose to live in the ring… be prepared to get your ass kicked, but simultaneously come to know who you are. Surround yourself by a village that will not be complicit in your sitting outside the arena, but forces you in it.

There will be no headlines or press releases about these stories. These almost entirely go unpublished. But when you choose to live your life in the ring… over and over and over again… it was never about publication in the first place.

This to me is choosing to live in the ring.