I tell wonder-filled stories about hope and healing
Author: Christa Avampato
The short of it:
Writer. Health, education, and art advocate. Theater and film producer. Visual artist. Product geek. Proud alumnae of the University of Pennsylvania (BA) and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (MBA). Inspired by ancient wisdom & modern tech. Proliferator of goodness. Opener of doors. Friend to animals. Fan of creative work in all its wondrous forms. I use my business skills to create passion projects that build a better world. I’ve been called the happiest New Yorker, and I try hard to live up to that title every day.
The long of it:
My career has stretched across Capitol Hill, Broadway theatre, education, nonprofit fundraising, health and wellness, and Fortune 500 companies in retail, media, entertainment, technology, and financial services. I’ve been a product developer and product manager, theater manager, strategic consultant, marketer, voice over artist, , teacher, and fundraiser. I use my business and storytelling to support and sustain passion projects that build a better world. In every experience, I’ve used my sense of and respect for elegant design to develop meaningful products, services, programs, and events.
While building a business career, I also built a strong portfolio as a journalist, novelist, freelance writer, interviewer, presenter, and public speaker. My writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, PBS.org, Boston.com, Royal Media Partners publications, and The Motley Fool on a wide range of topics including business, technology, science, health, education, culture, and lifestyle. I have also been an invited speaker at SXSW, Teach for America, Avon headquarters, Games for Change, NYU, Columbia University, Hunter College, and the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. The first book in my young adult book series, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters, was acquired by a publisher and launched in November 2017. I’m currently working on the second book in the series.
A recovering multi-tasker, I’m equally at home in front of my Mac, on my yoga mat, walking my rescue dog, Phineas, traveling with a purpose, or practicing the high-art of people watching. I also cut up small bits of paper and put them back together as a collage artist.
My company:
I’m bringing together all of my business and creative career paths as the Founder of Double or Nothing Media:
• I craft products, programs, and projects that make a difference;
• I build the business plans that make what I craft financially sustainable;
• I tell the stories that matter about the people, places, and products that inspire me.
Follow my adventures on Twitter at https://twitter.com/christanyc and Instagram at https://instagram.com/christarosenyc.
Last weekend, Michael and Amy (friends and fellow Compass Yoga board members) came over to my apartment to shoot our first set of homespun yoga instruction videos to upload to our new YouTube channel. The channel is now live and we would absolutely love to have you stop over there and let us know what you think!
For veterans and their families
We created this first set of videos specifically with veterans and their family members in mind. As many of our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq return home in the coming months, they will go through an adjustment period as they transition. These videos are meant to be a resource to turn to in moments when they feel anxious, are unable to relax, and feel tension, depression, or fear. Though inspired by the needs of veterans and their families, the videos are available for free and unlimited viewing to anyone who has an internet connection so give them a whirl and let us know what you think!
How you can be a part of our YouTube channel
Additionally, we’d also like to post videos that inspire people to live lives that have a focus on health and well-being. If you have a video that you’d like us to upload – and it could be something as simple as you speaking into a camera and explaining how you’re living a healthy life – then we’d love to post it. Drop me a line and we’ll talk about how to send it over.
In the coming months, we’ll be filming and posting more short sequences as well as guided meditations. We hope they will be of great benefit to a wide range of people across the globe. Stop by and let us know what you think!
A few days ago I read a post entitled, “Top Five Regrets of the Dying.” Sound morbid? Read it anyway and learn from those who are preparing to cross over. They’ve taken the time to spell it out for us so that we can learn from their mistakes before it’s too late for us to do anything about them in our own lives. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about these ideas since I read them and I hope they always sticks with me.
For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.
People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learned never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.
When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people have had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try to honor at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard
This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship.
Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.
By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier
This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice.
They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to themselves, that they were content when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again. When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.
“If you want to be a rebel, be kind.” ~ Pancho Ramos Stierle
James Dean. Steve Jobs. Richard Branson. These are rebels, and so often we think that to live up to this title we have to be difficult, unruly, and surly when necessary. This week I wrote about a few other rebels: Gandhi and Martin Luther King. These men are a wholly different kind of rebel. They believed in kindness and peace, and their power to overcome. And it’s this belief that kindness and peace in all circumstances will win the day, even if that day would be a day they’d never see, that has allowed others to pick up where they left off.
Gandhi and King were unusual for their times. Many people around them were rising up and raising their fists in the process. They understood the sentiments, but they chose to fight in new and different ways. In the process of rebelling against unjust systems and social constructs, they also rebelled against the common ideology of the day believing fully that their methods of peace would build steady, sustainable progress. And they turned others, millions of others, to their way of thinking and living. They inspired people the world over in their efforts and continue to inspire many today.
Kindness builds legacy and when it’s all said and done, legacy is everything.
Working full-time, running a new nonprofit, plugging away as a freelance writer, keeping up with friends flung across the globe, and taking part in all of the exciting goings-on in New York City can take a toll on even the most organized person. My reflexologist, Heather, said to me on Wednesday, “Christa, your brain is swollen.” This is one of the incredible values of holistic care. To look at me, you wouldn’t know my brain is swollen. Heather knows better.
I needed to find a better way of wrangling all my projects, tracking their progress, and planning my next steps. Gmail, Google calendar, and my DROID are an incredible help, but I needed more than that – something open source, mobile and online, customizable, sharable, and preferably free. I got some incredible suggestions on project management software but they weren’t exactly what I needed.
I consulted my friend, Amy, who also has a wide set of interests and projects. She gave me a few suggestions, once of which is Remember the Milk. At first glance I was smitten and now I’m completely in love.
Remember the Milk’s clean, bright, and intuitive interface is exactly what I need. I have different to-do lists for each of my projects, each to-do can have a note attached to it with further detail and a due date. It is available online and through a large array of mobile devices and syncs with many of my existing services like Google Calendar. (One I’d love to see them add is Evernote, where I track all of my online links.) I can email tasks to myself as well and it archives all of the tasks I’ve completed. And all of the above is sharable with contacts and groups of contacts.
If you need to add more orchestration to the different pieces that comprise your life, I highly recommend giving Remember the Milk a try. (It’s also great for simpler things like, well, remembering to pick up milk on the way home.) It’s taken the pain out of project management and restored the joy in the projects themselves.
Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett in The Mountaintop
“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.
And I don’t mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King
My friend, Pam, insisted that I see The Mountaintop, a play that chronicles the fictional last night of Dr. Martin Luther King’s life, which he spends speaking with a maid at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Angela Bassett is stunning in her immersion into her character, exhibiting a wide-reaching array of emotions from one moment to the next. (She’ll be getting a Tony nod, no doubt.) Samuel L. Jackson played Samuel L. Jackson, and I really wanted him to play Martin Luther King. Surely, he is capable of it, right? Why was he directed to be so, well, normal? Where was Martin Luther King, the most inspiring speaker in recent history?
I mulled this over from the moment he stepped on stage. And then Aretha Franklin sat down next to me, a few minutes after the lights went down. She is the closest we have to royalty in the this country. And she is regal. Elegant. And reserved. When the lights came up after the bows, I stood up, smiled wide and wished her a good evening. She smiled wide and nodded. People all around us noticed her – there is no way to mistake her for anyone else – and she quickly sat back down. She is after all, just a woman watching a show that her friends are performing.
It struck me how ironic it would be that I would be watching the story of one legend while seated next to another. We expect a lot of public figures. We do expect them to be perfect at every turn, to inspire us, impress us, and all the while maintain constant composure. We hold them to impossible standards, standards we never meet, standards we never even attempt.
In The Mountaintop, Dr. King talks about how death doesn’t look or feel the way he thought it would. It wasn’t what he expected. And death responds, “You’re not what I expected, Preacher King.” And then I realized what Samuel L. Jackson was doing in addition to playing Samuel L. Jackson. He was showing us the fear and the humanity of a man who we have canonized when in truth he was just a man. A dedicated, passionate, empowered man, with flaws and doubts and inconsistencies.
Dr. King has inspired generations of people around the world, and he did what all of us can do and few of us actually do. He picked up the baton and ran with it, passing it off when his time had come. How many of us will have the courage to do the same?
Upon the very strong advice of my friend and mentor, Richard, I bought a ticket to see the Metropolitan Opera’s final performance of Satyagraha (“truth force” in Sanskrit), an opera by Philip Glass that tells the story of Gandhi’s life in South Africa through the ancient Hindu text of the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita is also one of the primary teaching tools in yoga classes and in yoga teacher trainings. Yogis live by its lessons.
The visual representation and innovative use of puppetry in Satyagraha was stunning. The lighting and sound of Sanskrit (rarely heard today in this country, save for the occasional phrase in a yoga studio) set to music lit up all of my senses while also giving me a true sense of peace and resolve. I was in a very meditative state during the entire production. In the program, I learned that it took over 10 years of tireless effort by Philip Glass and his collaborators to complete.
The Gandhi we know who changed the world with his campaigns of nonviolent resistance against social injustice spent over 2 decades testing and refining his methods in South Africa after facing fierce personal discrimination. His movement began on an incredibly small-scale and remained small for years. It was his persistence and absolute confidence in his mission that brought him to prominence and influence.
Satyagraha was a particularly personal performance for me on a number of levels:
Yoga
I went on December 1st, the 19th anniversary of my father’s passing. The circumstances of his life and death have fueled my own yoga journey and the healing found along that journey spurred my desire to teach and to form Compass Yoga.
South Africa
While I was a graduate student at the Darden School, I went to South Africa as part of a cultural exchange class. For many years, I dreamed of going to Africa. As an elementary school student, I was fascinated by learning about the cultures there and somehow felt as though I oddly belonged in Africa even though I was very young and had never even left the East Coast of the US, much less traveled to Africa. For me, South Africa was a dream and I hope to return someday. Perhaps to even live there for some time.
India
In May, my friend, Rob, and I will be traveling to India on another long-overdue trip of a lifetime. India is the seat of so much philosophical history and the root of yoga. I expect it to be one of those places that changes me forever, how I see the world and how I see myself in this world.
Gandhi’s Lesson: Do or Don’t
Choosing to begin and undertake an auspicious project – whether it is a mission of social justice or an opera that chronicles the life of a towering historical figure through an ancient text in a language that few people understand – takes courage and faith. There are moments of grave doubt, fear, and anxiety for all people who choose to live a life of meaning and service to the greater good. What separates those from those who do and those who don’t is that those who do see something that bothers them, really bothers them, and decide that they have within themselves the ability, endurance, and dedication to generate great change.
It really is that simple – either we do or we don’t. We get the lives that we have the guts to begin and create.
“Chances multiply if you grab them.” ~ Yogi tea bag
We too often think that this is our one big chance to try something new, to do something we’ve always dreamed of. We fear that if we don’t take this leap now, the opportunity will pass us by and if we leap and fail, then we’ll head back to our existence prior to the leap with the comfort that at least we tried. No one really talks about the second chance, the one that happens precisely because we took that first chance.
Our existence in this moment, exactly as it is, is one-of-a-kind. We will never pass this way again. Robert Frost so beautifully described this sentiment of choices and the magic that they create in his poem The Road Not Taken: “Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” Once we make a leap, it begets another leap. The chances we take lead to other chances, not back to the place we started.
Perhaps this is the reason why leaping is so frightening in the first place. If we knew we could always just go back to our jumping off point, then we’d leap all the time without even considering the consequences. There would be no risk. And probably no fun, either.
Consider a time you made a real leap of faith that didn’t work out as you planned. When I went to business school, I intended to return to the nonprofit world as a fundraiser. It didn’t really happen as I planned. The chances that appeared after I took that chance to go to school multiplied exponentially, expanding my view of the world and my place in it. In the nearly 5 years since I graduated, I realized that I hadn’t gone to school to return an established nonprofit. I went to school to figure out how to create my own nonprofit. While a student, I didn’t know that but somehow the Universe had a far greater intelligence on that front than I did. Way got on to way, as it were, despite my efforts to steer my path otherwise.
It’s what Goethe meant when he talked about the magic in commitment. Part of that magic comes from taking chances, knowing that more chances lie ahead that will be able to trace a direct line back to that first chance we had the courage to take. I don’t believe that on every side of a chance there will be a net to catch us, but I do believe that opportunity taken leads to more opportunities available. And that is as good a reason as any to leap.
I have tried my hand at baking. Dessert is my favorite course of any meal. I once read that the body needs something sweet at the end of every meal to know it’s time to stop eating and start digesting. That’s all the motivation I need to give a hearty “Yes!” every time a waiter asks if I’d like to see the dessert menu. And since I’m on a confessional kick I’ll also tell you that yes, I have had dessert for dinner and no, I am not ashamed of that.
I have fantasies of impressing my friends with sugary baked goodness, inviting me to dinner parties purely because they just cannot get enough of my baking skills. In these fantasies, my friends often say things like, “Oh, Christa, can you please bring that incredible double chocolate souffle that everyone raved about last time. I’m having dreams about it!” Of course, this never happens because I never bring dessert to a dinner party unless I buy it or it’s fruit.
In my year of new beginnings, I decided that this was going to be the year I learned how to bake. Witness exhibit A above – my attempt to make a recipe entitled “Easy Pumpkin Pie”. Easy for Recipes.com to say. The evidence speaks for itself. Have you ever seen a pumpkin pie with a dome? Despite my painstaking attention to detail, measuring every single ingredient to supreme accuracy, and following all of the instructions down to the letter, I must admit that no, I can’t bake. That new beginning has been put to bed.
Looking at my “Easy Pumpkin Pie” I was a bit sad. Why can’t I bake?! Why is this skill that I want so much eluding me? In the process, I broke a glass bowl (Whoops! that one wasn’t meant to melt butter in a microwave) and spent more money on ingredients than I would have spent buying a picture perfect, tummy satisfying pie from my local Whole Foods.So I did what any self-respecting girl with a little tear in her eye and a propensity for sweets would do – I got out a fork and ate the pie filling. It was delicious, or at least edible.
(And then I started thinking about how this burned pie might lead to some creative spark in my writing. I came up with the idea for a collection of essays with titles like: I Burned the Pie, and Other Confessions of a Modern American Girl and I Don’t Bake, Other Things You Should Know Before You Fall in Love With Me, or We Won’t Be Eating Cake, and Other Helpful Hints for My Husband To-Be. What do you think?)
I cook well, but when it comes to baking I didn’t get the genes for it. I will continue to be marveled by those who can somehow whip up the perfect dessert with barely a speck of flour on their faces. From now on, I’ll happily buy my dessert and fully understand the value of its price. Crumbs, here I come!
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” ~ Leonard Cohen, poet, novelist, and singer-songwriter
We don’t start a business because our plan isn’t perfect. We don’t invite people over to our homes because our decorating isn’t quite done. We shelter our writing, canvas, or song because it isn’t just right. An addiction to perfection is what keeps us from sharing and asks that we hold ourselves to an impossible standard. We will never be perfect and nothing we make or do or witness will ever be perfect. Perfection is unnatural.
Whenever I feel the little monster of perfection hopping up on my shoulder, tugging at my hear, and whispering counterproductive, sour nothings into my ear, I remind myself of Leonard Cohen’s beautiful sentiment. We needs these cracks and flaws much more than we realize.
So start that business on the side, have people over to your home, and share your art with others at every step of the way in its creation. We are all in the process of becoming – it’s a very human thing to do. In becoming, there is always something just a bit out-of-place and we must learn to love each other, and ourselves, for those glaring, exquisite imperfections.
As an efficiency fanatic, I am constantly looking for ways to do more with less. In this season of gift giving, this proverb reminded me that we can do more with what we’ve already got. Keep this in mind as you consider what goes into your cart this holiday season. We have more resources that we think we have.
Last weekend, Michael and Amy (friends and fellow Compass Yoga board members) came over to my apartment to shoot our first set of homespun yoga instruction videos to upload to our new YouTube channel. The channel is now live and we would absolutely love to have you stop over there and let us know what you think!
Christa Avampato 