Your Blue Flame: Finding — and Doing — What Makes You Come Alive
My friend slid into the chair across from me at my favorite rooftop restaurant in New York City. Immediately, she leaned forward and said, “What happened to you?”
I laughed. “Good to see you too!”
“You are not the same person as the last time I saw you,” she said.
She was right. A decade earlier, she’d stopped by my suburban Texas home, back when I had three children under age three. I’d forgotten that she was coming over, so I didn’t do the thing where I shove all our messes under beds and into closets to give people a completely false impression of the way we live. A raggedy pile of dolls that had recently been given haircuts by a toddler covered a large, years-old stain on the living room carpet. A pile of electronic toys sat lifelessly because their batteries hadn’t been changed in a year. There were crusty plates on the table from dinner the night before.
The kids had woken up early from naps and immediately started fighting. As I cleared the table to get them snacks, I knocked an open jug of grape juice off the counter. After the purple liquid splattered all over my jeans, the counters, the chairs and then pooled around my feet, there was a moment of ominous silence. Then . . . I lost it. Lost it. I yelled. I babbled. I was on the brink of tears as I shouted into the ether about how ineffective and hopeless my life was.
This reaction to the juice explosion was an explosion of my own pent-up frustration that had been building for a long time. I felt a little more lost and aimless with every passing week. Some days I felt like I was failing in every single area of life. So when moments like this spill happened, I’d often end up having a mini breakdown because I was already walking around in such a fragile state.
Unfortunately, this friend of mine witnessed this particular episode. In the middle of my madwoman’s soliloquy, I looked up and saw her standing in the living room. My three-year-old had seen her approaching the house and let her in when she knocked, which I didn’t hear because I was yelling at the paper towel rack.
So when this same friend recently sat across from me at a rooftop restaurant when we both found ourselves in New York City for work, I understood why she started the conversation by asking what had happened to me.
“I’m looking at the person you are today, and your life is so different from when I saw you back then. You are so different,” she said. She thought out loud about what had changed.
Now I had a job as a daily talk radio host on a national network, which is why I was in New York. I had an opportunity to interview someone I’d admired for years, so I’d come to town to do it in person. Listeners of my radio show often invited me to do speaking engagements, which allowed me to meet fascinating people all over the country. I’d fulfilled my childhood dream of becoming a published author. Most recently, I’d become a standup comedian. I was about to head out on a national standup comedy tour that my husband and I produced ourselves. The kids were even more excited about all of this than I was since they often got to travel with me.
Oh, and I’d kept having babies too. I was now a mother of six.
Most importantly, however, was the change in my mentality. I felt powerful instead of powerless. I still had bad days—lots of them—and was still a disaster in plenty of areas. There was still a pile of dolls with toddler-scissor haircuts in the corner of my living room. But underneath the hard times and the daily frustrations was a deep satisfaction. I now woke up each morning with a sense of purpose. I felt as though I was living the life I was meant to live and having the impact I was meant to have.
“You are a minivan-driving mom of six kids who lives in the suburbs. You’re supposed to be boring,” my friend said with a smile. “Yet you seem more excited by your life than almost anyone I know.” She thought for a moment, then added, “It seems that, at some point, something came alive in you.”
My friend had been in a funk in her own life, and she wanted advice. She wanted to experience the same transformation I’d gone through.
This wasn’t the first time I’d had this conversation. My email inbox and direct messages had echoed with similar inquiries for years. Though the phrasing varied, the questions came down to: How did you make room for your dreams, even in the midst of a busy life? How can I do that too?
The answer is this: I found my “blue flame.” And I gave myself permission to use it.
I have often wished that every person who asks me that question could join me at that same rooftop restaurant so I could share everything I know over chips and guacamole. Since that might not be possible, I wrote this book.
If you’re in a funk . . .
If you’re stuck . . .
If you’re lost . . .
If you feel as if you have something to contribute to the world that you’ve never let loose . . .
If you feel unneeded . . .
If you wonder whether your best years are behind you . . .
If you want to make a change but are exhausted by hustle culture . . .
If you’ve recently found yourself covered in grape juice and babbling incoherently . . .
. . . pull up a chair. Let’s chat.
My transformation started when I discovered my blue flame.
Here is how I’ve come to define a blue flame:
It is something you do, and were destined to do, that fills you with energy and adds love to the world.
Looking back to that day covered in juice, I was overwhelmed. Just doing the basics to keep up with three kids in diapers drained me to the point that I spent most days running on empty. When I was first inspired to start that blog, I hesitated. I believed the conventional wisdom that says that busy people, especially women with young children, should not add any extra work to their lives, in order to conserve their energy.
My whole life changed when I realized that instead of sapping my energy, my blue flame gave me energy.
When I would make time to write, it was like taking a caffeine pill. I was infused with a burst of inspiration and joy that would help me get through the rest of the day. The kids noticed that I was smiling more. Joe noticed that I was up for pleasant conversation when he got home from work, instead of my old habit of throwing up my hands and saying, “Ugh! I’m out!” and stomping upstairs as soon as he walked in the door.
I came to see that I was doing my family a favor by making time for this work.
This is one of the first ways you’ll know you’ve hit on your blue flame: it makes you come alive. When you’re doing this work, you will have more energy than when you’re not. You’ll be like a ship whose sails fill with wind when it finally finds the right route.
Taken from Your Blue Flame by Jennifer Fulwiler. Copyright © 2020 by Jennifer Fulwiler. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com.
Jennifer Fulwiler is a standup comic, the host of a daily talk show on SiriusXM and the mom of six kids. She’s the author of “Your Blue Flame: Drop the Guilt and Do What Makes You Come Alive” (Zondervan). After being told that there wasn’t an audience for standup comedy done by a minivan-driving woman from the suburbs, she self-produced her own tour, which is selling out venues across the country. Follow her on Instagram at @JenniferFulwiler.