We recently had the chance to connect with Shelly Lang and have shared our conversation below.
Good morning Shelly, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? What are you being called to do now, that you may have been afraid of before?
I believe we are source beings having a human experience and as such we have come here to remember who we really are. We have two identities, our human orientation that comes from our wounds, the times we felt separate, unsafe or powerless as a baby or child and our unlimited self which is connected to all, loved without limits and powerful beyond measure.
I think others secretly struggle with their limiting thoughts and feelings and they believe them to be true. It is overcoming our limiting thoughts and feelings that brings us to our expanded selves and helps us create lives we love. That’s the journey I am on and want to support others on as well through my art.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am an artist and fashion designer. I just love both mediums as a reflection of the culture at any given time and place. Both are their own type of language of color, shape, movement, texture and meaning that is a freshness at the edge of who we are becoming philosophically, politically, scientifically, spiritually and morally. At the heart of my brand is the intention to empower the feminine so I talk a lot about what the means.
Being a very creative and sensitive person growing up, I felt dismissed or unseen a lot because I felt things so deeply in a way that others didn’t and yet as sensitive as I felt, I knew I was connecting to the most powerful force in the Universe which is love and the truth of unity.
My brand is about the openness to receive that power which is the expansiveness of our higher nature that lives within each of us. So, when I say I want to empower the feminine, it is our receiving nature I am talking about and it’s not just in women but in everyone. It’s just that women are the leaders in bringing this way of being forth at this time and we do it with authentic creative expression of our true nature and purpose, basically what we truly love and deeply desire.
I create art to empower women to move from their hearts, to be inspired and motivated from within, to dream with abandon and to have strong boundaries so they can protect their connection to their wild hearts.
One of my most inspired offerings is a very special portrait that specifically supports women who are called to live out their highest self. I call it The Pure Essence Power Portrait. Through intuitive work before the painting process and sharing together her proud accomplishments & happiest moments, deepest dreams, favorite symbols or belongings, I then create the portrait which is an energetic activation of her highest essence. I also have original art, prints, totes and a hoodie currently available all to empower authentic creative expression.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What was your earliest memory of feeling powerful?
As far back as I can remember, I felt pressure to give myself away because I believed if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be safe, as in not not belonging and being destitute. To be sure, I got a lot of this from the cultural conditioning of my family and community…. “Be a good girl. Do what you’re told”. “Pretty is pretty does”. “A calm and gentle spirit is a very precious thing in the site of God.” But I also had an experience when I was around 2 where I remember making the choice to turn away from the bigness of my true essence.
I was still in the crib. As an artist, I’ve always been a very visual person noticing color and pattern everywhere and that day, I remember the pattern on the curtains and when I see them in my mind’s eye now, the feelings I was feeling come blazing into my body triggering the memory.
I first remembered it over 13 years ago while practicing “The Power Practice” from a workshop and curriculum created by Claire Zammit and Katherine Woodward Thomas called Feminine Power. I had just moved to Los Angeles after a divorce and was on a journey to express myself authentically and be “powerful beyond measure” from the Marianne Williamson quote that Nelson Mandela used in his inauguration speech. I had spent a lot of time in my life giving my power away, so at this time, claiming it back was really important to me.
Before I share my experience and what I made it mean, I want to share a very important premise in my work and my beliefs. And this is it. We are divine beings having a human experience. I believe we all chose to come here to have this experience as humans so we could find our way back home, which is being source energy, uncontained, undefined and pure creative potential. I believe we are divine beings having a human experience and it is through receiving our hearts that we find out who we really are, each a unique expression of the divine in human form.
That day in my crib, I was with my father. He came into the room but he was distracted by something and did not put his attention on me. Prior to that moment, I remember feeling like I was bigger than my body, like it didn’t contain me, and I was still expansive beyond it, like a part of me was still in spirit form, undefined and uncontained. When I first came back to this memory 13 years ago, the phrase luminous brightness came to me. It was when I felt most powerful and where I practice getting back to daily.
But when my father didn’t notice me that day, I thought I was going to be cut off into dark space, abandoned into nothingness, and the way I remembered my fear was through the pattern on the curtains. It didn’t come to me all at once. It was the dread I felt when I remembered the curtains that helped the story come into memory. At the time of my first remembering, I didn’t even know we could go back so far into our past. I was skeptical. But I’ve done a lot of intuitive work since then and now I know it’s the trauma of my fear that still lives in my body and is part of my divine/human experience to navigate. That day, in my fear and belief in my smallness, I turned away from the bigness I felt and deferred to my father for how to be from then on.
I thought I was a victim when I first remembered this, like how sad to have had this limiting experience living inside my body that would be silently triggering me and would define me for the rest of my life but now I know it’s part of my purpose.
Now I know that every challenging experience we have is for us. It’s not against us. When we are in touch with what we want, I mean truly want from our hearts, every experience good or bad is for us. It takes awareness, intention and emotional strength to align with it.
My purpose is to be powerful beyond measure but that might not be the kind of power you’re thinking of. The power I am thinking of is to be utterly and specifically aligned to my true essence which is my purpose, my joy and my abundance of all kinds, all that thrills me truly, not what validates me, keeps me safe, proves my worth, or fixes me in any way.
This is how and why I create empowering, inspiring and motivating portraits to celebrate women in their true essence, true beauty and true power from the inside out.
What have been the defining wounds of your life—and how have you healed them?
Not fitting in has been my deepest fear and it comes from my deepest wound. It has lead me to a compensating strategy of conforming to what I believe others want and basically giving myself away. I also have strategies of perfectionism and being overly defensive when there may or may not be any real threat.
I believe we all have a smattering of compensating strategies with a dominant one or two because we’re all having a human experience as a spiritual being. In other words, we have a human identity who believes we are unsafe but there is also a divine and expanded part of us who came here to express, experience and create uniquely and authentically. One is unlimited – our divine self and the other, very limited, small and fighting for survival, – our human identity.
For me, for example, I had an experience just after birth that led me to believe I wasn’t wanted. I am a twin. My brother and I were born 2 months early and therefore very small. I was only 3 pounds and too small to go home. My brother was a little bigger so my Mom and my Dad left the hospital with him and left me behind in an incubator.
I thought I was abandoned, discarded and unwanted. Like the story with my father and me in the crib, this earlier story was not conscious to me until I did some intuitive work and uncovered the wound. However, I can look back now and see times when bumping up against blocks on my entrepreneurial journey, I felt like I was in a plastic tunnel. This made sense later when I remembered believing I was left behind while being in a plastic incubator.
My birth experience has blocked me in my life only because of the story I made up. That’s how powerful we are. Of course I was wanted. I am sure my parents were crushed to leave me there and of course they came back. But the story I made up was stronger than all of that. It was set as part of my human identity and the painful emotions and thoughts that followed, because of the belief, are the major blocks of unworthiness in my life. The wound is imprinted in my body and comes up as a trigger when I don’t get outside validation especially for parts of me I value most, my authentic expression,
I believe sharing my most authentic self is particularly challenging because of the original belief that I wasn’t wanted so I had to be someone else. I’ve done so much of that in my life that I can’t go back to it and the truth is, I believe it’s not such an unusual experience for a lot of people, especially women. That’s why creating art that cracks open the heart to one’s authentic self is my passion, the thing that fulfills me most and empowers me from my heart. I want that for everyone.
Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? Whom do you admire for their character, not their power?
I admire Naomi Osaka for her character which is her willingness to be real and vulnerable even while reaching for her power as an elite athlete and tennis champion. So in a way, I admire her for both her character and her power but it’s maybe not the kind of power you’re thinking of. Who she’s being is a powerful force for change in a world who allows outside forces to control their fate even when it’s dishonoring or unhealthy. By being vulnerable about her journey she writes a new chapter for all of us. It’s about being inner referenced, speaking up and crafting your life from your preferences, especially when it’s never been done before.
She is an advocate for mental health, sharing women’s stories of accomplishment and celebrating and honoring her own Japanese and Haitian cultures of origin. She is telling the truth, boldly drawing boundaries, being vulnerable and quietly being herself even when she’s struggling to know who she is all while being on the world stage of tennis stardom.
She’s a timely example of the power of authenticity, truth, unity and boldness of the rising feminine.
I believe women are the leaders in opening our hearts and not only receiving but claiming who we really are. It is in receiving our true essence that we empower the feminine and live from our true exuberance, come from compassion for ourselves and others, follow our intuition for the breadth of knowing it provides, value inclusiveness because we know we are all connected, choose vulnerability for its power to innovate and build connection, and stand in the boldness of truth.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. Are you doing what you were born to do—or what you were told to do?
As is evident by what I’ve already shared, I’ve spent a lot of time in my life doing what I thought I should in order to get validation and approval so I would belong. So I actually wasn’t following what I was told to do but I was the one putting the pressure on myself. And this is usually how it works for most of us. We are the ones who wrap the chains around ourselves often due to unspoken agreements we make and not standing up to tell the truth, speak our preference or claim our worth.
It has sort of been like a ladder I’ve been climbing from not really knowing my own heart to leaving marriages, two to be exact and one fiancé, to heading out into the unknown as a developing artist. After my second divorce I moved to Paris to study fashion and later moved to Los Angeles to be close to my kids while starting my own fashion and design business in my new city.
My creative entrepreneurial journey has been a slow up-spiral to my true essence fueled by gaining more and more trust and confidence in myself with every failure and every win, I am learning that the key is to open my heart to a clear vision of where I want to go, what I most want to create in my life, money, love, success and connect to it with my feelings daily.
Years ago, I decided I wanted to be a catalyst for significant change. I saw that phrase in a tag line for ad advertisement and I thought, that is exactly what I want. I also fell in love with artists who changed the world with their art and I knew that was for me too.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.shellylang.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamshellylang/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shellylang/
- Twitter: https://x.com/ShellyLang_
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shelly.lang1
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