Meet Cecily May

We were lucky to catch up with Cecily May recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Cecily, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

Personally, I believe that confidence is less of a skill that is developed but rather an innate energy and quality that we are all born with. On the other hand, insecurities and judgments are maladaptive skills learned by the modeling of and interactions with our primary caregivers, family of origin, and through various childhood experiences. So, for me it felt more like a re-discovering of my confidence.

When I began my journey towards healing and growth, building confidence was never on any sort of agenda of mine, but rather it turned out to be a natural effect of turning inward with compassion and curiosity. My goal was to find a release from the years of emotional pain that had consumed me, and shed the patterns of protection I had acquired during my childhood that were wreaking havoc on my adult relationships. I was in the pursuit of discovering who I was, outside of the frame of societal and familial expectations. Since childhood, I had grown accustomed to blaming my mother for my misery and was starting to suspect that maybe focusing on all the ways in which she hurt me in my youth was no longer serving me in my adult years. At the age of 25, I sought professional support via a therapist, and I quickly learned that judging myself and blaming others wasn’t going to free me from the effects of my childhood. But rather courageously accepting accountability for my own maladaptive behaviors, regardless of their origin, and befriending the parts of myself that I felt ashamed of was what empowered me to lean into growth, self-forgiveness and positive change. This required courage, even more compassion and patience as I unlearned old behaviors. And slowly but surely I became my own best friend, my insecurities started to soften and over time I realized that I genuinely liked myself, even the insecure or “flawed” parts and reached a place where I could wholly accept myself. There in that acceptance I fully leaned into my authenticity and my truth, and that I believe, was the energetic portal to re-discovering my confidence within.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

As an adoptee and someone raised in a highly dysfunctional family my upbringing was confusing to say the least. I had an amazing dad who I felt safe and secure with but as a military officer he was gone often and worked long hours. Instead, my primary caregiver was my mother whom I struggled to bond with as her emotional state was unstable, volatile, and shifted in extremes; I rarely if ever felt safe with her. The entire mood of our family was dependent on hers. As a kid I was intrigued by the concept of nature vs nurture and found myself to be really curious about what a healthy family looked and felt like. I would hone in on families of friends and observe how they engaged with one another and compare my findings to my own family’s patterns of behavior. As I got older, my desire to better understand human behaviors and how our societal and familial systems impact nearly every aspect of our adult experience did not waver. For the most part, humans genuinely wish to operate from a place of love and good intentions, yet so many of us don’t make it out of childhood without deep emotional wounds despite our parents’ best efforts to love us. Over the years I have come to understand that our perception of what love feels and looks like is programmed into our subconscious ideals and beliefs during our childhood experiences, typically with our primary caregiver and family of origin. This means that for many of us, and this was true with my own family, we are loving from fear and sometimes shame as the guiding force. This results in dysfunctional and even abusive family systems.

Fear and shame, combined with love, is what produces the ideal of love as a possession and the desire to control others, in an attempt to make ourselves feel safe. It produces a disconnecting and chaotic energy. The more we love from fear the more we push others away and the less secure we feel so we go into self-protective modes which often hurt us and others even more. Rinse and repeat. On the other hand, loving with courage paves the way towards safe and secure love. And is possible once we intentionally (re)build internal safety within. Courageous love is the result of internal acceptance, self-confidence (and so much more). We can’t offer to others what we aren’t offering to ourselves. Secure and courageous love begins and ends with us, we naturally pour into those we care about with the same courageous love we offer ourselves.

This is a concept I was able to really experience, first-hand once I became a mother myself. Being able to love and connect to my daughter in a courageous and secure way was an organic result to the internal foundation of love and safety I had (re)built within myself over the years leading up to motherhood. By befriending my fear and leading with courage I have been able to offer my daughter a different childhood experience than my own. One full of courageous connection and courageous repair when needed.

With various somatic models, like SPT, and tools, like IFS parts work, this is what I support my clients with: rebuilding their foundation within and creating courageous connections with their children and loved ones.

I am passionate about setting children up for success in their adult years, every child deserves an opportunity to thrive instead of surviving, which takes healthy families and a healthy society. I think one of the most effective ways to build a more emotionally mature society is through working with adults, allowing their healing instead of their woundings to trickle down through the generations. Currently, I work mostly with parents, but my vision is to build a speaking career on top of my coaching business to better reach the school systems as well. Our schools and teachers play a significant role in our society, as well as a child’s developing view of our world. I believe that our teachers are an invaluable part of our community, yet they tend to be over-worked and underpaid, two issues that regularly lead to chronic stress and burnout. This level of continuous dysregulation can certainly take its toll on a person’s ability to show up with intention, impacting their students. Just as parents deserve support navigating connection despite challenging external factors, so do our teachers. I can’t solve the barriers in our society, but I believe that I can offer support to teachers in guiding them to acquire skills and tools needed to navigate the emotional challenges within the school systems. After all, empowered adults, empower kids.

I am still in the first couple of years of launching my business, so a lot of my time and attention has been dedicated to the creative and building stages as well as navigating the messiness and challenges that come with juggling motherhood and a career. During these early years of growth my focus has primarily been on building clientele, networking as well as various training and continued education courses that allow me to support my clients in the safest and most effective manner possible. That being said, I am fast approaching the next stage in my business ventures including an upcoming podcast, which will officially be announced late this year, and some fantastic parent (and teacher) workshops and online courses in the works that I am very excited about!

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1) Looking back, I know without a doubt that my curiosity around family dynamics and my deep understanding of how our childhood experiences impact our adult relationships was what offered me hope in my ability to shift my own behaviors and build the belief in myself that I needed in order to deconstruct and rebuild my internal foundation.

2) Letting go of blame was essential for my growth. I’m not saying blame is bad but it’s not solution focused. If we sit in it for too long it can slowly disempower us and convince us the world is happening to us. Blame keeps us other-focused, rendering us to feel power-less. By asking blame to step aside, I was able to heal my relationship and understanding of what accountability, in the context of relationships, actually is. Accountability is collaborative and repair focused. It’s empowering and growth oriented. With a secure relationship with accountability, I was able to repair with myself and ultimately learn from my mistakes instead of feeling bogged down by shame. Blame kept me a prisoner of my past and accountability set me free to live intentionally in the present.

3) Courage is what has really given me that gentle push to keep going, even during my hardest of times, propelling me towards growth time and time again. Though, for me, it’s challenging to embody courage without first inviting compassion and curiosity in. Whether I am building a business, repairing with my daughter, or loved one, or experiencing immense grief and heartache, leading with courage has led me to exactly where I am today and I am proud of my journey. I actually have a tattoo that reads “befriend your fear, lead with courage” as a reminder during those especially difficult seasons.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

My dad modeled what a secure relationship with accountability looked and felt like within the parent-child dynamic. I mentioned before that he was an amazing dad; he was also a parent who made mistakes and had his share of absolute parenting failures. There were times when he let me down, or reacted in ways that he wasn’t proud of. But, and this is such a big but, he was capable of self-reflection, patience, an open mind, and an ability to hold space for me and all my big feelings as I expressed to him how he impacted me. His secure relationship with accountability allowed us to repair after conflict. This built a secure foundation of safety and trust between the two of us with open communication and feeling fully accepted by him, no matter how I was behaving. My dad valued and respected the relationship he had with me, and as a result I valued and respected him. I never doubted his courageous love for me. He wasn’t a perfect person, but he was without a doubt the perfect parent for me. His ability to own his parental failings and strive to do better has inspired me to do the same with my daughter and is what fuels my passion to support my clients to lean into with their own loved ones.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cecilymay.com
• Instagram: @heyitscecilymay