Meet Vanessa Ferlaino

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Vanessa Ferlaino a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Vanessa, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

Patience and learning how to embody my softness…

In my lived experience as someone who identifies as a woman, resilience was often depicted to me as being a “bad ass” and really being hard. I saw this in the media, I saw this in the workplace, I saw this in books, I saw this even in public figures.

But I have learned that most of this is really about other ways women have been conditioned to behave and even believe because of the fact that we were not discussing these things publicly, we were not sharing stories, and there was a lack of tools and resources available for women to progress ahead in their careers, their work, their passions, etc. The system really has held us back in many ways, and so I think, in addition to the rhetoric we have been fed about who we’re allowed to be, women have also been conditioned to develop very hard types of dialogues and behaviours as survival and defence mechanisms.

When I could hold this space with myself, I was able to really start holding my hardness with some softness. I was able to balance these parts of me.

Specifically, this looked like a lot of reflection — through journalling, meditation. It meant setting boundaries for myself to be able to continue this self-exploration and self-actualization. It meant honouring my space and remove myself from contexts that did not serve me, and removing others from my life who did not serve me. It meant inviting in self-compassion and self-love to honour my lived experience, my story, my histories, and all of the parts of me.

Now, this does not mean I completely ignore my hardness. My hardness is connected to the part of me that is direct, makes quick decisions, works will in intense situations, and so embodying my softness really just creates balance.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

My ethos is centred around oneness and interconnectedness… togetherness, if you will. I’m very committed to my inner humanity and how harnessing this power contributes to outer humanity and collectivity.

I write extensively on this topic, through reflection, life experiences, conversations, etc. I’m grateful that my first book, “human”, has won two awards for these efforts. It is my hope that readers will be invited to make their own reflections of their inner humanity and how this can empower outer humanity.

This is also why I practice mindfulness and meditation; I have found it to be a huge part of my journey, so much so, that it has become part of my being. Mindfulness is often spoken about in terms of benefits to mental health, anxiety, etc, and this is of course true, but the core of mindfulness, from the Buddhist perspective which is where my training was rooted in, is about oneness: oneness with Self, others, and the world. Be welcome to meditate with me on the free Insight Timer app.

I also run mindfulness programs through my foundation, The Being Human Foundation, to bridge mindfulness and community engagement; both are important to not only our individual humanity, but our collective humanity as well. We use mindfulness to encourage people to commit to their own inner alignment, and then support causes and initiatives that they connect with. We offer some opportunities through our foundation, mostly supporting women’s health and rights, Indigenous causes, accessibility, colonial violence, and sexual violence, but of course welcome people to explore or even create their own communities.

I’m quite committed to embodying my intention of inner and outer humanity; it is my ethos that is woven through all of my activities and creations. As such, I’m BEYOND excited to share that I’m in the FINAL editing stages of my second book, an extension of my first book… it’s all I can share at the moment, but the cover reveal and title are coming soon!! Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, or subscribe to my newsletter at vanessaferlaino.com

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1) Trust yourself.

Trust yourself that you will get things wrong, and when you do, you will figure it out. When we commit to trusting ourselves, we can let go of the expectation and the pressure, and hold space with ourselves as we move through the ups and downs, the highs and lows, that life offers. We learn to trust the journey of life and life itself, and not the destination. We learn to hear our intuition and align with our intentions.

2) Honour your space.

I prefer this language of “honouring space” as it tends to invite in more openness, as opposed to ” have boundaries” which we often interpret as very protective. They are really the same, except the former is a bit more all-encompassing, whereas the latter can accidentally lead to cutting ourselves out of life, and maybe this will be necessary for some of us depending on our journeys (I personally did this, and I hold space with anyone who may be going through this), but it is for this reason I can say that if we can adopt a perspective of “honouring space” it might make this period a little softer or lighter.

When I committed to honouring my space, it became less about cutting people off and building walls and more about what and who I was inviting into my space — and vice versa. It meant that I was more mindful of who I was around, what spaces I put myself in… and so, as I become more aware of this, I put myself in spaces that allowed me to flourish, where I was respected and heard for my life experiences, where it was safe for me to be simply be “me”, and eventually, the opportunities and alignment simply happened because of this commitment to truth. So everything else opens up for us; it does not mean we don’t work hard and that everything is “easy”, it simply means that we are in alignment, and when it is hard, we are operating from a place of inner alignment as opposed to choppy misalignment, which tends to take up a lot of space.

3) Allow.

the structure of society often programs us into certain ways of being and doing… we’re taught we need to achieve goals, break them down into objectives, further break them down into to-do lists and checklists, and plot them on a timeline. While this intention is meant to keep us focused, it actually often creates circumstances that are inflexible and rigid, while also creating a lot of choppiness when expectations are not met or when life throws us other plans. Then, we end up pushing for things in a different direction to adapt… but what if we just allowed for things to happen? What if we trusted ourselves enough, honoured our space enough that by simply committing to ourselves, maybe we didn’t have to push all of the time, and simple allow the opportunities to find us? I spent a lot of time pushing for my own realities, which were really just projections of the Ego to uphold a certain version of reality that didn’t truly serve me. When I committed to trusting myself and honouring my space, I allowed for things to happen in a way that was truthful, organic, and authentic to me. Again, I gracefully reiterate that this does not mean we are not working hard or searching for opportunities, it means that the way in which we are doing these things is aligned — we may be going to new spaces to meet people, exploring new sectors for work, maybe continuing education in a field that we have had to lock away because of societal pressures.

Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?

Allowing… this has been something that I have really embodied over the last year or so. Having spent a decade in a fast-paced male-dominated tech space, and then being able to find more alignment with other creative projects while also moving into the social finance space, I seemed to be programmed to always be pushing and looking for opportunities. But when I slowed down and started committing to me, my journey, my truth, my space, my lived experiences, I realized I didn’t have to push all of the time or be doing everything. The opportunities found me, and I allowed the ideas and creations to arise, instead of trying to force them out of me. This is holding space with myself; to tune in and allow for my intuition to inform me when it was time to create, when it was time to push, when it was time to rest and rejuvenate, when it was time let go and move on… This has been a balancing act that has extended to well over a year, but I would say over the last 12 months, I have become more aware of it and have really embodied it.

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Image Credits

Vanessa holding “human”: Khrystyna Photography
New York Times Photo: Courtesy of The Bookfest
Vanessa at podium with microphone: Cooke D. Photography
Vanessa during a live taping of The Human Challenge in Halifax, Nova Scotia with Indigenous fashion model, Keira Pratt: Captured by Shumba
Vanessa headshot: Captured by Shumba
Vanessa yoga: Khrystyna Photography

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