This post is part of Create Your Own Travel Guide Month, celebrating the release of our new book A Travel Guide for Transitions

As we created our book this spring, it came clear to Bas that by taking his journey outside the corporate world he had discovered an entire A-Team of new selves. Here are just a few of the different versions of Bas that he’s found over the last couple of years…

Bas A-Team

They are so beautiful, aren’t they?

Given their outfits, I might have gone with “a Smarter and Geekier Partridge Family” instead of “A-Team.” Don’t tell him I said that. 😉

Anyway, across that same period, I came to recognize and write about two versions of me: Order Girl and Wonder Woman.

Order Girl is a control queen and also, I’ve learned, a Harbinger of the Freak Out… Order Girl

And Wonder Woman is a 40+-year-old learner, happy being lost, full of wonder, and an embracer of Chaos… Wonder Woman

These are Bas-created images from our book. He’s so freaking good at noticing what matters most. I love that Wonder Woman is just me, in my regular clothes, deciding to let go of Order Girl and just dance instead. But I digress…

When I began this post this morning, my thought was that I was going to write about a third version of me that I found in the past few months: possibly Melting-Down-About-New-Puppy Mom or Bat-Shit-Crazy Event Planner or maybe even Cool Writer Chick who I’ve been getting to know this summer.

And because I’m not great at drawing, I went back to the images file of our book, hoping that Bas had created just one drawing of me that I could use in this post.

Then something amazing happened.

I didn’t find just one drawing.

I found dozens of drawings. I found dozens of different Loris in the images from the book.

Dozens Of Loris.

Holy crap!

When did this happen? Wow. So cool.

So here are my just-found points:

  1. There are lots and lots and lots of MEs to be found. Some of these MEs are easy to embrace. Some MEs surprise and delight me. Some I want to just punch in the teeth. But all of them – ALL of them – are more interesting characters than I can imagine when I live within my fear, within my choking-for-me cubicle, trapped in somebody else’s story.
  2. I can’t fully be or see these characters without the helping hands and kind eyes of dear friends.
  3. Today surprised and delighted me. Most days out here in Lori Land do. It’s my story, after all, and I like surprise and delight. This new journey, this new story, is so freakin worth it…

The Rock-Pusher and Lori-the-Playful… Push Rock or Play

Worker Bee… Worker Bee

Cool Writer Chick… Cool Writer Chick

The Ambassador of Quirky… The Ambassador of Quirky

Angry Gardener… Angry Gardener

The Moon Howler… Moon Howler

Yogini… Yogini

The Storyteller… The Storyteller

Cruise Director Julie…Cruise Director Julie

Champion of the Local… Champion of the Local

Business Consulting Failure… Business Consulting Failure

Coworking Space Holder… Coworking Space Holder

Community Coworking Co-Creator… Community Coworking Co-creator

Coworking Space Itself… Coworking Space Itself

Pirate Chicken… Free-Range Pirate Chicken

Divining Rod…Bloom Story Divining Rod

Bloom Story Creator… Bloom Story Creator

The Cheerleader… The Cheerleader

The Researcher… The Guru

Woo-Woo-Self-Beyond-Body Me… Self-Beyond-Body_Me

Self-Organizing Group Gal… Self-Organizing-Group-Gal

Community Member…

Community Member

Ms. Universe… Ms Universe

Co-Author…

Co-Author