We’re starting a new interview series on Topknot where we ask women powerful questions about their relationships with their jobs, their journeys, and themselves. Growth takes vulnerability, honesty, and hard (often uncomfortable) work. Sharing our stories gives us ownership over that journey and roots this community in trust.
First up is Topknot co-founder Brook Osborne on learning how to feel, both physically and emotionally.
Interested in sharing your story? We’d love to hear it.
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What is your favorite daily ritual?
Over the past few years I’ve been experiencing more and more hip and back pain that my doctor tells me is “typical for women in their mid-30s.” 🙄 The one strongly positive outcome of that discomfort has been a commitment to focused stretching and breathing each morning. This takes the form of a 10–20 minute session on the floor of my apartment where I move between 1/ pushing myself to breathe in so deep that my lungs are full up to my collar bones and down through my belly, 2/ exhaling until I feel like an empty grocery bag on the verge of blowing away, and 3/ folding, elongating, and flexing my tender muscles and bones. This practice has done so much to connect me to my body and help me identify changes in how I am really feeling each day. And if that weren’t enough, because it’s in the morning and on the floor, my 2 cats and dog make it a point to visit.
When have you experienced transformation? What was that experience like? What did you learn about yourself and how did you do this?
One that I’ve been working on for the last few years is changing how I experience and act on emotions. For a very long time I didn’t realize that I was at choice to decide how I would express my emotions. I typically had the social graces to keep some things to myself, but when my emotions were brought into the conversation I felt like I was strapped in for a ride that nobody asked for. Emotions felt like they were happening to me, and I would respond to them instinctively and reactively. I didn’t realize that I was ultimately in control of how I reacted to the things I felt.
In fact, how I experience failure is a prime place where I notice this caterpillar-to-butterfly style metamorphosis. Running from failure, as many of us are so practiced at doing, stemmed from trying to avoid emotions that made me feel bad about myself. Experiencing failure brought up feelings like anger, insecurity, rejection, disappointment. Those… are not great things to feel. And, they’re made worse when the feeling > thoughts > actions road feels like it’s an expressway without any exits. Because I didn’t know how to feel something and then decide what I was going to let that mean for me, I did whatever I could to avoid those feelings in the first place. In the case of failure, that meant avoiding situations where I might fail. Now, I feel into those situations and give myself space to let the feelings wash over me. Then, after I’ve felt the feelings, I make a choice about what’s next and how I want to move forward.
This is hard work, and I’m not perfect at it. But through this process I’ve been able to take on new things that the failure-phobic version of me would never have given myself permission to try. I certainly wouldn’t have been equipped to wear so many new and unfamiliar hats as the co-founder of Topknot without working toward this transformation.
What would you be doing if you weren’t doing what you’re doing now?
There is a parallel universe where I became an engineer and dedicated my working life to innovating on how we get around — think new and exciting ways to power cars. Had I gone to a college with a stronger connection to the automotive industry, I have no doubt I would be spending my days trying to build a more efficient way to go fast, sustainably.
What’s your relationship with failure?
Always evolving. For a long time I was pretty terrified of failure — I wasn’t afraid of working hard, but I was very much afraid of putting in that hard work and still not being good. Sometimes this meant I would gravitate toward activities and hobbies that I was “naturally good at”; AKA, things where my existing skills could ensure some baseline level of competence. Other times that meant trying something new, but not really working for it, so if it didn’t go well I could chalk it up to the lack of effort.
I now work to experience failure as a temporary state, a learning opportunity. This mindset shift still requires *a lot* of effort. I hope that one day it feels more like second nature, but for now it’s a powerful reminder that I have agency in deciding how to react to the things I feel.
When do you feel most like yourself?
This is a two step process for me: the first step is to be quietly creative. I love being around people, but at my core I am an only child who loves the feeling of being in on a secret with myself. The second step is to entertain or play the host. I love to share the spoils of that quiet creativity with others. In my personal life that most often manifests through things like tasty food and cool photographs or prints.
