TGI (Scary) Friday

It's Friday and it has been a whopper. Just when I think I have this fear thing licked it rears its ugly head (or swishes its ponytail, whatever) at me.

The past two days have been filled with scary steps. I have noticed that I am taking them more easily now, feeling the fear, acknowledging it and then doing what has to be done.

I spend a lot of time wondering this week was I was so afraid to sit down and write, something kept pulling me away from the computer even as ideas and dreams of my novel filled my head. "What is going on here." I finally decided (about an  hour ago) WHO CARES? Stop trying to over analyze and just sit your ass down and write something. So I did. I purchased some novel writing software (is that cheating, set it up on my computer and set up my novel. Go me.

I also went on my first interview in two years and realized that I could start the job tomorrow and do it well. Who knew?

In order to prep for this interview I had to send emails asking for references. I still can't believe that everybody I contacted was so sweet and agreed to speak on my behalf.

The last scary thing I did was put on a pair of real shoes for my interview. It didn't go well. They made me limp and hurt my toe, but I think part of it is from when I stubbed it on Monday. At least I can walk with no problems in the boot!

So for TGI Friday:

I am again trusting in the process. That I will end up where I belong.
I am grateful for all the wonderful, smart, strong powerful women who have taught me and so quickly stepped up to speak for me.
I am inspired by my Blogging From the Hearters! They have kept our group going even after the class ended! I love having a place to go and call home. Thanks, Ladies.

TGI Friday

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. Albert Schweitzer 

It's been a rough week. I'm on the medical treadmill, a hamster running on its wheel after test and more tests and trying to decide the appropriate referrals. In the midst off all of this, I think TGI Friday is imperative! Today I am: Trusting that everything will be okay. If it isn't okay, it's not over. Grateful to have found doctors who are also healers. Inspired by the little voice inside that tells me if I would just "trust my instincts/close my eyes/and leap" I would defy gravity.

I'd love to hear what are you trusting, grateful, and inspired by. Please post in the comments below and share your own story.

Rainy Days & Mondays

I'm feeling down, rainy days and Mondays and all of that. I'm going to listen to the song though, remember that this feeling has come and -more importantly- gone before, so I will run to those who love me and hope for a sunny Tuesday.

Talkin' to myself and feelin' old
Sometimes I'd like to quit
Nothing ever seems to fit
Hangin' around
Nothing to do but frown
Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down.
What I've got they used to call the blues
Nothin' is really wrong
Feelin' like I don't belong
Walkin' around
Some kind of lonely clown
Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down.
Funny but it seems I always wind up here with you
Nice to know somebody loves me
Funny but it seems that it's the only thing to do
Run and find the one who loves me.
What I feel has come and gone before
No need to talk it out
We know what it's all about
Hangin' around
Nothing to do but frown
Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down.

It's TGI Friday!

TGI Friday is here!

Today I am:

Trusting in the process.  The process of developing my online persona. The process of healing. The process of discovering my passion and purpose, whether it be in social work, writing, photography other creative arts or all of the above

Grateful for the lovely Susannah Conway A year ago I had never picked up a camera or even considered opening myself up to my creative side. All I knew is that there was something inside that was unexpressed and needing to come out. With a year of her gentle teaching I have fallen in love with photography, set up a website, and hope to follow the creative trail she has so lovingly inspired and forged for me. Thank you sweet Susannah.

Inspired by my fellow bloggers in Blogging from the Heart. I hope we continue this journey together and I can't wait to show you what new projects I create and see what new roads you trail blaze! Please, let's stick together. I need you!

Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah

"Don't ask other people permission to do what you are directed to do" Bishop TD Jakes

I have a cheerleader that lives inside of my head. Not the "rah, rah- you can do this!!" kind but the nasty, mean-girl kind. Think Santana from Glee or any of the Heathers. Yeah, that one. The one who holds court in the high-school cafeteria, her blond hair in a perfect ponytail, passing judgement on every girl who walks by with a sneer, a laugh, and an eye roll. The one most girls aspired to be and hated.

She's been taking up space in my head for as long as I can remember. She doesn't say much. Just sits there in her perky cheerleader uniform swishing her ponytail pointing and laughing at me, especially when I get an idea in my head.

She thinks it is utterly ridiculous that I bought my own website domain because I  would like to have a place to showcase my writing and photos. (She is almost doubled over now with laughter now, tears beginning to run down her face.)

She is the one who keeps me quiet, who keeps me from trying, who keeps me from telling anyone I want to start a four week on-line class using creativity, meditation and movement to help women reconnect with themselves. Yes, eventually I would charge people. Hear that? That is her laughing. Who would pay you money to tell them anything? No one would listen to you.

This should really kill her. I want to right a novel. It is called One Sweet Love and is about love, loneliness and the lengths we will go to to find and keep connection. I have had it rolling around in my head for over a decade, but whenever I reach for it and try to bring it out, my cheerleader points and laughs, what are you doing? Put that down! Who do you think you are? Jennifer Weiner, Jodi Picoult?

She is the one I always ask permission to do what I feel directed to do.  But why?

Why am I asking permission from a voice that is so determined to silence me, and why am I asking permission. At. All.


That internal laughter and negative voices we all hear can be devastating to our creativity. They can silence us until we forget that we ever could speak, or even ever had anything to say.  I've had this cheerleader laughing at me for so long that I couldn't believe that I had anything to say that was worth hearing. The first step is identifying that voice, whether it is a cheerleader, your
So now you know. I have a website. Eventually I am going to offer and online course, and I am writing a novel. And I'm not asking permission.

Rah Rah Sis Boom Bah

Welcome to TGIFriday!

I have seen this prompt on several blogs and feel it is a good way to end the week!

What are you:
Trusting in
Grateful for
Inspried by
on this Friday?

I'm trusting that even at this late age I will find my passion and calling
I'm grateful for this quiet moment in the middle of a busy day to sit with my thoughts.
I'm inspired by all my fellow bloggers who have been so warm and welcoming and inspire me to break out of my shell!

Being Seen

"We all deserve to be seen" -Susannah Conway

I have never felt "seen." I can remember  walking down the busy streets of New York, people passing on either side, rushing past going where ever New Yorkers go, and I'm lost in their wake. Not hip, cool, or beautiful like everyone else, but short, dumpy and plain. No one notices me. I don't notice myself. I notice others and what they have that I don't and what I want to possess.

So I tell stories, and hide behind a computer screen and my words reveal a glimpse of who I have always wanted to be. Noticed. Seen. The act of sending them out into the blogshere is a prayer for connection.

We all have stories and they aren't that original - and that is a good thing. Stories of loss and love, grief and happiness. In seeing ourselves in the words of others we are noticed and seen. We are connected.

Spotlight

So last month I really did something to bust through my fear. I performed in my Alma Mater's production of  Vagina Monologues. The Monologues were written and performed by Eve Eisner and became a movement to give a voice to and end violence against women. Productions are performed globally during "V-Season" and the money raised benefits local organizations involved in women's issues.

I'd like to say that my reasons for becoming involved in this play were purely altruistic. They weren't. Not even close. I feel it is a good cause, yes, but the day I saw the casting call and went down to audition, was more about winning the bet I had made with myself that I would never really go through with it, and if I did, I would totally suck and they would laugh me out of the audition and of course everyone would be so much better than me instead of a desire to help women. I promised myself that I would at least show up to the audition. The rest I would worry about later. 


So I auditioned... and  got a seven and a half minute monologue. Over seven minutes on stage. By myself. In front of a theater full of people. Holy Shit.  What did I just agree to do?


My piece told the story of an elderly woman's embarrassing, shameful experience with the local "good- looking catch." She recalls, "I got excited, so excited, and well, there was a flood down there." After her date calls her a "stinky, weird girl" she goes home and "closed the whole store, locked it, never opened for business again." And except for some wild dreams about Burt Reynolds, she denies her self any physical intimacy declaring it highly over-rated, confessing,  "the idea of flooding made me too nervous."


 I began to really love this woman, feel for her and understand her. I wanted to do right by her, to tell her story and have the audience really understand what she had given up and the shame that had cause her to do so. I was so afraid of letting her down. I had been entrusted with her story and I was determined to tell it in a way she would be proud of. Maybe because I'm struggling with keeping my own fear, shame and whatever else from letting me experience...well, anything.


My director was extremely supportive (as were all the women involved in the production.) When she asked me if I was nervous about performing, I told her no, because I was pushing the fact that I was going to actually have to PERFORM this piece in public right out of my head. Denial is a beautiful thing. I was just focusing on learning my piece. The fact that all the work I was pouring into my piece was supposed to culminate with me performing on stage, in front of people?? Yeah, just picture me putting my fingers in my ears singing "La La la! I can't hear you!"

There were moments during this journey that warmed my heart and spurred me on: The first read- through when I looked around the room while I was delivering my piece and everyone was leaning forward interested in what I had to say; the compliment I got from a professional actor;  the audience's response that let me know that they got the deep sadness of the piece; an audience member telling me that I made her cry. All those moments buoyed me up and made me believe when I didn't, or couldn't, believe for myself.


The last night of the production during the last moments of the piece and the woman I was portraying confronts her shame with anger, "are you happy? You got it out of me, you got me to talk" she stops talking, shamed once again for sharing a moment she has been sure, for 50 plus years, no one but her has ever experienced.


In that moment,  I stood in the spotlight and re-lived all the single steps that made up this thousand mile journey. Something about it being the last time I would perform this piece, and that particular moment in the monologue, that moment of vulnerability that  finally leads to connection, collided inside me and I let that vulnerability wash over me.


I felt the emotion showing on my face and for once, FOR ONCE,  I let it show. I let all the emotion wash over me uninhibited, sent it out to the audience and then drew them in with me.

I felt my face crumple with tears, and was reminded, all at once,  of a picture of me at my wedding with the same emotion on my face. I saw the stage and my beautiful ballerina, smiling as she danced on the same stage and my son, as he sang his heart out at the school's talent show, and as he learned to wrestle. I heard the words to Taylor Swift's song Fearless. The moment stretched on , expanded and I heard the advice of one of the directors, "just enjoy it" and so I did.  My memories filled the theater and led me back to the stage ready to give my last line, a line that was not just her line, or my line but was now our line, our story, "I've NEVER told anybody that before. And I feel a little better now." I let the warmth of the spotlight thaw that which had been frozen in fear and I realized that I had finally done it. I was living. Fearless.

Hobbled

There's a diffrence between a failure and a
fiasco. A failure is merely the absence of success. Any fool can
achieve failure. But a fiasco, a fiasco is a disaster of epic
propotions. A fiasco is a folk tale told to others to make other
people feel more alive because it didnt happen to them.

Im hobbled. Stuck on the couch unable to do much of anything, weighted down by a medieval torture device known as a surgical boot! How in the world did I get here? It occurred to me that I've been hobbled a lot longer than the past three weeks. To be honest, I've been hobbled for over a year and a half since the fiasco (see above quote) known as my social work career in June 2010. So here I am: a hobbled fiasco. And then...

And then it really came down to two options: saw off my offending foot (which believe me, I considered) or do something. ANYthing. It came down to the two questions I asked of my clients: what CAN you do, and what are you going to do instead. Remarkably, I didn't bury my head back under the covers but found some seated yoga stretches online and started to do them. I did some gentle ankle stretches for my foot. I started to post positive messages instead of the "I'm broken" ones. And while lying in Shava Asana this morning a voice said,"get up."
"uh, no I'm not getting up! I just started."
"GET up,"
"no" breathe...
"GET UP!!!"
That's when I realized that the universe was trying to tell me something and maybe I should listen. You know, get up.

So you failed. Alright you really failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You think I care about that? I do understand. You wanna be really great? Then have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make them wonder why you're still smiling.

And it occurs to me lying there in corpse pose that I have made a mistake. The failure wasn't in the job, it was in the leaving. I should have stayed and worked it out. I should have stood up for myself and insisted that I WAS a good social worker and I could do the job and not allow every comment made to me or about me to chip away at me until I was mere dust to be shaken off everyone's boots.

I gave up and that is the true fiasco. So in my best therapist voice: what CAN you? What can you do instead?

Practicing Patience

A brand new year. A time to reflect, set intentions and make resolutions. Some come out of necessity, some the universe, in its infinite wisdom, force upon you even if it has to trap and immobilize you - in a sort of cosmic placing you in a corner for being naughty until you have learned your lesson.

I've been hobbled. Bunion surgery has left me trapped on the couch caught between the sweet, soft exhale of the letting go of responsibility and the slow simmer of water in an unwatched pot of unused energy waiting for healing to occur.

After ruling out that I have sustained any further damage in a fall taken in my push to hasten "getting back to normal" or have a more serious post-op complication of a blood clot,  I'm hit with even worse news: I'm just healing slowly and am sentenced to  two more weeks (at least) of non-weight bearing, crutches, cold therapy machine existence to be served out on the couch. Everything else is on hold (including my life)  and there is not a thing I can do about it. No amount of ranting, crying or begging can will my foot into health again, force the swelling down or decrease the pain. No, the foot, which has caused me such heartache over the last year and half even stealing my one great passion (running) seems bound and determine to keep me hobbled until it is good and ready to release me from my couch prison. 

Out of this forced confinement a New Year's resolution is not so much made as thrust upon me: Practice Patience. Only patience will get me through the next few weeks of forced rest, physical therapy, and teaching my body to run again, as patience is not a quality I readily posses, I am not amused.

What I do know is that the universe has a wicked sense of humor,  so it scares me to think of what new and special ways it will come up with to each me to be patient if I refuse to listen to it now.  At least my new Ipad and a marathon of the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous makes tuning my couch prison into a place of learning life lessons easier.