courage

Cutting the Cord

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 4 Comments

I am on a quest.

A quest to trust myself more. Especially in the arena of decision-making.

It sounds easy enough, right? I mean, I am me. So it makes sense that I should be able to make decisions and act on them. Easy-peasy.

I have thoughts and feelings. I reference the information stored in my brain and body that I have gained through experiences in my lifetime until now.

I know my values. I have my goals, my aspirations. My action plan. I have one, five and ten year plans in place just like experts tell you to. These are supposed to be the touchstone from which you make decisions. Check in with what they are, and if the thing is in alignment with them, voila, you have your decision. What’s not to trust?

But the process above is not the way it goes for me. I agonize over decisions, major and minor. Whether it be deciding what restaurant to go to for dinner or if I should buy a new apartment.

In my decision-making process, I am riddled with doubt at every turn. There is a constant loop of second-guessing that plays in my head. What “should” I do? What are other people doing? What if I pick the wrong thing and ruin my life forever? What if I regret my choice? What if I could have made a better choice? I torture myself.

I used to explain this away as a Libran “ism.” As a Libra, I am prone to weigh the different sides of things. I can see the value in opposing sides. Fairness is of high importance to me. I can see the good in the bad and the bad in the good. It makes decision-making a tedious mess. I end up feeling torn.

I have also pointed to my being an actress, a storyteller, as part of the issue. When posed with a scenario, my mind naturally starts to put together paths of logic that stem from every possibility. I have a vibrant and active imagination and can envision potential outcomes in great detail. This does not necessarily make for easy decisions.

I have even thought that my difficulty making decisions had to do with being the youngest. Often, as the youngest, you grow up doing what others want you to do and going where you are told to go. You learn to follow your older siblings’ lead. You want to do what they do. You want to be where the action is. You don’t know there is any other way than how the family treats you: as the littlest: you are usually just told what to feel, think and do.

I also come from a Protestant people who I think are quite fear-based, so it is in my genes to be cautious and to fear bad things happening as a result of one’s own actions. Don’t rock the boat. Go with the flow. Don’t make waves. This desire to fit in and to protect myself by blending in is often at war with my other desires and impulses, making decision-making all the more tricky.

I also know that due to traumatic events at a pivotal time in my early childhood, I learned to discount my own experience and sense of truth. To doubt my inner truth in favor of what others’ think. That certainly has messed with my ability to reach within, make a decision and trust it.

Though all of these may indeed and probably do contribute to the problem, they aren’t the root cause of my decision-making difficulties. The root, I have come to learn, is satellite thinking.

Satellite thinking/living occurs when a person makes other people’s ideas and opinions and actions have more meaning than one’s own. To be constantly seeking outside evidence, clues and advice as to what to do.

I didn’t even know that is what I was doing for many years. That I was always looking outside of myself to decide what to do.  It is incredibly painful to live that way. It’s exhausting!

I know it now, and I am so grateful.

There’s no fulfillment in that way of living. Ever.

It has been quite an awakening to realize this and to shift into my own core. It has been perhaps the most amazing healing work I have ever done in my life. It has taken patience and tremendous love. I have had to learn to really listen to my own voice within and to discern it apart from those other voices inside my head that have worn their groove into my neuropaths.

And I now feel that I am at the last phase of becoming core-centered. I am at the phase where I actually jump off the psychic edge of the familiarity of looking to the outside to guide me. Where I willingly fall into the unknown abyss that core-centered living feels like.

It is flat-out terrifying. And exciting.

When I think about truly entering into this relationship with myself: asking myself alone what is the next right action; when I think about asking questions of myself such as how do I really want to lively life, and what does a meaningful, well-lived look like to me; what will I feel was a “worthy” life when I am on my deathbed…when I begin to live with these questions, really listening for the answers within underneath the cacophony of those loops, I feel dizzy and disoriented, literally.

It feels like I will become like the astronaut in 2001 A Space Odyssey who is disconnected from the mothership, floating away into black nothingness…

A terrifying image. That is truly how scary it feels. My entire relationship to life is changing. Scary, to be sure. And yet.

It also feels like finally coming home to roost. Like the Eagle has finally landed.

Like I have finally found what I have been looking for and missing my whole life.

Can I ever truly erase that ever-playing loop of doubt in my head? That constant tendency to look to see what is happening “over there,” to ask what are “they” doing in order to decide what I want to do? To question my own sense of reality and defer to what others say is the truth or what I think others would do or what I imagine they want me to do. Can I halt that loop?

Maybe not. But I know it for what it is now. It is just old static. I can brush it away, like a stray hair that is tickling my face.

I can tune the knob and find my own frequency inside. Sometimes it takes awhile to find, but it is always there.

Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz discovering the power to go home again, I find I’ve had it in me all along.

Turns out, I am my own mothership.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: loop

 

To Do’s Today

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 1 Comment

Here is what I can do today.

I can create:

Joy. By Taking time to find it in my body and then give it to the world in the form of smiles and kind interactions with others.

Peace. By listening and respecting others, staying unattached to needing them to agree with me or see things my way. By refusing to war with my self or anyone else.

Art. By choosing to use my body, voice, mind, emotions, instincts, words, will, expertise and talent to create in whatever ways I can. I can do this regardless of whether I get an audition or booking, or am in a show or film or not. Especially in today’s world, I can create art and share it daily, for my self and others.

Positivity. I can choose to meditate, practice gratitude, use mantras and affirmations and select an intention to guide my day. As many times a day as I need to, I can tap into the ever-abundant source of this that is within me. Every moment contains the choice of love or fear.

Justice. I can stay active politically for the causes I support. I can use my voice, body and energy as needed to take action. I can speak up when I see injustice.

Equality. See above. 

Beauty. I can allow my spirit to shine freely from within. I can reflect back to others the beauty I see within them, encouraging theirs to flow freely.

Comedy. I can listen for the clown (my unsocialized 4 year old) within, and work with her impulses instead of tamping them down. I can laugh at myself and at funny things and share that with the world. 

Music. I can hum and sing and make up silly songs in the grocery line. I can sing at the top of my lungs for the sheer joy of it. Or I can create art from the music in me.

Excitement. I can go against the grain of the social conditioning that started in junior high school and begin to allow my enthusiasm for life to thrive and be seen. I can choose excitement over “cool” and feel my own aliveness flow into the world. Maybe I will spark enthusiasm in others.

Intimacy. I can choose to be vulnerable with myself and with others, and perhaps help them to become vulnerable as well. Vulnerability may well be key to saving the world.

That’s what I can do today.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word: create

Invisible Shield

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For as long as I can remember, I have not been a “huggable” person.

This used to confound me, and I actually experienced a lot of pain around it.

Huggable people are people who others want to hug freely. Hug, as in express affection for.

I remember first noticing this in college. As a freshman at a women’s college in Virginia, my friends and I would travel to the surrounding men’s colleges for parties. I would literally be standing with my other two best friends, Katie and Laura Lee, and people would come up and they would hug Laura, then grab Katie. And when they got to me, they would suddenly adopt a more subdued or formal manner and greet me verbally.

Now, Laura Lee was a beauty pageant winner who was stunning and had a perfect figure and a winning smile. I knew she was the first to attract others’ attention anywhere we were. That was just natural. Katie was a fun, fiery redhead and short; she fit right into the curve of your body, so being draw to her also made total sense to me. Who wouldn’t want to hug that?

And I was, well, me.

And I was just so confused. What was wrong with me? Why would they want to be so distant from me? To literally not touch me?

Of course, having little to no self-esteem, I immediately went to the idea that I just wasn’t pretty or interesting enough to deserve their attention. I was less than and so did not deserve a hug. This was a painful interpretation of the situation. I had no facts to support the theory, but it seemed to make sense to me.

I remember sharing about this with my high school friend Mary when we were home at Christmas break. What was wrong me? Why did no one want to hug me?

She thought it was great. She thought it gave me a sense of mystery. That people weren’t quite sure about me. And she thought this was a really big plus.

I did not think this was a plus. It felt like further evidence of my less-than-ness, my separateness. I wanted to be someone who people wanted to hug!

Later, as I got older and began to mature emotionally (aka got into therapy,) I started on a study of what in my presence could be creating this distant response of other people to me.

I began to connect dots. I looked back on the fact that over the years, I had tried to adopt a nickname or two. My name was a three syllable mouthful and was also fairly old-fashioned. It seemed like everyone had an aunt or a mother or grandmother named Margaret. So I’d attempt Maggie, or Meg, or even Mac (my initials.) But whichever version I’d try, it never stuck.

As a matter of fact, I did get nicknames, but it was usually an even more formal version of my name, such as Miss Margaret.

What I began to realize is that for whatever reason, there is a kind of formal quality to me. There is something about me that leads people to feel that they need to keep a distance physically.

What this because I was raised in a Protestant, somewhat physically non-demonstrative family? Possibly. I come from a family who believed in keeping up appearances above all else. Keep a stiff upper lip. Never let them see you sweat. And so forth. Yes, I learned to be very cautious of others, outside of the family. To hold my cards close to my chest. To watch what I said and did.

I had also developed a protectiveness in my system when very traumatic things happened to me at an early age. Anyone who has had trauma in their life knows how PTSD exists in your body.

OK, so I figured out some possible alternative theories to decry the original “I am just not lovable or worthy” theory of my youth.

What now? Well, I had to look at who I really am underneath all of that, and help myself allow that essence more space inside.

I know that at my core, my essence is warm and loving. That I am kind, and that I really want to connect.

I no longer hate or judge myself for my invisible protective shield. I have compassion and amazement at my ability to have survived as well as I did. I am patient and kind with my self and my body as I allow my essence to grow and flow.

And I have adapted the old adage if you want to be loved, love well into: I want to be hugged, so hug. I initiate the connection.

That invisible protective shield that I found so painful and frustrating before, today I claim as mine, and therefore worthy of my own love, just like any other part of me. Plus, I have it when I need it, like Wonder Woman’s invisible plane. I have a choice of whether to have the shield up or down.

Do I sometimes still wish I were more like Katie naturally and did not have to work at it? Sure. But I am me, so I do.

And so I do.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: distant

 

Split Decisions

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 7 Comments

I have been thinking a lot lately about trusting life.

I have come to realize that I have been living, but not trusting, life.

What does that mean?

It means that when I was six, things occurred that were so traumatic that decisions were made on an unconscious level that 1) the world was not a safe place, 2) I could trust no one and nothing, and 3) life was not meant for me.

Fast forward through decades of living from the decisions of a wounded child who felt that what had happened was on some level her fault and who also thought that she carried responsibility for the whole world as she knew it.

What does that look like?

It is exhausting to live but not trust life. I am exhausted. I have been dragging my soul through all of these years, cheerleading myself every day to show up despite feeling on deep unconscious levels that life was not meant for me.

It has been a strange dichotomy: wanting to live so badly, to work so hard to have a happy and meaningful life, yet to have an equal and opposite drive in my telling me that life is just not for me. That I was not meant to be happy. To live “in spite of” not feeling as if I deserved a good life or even was a worthy or necessary part of the world.

I have loved life. Needed life. Wanted life. Fought life. Almost killed my own life. But I have not trusted life.

And not trusting life, it has been hard to trust myself. I mean, if you do not trust the very force that sustains you, what can you really trust anyway?

I did, indeed, survive. Miraculous, indeed, because when you live from unconscious wound-influenced decisions from a child’s psyche, you tend to make some very, very poor and unhealthy choices.

I look back at all of the choices I made from those 6 year old’s decisions today, and I am truly in awe. I used to be embarrassed, ashamed even, at how poorly I have managed for some times in my life. But today, I am astounded at my resilience and my ability to bring myself through it all. I survived, and I live to write this.

But I have not yet truly thrived.

I have healed so much. But here I am, having cleared away so much wounding, seeing these decisions that were made about life and my place in it, and I am exhausted.

And it is time. Time to finally trust life.

I have blamed Life for what happened to me when I was six. Life and God. But mainly Life. And I understand why. The pain and shock of what happened was just overwhelming to me at 6. I just could not trust after that.

One of my favorite lines from a play is from Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz. “Most people don’t have to make a step-by-step decision to stay alive, most people just basically want to live. I am not one of those people.”

I have always deeply identified with that. It has taken me work each day to push through the energies around those early decisions to find the strength, courage and hope to face another day.

But I want to address that. Really see if I can forgive Life — it was not Life that did anything to me. Life is not to blame.

Life has held me through. Life has loved me no matter what. Life has always just been there, offering me breath, love and trees.

I don’t know how I will heal this or how long it will take but I am ready and willing to try.

I can start by making a list of what I think that might look like. If I were someone who trusted life, how would I act? How would I talk? How would I make decisions? How would I love?

Will my smile be different? My laugh? Maybe my very breathing will change.

I am eager to live in these questions, this exploration.

To take my six year old lovingly and gently by the hand and take over the reigns. Give her a soft place in my heart to go play in and reassure her that I got this now. Yes, my child, it is time.

Here we go.

Comes the light

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 2 Comments

When you live in darkness and the light finally comes

The dark doesn’t just “fall away” the way the say it will.

It’s still there, waiting for you

like a terrified child awaiting an adult’s comfort.

So there’s that.

But what about what’s in-between dark and light?

There’s all that gray.

Harder to look at than the deep of dark

or the bright of light.

Easy to dismiss what’s in shadow.

But something important that lives there

needs freeing too.

Inspired by The Daily Post Prompt: Gray

 

Girl with a Pearl Necklace

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My niece just graduated from high school and turned 18 on the very same day.

She is very special to me, as is her brother, who is a few years younger. They are my remaining older brother’s children, and our little family of my husband and I and my brother and his family have become more and more important to me with each passing year.

More so I think since the deaths of my mother, father and other brother several years ago. Losses sharpen and intensify the remaining connections. It is one of the sweet gifts such losses contain.

I decided to continue a family tradition and take my niece on a trip in honor of her graduation. My Grandma FitzGerald (who I was named after) began the tradition when my oldest brother (the one who remains) and our cousin (my mom’s twin sister’s eldest daughter who was my eldest brother’s age) graduated from high school. She took them on a two week trip to Europe. She did the same when my middle brother and our only other cousin (my mom’s twin sister’s other child who was John’s age) graduated from high school.

When my high school graduation came, Grandma and I went alone as there was no cousin there to join me. (That trip is a whole other blog post. Being a namesake can be complicated. I was also a bit wild. Gran was a bit of a force to be reckoned with. We were an interesting combo on a trip to Ireland, England and Scotland at the height of “the Struggles” in Ireland and when, politically, Europe was not too keen on Americans. Gran eschewed social norms and loved to talk politics and religion upon meeting strangers. At seventeen, I found this incredibly embarrassing, and a lot of eye-rolling and running off with the only other young person on the tour to sneak beers in pubs to meet boys ensued.)

Back to my niece and our trip.

I had come up with the idea to carry on this tradition: I knew that if my mom were alive, she would have done for my niece what her own mother had done for her children. So now I will do this for her, for all of us who remain. I cannot wait for our trip this summer, to have that time together and to perhaps tell stories about my memories of my mother and her mother and her mother’s mother.

But I wanted my niece to have something to open on her birthday, and after racking my brain and scouring the internet for all the usual grad gift ideas, I still felt at a loss. Then an idea occurred to me. I have a beautiful, sweet pearl necklace that my mother gave me when I graduated from high school. What if I passed it on to my niece?

When she gave it to me, my Mom had told me that her grandmother had given it to her when she graduated from high school. I think I remember feeling special when she gave it to me. I know I loved wearing it.

I had the great luck to have actually known my Great Grandma Burns. She had been a world traveller, and incredibly sophisticated. She had beautiful taste, and a style that was quite European-seeming that she had passed along to my Grandma. Originally from Kansas City, the daughter of a fairly well-to-do flour miller, Great Grandma Burns had been all over the world and had an elegance that she had imparted to Gran Fitz that was way bigger than Texas, where our family had eventually relocated as a result of my Grandma’s marriage to a traveling salesman.

Great Grandma Burns had bright, sparkly eyes and though she was intimidating, she was warm and funny, and I loved her. My mom, my Grandma FitzGerald and Grandma Burns and I would go to have luncheons in department store tea rooms together, four generations of women. She and my Gran Fitz would dress to the nines, as did women in those days, replete with a hat, pumps, a skirt suit and matching bag and gloves. I, being the youngest, would run to open doors for them. “Age before beauty,” they would say, if I ever made a face at this task.

I remember liking the necklace, but at 18 I doubt I really thought all that much about it then, being much more concerned with parties and boys and my friends.

As I grew older, the meaning of the necklace deepened and changed. We lived through both my Great Grandma Burns and my Gran FitzGerald’s decent into dementia, and eventual death. Life began to shape and change me, as She does to us all.

Later, when my own mother moved through her two cancers, and after her death, that pearl necklace remained, a symbol of her love of me, and of the love of the women who came before me. Whose hearts and dreams brought me into creation. I am the living embodiment of their imaginations and wishes and hopes and desires.

It has brought me such joy throughout my life. I truly treasure it. As I treasure my niece.

I was so excited when the idea of giving it to her came to me. It felt like divine inspiration.

So it surprises me that now that I am actually giving to her, I feel sadness around it for some reason. A strange mix of emotions have taken me completely by surprise. Sadness, fear, anxiety…I do not want to give it from this space. So I have to unravel what is going on.

Is this sadness because I do not have a daughter to give it to? Hmmm, I don’t think that’s it. I’m ok with that, at least for today. (More on being child-free another time. That too is at least a whole other blog post.)

Is it that I am letting it go? Ahhhh, yes, that’s it…I am sad to let it go…as if it somehow holds the actual love my mother had for me and by giving it away I will lose touch with it or something. That is the odd fear-panic I am feeling. Attachment is deep y’all. Damn.

And what if she doesn’t treasure it as I have? What if she hocks it for beer money someday (ok, this is probably projection and totally revelatory of my own wild youth — I did do that once but it was a bracelet an ex-boyfriend had given me, not a family heirloom, and she is very level-headed and not at all like me at her age, so that’s definitely a reach.) If I give it, I have to really let it go, and that means giving it without expectation or any strings attached to the receiver. She is free to feel about it and do what she wishes with it. I have to be willing to actually let it go to her.

I have loved that necklace so much. Cherished it. But I don’t actually wear it much. Isn’t it better is it is given to possibly be worn by someone my mother and I both adore?

I wonder if my mom felt pangs of sadness when she gave it to me? Don’t get me wrong, the overriding feeling I have is one of joy and love in thinking of giving it to my niece. I am just examining the other complicated things that it has brought up.

There’s something in here too, I think, about the passage of time…maybe the necklace, without me realizing it, has been a symbol of my own youth? A rite of passage, anointing the next young woman of my family…and giving it to her hits home that I am no longer that girl at the cusp of the start of her adult life. I am deep in the middle of mine, heading towards the transition to the later years. Yep, that definitely rings some bells.

Realizing these layers inside, I can be more clear and clean around this. And so I give it to her without expectation, but with some hope. I hope she appreciates it and loves it as I have, but that is all literally out of my hands.

As for it being a symbol of my mom’s love, I have beautiful memories that do not require a physical object to live.

No matter where the necklace ends up, may it resonate love and dreams and family and new life. May it bring whomever wears it in its remaining lifetime great joy in the wearing.

 

 

On Aging

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 2 Comments

I discovered a few weeks ago that I am severely prejudiced.

It was a shock. I didn’t know that lurking within me were truly vile and discriminatory feelings and thoughts about a huge portion of the human race.

I didn’t know I was an ageist*.

*According to Wikipedia: Ageism (also spelled “agism”) is stereotyping and discriminating against individuals or groups on the basis of their age. This may be casual or systematic. The term was coined in 1969 by Robert Neil Butler to describe discrimination against seniors, and patterned on sexism and racism.

Lemme back up. I was having an especially terrific day.

There are days when, as an actor, you are just filled with joy because you feel so in the flow. This was one of those days.

I was on my way from a great voice lesson. I had a while to do an errand and then later was going to rehearse and then do a staged reading of a very special play that held deep personal value for me, with amazing fellow actors. What could be better than that?

I stopped at a grocery store to pick up some kale. I was at the register when it happened. The woman checking me out said the following words:

“Do you qualify for the 55+ discount?”

I was shocked. Then outraged. Then mortified. And ashamed. In that order. Appalled and dripping with disgust, I looked at her.

“What?! Do I look like I’m 55?!! Oh. My. God. Kill me now.”

(Yes, I actually said “Kill me now.”)

Poor thing tried to backpedal it.

“Oh, I just thought…you eat so healthy…so maybe…”

Which made it worse, because she was inadvertently inferring that I’m actually older looking than 55 but eating so well that it doesn’t show?!

I left the store, kale in hand, attempting not to spin out on this.

I wanted to enjoy the rest of my day, but knowing myself and how my brain works around such things, I knew I had a triage situation in regard to my frail ego.

First, I tried different paths of logic. Oh, she didn’t really take me in before she said that. She probably says that to every one, right? I don’t look my age. Everyone says so. And my real age is not 55, so she obviously didn’t even take me in.

I’d slip into anger occasionally.

How irresponsible of her. They really shouldn’t let those cashiers  offer that discount willy-nilly. They are just asking for it!

By the time I got home, there was a new voice inside making itself known. A voice that said, “Hey, you. What’s so bad about being associated with being 55?”

I mean, truthfully, the level of disgust I felt at the mere suggestion that I could ever be 55!

I began to examine this, go deeply into it. I discovered that being over 65 felt OK. I mean, I know I’m going to be a rocking 65-year-old.

And 70? Look out! I want to be one of those cool Septuagenarians who astounds people with their vitality and continued accomplishments.

But 51-64? I want no part of THAT club. No way.

Where did this come from? This abhorrence of people those ages? I wasn’t born rejecting a whole segment of the population. How did this hidden inner belief system come to be so strong in me?

And better yet, what can I do about it now that I know about it?

I don’t want to feel such a distaste for any of the years I am lucky enough to have ahead. I thought I had embraced ageing when it first started appearing in my mid 40’s…I looked at how I felt about it then and really thought I had decided I was gonna forge a new pathway for generations of women to come by embracing my later ages. By celebrating the changes as they came. By being a vibrant, sexy woman at EVERY age.

I thought I had decided that I was gonna be a one-woman revolution and reject societal, cultural pressure to look young no matter what the cost for as long as possible. To be on TV and in films at my age and not be ashamed or embarrassed because I am not young anymore. To blaze trails. To be a part of a change that embraces beauty at every age instead of the age-shaming we are bombarded with from infancy through all forms of media.

I thought I had chosen this path.

Little did I know that sure, I was great with aging as long as I still looked 38-48. That was cool.

Little did I know that when I looked in the mirror, reviewing the changes I could see, there was this part of my brain that must have decided “Sure, this is acceptable. I can live with THIS.” But that all the while that seeming acceptance actually held a hidden silent caveat: “As long as it doesn’t get worse than THIS.”

How insane it seems now. But that must have been the invisible internal logic.

Oy.

I can’t stay frozen in time. I cannot choose the face I will keep for the remainder of my life in this body.

My face and body WILL continue to change as time progresses. I am like every other human who has ever lived and aged.

But. I can choose all of the things I thought I chose before. I CAN embrace. I CAN blaze a trail. I can be a one-woman revolution.

I can choose to reject what advertisers and media cram into my psyche on a practically moment-by-moment basis. Anti-aging, this, anti-aging that. (“Anti-” opposed to, against!)

I do not have to believe/embrace or live from the beliefs that:

After 40 it is all downhill. Middle age is something to dread and fear. Women become invalid and invisible once they hit menopause. Life is meant for the young. Old people have no relevance. Old people cannot remember things. Old people are “out of it” when it comes to modern technologies or cultural references. Blah, blah, blah.

Bullshit. It is all designed to make me fear getting old and to buy skin creams and such as if my life depends on it.

When I shared my grocery store story with a friend, she said she could relate to my outrage. She said she wasn’t going to age “without a fight.”

But I don’t want feel like there’s anything TO fight, you know?

Or rather, I am gonna fight. But not aging.

I’m gonna fight Ageism.

Look out, world. Here I come! Who is with me?!

To find out more about ageism: www.legacyproject.org

#beautifulateveryage

Confessions of a Closet Extrovert

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I have always had a very rich inner life.

In fact, it’s always been so vibrant it has been confusing to me through the years when people would label me shy, quiet or reserved. It just made no sense to me.

I felt I was living this wildly adventurous lifestyle. I thought I was an extrovert. I actually felt sort of claustophobic when others reflected back to me how they experienced me. The dissonance between my sense of myself and what the world told me was disturbing.

It was a great shock that became tremendous relief when I finally realized at a certain point that I was living a whole internal life that no one had a clue about. I truly had no idea that all those thoughts, all those fantasies…no one else could TELL they were happening. They were just the movie inside my own head. Ah ha!!

I was an introvert who didn’t know it.

I understand more about it today, but in many ways I am still living a kind of double life: the internal world I am living in my head, and the one I live in the outside world. We all do this to some degree. But I want to make the line between the two thinner.

You see, I have extrovert longings.

Don’t get me wrong. I embrace being an introvert at this point in my life. And I love my rich inner life. I use it for my acting and writing; it serves me well. But.

There are times in my day-to-day life where I feel it is time to find and release my inner extrovert and let her take the wheel.

Like the other day, for example.

There I was, in the upscale hair salon I go to because I love my hair stylist dearly and have followed him here. Our relationship is one of the longest I’ve had in NYC. I cherish it.

Normally it is quite a chill vibe. There’s usually a celebrity there amongst the other wealthy clientele. And me…usually the only unmade-up-face-unstyled-person of the lot (unless you call sweaty workout clothes a style. I usually go after a run or the gym. I am not one of those people who love to go to the salon or spa. I can barely sit still long enough for Jacob to check the color before I am out the door with still-damp hair, much to his consternation.)

But on this day, there was one of those people who just drives me nuts. You know the type. Totally self-absorbed. On the phone as her poor stylist attempted to work on her. I mean, he was blow drying her hair, for heaven’s sake! How could she even hear what the person on the other end of the phone was saying?! The entire salon had to hear her conversation, which, as you can imagine, was quite loud. We were held hostage to her whims.

I soldiered on for while as I had my hair rinsed, until I could stand it no more. I gave her the ‘ole Southern girl’s passive-aggressive evil eye, designed to awaken her to her broach of social manners.

Nothing. Not a twitch or a skipped beat. She was too immersed in her sense of entitlement. I probably did not even register to her. I was just a pasty blur on the fringes of the center of the Universe, which was, of course her and her Important Phone Call.

Then I began to bear witness to the despicable way she was treating the stylist. She’d stop mid-sentence and dress him down for some indiscretion he’d made. Maybe the brush touched her phone? Was the air too hot? She spoke to him like he was an indentured slave. It was grotesque.

Soon, I was seething with rage. I began to have fantasies of ripping the phone out of her hand and giving her a piece of my mind. If she used the word “foliage” in that British accent one more time…I was gonna march over there and let her have it.

There it was…she said it! “And you just have to see the foliage!”

I leapt up and ran over and ripped that phone out of her hand and said, “Excuse me. But we are all having to listen to your conversation and it is rude. It stops now! Plus, this man is a person! Who the hell do you think you are? No one deserves to be talked to like that!”

It was amazing. And I did do all that…but only in my head. In the outside world, there I was. A fairly reserved-looking woman quietly having my hair glossed.

Oh, I did my best to convey psychic messages of commiseration and support whenever I could catch the stylist’s eye. But I just did not have the guts to confront the beast herself, at least not out loud, anyway.

There was one saving grace. Apparently, as he was rolling her hair in rollers, her stylist must have accidentally brushed her forehead with a tiny part of the brush. She literally cried out in a dramatic style that would have rivaled Sarah Bernhardt in her day, waving him off, touching her forehead as if to insinuate that blood was about to gush forth at any moment. All the while staying on the phone, of course.

I found this incredibly funny, and started to giggle and then laugh out loud, uncontrollably, at her plight. It just felt so right. Karmic retribution.

I so want to be the kind of person who speaks up in such situations. Something still holds me back. Caring too much what others think, I suppose. That “good girl” Southern, Protestant-y encoding goes deep.

My step for that day was to speak to the front desk and ask that they offer the stylist a massage or some really loving thing to offset the disgusting shower of ugliness he had been submitted to by that awful woman.

They apologized that my experience had been tainted. I said no. I wanted to apologize on behalf of the human race for the ugliness we human beings sometimes inflict on fellow human beings in the service industry.

That was my Big Step Out. But it is not enough for me. It is time to bring that rich inner life with all of it’s bravery and bold action into the outside world where perhaps it can benefit others.

It is time to live my life out loud, out on the skinny branches. (At least sometimes.)

Look out, world. Here I come.

Beyond the Skinny Branches

~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ Leave a comment

I am living life beyond the skinny branches. Or rather, that is my intention. I want so much to be the kind of bird that courageously leaps from the skinny branches off into the air, to soar into the unknown on a daily basis, in my art and in my personal life. That is my soul-craving. That is my heart’s fondest desire.

In reality, some days I’m clinging to the base of the tree for dear life. Some days I long to bury myself in the earth that holds the roots so that I may disappear and be seen no more.

Many days, I am comfortably uncomfortable as I sit on the medium-to-small branches that offer the safety and comfort of the known. But most days, more and more, I’m climbing out onto the skinny branches.

Any action I can take that feels as if I am living life beyond those skinny branches is a win in my book. So here I am. Challenging myself to be seen. To let my voice be heard. To take those leaps and both fly high and dive deep into the waters of life.

Care to join me?