I hear an echo

I’m preparing to write a guest post for another blog that I am a fan of.  I am confident in the piece I am writing.  It’s personal, powerful (for me at least), and from the heart.  The most stressful thing about this whole venture is the little bio dealy-bob.   I have never been a fan of writing a bio blurb.  I’ve usually always begged or bribed a friend to do it for me – especially friends that think I’m amazing and whose words taste delicious on my tongue.  The stress of condensing the essence of me into a few sentences is just….ugh.  Do I include this?  Do I leave this out?  Do I go for professional or personable, serious or witty? 

However, I’ve realized tonight that the main reason I hate to write them is because I don’t want to be perceived as "stuck up".  This has been a major perception issue for me.  Very many years ago I had an experience where I stood in front of a group of people and they gave me feedback.  The feedback they were coached to give me was to address my “walls”, the parts of me that it may be painful, but valuable, to look at and to identify the way I hold myself back from people.  The things I was told most often that night were that I was self-centered, stuck-up, and a total bitch.  My thoughts while walking out the door bounced back and forth from “Well screw you very much” and “Ouch.  How do I change that?”

I’ve grown a lot since that night 17 years ago.  I speak up, I speak out, I recognize my worth, I’m willing to be vocal about it and as long as I’m true to me I never regret it – even if someone thinks I’m a bitch.  That doesn’t mean that the fear of being perceived as egotistical, selfish, or a bitch doesn’t come up.  It comes up a lot.  The question now is, when it comes up what do I do with it?  I’d like to say that I just take it and, like a dandelion seed in the wind, blow it away with a wish for something better.  It’s not that easy or whimsical though. Often when it comes up, I notice it and move right on.  Sometimes it takes work and I have to beat the crap out of it (or me) and stuff it back down into the dark depths it belongs in.  Sometimes I let it win and lessen myself because of it.  Gratefully those times are fewer and farther between.

For several years I have taught people not to hide their light, to let it blaze brightly.  I’ve told them not to weaken themselves for anyone else or to diminish who they are to make anyone else feel better.  Tonight as I struggle with this (really minor and ridiculous) task, my words come back to me, “Dimming your light doesn’t make anyone else’s light shine brighter.  It just dims your light.”  Thank you to all those of you who have listened over the years and who echo these words back to me tonight.