Last night, one of my closest friends took me out to celebrate my birthday. Yes, my birthday was in October, but we have both been so busy that we just got around to it.
We went to dinner and talked about where we come from. We shared our family history, and I realized that as we both talked about grandparents and old situations, there were many times we said something like, “I’m not exactly sure what happened there. No one ever talked about the details.”
After dinner, we went to see “Up In The Air” a new George Clooney movie. It was a very sad tale, really, about isolation and loss and secrets.
It’s amazing the secrets we carry within us, isn’t it? Whether it’s simply refusing to verbalize an opinion or staying mum about something that we did in our youth (or yesterday) that we are ashamed of, we just keep things to ourselves. Often we have fantasies, or dreams for ourselves, that we never tell anyone. Mostly I think we internalize those out of fear that they’ll never come true.
I have been working on a book for 2 years. I told everyone about it, and even got an agent fairly quickly. Things were humming along, and parts of it went to focus group and everything. When the process stalled, I started to keep things to myself. I’m not sure if it was embarrassment or a sense of failure or what – but for some reason I kept all those feelings to myself – fear, disappointment, questions.
Now that things are humming again (yeah, you’ll have a book in 12-18 months!) I am trying to examine why I am so open with success and closed with failure. I sense, after our conversation last night about family history, that is critical for our children and our world that we start to express our inner selves a little more.
Someday, when my great-granddaughter is out for her birthday with a friend, I want her to be able to articulate who I was and WHY I was. Of course, she won’t know everything, but perhaps it will be an encouragement to her life to know the ups and downs of mine.
We went to dinner and talked about where we come from. We shared our family history, and I realized that as we both talked about grandparents and old situations, there were many times we said something like, “I’m not exactly sure what happened there. No one ever talked about the details.”
After dinner, we went to see “Up In The Air” a new George Clooney movie. It was a very sad tale, really, about isolation and loss and secrets.
It’s amazing the secrets we carry within us, isn’t it? Whether it’s simply refusing to verbalize an opinion or staying mum about something that we did in our youth (or yesterday) that we are ashamed of, we just keep things to ourselves. Often we have fantasies, or dreams for ourselves, that we never tell anyone. Mostly I think we internalize those out of fear that they’ll never come true.
I have been working on a book for 2 years. I told everyone about it, and even got an agent fairly quickly. Things were humming along, and parts of it went to focus group and everything. When the process stalled, I started to keep things to myself. I’m not sure if it was embarrassment or a sense of failure or what – but for some reason I kept all those feelings to myself – fear, disappointment, questions.
Now that things are humming again (yeah, you’ll have a book in 12-18 months!) I am trying to examine why I am so open with success and closed with failure. I sense, after our conversation last night about family history, that is critical for our children and our world that we start to express our inner selves a little more.
Someday, when my great-granddaughter is out for her birthday with a friend, I want her to be able to articulate who I was and WHY I was. Of course, she won’t know everything, but perhaps it will be an encouragement to her life to know the ups and downs of mine.
4 comments:
Yea! I can't wait to see the book! Isn't it sad that we tend to think of not being successful as failing?
"We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
Keep the faith!
A little worried there's no update here for over two weeks! I have my fingers crossed that all is well and you are merely tearing it up with your book
: )
I love the way you write. It's truly engrossing...I am looking forward to your book. Thanks for your Blogspot...so easy to relate!
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