Au Revior LTYM:OKC

I remember the day so perfectly as it was tied into the beginning of this life I’m currently living.

I was high on that post date first kiss feeling on Friday in September about three years ago. I was giddy. To make matters even better I had just slipped on a pair of old skinny size jeans…effortlessly.

And then…and then I found out that I had been chosen to produce a Listen To Your Mother Show in Oklahoma City.

HOLY SHIT THE BED THIS DAY!!!

I don’t remember anything about the class that I went to that afternoon, nor the clients I saw in the salon that evening. I just remember…flying high. Smiling to the point of face pain. God it was an awesome day.

It got even better when I connected with Heather and Julie and our fearless production team dove in. We sat in my living room for that very first meeting and we talked of our hopes and wishes and what we could bring to the table, what we wanted the end result to be. We visualized the end result and moved backwards.

We had no idea how important this project would become for us, for the storytellers in the casts, for our community. I am humbled and so grateful that these two women agreed to jump on this crazytrain with me. They have become two of the most important and beloved people in my life and I can’t imagine life without them.

It was really…surprising when we all discovered that we might be done. We might be ok with letting the show go to other hands and walk away. We discussed it at length, we wrote our pros and cons. We made a promise not to make any decisions until after the 2015 show was behind us. We checked in…if you had to decide today…NO WAY or Still Yes…it wasn’t a decision made lightly.

We played the what if game in every way we could.

What if we just brought on another producer to do XXXXXX? (no because that’s actually our job and if we can’t do that job we should step down)

What if I stepped down and XXXXX (no. you leave, I leave, we all leave together.)

We worked around scenarios, we juggled names, we played what if until we were just blue in the face.

In the end, it was a decision made unanimously and for different reasons.

Life is moving us in different directions. Jobs and children and new family are shifting and moving and it’s just time.

This project takes a goodly amount of time and we felt that it would be better served in fresh hands for year four…should those fresh hands step up.

We sent in our resignation shortly after the national season ended and have held onto the info until the call for applications went public. That happened last week.

We hope that someone from our fair state will apply to run the show. I know we have the audience and support for it. I KNOW we have more stories out there that deserve this stage.

In the final analysis, we knew that our time at the helm was over and that we would just have to bless it and let it go and pray that someone would want to move into this home that we have lovingly, painstakingly built with tears, and sweat, and some really dazzling F bombs. This home that has held fits of giggles and you tube song parties, high fives and late nights and “we got a sponsor” dancing! It is a lovely home, ready for new owners to lead new stories into the world.

I’m so proud of the work that we have done, not just for our casts and our city, but for the non-profit organizations we were able to support. Infant Crisis Services, ReMerge and Reach Out and Read Oklahoma were all such a privilege to work with, and they in turn were blessed by the generous spirit of our audiences. The good feels are just spilling out all over the place!

Saying good bye is…wonky. I dread not being in our Producer/Director group on FB, not getting to be in that inner circle. But I leave, head held high, knowing someone will take my place and they will kick some awesome LTYM: OKC ass.

Until then, I say THANK YOU Ann Imig, our amazing national team, and this near perfect OKC team.

I’ll see you in the audience in 2016.