For all of the joy and excitement and forward motion being made with our LTYM show, it’s kind of been one of those Just Keep Swimming weeks. I know this happens a few times a year, I know that it does, but I swear my clientele has just seemed to dry up. POOF! Gone baby gone.

It is a reminder that THIS is why I want a “real” job.

The hitch is this: I’ve been working for this Masters ostensibly so that I can teach. That’s all I’ve been yammering about. Teach. Teach. Teach. Get my ph.d and teach.

And then everything changed.

And I made some really interesting discoveries about myself and the upper academic world.

And I’ve decided NOT to get my ph.d, right now. I’m not marking it off of my radar, but I can’t do another 5 years. I need to get out, get some benefits, make some money, stretch my muscles and leap into new possibility. I need some stability in my financial life before it gets to the point of no return.

So. I’m looking at “real jobs.”

And it’s kind of heartbreaking. I see postings for English teachers. I see postings for Drama and Speech teachers. But I cannot teach. Not yet. Not until I graduate with my Masters in December and then get my alternative certification.

But some of the things I’m looking at are pretty awesome opportunities that I know I could do.

I want to combine my WHOLE resume. I have amassed a skill set that really, it’s awesome. But I think it’s something no one knows what to do with.

I have a BA with a double major in English and Theatre.

I write. I can write. I love writing. I do not love academic writing. I love literature. I love the lessons that literature teaches us. Helping to relay these lessons, becoming an advocate for not only the literature but for the student is a passion.

I have professional acting experience, touring/management experience, working with children in an educational environment. Puppeteering skills. I was a founding faculty of an arts camp that to this day is still going and still running on the curriculum model that I helped build.

I have a cosmetology license and many continuding education hours to support that. Leadership skills, and really a social working degree that one develops with this style of work.

Putting together this show has opened up new levels of communication, critical and creative thinking and I promise the end result will be not only a success for our charity, but for everyone involved. It’s pretty amazing.

Mostly though…I want to make a difference. I want to do some good. I want to help make someone else’s life better. I feel called to do that. In the grand purpose of my life, I know that I can connect, I can listen, and I care. There must be a place for me, that allows this to all be a part of something that also pays a living wage.

So that is my wish. Lift it up for me today, would you? Lift up this wish? To God, to the full moon, to the candle or the song playing right now. Lift it up and I will too. While I dog paddle through the rest of this week. I’m not in a bad place. I’m happy happy happy with the progress being made in every other area of life! So please don’t think I’m sitting in the corner eating my hair.

But it’s time for a change. It’s time. And I just need a little light to see where the next step should be.

 

just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming

There is no better way to help you all understand what exactly this Listen To Your Mother thing is than to let you hear it from our National Director and Founder herself. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Ann Imig.

 

OKC’s LTYM information, cast list, and ticket links can be found here! Don’t wait! You’re really not going to want to miss this. I promise.

Sunday was our day. It was the day I’d been looking forward to for months, a day that Heather, Julie and I had prepared for, made lists about, gathered supplies for and fretted over.

The morning was bitter cold with horrible winds. Heather woke up to an inch of snow in Bartlesville. Several of our readers were driving in from other parts of our state. The roads were clear but…C’MON MAN! It’s SPRING BREAK!! Fervent prayers went up that everyone could get to the auditions, that everyone would make it safely.

We all got to the Girl Scouts office (Julie’s employer has graciously allowed us the use of space) Julie began setting out the GS cookies, making the coffee and heating water for tea. I taped up signs, set out the extra audition forms, pens, arranged the audition space to be the least intimidating as it could possibly be. Heather and her awesome Kiddo arrived safely and we set Kiddo up to be our greeter and assistant. Marcie and her beau showed up with their cameras, documenting the day with candids as well as taking headshots of each reader so that we would have them when we cast the show.

It was time.

We had some nervous energy between the three of us, some giggles. At one point I turned to Heather and said, “I just want it to be easy. I want it to be easy for our readers, I want it to be easy for us to find the show. How are we ever going to do this?”

And then our stories arrived. Our readers came into the room, introductions were made and it was really lovely to see the humans that belonged to the words that we had been reading through the first round of submissions. I tried to encourage each and every reader, reinforcing the fact that we three were already on their side. Some were quick to apologize for . . . everything.

The nerves.

The edits.

The time of their piece.

The way their voice sounded.

Shaking my head and smiling at them, I said, “Take a deep breath. Let it out. Now just tell us your story. That is all you need to do. Tell us your story.”

And. They. Did.

My emotional seal broke about the second or third reader. I didn’t make it long. I was so overcome by the amount of courage and strength that they were showing by standing there with only their words as armor…and piece by piece…they removed that armor and gave it to us. With each quiver of a voice, with each waver of emotion that flowed through their bodies…tears would well up and I would start biting the inside of my mouth in an effort to not look like an escaped psych patient sitting there at the “grown up table.”  I was in awe of the vulnerability that each reader was embracing. . . EMBRACING this unknown as if it were the easiest thing on the planet.

They took us for a ride. We laughed. We cried. (I cried. a lot) We empathized. We laughed. We nodded. We clapped. We hugged. We ( I ) cried more. We took breaks and took pictures.

Every ten minutes, a reader would stand before us and invite us in with such grace that really…I’m still not over it. Each reader stood in such fierce vulnerability, with such vigor and strength, and honored us, honored their stories, honored those they were talking about. No. I’m still not over it.

Take a deep breath.

Tell us your story.

Oh boy did they!

By the end of the day, our show did in fact present itself. It couldn’t have been more clear had it showed up at the door wrapped in Saran Wrap ala Kathy Bates in Fried Green Tomatoes.

The stories not chosen this year…it was what all of the other directors had been saying all along…it wasn’t because they weren’t worthy of the show. It wasn’t because they weren’t valid, and not because they didn’t deserve to be told. I hope with my whole heart that they audition again next year.

We divided the cast up between the three of us and made our phone calls that evening.

WELCOME TO LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER!!!

SQUEEEEEEEEALLLLL!!!!

ohmygoshyou’rekiddingohmygoshican’tbelieveitohmygoshSQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

I’ve learned so much from this cast already. They were fearless in sharing their words and their hearts with us on Sunday. They will tell you, “oh I was so nervous I was shaking” but I will tell you They Were Fearless.

I’m already terribly proud of each one of them. I stalked their social networkings yesterday as our news broke and can see how proud their family and friends are of them as well. I want to tell them how much fun they have ahead of them. The power of the stories, the connections of the cast. We’re building a community here and the best is yet to come. I want to tell them…but they will know soon enough the power of LTYM.

I’ve thought a lot about vulnerability lately.

The courage it takes to stand in that space.

The fear that it takes to move within it.

The relief it feels to know that all of it is okay.

My underlying motto for this show is:

“Vulnerability is the birthplace for connection, love, and change.”–Brené Brown.

We are cultivating all of those things with Listen To Your Mother: OKC.

It has already started.

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about vulnerability.

About being truly vulnerable.

It was in the forefront of my heart and mind yesterday when I sat and listened to over 20 people share their stories, standing fiercely in a place of vulnerability and give us their words. *(I’ll share more on this tomorrow)

I was on a connected plane of empathy with them because I have found myself in a place thick with vulnerability lately. With all the whiplash change that has happened in my “Plan” the past few weeks, I’ve really felt raw. . . as if my armor had been stripped and everyone was Instagramming my shame.

One tiny chink in the armor, one tiny hiccup and before I knew it, I was questioning everything. I’m questioning myself, my abilities as a student and as a girlfriend and as a friend and as a daughter and as a sister…you get the picture. I’m questioning, and then I begin doubting.

I’ve had a few weeks of this, and feeling like I couldn’t talk about it. Couldn’t write about it. Because really, one more thing? One more thing that isn’t going right and here I am bitching about it? One more thing that someone else has done wrong, one more thing that I’m not happy about. . . my fear, my ultimate fear is that you will leave. You will leave. Mark will leave. Everyone will leave. It’s scar tissue that is inflamed and throbbing. It’s irrational and can put a pit in my stomach faster than the sound of that belt could…whipping through the belt loops and heading my way for a spankin’ years and years ago. That kind of a pit. Unshakeable.

During these moments, seized in shame and just raw fear, my scar tissues flair, and I need reassurance. I need some extra.

Yet I do not ask for it. I do not say, please…I need this.

I gunnysack. I list. I manipulate every movement into an unintended slight. I loose sleep. I cry. I emotionally eat. And if there is nothing whatsoever going wrong? I’ll find something.

I hate this version of me. I hate her. She is desperate and clingy and needy. She is mean and cold and joyless. I have nothing nice to say about her. I don’t know where she comes from. What I do know, is that she is vulnerable. And being vulnerable is an uncomfortable thing. It is scary and painful. 

What I finally did was dig up the courage to word vomit, to just break the seal and say the things that had started my spiral into the land of stink.

Mars. Venus. What a bunch of crap.

Total on the money crap.

Communication. When something blocks the communication, when something clogs the words…things start to back up. And if communication is clogged during a time of vulnerability in any other area of life…Lord help the man.

With one simple exchange, I went from a knot-filled, tension-wired time bomb, to someone who believed in everything again. Someone who could breathe easier, and felt like a *mountain of support just arrived on the doorstep.

*it had always been there, btw.

I want to say how lucky I feel, how lucky that I know I am, to have someone walking this road with me who is patient, and willing to do the work and learn with me how to navigate this communication thing. Someone who will listen to my stories because he hasn’t gone away because he is here to listen.

Vulnerability isn’t a bad thing. Brene Brown tells us that “Vulnerability is the birthplace for connection, love, and change.”

This is the motto that I have for our Listen To Your Mother cast.

I can’t wait to tell you about them. But first, I needed to tell you about this. And to tell you that at the end of the day I may not know where I’m going, or how I’m going to pay for it, but I know that I’m not alone.

Steadfast.

 

 

 

Today is the day!

Live auditions for Listen To Your Mother: OKC are scheduled for all afternoon. Julie and Heather and I will sit, listen to the stories and put together our cast.

This is the day I’ve been waiting for…for over a year…this is the day.

As the cold winds blow outside this morning, I’m sipping coffee, watching some CBS Sunday morning, mentally going over my checklist of things that I need before I get packed and drive home to get ready.

It’s been a really lovely quiet life weekend.

I’m ready to listen!

 

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The end of Spring Break is nigh. Today I’ve got to really, finish the two assignments for next Tuesday’s class. At least, I’d really love to get them both finished, so that I can enjoy the weekend. The weather is turning to gunk, so it’ll be easy to stay inside and focused. *hopefully.

I still have some big chores on the list, but hey, I’m up. It’s 9:00 am. I’ve got until 4 before I go to work. I can totally do this.

Reading Sarah’s post this morning, she mentioned that we only have One Hard Month left of school. Yes, Spring Break is almost over, but we can do this last hard month. We can.  That was such a revelation to me. One hard month. That’s it. Really, for me, it IS it. I’m free from all things school until it is time to start studying for comps sometime in September. I’ve got to double and triple check that fact, because clearly, the information coming my way from the English department is less than dependable. But all things point to…yup. One Hard Month is all I have left. One Hard Month, then in 4 months, one hard test. again. And it’s over. I’ve been thinking about it, and I really have lost all desire to walk in any kind of graduation ceremony in December. I guess we’ll see how I feel then, but seriously. I want to walk out of that department and never go back.

March Madness begins today. It’s the first time in YEARS that I haven’t filled out a bracket. The bar does a big big thing, but I don’t participate with anything connected to that place anymore, and I didn’t get in on anyone else’s pool. That’s ok. I’m excited for our state schools, OSU plays this afternoon (as soon as I get to work) and OU plays tomorrow night. Mostly I’m super excited that my hometown friend who is the head coach of Oral Roberts University girls team has their first game in the big dance on Saturday! ESPN2 is the channel in case you were wondering! So exciting for her and her girls! GO MISTI LYNN!!! 

I’m still mulling around the idea of a big Spring garage sale. Selling some of the big ticket items in the house, getting rid of some debt. It’s a whole lotta gathering, and I wonder if I’ve got enough to matter. Thoughts on garage sales? I hate the idea of Craigslist. But I might list the piano and treadmill on it.

Listen To Your Mother final auditions are Sunday. There are no words to describe how excited I am to get the cast finalized. Seriously. So. Excited. I feel like all of the other cities are way ahead of the game, and I’m ready to join the party. Our Facebook group is abuzz with all kinds of news and notes. This really is a well oiled machine. Pretty impressive. I can’t wait to bring it to Oklahoma. Heather and Julie have been working tirelessly, and we are all gearing up to work even harder these next few weeks.

Hey, do you guys remember Shawn Mullins? This guy?

Mark (along with the PAS) is bringing him to Norman for a show on April 11th. Local people, why don’t you come sit with me and listen! I could use some company to hang out with at these things, and it’d be a really really great show! Come on. It’ll be fun! Get your ticket and giddyup to Norman for an evening of live music!

That’s it from me. I need more coffee, a little breakfast and to start a load of laundry. Then it’s time to hit the books!

Have one of those days where you actually recognize how blessed you are.

Ya know how oftentimes in this space my voice is cranking out this vibe of discontent, of struggling to find an even keel, of being THIS CLOSE to whatever it is I’ve been chasing my whole entire 42 years?

I thought that I would let you know, that right now, at 7:08 pm on March 19th, 2013…I am so content.

I did some pretty awesome cleaning and resting today, this second day of Spring Break.

I drove to Norman early, to beat the traffic and got groceries purchased. I knew that Mark had some yard projects that he wanted to get some headway on. I bought us a little $15.00 charcoal grill and right now, I’m sipping a “grocery store beer” and cooking the corn on the cob, about to put on the burgers as Mark reconstructs the giant hedge that has taken a turn into CrazyOutOfControl Land. It’s very pleasant, still 60’s if not overcast. Wilco is playing on my computer.

All is well.

All is well.

All is well with my soul.

We have had a week of evenings chock full o’ fun here lately. Webinars and concerts on Wednesday, Ryan Bingham and Honeyhoney on Thursday, Friend time on Friday, Wedding on Saturday, Sunday Funday for me on Sunday, then jam session with Mark’s people that night. Last night we capped it off, or started Spring Break rightly, with doing our favorite thing, sharing a meal and an evening of music with Brad and Lisa. Throw in two sessions of wedding hair that included travel and there’s our life this past week.

We woke up this morning and I really don’t think  we spoke but 5 words to each other. I came home, he went to work and of course on the drive my voices were all waking up from their St Patricks debauchery and talking to me crazy. I needed a little more sleep. And to take control of things in this house. I cleaned the kitchen, and steam clean the floors with vinegar, kitchen, bathroom, my bedroom. I’m convinced this house is making me sick. Allergies. Cats. Dust. Hairballs. Ugh. I’ve got it airing out, deep cleaning here and there, mentally making a list of things I need to get rid of to pay off some debt, and wonder if a garage sale would be profitable or not.

I’ve got two academic assignments that are due next week, and some Listen To Your Mother stuff as well as taxes that need to be completed this week. We’re on day two of Spring Break but I can feel it slip slip slipping away.

I think that once I’m out of classes, I’m going to do some projects around this house that won’t be too costly. I want to rip out the carpet. a) it’d help my allergy situation. b) it’s disgusting and gross and the wood floors will be much better. We’ll see how that works out. But that’s in the future, not now. Now, tonight, this week, we’re calming down. Staying close to home. Yardwork, some real meals that don’t come from a drive thru or delivery person, calm, normal, restful. That’s what we’re hoping for this week. Woah on the Fun for just a bit.

Now if you’ll escuse me, I’ve got some clothes to fold, some sheets to change and some vacuuming to do.

As par for the course, with last weekend being so zoomy and blurry, this week has flown by as well. I have a few hours this morning to finish reading Henry VI part III before class, and spiff up the house. Change the sheets, hang some clothes, etc.

We’ve made great progress on Listen To Your Mother. I sat in on a webinar last night and took many notes regarding the transition from planning to performance but my favorite one came from our national director Ann Imig when she said, “It is time to lift our heads from our to-do lists and remember why we are doing all of this. Take a breath.”

Our show has already sold a couple handfulls of tickets, which this far ahead of the game is awesome! Sponsorships are coming in, shaping up. I’m getting things crossed off the to do list. Every communication with Julie and Heather makes me even more grateful for this team that we’ve built. All is right.

Tonight I get to see my love and our friends Brad and Lisa and listen to some of my favorite musicians. Ryan Bingham and HoneyHoney are at the Diamond Ballroom tonight. Yes it is a schoolnight. No I don’t care. It seems like the time we get to spend together goes faster and faster and I’m going to be picking up bartending shifts here and there, cutting into our weekend (?) time so…we take it when we can get it. 🙂 *that’s what he said.

Tomorrow Cindy arrives from the KCMO and we get to celebrate Lindsay and Sam’s nuptials  I have concerns about what I’m going to wear, but seriously the thought of getting to spend some time with this girl is just filling me to the brim. The wedding is Saturday night and I’m doing a little work at the salon then banging out some Mother of the Bride hair that afternoon.

I do believe the most important thing that happened this week is that Wonderboy turned ELEVEN.

What kind of asshattery nonsense is that, I ask you?

ELEVEN?

I sent him some books (he always gets books from me on his birthday) and it’s becoming more difficult to pick titles the older he gets. This year he got this Dangerous Book for Boys: Things To Do, The Boys Book of Survival,  and The Dangerous Book for Boys. 

I talked to him on his birthday, and they were on their way home from Red Lobster.

Me: “What’d you have to eat?”

Wonderboy: “ohhhh I had some fries. some french fries and some shrimps. some shrimps and a lobster tail and oh yeah and some crab legs.”

The kid does love his seafood.

And I do love that kid.

 

Have a great week ya’ll.

That’s an order.