You know how sometimes you hear or read or experience just the right thing at just the right time?  A Long time ago now, my Mom gave me a Marlo Thomas book called exactly that, “The Right Words at the Right Time”.  I loved all of her personal stories of moments in her life when someone said exactly the right thing to soothe, or bring joy or get her butt heading in the right direction!  The idea has captured my imagination ever since;  How powerful our words and actions can be in another person’s life, how healing, how inspiring, how motivating, how potentially devastating.  Words have incredible power and we must yield them with great care.  Once we open our mouths and words come out, we can never take them back, so hopefully we strive to make them mostly kind and helpful.  “Big Magic” is another book my Mom gave me, by Elizabeth Gilbert, of “Eat, Pray, Love” fame, this time for “Person’s Day”.  We always celebrate this day each October 18th, the day in 1926 that women officially became considered “persons” in the eyes of the law in Canada and were finally able to vote – incredible that we never existed before this!  We celebrate the strength and accomplishments of women each year on this day, and over the years my Mom has helped me through many things with “just the right words at just the right time”.  In fact, we started celebrating “person’s day” during my first year in University – I was having the worst time with homesickness and that being such a transitional year, she figured I needed something to help me keep my chin up.  Acknowledging that what I was doing was hard, but that women are pretty incredible and have always done hard things and come out the other side, was just the thing I needed to hear in that moment.  And now that we are embarking on a pretty amazing, yet incredibly difficult period in our lives, once again she’s come through with thoughtful wisdom to share!

I’m really enjoying reading this “Big Magic” book about embracing creativity and risk  and “newness” in your life, and there is a section that is really resonating with me right now.   She talks about how she has handled that ever-present Fear that goes hand-in-hand with any creative pursuit and I wish to apply her perspective on handling Fear to both my writing (been writing my whole life, but only now am I ‘putting myself out there’ with this blog) and my approach to experiences here in a new country.  I hope to help the kids deal with their Fear more effectively once I’ve put my own Fear in it’s place!   I love how she acknowledges that Fear will always be present and suggests that for successful risk-taking and advancement, one must acknowledge Fear’s existence, but give it no power.   She likens the journey with Fear to a “road trip”, which is brilliant and so tangible:

“Dearest Fear,” she writes, “Apparently your job is to induce complete panic whenever I’m about to do anything interesting – and, may I say, you are superb at your job…there’s plenty of room in this vehicle for all of us, so make yourself at home, but understand this: Creativity (Note: here I (CL) have substituted inspiration, exploration, anything new, etc.) and I will be the only ones who will be making any decisions along the way…your suggestions will never be followed.  You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote.  You’re not allowed to touch the road maps; you’re not allowed to suggest detours; you’re not allowed to fiddle with the temperature…you’re not even allowed to touch the radio.  But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.” (Elizabeth Gilbert “Big Magic”)

To me, this is like a vow to Fear, and I include it here so that I may refer to as often as I know I will need to so that we are making decisions that are really based in living.  And really, I have already gone on this road-trip with Fear just getting here, and travelling here twice before ON AN AIRPLANE for exploration visits (only been on a plane twice before that).  I’ve had a bit of pharmacological help, for which I’m very grateful, but have also done a lot of wrestling with my mindset and I’m getting good at talking myself through a lot of the typical phobic irrationalities – certainly not making light of any of this – I live it every time I have to fly.  But I’m not letting Fear drive my car, or my plane (counting on a very experienced, trained pilot – interestingly, that is the profession, of ALL professions that my dear first son is interested in pursuing right now, and who proudly says he will fly me “all over the world someday”… obviously I’ve done a decent job of subduing Fear for his sake!), otherwise I will go nowhere and will miss out on experiencing life.  Fear in this case is threatening to halt my living and I’m very aware of us riding together – and because I’ve lived it, I agree with Elizabeth Gilbert’s assertion that the more we fight the presence of Fear, the more powerful the feelings induced by Fear become, threatening to paralyze us.

And yet, everyday I feel worry and concern and definitely Fear is present. As a parent, in “normal”, familiar circumstances and environments it wouldn’t take much convincing to bubble-wrap our kids and put them in a padded room to protect them from everything our Fear imagines is coming… and we fight this instinct from the moment they are placed in our arms because we know, rationally, that they must have their own journey and ultimately we made life possible with the great consequence that they may experience life!

The universe has sent me this experience because I continue to have work to do to learn to live fully.  And to help my family do the same!