Diane’s Blog

I was watching Oprah yesterday, and although the topic was the widening rift between the “haves” and “have-not’s” in this country, what really got my attention was something else.  Near the end of the show Robert Reich, who was talking about the imbalance of wealth in our country, said that “luck” was an important factor in achieving what we like to call The American Dream. 

Oprah said that she had to disagree; she does not believe in luck.  She said that she sees it instead as the place where intent meets opportunity.  Mr. Reich fumbled around with this for a minute, but couldn’t seem to get away from the “luck” concept.

 I used to believe in luck, but that belief began to fade as the realization of a new truth entered my life: we create our own reality.  It seems that these two concepts cannot share the same space within us.  What does this mean?  In other words, it’s the old debate — there is meaning and organization, versus randomness, chaos, and by inference, luck. 

I now see that where you fall in terms of these two concepts determines not only your worldview but how you actually experience life.  For example, when I believed that circumstances in my life were conspiring against me, I was unhappy and resentful.  Bad things “happened” to me — surely I wasn’t creating them — who would want to?  I was at the mercy of factors I couldn’t control and therefore I was a victim. 

Then I began to open to the universal truth that made its way into human consciousness in the 1960s — we create our own reality.  As I did so, not only did I cease to feel that I was a victim of happenstance, but I began to see that my intention in any given circumstance had more power over the outcome than I ever would have thought possible. 

 Luck is in the category of  human beliefs that we cling to in order to keep from becoming fully conscious.  It gets you off the hook, doesn’t it?  But it also prevents us from becoming the immensely powerful beings we really are, because belief in luck says that you still think the real power is outside of you somehow.

So how do you improve your life if luck isn’t involved?  In the realm of social class in this society, certainly there are long-standing institutional factors and pervasive beliefs and practices that conspire to keep all of us in the same class into which we were born.  Do exceptions like Oprah transcend these factors due to luck, or is it that notion of intent meeting opportunity? 

 This is one of those areas where most people come down 100% on one side or the other; there are no shades of gray here.  How do you see it?  Earlier this week my husband and I received an offer from a friend to live rent-free in a beautiful home in the country not far from here in exchange for being the caretakers for the main house, which is occupied by a lawyer from Washington, DC only a few months out of the year.  As it turns out, this opportunity couldn’t be more well-timed, for reasons I won’t go into here. 

But the question I asked myself was, “How did I create this?”  And I knew the answer immediately — our intention, bolstered by our belief that anything is possible and that we deserve all the abundance that life has to offer, met with a wonderful opportunity.  The same holds true when circumstances are not so favorable. 

 I ask the same question, but I’ve learned, more and more, to stay away from the voice — the ego — that wants to blame Diane and make her guilty for having created something that she will most likely experience as painful.  I’m learning that part of the journey of becoming “conscious” in this life is to stop seeing chaos as an enemy.  What if the meaning behind the chaos is simply our cue to look at everything from a greater perspective than we normally do?  I don’t know about you, but making that choice helps me to stay sane when so much in our world appears to be madness.

I asked for guidance recently about marketing my web site.  The answer I received made me say “Duh!”  Guidance is often like that, in that what it really does is tell us what we already know but haven’t yet brought into sharp focus.  (Often because we don’t want to) 

 So this answer seemed obvious:  “You are an unconventional person — why would you choose to pursue conventional marketing advice?  It won’t work for you.  You will need to allow your creativity to flow freely; then you will find the methods that “work” for you.”

This inspired me to take another look at my life: sure enough, I have almost always been different.  But that square peg-ness was extremely painful in my first, oh, 40 years or so.  I feel compassion now for the Diane who so desperately kept trying to fit into a world that didn’t accommodate her uniqueness.  The thing is, if you haven’t looked within in a serious way over time, how can you know what your needs really are?  Most of us think we know, but we don’t. 

Here’s a test: How many times have you agreed with someone in the last week without digging deeper to take stock of how you really feel?  Then look at your life and ask, “How often have the important events and turning points in my life been governed by “shoulds”?  For example, I married my first husband because I was 37 years old and held the belief that if not now, when?  There’s a “should” for you. 

 Or going back further, I went to college right after high school even though I hadn’t a clue about who I was or what I wanted in life.  All my friends were going, and it was assumed by all that I would, too.  “Here’s the application; pick a major.  Well, put SOMETHING down.  You can always change it.”  Only since my early 40s have I really celebrated my different-ness, and that was pretty wobbly until more recently. 

 Now I realize that the very qualities I once felt I had to hide are the ones that comprise my gift to this world; it is always so.  If there is one pearl of wisdom I could give, it would be this: Choose to dig deeper and find your own different-ness, because within it lies the key to your greatness.  Okay, two pearls: If something isn’t working for you — look more closely.  Maybe it isn’t meant to, if it doesn’t fit who you really are.

Last week I talked about my concern that we tend to not get worked up enough about the state of the world.  Funny how you can step around a corner and Bang!– you’re looking at the other side.  My father sent me a newspaper article this week from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  Although at first glance it seems to provide useful information — graphs, statistics on medical care for retirees — a closer look had me jumping back like I’d stuck my nose into a funky garbage can.  After checking out my response with that of my husband Jim, I tossed the thing into a file drawer.

 Why, you ask, did I flip out?  Well, I’d be pleased as punch to answer: I no longer conspire with worry-mongers.  My dad, on the other hand, is a full-out black-belt, proselytizing worrier.  I can remember hearing his voice back in my teen years, responding on many occasions to my innocent statement that I wasn’t worried about whatever it was.  “Well,” his deep voice would boom, “You SHOULD worry!”  And so I did.  I learned to be a champion worrier.  Hell, I’d worry if I even suspected that I might run out of toilet paper before my next scheduled trip to the grocery store.  Did you notice the word “scheduled?”  Yep — I was also a world-class control freak.  More on that another time.

 But as I began to look at my life in a new light in my 40s I realized there is a hidden hand guiding everything we do (not necessarily “God” — but a greater intelligence.)  And then I understood that a soul that is lovingly, purposefully guided and supported every step of the way is wasting absurd amounts of energy by worrying.  As James Redfield, author of The Celestine Prophecy stated in an interview, “Worry is negative prayer.”  Oops!  That really hit home for me.  The last thing I want to do is send more negative energy out into an already gasping world.

The aforementioned article on the growing cost of medical care for baby boomers meant well, but its whole point of view was to scare the shit out of us about how “unsafe” retiring at any age now is, unless you’re Bill Gates.  Worry because of scarce resources is big in the media these days. While I agree that there will be people going under financially, and who knows, I could be among them, I know that worrying is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Especially harmful is dwelling on “statistics” and anything quoted from “experts.”  Please.  Who can be more expert than me about how I choose to create my life? 

 Interestingly, large numbers of people (also sheep) are quite easily directed if someone yells “Fire!”  and then points to the door they want said sheeple to pass through. So I hope you’re not in “worrier” mode.  Here’s an interesting fact: You can’t worry and be fully present at the same time.  It’s not possible — our conscious mind can’t achieve that particular multi-tasking challenge.  Try it out if you haven’t already. 

 Whenever I’m tempted to worry, I ask myself — “Is everything okay in THIS moment?”  The answer can only be “yes” unless you just expired. (Now THERE’S a whole other topic)  Then I remind myself that the future is just a string of “this-moments.”  So the chances are really good that they’ll be fine, too.

I’m feeling a little snarkey this week.  I snapped at my husband this morning.  I’ve had zero patience with myself.  I didn’t even feel like “blogging,” to tell you the truth.  It’s been one of those weeks that you can only describe this way: “It’s been one of those weeks.”  I can’t quite put my finger on any one thing.  Hmmm — My hair made me a cinch for the “Kramer” look-a-like contest, if they ever hold one.  I’ve felt tired all week — low energy, nothing serious.  Oh, and every time I turned on the TV or radio or went online, I heard horror stories of innocent people dying and rumors of World War III.

   Oh.  That could be it. These are turbulent times we are living in, people.  Or as my elderly ex-client Doris from Pittsburgh used to say, “Turrible, turrible.”  How are you affected by all the global gnashing?  Do you tune it out?  Does it make you feel impotent?  Resentful?  Angry?  Have you ever just cried for the hatred and greed that are playing out on a world-wide level? Or do you feel nothing at all? 

 When I heard the author and mystic Andrew Harvey speak here in Ashevile almost 2 years ago he said the reason we aren’t outraged 23 hours a day is simple: “We’re in a Coca-coma.”  This is a consumer society, after all.  Consumerism is the national religion.  And if it does nothing else, our religion helps us to go numb just when the appropriate response for any normal human would be, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”  Or perhaps, “It didn’t have to be this way,” if we are one of the more forgiving, compassionate ones.

The beauty of this religion is that you don’t even have to get high and alter your consciousness to zone out.  Hell, that would be redundant — we are all zoned out.  All the time.  If you doubt it, ask yourself, “How horrible would things have to get for how many living beings on this planet for me to break down and sob?”  I don’t know about you, but I think of myself as a fairly empathetic person who gets upset if an animal is mistreated.  But I can focus my eyes and ears on stories about thousands of innocent people dying in Darfur or Iraq and eat my dinner at the same time.  Isn’t that denial, folks?  Yeah, I know — we all need a little denial just to get us through the day.  It’s one of the holy sacraments of consumerism. 

 But I’m beginning to suspect we’re in it up to our necks.  Otherwise we would be marching and protesting and banding together to make our voices heard.  We wouldn’t sit there and say, “Oh, that’s awful.  Is American Idol on yet?”  At least I’d like to think we wouldn’t. So what does it take to respond, if not with anger, which is useless anyway, then with compassion and with a resolve to do SOMETHING to improve the lot of humans?  It seems to me that we’ve sedated ourselves so successfully for so long that we now have whole generations growing up thinking that reality TV beats the real thing.  Their parents can’t really help them sort things out because they’re too tired from working overtime to make the mortgage payment and hopefully avoid losing their good credit rating.  What is THAT about?

I know this — everyone I meet is too distracted almost all the time to focus on the one thing that counts — the quality of life on Earth.  It’s no longer possible to act as though what happens in equatorial Africa doesn’t affect us here in the U.S. On the level of Spirit, All is One.  So that even if we don’t necessarily know what’s bothering us, on the inner planes we are all suffering from the damage we are inflicting on each other as an interconnected part of the collective mind of this planet.

 Sometimes we just have to turn our focus to those areas of our lives that make us feel good about who we are.  I’m now finding that it no longer seems possible for me to separate the quality of my life from that of the other 6 billion souls.  Maybe that’s a good thing — if you choose to see it as an indication that we all are, indeed, one.   

Okay I know that for those of you of a certain age that song title is incredibly vapid, but “Subterranean Homesick Blues” just doesn’t describe this week’s musings; Ms. Spears’ pop hit does.  What I did again is listen to my ego voice as though it was my truth.  It isn’t, of course; Spirit is the voice that carries our deepest truths.  But I got sucked in by the ego’s thoughts and didn’t recognize them; they can be so darn convincing.

I decided to share this week’s process with you because it’s what we all have to go through over and over if we choose to evolve.  (I’m talking spiritual evolution here — this dimension apparently escaped Darwin)  I had always been confident that this web site would do well — meaning people would take advantage of the personal guidance I offer.  That confidence seemed to flip over on its head about a month after publication of The Soul Garage.  I found myself suddenly entertaining thoughts like, “Nobody will even FIND this *!&# web site, forget about requesting guidance!”  And more recently, “Oh, who cares, anyway.  It really makes no difference to me.”  Wha ’sup wit dat?

Within three weeks my vision for my work went down the toilet, and along with it went my sense of moving in a certain direction; suddenly I was lost.  I finally did what I learned to do back in 1992 when I first began receiving answers to my life questions in written form from higher guidance — I sat down with pen and paper, aligned myself with Spirit, and asked.  Because much of what I received in response is universal, I will now share with you excerpts you may find useful:

 ”Your dilemma is this: You haven’t a clue when your work will take off and this is driving the ego crazy.  Its response was first — “Oh, it’s just a matter of time” which quickly has degenerated to, Nobody will EVER come to me for help –fuck ‘em!”  Does this sound familiar?  It should, as it is a long-time response system set up by your ego many years ago to protect you from outside disappointments.  This is not your truth.

 Your truth is that you are now offering to the world grace in the form of your answers to individuals’ most pressing problems, and you know you are the real thing.  Your truth is also that whatever happens, Diane will continue to evolve.  The timetable is set only by the ego, which wants Diane to feel guilty for not DOING more at this time — does that sound familiar? In order to feel the motivation you want you will need to discern the ego voice when such thoughts arise and do so vigilantly.  Right now you are accepting that voice as your truth and are becoming lost in it.  Your work WILL be found — never fear. 

 Allow yourself to have “negative” thoughts and feelings without judging yourself, Dear One.  The thoughts in themselves are harmless, and you only give them power by dwelling on or by immediately pushing them away.  Acknowledge them, thank them, then move on.”

 So you see, I did it again.  I gave more authority to the external world than my internal wisdom.  Although I don’t do this nearly as often as I used to, obviously there is still work to be done. So for all of you who are choosing to reach for the life you really want, please know three things:

1) Notice your thought processes, especially when they become negative and/or you find yourself feeling guilty about not being good enough in some way 2) Go with Spirit’s guidance, whether on your own or through someone like myself, and 3) Forgive yourself, no matter how many times you catch yourself buying into egoic thoughts as “truth.”  What matters is walking through this corrective process — how often is irrelevant. 

 Each time we choose to align with Spirit we are learning to carry more authentic power.  That’s the kind of power that brings both inner and planetary peace; until we understand this as a species we will continue to flail against “enemies” and feel impotent, no matter how successful we are as currently defined by our society.

Please feel free to contact me here at The Soul Garage if any of this is confusing to you.  I’d be glad to answer any of your questions.

For most of my life I had a fickle relationship with practicality.  Or at least with my beliefs about its meaning to me.  I wasn’t conscious of this and so I got into a lot of trouble along the way, blaming everyone else for my unhappiness and misfortunes. I remember being expected to choose a major for college and being stumped.  If I had allowed myself to believe in following the desires of the heart, I would have chosen theater or dance.  Instead I chose home economics — I hear you snickering out there — in the 60’s this was still considered a viable choice for “young ladies.” 

Within a year it was the “Summer of Love” — 1967 — and my world was flipped on its head.  The rebellious impulses on which I had begun to act rather meekly in my freshman year went into overdrive and my grades suffered accordingly.  I dropped out halfway through my senior year.  Hey — I didn’t need that piece of paper, man!  I was so Mary Tyler Moore meets Janis Joplin — a truly half-assed, reluctant hippie who still had not a clue about who she really was — but now I felt empowered in my cluelessness.  Wasn’t I part of a movement? In other words, I still had a very unhealthy relationship with practicality.  The only difference was that now, instead of completely buying into my parent’s notion of what’s practical I completely rejected that same notion. 

 Hello!  I couldn’t see that I wasn’t following my own blueprint — or rejecting it.  I was rebelling against an image of myself that had been projected onto me by people who thought they knew who I was–or should be.  No one, least of all me, realized how far off we all were. I was 40 years old before I began to suspect that my life was little more then a continual allergic reaction to other people’s vision of me, particularly what was “practical” for me.  How can we make smart choices for ourselves if we aren’t on intimate terms with our own deepest needs?  With our true intentions?  Yet I talk to people every day who never seem to check in with their own gut feeling — or, having checked in, refuse to honor it.  Why?  It always seems to be a variation on “Not practical.”

If we truly are at least as much Spirit as we are matter, can we afford to live our lives as though these vital impulses of our heart are anything less than practical?  If they aren’t, then who IS driving our car?  Have you ever suddenly just KNOWN something is wrong but you ignored that knowing and persisted in acting on what your head told you to do, only to later regret that betrayal of your own inner wisdom?  (Yes–my first marriage, but that’s another story…)

I have a feeling that if we each decided to expand our definition of “practical” to include our gut reactions, within a year we would have successfully steered this planet in a much healthier direction.  I know, I know — that would require a leap of faith because most of us still accept the consensus reality that the ego voice is the ultimate authority.  What if it turns out to be the other way around?  What if our own personal inner guidance system, driven by our intuitive voice is actually the smarter CEO?  What do you think?  Isn’t it time we try something different?

(more…)

This is a subject I intend to return to again and again, in many different guises: We have to begin to trust our own inner knowing/gut feeling/guidance/inner voice/intuition — whatever words feel most comfortable to you — above all else.  We tend to allow much of our personal power to be sucked up by others.

Yesterday I started thinking about an article I read recently by a doctor of naturopathy.  At first her advice seemed reasonable, since it was about homeopathic medicine.  Then she apparently was nudged by her ego voice which told her to go for it — and she did.  She commenced to wax pedantic on all manner of topics, from healthful foods to sleep habits.  Specifically, how many ounces of broccoli to eat how many times a week, all the way to what time we should go to bed every night, and for how many hours.  There seemed to be no exceptions allowed.

I know this is the information age, but some of us seem to get carried away.  Do adults really need to be lectured on when to go to bed and how often we should experience “evacuation of the colon?”  And who is doing the lecturing?  Isn’t every fourth person you meet an “expert” on something these days?  Personally, as soon as I hear someone being introduced as an “expert” I head for the hills.

How do we discern where the expertise ends and personal opinion begins?  I had an intuitive reading by phone a number of years ago from someone whose work I admired.  About the fourth time I listened to the audiotape of this session, however, I got a funny feeling.  Although 75% of the information was obviously received from Spirit, the rest seemed to be his personal opinion.  Ordinarily I have no quarrel with people stating their opinions.  But it is incumbent upon a healer to differentiate for the public between information or conclusions arrived at from a higher source and that which rests solely on the say-so of the ego mind.  This healer — and a few others I’ve run across — didn’t do so.

As with any other position where people seek you out — politician, doctor, Minister – one has to guard vigilantly against loving the platform more than the truth.  Isn’t this happening everywhere today?  Everyone’s a pundit.  I hear increasingly nutty opinions every day by all sorts of folks who take themselves way too seriously.  And there’s always an audience.

I got pulled into this power matrix briefly myself when I began teaching adult classes about our inner wisdom, and here’s why — Reason #1: A lot of people treated me like a guru.  I was shocked.  They couldn’t divest themselves of their own common sense and wisdom fast enough, so eager were they to hear a “definitive” truth.  Reason #2: I was insecure about Diane’s worthiness.  It feels safer to hand out information as though it is 100% guaranteed certainty than to couch your knowledge in terms of degrees.  “This is fact” rolls off the tongue with a satisfying smoothness that “At least in my experience, here’s what works” never could.

I believe that the human race will not continue to evolve unless they get this issue straightened out.  It’s that basic to the fulfillment of our potential.

I still accept too much information as “fact”, but I’ve trained myself to notice more of my behaviors.  More and more I catch myself in my old habit of throwing away what really feels right to me in favor of someone else’s “right.”  I ask myself, “Does what they are saying really apply to my life, or do I need to check that out by getting quiet and sitting with it for awhile?”  Or alternately just acknowledging the cognitive dissonance I feel.  That’s guidance too.

 We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water.  If we pick and choose what really seems right for us from the constant onslaught of wall-to-wall opinion, we can only become our truest self.

If any of this doesn’t fit who you are in this moment, please set it aside.  You’ll be that much closer to your own truth.

I have a high school reunion coming up in October, and I’m shocked at how eager I am to attend.  It’s not as though I haven’t seen these people since graduation; I went to both the 10th and 20th gatherings.  They decided to hold a 25th, but at the time I was too fragile, having just left my first husband a month earlier.  Did they even hold a 30th?  If so, someone left my name off the list, and I think I know who (just kidding–no I’m not).  And now — it can’t be — but it is: the 40-year reunion of Lakewood High in Lakewood, Ohio, where I was born and grew up. I remember being surprised at all the people who flocked in from all over the country at those earlier reunions; now I’ll be one, having moved to Asheville in 2000. 

The reunion committee sent me a list of events and a questionnaire.  I’m sorry to report that I won’t be attending the Friday night informal get-together at a local bar, although I love the concept; it feels so surreal, like a David Lynch movie: An increasingly snockered and rowdy bunch of 58-year-old pre-retirees finally getting up the nerve to vent all that button-down, savage emotion that until now had been semi-successfully repressed.  Spotty-faced, hormone-driven angst erupting intact from the the aging lips of somebody’s grandparent:  “I always hated you, Susie!”   ”You were so hot, Kenny, and I bet you didn’t even know it!”  Spouses backing out of the place to get some air…

Okay, I admit, part of the reason I am not going to expose myself thus is that I could all too easily be one of those characters, verbalizing what I’ve only fantasized I’d say if I had the nerve.  I already know how that turns out, thank you, having made what turned out to be the stupendously unwise choice of calling a high school boyfriend after my divorce–way too soon after my divorce.  Do you know how these things go from personal experience?  Well, perhaps your attempt at re-ignition went well.  Mine, sad to say, went very, very badly.  Not immediately, mind you, although there were signs early on, such as the fact that he went into a sort of hellfire and brimstone rant in the middle of the pizza parlor on our first, er, “date.” Should I have read my inability to get out of bed most of the next day from exhaustion as a clue?

No, I’ll save my one-night-only appearance for Saturday night — the actual reunion “dinner/dance.”  I finally unearthed the origin of my desire to show up this time: two reasons, apparently.  One — I can think of three people to whom I owe apologies.  Suddenly, at this point in my life, such things carry weight.  Thirty years ago, when another boyfriend asked at our 10th reunion, “Why did you take so-and-so to the dance during prom week instead of me?”  I had nothing.  Nothing but some flippant, dismissive excuse.  They say what goes around comes around, and so I experienced real déjà vu when I found myself asking of the “brimstone” ex-boyfriend years later, “Why did you cheat on me senior year?”  I received the same type of response I had given when asked at that 10th reunion. 

I know now that even though we grow up and move on the old wounds don’t necessarily heal completely.  And so I plan to revise my original answer this time, and apologize to two other classmates as well.  It doesn’t even matter if they brush it off — it’s something I have to do so that I can feel a little lighter. Sometimes personal growth means we do what’s necessary to ease our conscience — and we do it more for ourselves than for anyone else.  That’s not selfish, it’s part of bringing our life back into harmony.  Calling back parts of our lesser-evolved self from whereever we let them stray, and forgiving them, because we now know they did the best they could at the time.

The second reason I’m attending this hoedown is curiosity.  It strikes me as very telling that I went to those earlier reunions to see certain people, but largely to be seen.  “How do I look now?” was my refrain, which I now understand stemmed from my low opinion of who Diane was. The questionnaire says, “What have you been doing with your life?”  Tell me instead, “Where has life taken you?” and “Where have you gone that you didn’t expect to go?”  These are the questions I would ask anyone who has lived for one half a century.  and did ask, often, when I was a social worker specializing in gerontology.  Every last one of us is on a unique journey, no matter how mundane it may look from the outside.  It’s always a journey of the soul.  And, as I have elsewhere quoted Pierre Tielhard de Chardin as saying, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Come back for Part Two sometime in October, after the reunion.  I can hardly wait to see what scenic routes some of those souls have traversed.  I know this–it won’t be boring.

Earlier this week, during a visit with my friend Ken and his twenty-something daughter, the two of them recounted the blow-up that finally ended his second marriage.  Back then he had not yet developed the degree of self-respect needed to end an abusive relationship early on.  His wife had always been verbally abusive, but this time she crossed the line and grabbed her stepdaughter by the throat.  Ken had to separate them; it got uglier; Ken and his daughter walked out for good.

(more…)

Hi, people!  Welcome to my web log.  When I first thought of creating a web site to offer the spiritual guidance I’ve been providing for years, I felt very excited.  Then the fearful part of Diane’s mind rose up in horror: “Why would I choose to expose myself globally when what I do is still so misunderstood, not to mention so little known that there isn’t even a name for it?  Why would anyone want to do such a thing for that matter?  No, I’ll stay safe and just keep offering my services here in Asheville where my work is accepted.”

This inner dialogue ebbed and flowed over the next few days until suddenly I thought of Ethel and asked myself, “What would Ethel do?”  I knew the answer before I finished asking the question.  Allow me to back up and introduce you to Ethel.  In 1992 she changed my life and will always be a touchstone for me.  That October I was a recently divorced, fortyish social worker just beginning to reawaken my long dormant creative powers.  There was a Halloween party coming up at my workplace.  I knew this was my chance to break out.  I didn’t want to go as someone famous — anyone can do that.  Perhaps a twist on that theme; an unknown, barely talented but ambitious relative of some celebrity.  I kicked this around for awhile.

A couple of weeks before the party it came to me in a dream: Madonna’s cousin!  Oh yeah.  Over the next few days this character unfolded and Ethel walked — no, strutted — into my life.  Ethel Ciccone, Madonna’s cousin from the Bronx (with appropriate dialect): a part-time, freelance dental hygienist whose real talents (according to her) lay on the Broadway stage, although so far her talent had eluded anyone casting anything.  I’ll let Ethel take over: “I am aw-bviously the more talented one in the family.  I wasn’t named afta my idol, Ethel Merman, for nuttin’.  Madonna’s all twalk!”  We now watch as Ethel yanks open her lace jacket to reveal a black bustier (French corset) à la Madonna, and belts out the first verse of “Like A Virgin” with a Merman-esque delivery that knocks ‘em dead every time.

The afternoon of that office party I was, for the (very) first time (oooh!) the life of the party.  I had acted in children’s theater and knew I was a performer at heart, but as sometimes happens to young girls, I became too self-conscious by adolescense to follow it.  The next day my boss, who was a New Yorker, accosted me in the hallway.
“Doi-ane,” she said loudly, unwittingly  reminding me who had actually inspired Ethel’s accent and style.  “Do you think Ethel would be available to sing at my reti-ya-ment pah-ty next week?”  “Yes,” I said.  “I believe she would.”  And so she did.  Before 60 people, Ethel, in g and full regalia, sang “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” Ethel Merman’s signature tune from “Gypsy.”  After a little initial nervousness, she was a sensation.

What does this have to do with you, dear friends?  In the ensuing weeks I began asking, “What would Ethel do?”  Whenever I felt intimidated or shy, she was always there, being who she is in a big way, with no apologies.  We each have an Ethel within us, urging us to play big instead of staying small and safe.  Ethel gave me permission to allow the boisterous, life-embracing part of Diane (who had learned early on to stuff her anger and please others) to come out and announce “I’m here!” to the back of the auditorium.

Acceptance of the entire cast of characters we each call our own plants both our feet firmly on the road to wholeness and fulfillment.  Who is your Ethel?  She may have something very different than mine to show you about yourself, but chances are you’ll find her in a dark corner where you may have left her long ago, out of fear that was real to you.  You and the world need to hear from her.

“Now’s your inning
Stand the world on its ear.
You’re gonna set it spinning
That’ll be just the beginning…”
              –from “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim