So Much Brilliance!

You know the Marianne Williamson quote from her book Return to Love (often mistakenly attributed to Nelson Mandela): “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”

It’s true. When the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. contacted me with a request to show Hoo Hoo: Losing Mother Tongue at their Mother’s Day event, I went bonkers. I flew around the house looking for something to eat, anything, anything (I think I ended up downing a full bag of organic blue corn chips, two bowls of popcorn, and a chocolate bar), to avoid calmly sitting down and graciously accepting my greatness.

Usually I eat to procrastinate, and this was the first time I realized that I also eat to distract myself from acknowledging my talents. Isn’t that crazy? You’d think we’d all want to sit around thinking how marvelous we are, but we’ve been conditioned -- especially as women -- to focus on our flaws. Perhaps they’re afraid (and we’re afraid) that we’d grow too big for our britches and wreak havoc making some much-needed changes in this world and in our lives.

Congratulations to me! Oh my, I am getting too big for my britches; thank Goddess for wrap skirts and elastic waist trousers.