I love me some Dolly Parton.
I mean, how can you not?
I liken people who don’t like her to the same ones who kick kittens and steal suckers from toddlers.
So, when she posted a status update on Facebook – yes, I follow her, and YOU SHOULD TOO – it got me to thinking.
“I just love people who are bold enough to get out there and do what they do and do it without fear!”
I am not one of those bold people.
I never have been.
Since I was a little girl, I have always been fearful.
In third grade, I was so afraid of my teacher, I would vomit almost every morning before school.
In my defense, she was one of Satan’s minions.
When I was a freshman, I became a “band manager” instead of marching in the award winning band.
Why?
I was afraid to go to band camp and be tortured by the upperclassmen.
College?
I didn’t go right after high school.
Why?
I was afraid of sharing a room with someone I didn’t know.
As an adult, I got into the competitive nursing school I was working toward for three years . . . then turned it down.
Why?
I was afraid of the rigorous schedule.
Now I know some of the above are “normal” fears, but “normal” people push through them.
Me? I let them hold me back.
Why?
Why can’t I just be less immobilized by fear?
Why can’t I just push forward and work through it?
I love to write, but I don’t value myself or my writing.
One of my dear friends told me this the other day.
It’s true.
I don’t.
I make sure to correct anyone who calls me a writer.
No, I am a blogger, I say.
I don’t write in complete sentences and my grammar isn’t good enough, therefore, I am not a writer.
Because this apparently is the scale for being a writer in my fear-riddled brain.
When I was back in my hometown last weekend, I ran into an old teacher whom I hadn’t seen in 30 years.
She asked what I did for a living.
I blurted out STAY-AT-HOME MOM.
And while I am a stay-at-home mom and love that I am able to be, why wasn’t my first reaction to say, ” I am a writer, Mrs. Roberts. That is what I do.”
Fear.
Afraid that if I say I am a writer, I will have to actually live up to that?
That I will have to value myself a little more?
Someday I hope to be one of those "bold" people. But first I have to get out of the fetal position.
