Just Jump…
Sometimes you have to take the leap – jumping blindly without assurance that everything will be okay!
September 23, 2024, was my 50th birthday. I sat contemplating this in the early morning hours as the house was quiet, before the sun had risen, before the animals began running down the stairs to be let outside, before my husband got up for work and before the birthday wishes began. 50! How could this be? I swear it wasn’t that long ago that I was younger and yet, here I was turning 50 or as my husband reminded me the night before – half a century old. There are a lot of questions that might run through your mind on a birthday. For me, they weren’t of the fears of getting older I’ve heard from others, they weren’t thoughts of wasted youth. Instead, they were thoughts of gratitude. I have a beautiful family, a husband who loves and supports me, 4 kids who I am proud to have raised, a lot of grandkids that I get to love and be loved by. I am living my best life. But there are more things I want and feel I need to do.
One of these things that felt like the “more” I need to do, has been to publish a book I had written. I wrote it following a trip to Utah where I attended a retreat for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Following the retreat, I sat down and wrote down the memories that stuck with me. The ones that had hurt me, the ones that made an impression on me, the ones that made me feel like I couldn’t quite let them go without writing them down, reviewing them, figuring out what about them haunted me or stuck so deeply with me. I had always written poetry from a young age. I had notebooks of poetry. Some poems remained unfinished, only a few lines that came to me randomly. I’d scribble these thoughts down but never go back and add anything to them. Others flowed out of me quickly, almost violently, scribbling as fast as I could which was not nearly as fast as my brain was churning out the lines. I began realizing that many of the poems centered around the same events and moments that had stuck with me. I added poetry to the writing I had done. I shared bits of it with my daughter and a friend or two.
I had completed the writing almost two years before. I then sat on it after that. At the urging of friends who knew about it, I began considering the idea of publishing it. It felt really personal. I also struggled with “Is it good enough?” and “Who do you think you are?” Both fair questions but also questions stemming from childhood trauma. That nagging little voice never too far behind me that had haunted me for most of my life was always willing to make me doubt myself. As I sat there, I decided to do the last things to set up my account and hit the publish button. As any true procrastinator knows, there is almost always a good reason to put things off, and this was no different. I needed to log in to work. Today that nagging voice that kept asking “Why not just do it?” kept me company during my workday. After logging out for the day there was still dinner to make, and conversations to have, so, it would wait.
As I sat on the couch beside my husband later that night, about ready to fade into sleep there was a moment that woke me up and I just knew that the moment was now. “Do it, NOW!” I got up from the couch, walked to my computer, logging in without turning on the lights in my office. The page was still loaded and came into view as soon as I logged into my computer. I hit the button to publish…and then I panicked. What had I just done? I clicked the ellipses and unpublish was not an option I could choose as there was a waiting period of up to 72 hours for the contents of my book to be reviewed. I shut my laptop and walked back to the living room. Waiting. Wondering. Nervous. Excited.
Days later it was live on Amazon. The truth is since then I’ve considered other things I might have added or maybe should have changed but the truth is our stories are never completely done. As a writer or an author, we have to simply decide when it’s enough. The response to my book has been so supportive. I am so happy to say that some people have even reached out to tell me their own stories. Teddy Roosevelt has a famous quote. I was introduced to it by Brene’ Brown in her TED talk (see below). My advice is to just jump. We cannot know how it will go and that’s part of the bravery of taking the jump. Not everyone will face their fears, but those who do are brave. So, …JUST JUMP!
The Man in the Arena
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
