Felt the fear and did it anyway..... badly :)

A lot of questions have been answered for me in the last couple of days.

Am I destined to be glorious on a stage in front of thousands..... not really!  I did turn up for the audition, my voice was tired, and I had no great hopes, but I did expect to get further than I did.  I have always suffered from stage fright, but in the past I have managed to rise above it.  Perhaps the mistake I made this time, was that I decided that I would not have any fear, and so it overwhelmed me when it did appear.  When my moment came, I literally couldn't breath.  I am proud that I still managed to sing (though perhaps I shouldn't have!).  I sang with my eyes firmly shut, desperately trying to "find" the music.  I wasn't out of tune, just totally out of body. Weirdly enough they decided very quickly that I wasn't the performer they were looking for :)

As I said before though this has still been a valuable process, strangely enough then the biggest lesson I have learned is that I should spend time with myself regularly in front of the mirror, the experience of being with myself in this way has affected me in many positive ways.

This whole thing has shaken me out of the rut I was in, and showed me how much of my life I do not need to escape from, and reminded me of the huge gratitude I have for the existence of my gorgeous family, however demanding life with them may be. 

It was weird to feel the respect from friends simply for "giving it a go".

I can't help comparing that terrified woman, from yesterday, to the woman that a few months ago, was dancing barefoot in the rain, with a guy I had only met two days before (on a course). It was an incredible course, and every-one was feeling the freedom, of exploring who they really were.  There was an underpass, under a busy road nearby, that had incredible acoustics, and I dragged a few people there and we sang, gloriously, chaotically, as strangers rushed past pretending we didn't exist.  And we didn't care, didn't pause in response to their presence, because it didn't matter, in fact their was joy in knowing that we where in some way shaking them up in their perceptions of "how life was" or more accurately "how you can be in your life". 

Earlier that same month I had been running around the garden with my daughter, it was a hot day, and one of those impressive summer downpours.  We had our arms flung wide, and where chanting/laughing "it's raining".  My son came home soaking wet, and immediately started crying, because he was not enjoying being wet, and he thought we where laughing at him, so we stopped.  That experience is an extreme example of the way I, so often. feel pulled in more than one direction at once.  My 3 kids are very different characters, needing very different forms of nurturing, and there is only one of me!  But then the 3 of them are so nourishing in their differences.