Fearlessly Defrosting Your Expression

No one knows what's going to happen because it has never happened before. I read this the other day on a postcard, and it started me thinking about this fear of the unknown and the comfort zones that keep us safe, outside of unexplored territories. We often don't know, when we start something, how it will end, how it will be received, and where it will leave us in relationships with ourselves. In other words, what judgment will we make about ourselves and our world? Will we be able to withstand it if things don't work out? Too often, we stop the whisper of our inner voice, because our self-protective side -- our intelligent being -- steps in to keep us in survival mode.

I have heard so many women say "I don't know what my voice is" or "If I have a voice, I don't know what I want to say or do" . . . What is our unique voice, our expressive self that makes us feel alive? These questions are the beginning of the struggle of expression: I call it the process of defrosting ourselves.

The thawing process is not a comfortable experience -- thawing out the parts of ourselves that we keep locked in the freezer because of our fear of being wrong, judged, hurt, ridiculed, thought of as less than perfect, et cetera, et cetera . . . All those times we wanted to say something and didn't, wanted to do something and didn't, wanted to love someone and didn't, wanted to tell someone the truth and didn't -- these become our frozen, justified expressions. They are the cloak and disguise, the belief that creates a canopy of separation between our authentic self and our self-image that we sometimes call the ego.

When I was a young girl in London straight out of drama school, I needed to join London equity so I could audition for parts. The quickest way I could think of to make this happen was to ask a friend who owned a Greek restaurant to hire me as one of the restaurant's dancers. The other girls were very experienced and had been doing it for years. I rehearsed quite a bit but I never managed to do it just right -- I faked it and I stepped on many toes, but I kept trying for weeks, and practiced walking through my feelings of inadequacy. The reality was that the other girls were much better and I knew I would never come up to their level, but I didn't care. I got my equity card, and I felt great.

Years later in L.A., I created a one-woman show called "Conversations with the Goddesses," and took it everywhere, from museums to colleges. It occurred to me how great it would be to write a book on the story of the goddesses -- to link art and literature and my love of theater and tie it all together. I put a three-page proposal together and called it "Goddess: A Celebration in Art and Literature." Through a friend, I heard about a well-known and prolific publisher. It took four months of scheduling and rescheduling to make a meeting with her happen. But finally, one Tuesday morning at 9:00 a.m. at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, I met with her, showed her the proposal, and told her my idea. "You must do this," she said -- "it's a great idea, and I want to introduce you to someone who can help you structure it into a book."

She then proceeded to pull out a 200-page book galley called Goddess: a Celebration in Art and Literature. "By the way," she said, "I want to share with you a book I'm doing right now -- a history of the goddesses around the world."

My heart sank. "You're already doing a similar book," I lamented.

"But yours will be different," she said, "because it's yours, and it will be your voice." She told me, "You don't know what you are going to write yet because the book has not been written." The next two years were the most transformational years of my life. The book gave birth to what would be my voice; it opened a new path to my expression.

But it was a long and arduous path to get there. I had to overcome all of my doubts, insecurities, and the unknown -- giving up control and using all my strategies to accomplish what seemed a task assigned by the goddesses -- did feel like a Herculian effort.

I spent days, months actually, staring into the abyss of a structure I had no idea how to tackle, and dealing with an overwhelming fear that maybe I didn't know how to do this at all; and, worst case, that maybe I had nothing to say. The day I finished the manuscript I wept. Finally, I had been defrosted and I knew my life would never be the same.

After the book was published, doors began to open. And it wasn't long before the book and I found an audience that resonated with the message I wanted to share. Since then, whenever anyone comes to me and says "I want to do a book," or whatever is an "unknown" to them, I only have words of encouragement and support, and do everything I can to facilitate their defrosting process.

After all, the greatest joy comes from being there for others -- to accompany them along the path of finding their true voice.