“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.” – Marianne Williamson

I got to thinking about my long career, or was it a vocation? 

In my formative years when I was trying to find my footing, it was my mother who saw my desperate attempts at being creative, whether it was becoming a dancer, musician or poet. She went along with it because she loved me. 

In those days, the 1960s and 70s, young women were taught to cook and sew and do a little of everything—we were splendid dilettantes destined to marry Prince Charles. But my creativity frightened my father. He did not understand the Entertainment industry at all. He thought it vulgar and that I was too sensitive for it. He’d rather I go to Secretarial School, marry and have a family.

“What would you like to be when you grow up?” he’d ask when I was little.

I’d say what he wanted to hear: “A Housewife.”  

Another time I’d say, “A Lawyer” 

“A Liar?” He’d laugh.

I was a Polish Princess. Let me explain what that meant: She is from a good family, raised to be polite. She grows up with memories rather than money. Young men, clamor to be in her social circle because it gives them status. Cultural clout. She is protected. She is a European “Southern Belle.”

Many years later, when my youthful dreams came true and I found myself a Television personality— it was fine until it wasn’t. It was what my father warned me of. I no longer felt secure. Being in the public eye was uncomfortable, being stared at or having people stop on me on the street unnerved me. 

One day, a day of sunshine and bright blue sky, it all became too much. I felt I was standing on shifting sand.  The panic lasted fifteen years through which, both my parents died leaving me not only lost but alone. The loss of my mother was especially painful since I no longer had her tremendous support. A mother’s love is expansive. If you’re lucky to have a good one.

Cognitive therapy helped. So did revisiting my Faith. Learning to speak and write about my fear helped to keep it out of my mind. That’s when it loses its power.

I realized that I had to learn to accept myself, my fear and my bravery, to be prepared for whatever my call in life is. I want to share with other women that the doorway that opens is a full realization—not psychological, but at the deepest level, is the place inside that is receptive to the love we seek and the love we give. When overwhelmed it helps to embrace community to relieve feelings of loss and loneliness. realized

I still have fearful thoughts. However, when they enter my mind, I can let them go by pointing them in a different direction where I can grow and be able to act in ways that are beyond my own expectations. And I want to say that it’s truly in loving others that women can discover who they really are. You are not as alone as the fear wants you to think.

I like to think of it as an Expansion of the Heart. 

Long ago, when I was young and rather sad, my mother said, “Go be with other People”.

My mother’s voice still speaks to me with its good counsel.