There are two things brewing right now, happening simultaneously, so it feels funny and curious.
My daughter is about to graduate from high school (this is the last of the posse here —Sam and Nate graduated many years ago) and I am planning for my 40th high school reunion.
That’s what happens, I guess, when you have a kid later in life. Although, later than what, I’m not sure.
When I was going through menopause, she was entering puberty. It’s almost the perfect relay race life: I hand her the torch of significant life events as I continue my movement toward the final laps.
Deliquesce. One of my favorite words. Also, luminesce.
While Coco is luminescent, radiant, glowing with life and possibility, I continue to deliquesce: slowly fade out, like a vapor, dissolve.
I am fascinated with her life, who she is, what she does and wants for herself. The changes she goes through, the choices she makes. It’s as if life gave me a version of myself to study, so I could draw from what came before in the hopes of improving what comes next. As a woman raising a woman, this matters a lot.
This past week I met an incredible woman: strong, gorgeous, talented, doing amazing work in what’s largely a man’s world (cheffing). Her energy said nothing short of I will prevail and in the process I will take no prisoners. I noticed that several times, however, in-between the fascinating talk about her work (butchering, too!), she said that she has something called Imposter Syndrome. She said it was because she hadn’t moved through the traditional channels to get where she is, or something like that.
She’s not the first person I’ve heard talk about this. So I just want to set the record straight: there are neither experts nor imposters. I mean, some people know what they’re doing, but pretty much everyone is figuring it out as they go. This, for me, raising a girl, has been perhaps the most important thing I could convey: you’re already good at what you’re doing. Trust in your instincts, go for it. There is no magical time in the future, no piece of paper someone can hand you that will make you the best at this thing; life is try and fail, refine; try and fail, refine over and over.
I mean there are legit imposters, real people playing a game, usually for financial gain, legitimately duping people. Of course.
But the vast majority of us, we’re not imposters. We’re living, we’re trying, that’s what it’s all about. We’re humans, being. That’s what we’re supposed to do. Life is an endless opportunity to try things on for size. Try and keep some, discard some. We have to be unafraid of finding out that we’re not good at something or that we have more to learn. We have to be willing to ask a lot of questions.
When I entered the program to study to be a hospital chaplain they handed us each a badge with our name and the word Chaplain at the second or third meeting our cohort had. I was like, wait … we’re not gonna shadow someone for three months or anything like that?
Not only were we not going to shadow anyone for any time, we were also assigned to the part of the hospital we had declared was the scariest for us. Mine was oncology.
Off I went. I would enter a room and introduce myself: Hi, I’m Melissa, I’m a chaplain.
We had already been vetted in the admissions process, the group leaders trusted that we had what it took to do the work. We needed to learn to trust in ourselves.
Let me tell you this: when you say, Hi, I’m Melissa, I’m a chaplain often enough, and you’re doing the work, pretty soon you step into the chaplain shoes and you are a chaplain, by golly. It doesn’t take very long, either. You own it, you live it and you get good at it as you go.
I remember when I started writing publicly, about 15 years ago or so. I had been a writer my entire life. I was born to write. But I was sheepish about saying I’m a writer out loud. I knew people would ask me what I had written that they would know, which was nothing. I wrote for myself, I wrote to make sense of the world. I couldn’t not write.
Then I took a trip to Alaska and I was really into photography at the time, but I chose to leave my camera home so I could be present in the moment. Only the moment in Alaska is so huge, so overwhelming, so incredible that I had to process, so I created a website and became a, worst word ever, blogger. I put my writing out there.
Back then blogging was new and it probably felt like it wasn’t a legitimate platform for writing. But that’s what I was doing. My first public story was entitled, You Are The Contents of Your Dopp Kit. I remember it so well. I had been in a small hotel in Alyeska and I noticed one morning that the stuff in my Dopp perfectly mirrored my life: there was a Swiss Army Knife (the most practical thing on the planet and I’m swooning for days when you could still travel with one), two toothbrushes but no toothpaste (I’m forgetful and toothbrushes are great for cleaning a bike chain); there were band-aids and hair ties and some cream, that was it. No brush, no make-up, I’m a practical minimalist: I wash my hair once a week and I have dry skin because I don’t drink enough water.
I wrote that story and published it on my shiny new website and darned if people actually read it! Still, it took me a long time to claim what I thought was my right to call myself a writer.
I wish I had started sooner.
Whatever it is you are, whatever you love to do, trust you’re supposed to do that and don’t shy away from naming and claiming it. Technically I have no business being a pastor. I’m not ordained, I didn’t get an M.Div., I don’t fraternize with any other pastors to learn how they do what they’re doing. I trust I’m where I’m supposed to be and the world seems to be telling me that my instincts are solid.
Yours are, too. Please, let’s not waste precious time questioning ourselves. Please let’s be, let’s create, let’s share in our creativity and our experience. Please, let’s stop making anyone ever feel less than because they didn’t follow some specific and contrived pathway to a vocation. It’s a bunch of bunk. Flynn McGarry loved food and cooking so much that he started a pop-up restaurant in his mom’s house when he was 11. ELEVEN!! Today he’s a successful chef in NYC doing interesting things all the time. He didn’t stop to go to culinary school, he just kept cooking and dreaming and doing.
When Coco and I ate at his restaurant, Gem, several years ago she was in the middle of a major foodie moment in her life, having just been a contestant on Chopped Junior (at 12). Flynn chatted with her and invited her to cook with him in his kitchen the next time she was in New York. That’s how it’s done, my friends, that’s how it’s done. Do it, learn it, pass it on.
Amen.
Sweet photo of you and your daughter. Blessings to the high school graduate and I hope you enjoy your 40th high school reunion. I am attending myine 1963 on June 8, at the Saratoga Arms Hotel. Owned by a classmate Kathleen Dowd Smith, and now her children.
Every time your words show up in my inbox I am stunned by how much I need to hear them at the exact moment I’m reading. Thank you!