Little Old Lady Who...

Saying the title of this piece out loud in a funny voice is the closest I'll ever get to a yodel. And I have to admit, writing something for the Remarkably Real Challenge has had me perplexed. I realized that I love talking and telling stories, but I'm not very good about telling stories about myself unless I'm making fun of me in some way.

I did write this piece about myself as a biography of sorts.

But that piece just didn't seem to quite fit the brief for the Remarkably Real Challenge but it did get me thinking about what in my life could I possibly feature in a story where I shined? And the more I thought on it, the more it perplexed me to think that in all my 62 years of being alive, I couldn't find even one thing in my life where I did something to be proud of? Or where I made a difference? Where I shined? It made me feel like my life had no purpose. I couldn't accept that. So, I thought about it long and hard some more and I realized I am certainly not the only person alive that freezes up when the spotlight turns on them. That we live our lives so organically and authentically that we don't really stop to look at the hills we've climbed, the difficulties we've conquered or the differences we might have made in the lives of others, or even our own.

I was born and raised during a time when female roles were relegated to getting married and spending life being a wife, mother and homemaker. And I did become all of those things. I'm not sure how well I have done them - married three times, only one viable pregnancy of a beautiful daughter, now an adult that I have a tenuous relationship with, and homemaker -- well, let's just say, if you show up on my porch, I'll slip through a crack in the door and talk to you on the porch. Don't be offended that I don't invite you in. It totally isn't about you. My house just isn't a company house and the thought of letting anyone in my home mortifies me.

So, with all of that in mind, I just wasn't seeing how I could possibly come up with an entry for this challenge. But, I want to share this. We all measure success in different ways. Sometimes no matter how we measure it, it can be less success than we desire or seem meager and insignificant when compared to the success of others. And therein lies the rub: we discredit ourselves.

I was a beauty rep for 2.5 years. Not because I'm gorgeous or have mad makeup skills. I represented the ordinary aging woman that needed to know and feel she had a place in this world just as she was. Everything is skewed towards telling a woman of age that she is getting old and needs to hide it. Color your hair to cover the gray. Get a face-lift to erase aging. Or botox or wrinkle creams. It goes on and on. Everything we face as we age is listed as a negative that must be fixed. That a woman only has value if she is young or maintains a youthful appearance.

For 2.5 years I did a 45 minute to hourly morning show Monday thru Friday putting on everyday makeup. I did a Wednesday night show where the theme was bolder makeup. And Sunday night was taking care of skin.

My shows were lucky to have an audience of 20. The younger women doing the same thing less times per week were pulling in 100s of viewers and many of them thousands. By all accounts I was failing. My sales were mostly my own for demo purposes. My audience was a steady handful of similarly aged on my lives. And though the number of woman that I touched was small, I connected with them. They felt seen, heard, and valued. They came to sit and put their make up on as I did mine, and to enjoy the comradery with others on the feed. And for the motivational stories I told. They appreciated my promotion of beauty as being timeless. We are beautiful throughout our entire arc of life from cradle to grave with a woman's beauty changing in the seasons of her life just like the seasons of the year. And to never compare ones self to anyone else because nobody can do beautiful like you do. I encouraged full mirror gazing at face and body, in the nude. To look at yourself so long that all revulsion faded away and you stopped scrutinizing yourself for flaws and just saw yourself. And to embrace that everything you see in that mirror is you and you are worth loving exactly as you are.

I ended that chapter in my life because I separated from the company to start for another. There was some product overlap so I couldn't keep both. The new company had local real world meetings and I needed that interaction. My life isn't well connected in the "real" world. My friends are mostly online. This past year I lost three of them and it HURT! One to suicide and two to cancer.

This is a long and winding way to get to my point. For the past several years I felt I had accomplished nothing. I began to write because it was a way to create. It was something tangible for the effort I spent. I could read and reread my own works to quiet my mind. I had no expectation of having a following or my words being loved by anyone other than me.

And then unexpectedly, a message came through my social media. It both thrilled and frightened me. I had been seen. I had been loved if only by this one person. And she had watched me for some time through the arc of my endeavors. I had no idea.

JUL 11 @ 9:38 AM

Good morning! My name is [redacted] and I have been following you & [redacted] for a while now. I started watching [redacted]'s videos when she was with [redacted]. That's how I "met" you. I ordered the makeup and I have continued to follow you both. I was invested, emotionally, in your family and the shenanigans of [redacted] and the kids. I didn't really know, exactly, why I kept following until about 30 minutes ago. I just read your 2 stories. I am blown away! I saw the first line of the Barn story and I was hooked. I'm not tech savvy so it took me a few minutes to find the full story. I savoured it. I was beyond impressed. I immediately went looking for more stories from you and, luckily, found the shadowed heart story. Again, I'm speechless. Outstanding! I don't enjoy reading (because it takes time away from things I need to be doing) but I love a good book. I believe you have found your true calling and I would love a collection of your stories in a book. I can see me enjoying it the first time I read it but also having it, on hand, as a reference and perspective that I can personally use or share with other during all seasons of life. I saw on the site where I could "tip" you for your stories. I wasn't sure how that all worked so I didn't leave a tip. I do, however, want to support you because I think you are an amazing writer! I don't know anything about the writing/publishing world and I don't have any contacts or advice except to say...keep on keeping on with this! Do you have a PO Box or address that you can share with me so I can send a tip directly to you? What else can I do to help you out? Share your stories? Vote somewhere for your stories? Just let me know. Thank you for the two I just read. You are amazing!

It turns out, that as simple as I have deemed my life to be, the words I have assembled into stories touched at least one person in this world in a meaningful way. And THAT my friends is why we should write. Write, write, write and then write some more. Never obsess over stats or think for one minute that because you can't track your reach or visibility with measurable metrics, that your works have no value. Just know that there is someone out there somewhere that is finding your writing and being moved by your words in ways that you may never come to know. And even it if is only just one, it makes it all worthwhile.

So, I guess as it turned out, I'm just a "little old lady who" (did you sing it in you mind? lol) that shined more than she had taken time to realize.