There By The Grace of G-d Go I: Dangers of the unknown/undisclosed Self

On-air, tonight!

"There By The Grace of G-d Go I!"

On the Anastasia The Storyteller Radio Show

Tonight, Saturday, March 29 at 6:30 p.m.

An excerpted reflection from “Hot Pants, Motorcycles and K Street”

Spring, 1985

“Hitting It Big And Kissing It Good-by” has, recently, been featured on the front page of the Washington Post. And, I have been invited to speak at a luncheon hosted by the First Women’s Bank of Maryland.  My presentation topic will derive from that newsworthy article of the times.

Always, my entire adulthood, I am exquisitely able to make connections between what I have to offer and how that, somehow, taps into the world around me. I am to achieve this, again, for this luncheon, if I can figure out how.

The luncheon is to include thirty to forty key Washington women executives. I am to be the guest of honor and key note speaker.

My presentation will draw upon my four year study of women and relationship and personality addictions. I have just recently completed it in the Women Studies Department at the University of Maryland, College Park.

(In 1988 this research will become the foundation for my book publishing contract with Random House.)

For weeks I have been fretting about this speaking engagement; wanting to do it, wanting not to do it. My best friend, Marv Brooks, recently dismissed, prominent disc jockey of the WPGC Good Guys has been coaching me through my angst.

Now we are getting down to the wire; the luncheon only days away.

I have my costume prepared; a lovely designer fashion suit by Laura Ashley. An elegant blouse, patent leather pumps and a cameo pin of my mother’s to set out off my professional refinement.

However, as the luncheon date grows closer, my resistance builds.

Two days before, as near tears as I ever get, I lament my awaiting fate in making this presentation. (It would be healthier if I did cry more but knowing this is still years away.)

Mostly, I think I do not want to do this speaking engagement.

I am feeling compromised, feeling as if I am compromising myself.

It is twelve years since I left my “hot pants, motorcycles and K Street” life behind with glorious relief.  And a cache of teachable moments upon which I will intermittently reflect forever after.

Now I am faced with approaching a re-entry point. Everything inside of me screams not to cross over it, even the approach to it.

Spring, 2014

Almost thirty years later, my approach-avoidance tension continues still. 

I am, once again, approaching a re-entry point back into the heart of the D.C. fast track.

Once again, I am anxious; to do or not to do? That is the question.

Other questions hover over that one:

How to BE and DO with integrity and integration, if one even approaches that game? A tricky challenge lies within the Capitol Beltway, even for the best of us.

The saga of this quandary; approach-avoidance insofar as it relates, metaphorically, to K Street; will it, perhaps, last my entire lifetime without full resolution?

I ask myself this: questioning myself.  Questions, too, about you – and – “us.”

I wonder at this, with puzzlement,watching the red-bellied woodpecker, pecking away at my bird feeder. As I sit here at my desk in “the serenity of the New Horizons Harpers Retreat Center” with the tragedy of L Wren Scott tugging at my heart and my mind.

If nothing else, an incident such as this triggers contemplation. For me, there is much else!

I am trying to sort out what it is in me that is effected by this tragedy, hoping to clarify the point soon.

This shocking, horrific ending to what seemed to be a beautiful, got it all, life.

It brings into bold relief, who I once was, who I am now and how I got from there to here.

There By The Grace of G-d Go I!

By Sunday, March 30 I hope to broadcast some of what I discover to conect the dots, from this, of me and the world around me. I hope you will join me on The Anastasia The Storyteller Radio Show.

Our topic will be: There By The Grace of G-d Go I!

For me, a most appropriate day, March 30, 2014; the one hundredth birthday of my father (deceased), the man who handed me the "lean in" legacy by the way he lived his life.

To be continued.