\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Writing Into the Wind<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0Of all the steps along the path of life, I\u2019ve found rejection to be one of the most challenging and the most impossible to avoid. We all face judgment and rejection on a regular basis. Sometimes it hurts so much, we become afraid to expose our vulnerabilities to other people. But when we don\u2019t, we feel lonely and misunderstood.<\/p>\n
During the pandemic, I wrote a\u00a0collection of stories about what shaped me and made me into the person I am\u00a0today. With no particular goal for my work, I wrote about the ballet, my past\u00a0relationships, marriages, careers, (I\u2019ve had a variety of those), mental\u00a0challenges and my spiritual development. I enjoyed the writing but when I was\u00a0finished, and held the pages in my hands, I felt isolated and unhappy. I’d been
working diligently for a long time, I had a lot of material, but there was no\u00a0one to show it to. I call that \u201cwriting into the wind.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a reason I felt like I\u00a0was being blown around in the breeze. I would have to share my work with\u00a0someone, but I was afraid. I\u2019d had a number of books published, I\u2019d had some\u00a0success, but I felt resistant to see if anyone liked what I had done. And\u00a0therein lies the crux of the matter: \u201cTo see if anyone liked what I had done.\u201d\u00a0What if they didn\u2019t? What if I got rejected? How would I deal with that?<\/p>\n
People are in the habit of\u00a0criticizing each other, comparing themselves and if they don’t measure up, they\u00a0try to make the other seem unworthy or untalented. That doesn’t have to affect\u00a0you. You know who you are and what you\u2019re capable of doing. You know your\u00a0motivations behind your actions. You know how people act when they feel\u00a0insecure. I\u2019ve learned that when someone is Criticizing me harshly, they\u2019re\u00a0always talking about themselves. When they look at me, I\u2019m like a mirror for
them and maybe they don’t like what they see.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, there are bullies\u00a0everywhere. You may be married to one or be the brunt of someone\u2019s anger. You\u00a0may the target of someone\u2019s jealousy or you may remind them of someone they\u00a0don\u2019t like. As a ballet dancer, an actress and a writer, I\u2019ve suffered a great\u00a0deal of rejection. Bad reviews and dismissive agents are par for the course
when you\u2019re artist of any kind, and if you believe what your inner critic is\u00a0shouting at you, you won\u2019t enjoy the process and you\u2019ll never finish anything. It\u00a0sounds like this: \u201cWhat makes you think you have the talent to do this? You\u2019re\u00a0no good so you might as well stop right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t feel good but avoiding\u00a0what you want to do is a thankless way to spend your time. Back in the 1980s, I\u00a0wrote my first book, \u201cAwakening the Healer Within,\u201d about a number of trips I took\u00a0to the Philippines to study the controversial faith healers. The practiced a
unique kind of healing and I was writing about the research I was doing. Some\u00a0of the healers I met appeared to be really helping people, I felt good about\u00a0them, but when I got back to the states, the overall consensus was that these\u00a0so-called gifted men and women were deceiving people and robbing them of their\u00a0money.<\/p>\n
It was an uphill battle to find\u00a0an agent for my book. I got turned down right and left, some kindly and others\u00a0not so much. I went from agent to agent, trying to stay optimistic but the\u00a0multitude of rejections were hard to endure. My worst encounter was with a\u00a0female agent who called me on the phone. When I heard her voice, I was hopeful.\u00a0I\u2019d received so many rejection form letters, I thought if she wanted to speak\u00a0to me, that was a good sign. I realized I was wrong when she started yelling at\u00a0me in a shrill voice. \u201cThis is ridiculous. Do you expect me to believe it? Do
you expect anyone to believe it? Everyone thinks they’ve written a great book.\u201d<\/p>\n
I couldn’t understand why she\u00a0was so angry. \u201cWe have to believe in our work,\u201d I told her. \u201cHow else can we\u00a0find the stamina to do it?\u201d I climbed into bed, pulled the covers up to my\u00a0chin, and I sobbed. I gave myself twenty-four hours to pout and then I got up\u00a0and carried on. My desire to share the things I\u2019d learned was stronger than my\u00a0fear of rejection. I kept on going and finally the miracle happened. Someone from\u00a0Simon & Schuster liked it and wanted to publish it.<\/p>\n
You just can’t avoid people\u2019s\u00a0judgments and it hurts. That\u2019s a human being\u2019s cross to bear. It\u2019s as if you\u00a0were pregnant for nine months, you had a hard labor, and finally you birthed a perfect\u00a0baby. But when you showed your newborn to people, they were not impressed. They
didn\u2019t like her eyes or they thought she was too fat. You took it personally\u00a0and wondered if you\u2019d misjudged your precious creation. Would he or she grow up\u00a0to be beautiful or ugly?\u00a0<\/p>\n
The truth is that what shows up\u00a0in beginning will grow, develop and evolve. Have you ever gone to a high school\u00a0reunion where the kids who were popular and gorgeous look ordinary and the\u00a0outcasts, the funny looking ones, have ripened into extraordinary beauties and
successful business people? Supermodels often talk about how awkward they felt\u00a0when they were in school. They were tall, skinny and graceless, they felt like\u00a0misfits, and they were bullied by the other kids. They judged themselves and\u00a0hid in the shadows in the schoolyard, but eventually they became strikingly\u00a0beautiful, wealthy and sought after.<\/p>\n
When I began writing,\u00a0I wasn\u2019t very good. I had to keep practicing and face constant rejection. I\u00a0remember wanting to show my work to a friend so I wasn\u2019t writing into the wind,\u00a0but when I did, he felt slighted, judged and exposed. It made me fell terrible \u00a0but I came to understand that the only person you have to please is yourself.<\/p>\n
Do you feel okay\u00a0about what you said or how you felt? Each time someone judges or treats me with\u00a0less than kindness, instead becoming weaker and afraid to be my authentic self,\u00a0I become stronger and more confident. I remind myself not to take things\u00a0personally because I know who I am and the older I get, the more it feels good
to be me. It always hurts to be rejected and judged for the things that I
create, but I do my best to remember that somone is judging what I\u2019m doing. Not\u00a0who I am.<\/p>\n
No matter how it\u00a0feels, keep on moving forward. If you don\u2019t buy a ticket for the roller coaster\u00a0(I happen to detest them), if you don\u2019t climb in, buckle up and surrender, you\u2019ll\u00a0be missing the wild ride that is called \u201clife.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Writing Into the Wind \u00a0 \u00a0Of all the steps along the path of life, I\u2019ve found rejection to be one of the most challenging and the most impossible to avoid. We all face judgment and rejection on a regular basis. Sometimes it hurts so much, we become afraid to expose our vulnerabilities to other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2295,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions\/2295"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}