\u201cBe\u00a0yourself,\u201d said novelist Oscar Wilde. \u201cEveryone else is already taken.\u201d<\/p>\n
My Aunt\u00a0Ruth was an avid moviegoer. When I was small, she took me to Disney films and\u00a0musicals at our local movie theater. She bought a buttered popcorn for herself\u00a0and a Fudgsicle or a Creamsicle for me and we sat on the aisle. When the music started,
I stood up and danced up and down the aisles, throwing my arms over my head, swaying,\u00a0twirling, jumping. When the music ended, I sat back down, breathless, and\u00a0waited for the next one.<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t\u00a0trying to get attention. I forgot there were other people in the theater. I\u00a0danced because I was a dancer. When my extended family got together at\u00a0Thanksgiving and Passover, I brought a record player and a record. After dinner\u00a0when everyone was full of food and relaxing in the living room, I put on my\u00a0pink satin ballet shoes, turned on the music and danced. I wasn\u2019t looking for\u00a0compliments. It never occurred to me that anyone might not like what I was\u00a0doing. I just wanted to dance.<\/p>\n
A lot\u00a0of young girls want to be ballerinas when they grow up. I didn\u2019t just want to\u00a0be a ballerina. I was one. That was my calling, my identity. From the time I started lessons, I considered myself in training. It was rare for such a young child to know exactly what she wanted to do and who she was, but I was that child. I was a hazard to my family as I leapt and pirouetted my way around the house, throwing a leg behind me in an arabesque, hitting whomever was unfortunate enough to be standing there. I just wanted to dance.<\/p>\n
As a\u00a0child, I was not a bit self-conscious and that carried on to Junior High\u00a0School. While the other girls were curling their hair, picking out lipsticks\u00a0and flirting with boys, I pulled my hair back into a bun and I walked like a\u00a0duck, something that happens when you spend hours on end turning your hips out.\u00a0I heard later that the boys made fun of me, but I was oblivious at the time. I\u00a0just wanted to dance.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve\u00a0gone through phases when I haven\u2019t been so comfortable being me. I wanted to be\u00a0prettier and more talented. I wanted to please the men I was with by becoming\u00a0what I thought they wanted. I did some acting and I wanted to look how I\u00a0thought an actor should look. But whenever I lost myself, I brought myself back\u00a0by remembering that child who knew who she was and didn\u2019t look outward for\u00a0opinions. She just wanted to dance.<\/p>\n
During\u00a0my ghostwriting career, I\u2019ve had the opportunity to work with some of the most\u00a0highly talented people in the world. Part of the work is to embody the client I\u2019m\u00a0working with. I ask myself, Who am I? A girl singer from Detroit? A member of the White House Press Corps? Was I in an Afghani prison for drug running? A basketball hero? An alcoholic rock star? A female morning show host?<\/p>\n
I became\u00a0all of these things but with each project I did, when I got home from work I\u00a0had to make sure I got back to myself. A writer. A girlfriend. A soother. A\u00a0reader. A sister. A daughter. A ballerina.<\/p>\n
Of\u00a0all my clients, no one embodied authenticity more than Grace Slick, lead singer\u00a0of Jefferson Airplane. She was always Grace Slick. She didn\u2019t try to be a rock\u00a0and roll diva. She was one and if she said something to me, anything, she let me put it in the book. She had no concerns about what her readers might think about her. She was so unabashedly herself, it was a delight to be with her. I don\u2019t think she even knew how to be someone else.<\/p>\n
When\u00a0I teach writing, many of my students are uncomfortable calling themselves\u00a0writers. If you write anything, a poem, a story, an essay or a book, you\u2019re a\u00a0writer. If you love to dance, you\u2019re a dancer. If you like to paint, you\u2019re a painter.\u00a0It\u2019s pretty simple, but remember, none of us are just one thing. A serial killer\u00a0may help a little old lady across the street.<\/p>\n
When\u00a0I left my ballet bubble, I had to learn how to be a regular person in the regular\u00a0world. One evening, I was at a play with a friend and during intermission, she\u00a0asked me, \u201cDo you like it?\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u00a0said that I did. But when she said she didn\u2019t, I told her that I didn\u2019t either. \u201cWell, which one is it?\u201d she asked me.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t\u00a0know and I was embarrassed. I was a completely different person outside the\u00a0ballet than when I was on the inside. It was a big \u201cgetting to know me\u201d time. I\u00a0hadn\u2019t gone out on a date. I didn\u2019t know what kind of clothes I liked best. I\u00a0didn\u2019t even know what music I liked besides Tchaikovsky and Chopin.<\/p>\n
If you\u00a0feel like a stranger to yourself and you want to change that, try starting with,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m a human being,\u201d and you can go from there. You don\u2019t have to try to fit\u00a0into someone else\u2019s mold.<\/p>\n
Amy Schumer\u00a0said, \u201cI\u2019ve always had my wrist slapped for being myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Being\u00a0you in a world that wants us to conform is an accomplishment. If finding out who\u00a0you truly are stuns or suprises you, don\u2019t try to change it. Get to know it.<\/p>\n
Master\u00a0painter Salvador Dali said, \u201cEvery morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite\u00a0joy \u2013 the joy of being Salvador Dali \u2013 and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful\u00a0things is this Salvador Dali going to accomplish today?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cBe\u00a0yourself,\u201d said novelist Oscar Wilde. \u201cEveryone else is already taken.\u201d My Aunt\u00a0Ruth was an avid moviegoer. When I was small, she took me to Disney films and\u00a0musicals at our local movie theater. She bought a buttered popcorn for herself\u00a0and a Fudgsicle or a Creamsicle for me and we sat on the aisle. When the music […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2750,"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-2751","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\/2751","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2752,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2751\/revisions\/2752"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}