It was 1987 and a friend of mine,\u00a0Vincent, was in the hospital. He had been diagnosed with HIV and back then, it\u00a0meant that it would progress to AIDS and he wouldn\u2019t be around for much longer.
There were no cocktails to fight the virus and the only drug available was reportedly\u00a0killing people at the same time that it was prolonging their lives.<\/p>\n
My friend had contracted an AIDS\u00a0related opportunistic infection called Pneumocystis Pneumonia. He knew that his\u00a0days were limited and he made some phone calls while I was sitting with him. He
was arranging dates and times for people he knew to visit him, but after he\u00a0called one particular person, I was surprised. \u201cI thought you didn\u2019t like him\u00a0very much,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t,\u201d he said, \u201cbut what ifmaking peace with him is the last thing I have to do here? I need to speak up. I\u00a0don\u2019t want to miss anything.\u201d\u00a0If there was an afterlife, he
didn\u2019t want to take any dark energy with him.<\/p>\n
Over the next week, Vincent saw\u00a0friends who were dear to him to say good-bye but he also saw a few who were\u00a0not. He had some difficult conversations but each time someone left, they\u00a0looked lighter and more at peace. And so did he. It was a gift to him hut it\u00a0was also a gift to his friends. He had made the choice between war and peace.\u00a0He wanted to forgive and if he couldn\u2019t get there, at least he knew he had made\u00a0the effort.<\/p>\n
One afternoon, when I left his room\u00a0and I was walking down the hospital corridor on my way to the elevators, I had\u00a0an epiphany. What if I did what my friend was doing right now? What if I didn\u2019t
wait until I was on my death bed? What if I made sure that each time I left\u00a0someone or ended a phone call, nothing was left unsaid? I decided to treat each\u00a0phone call or meeting as if it were the last one, as if I would never see that\u00a0person again and I didn\u2019t want anything unfinished hanging in the air. I wanted\u00a0to use my words, as we tell children, to speak up and say what needed to be\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
That became my spiritual practice\u00a0and it still is. I don\u2019t wait to say what I want to say. \u00a0Within reason of course. If something that I want to say will be unnecessarily hurtful, I work it out for myself. I don\u2019t want to use my words as a weapon. I want to use them as a way to honor another human being and to stand up for myself.<\/p>\n
Knowing who you are and speaking up\u00a0for yourself is a step along the path to self-acceptance. My job as a writing coach\u00a0is not about teaching punctuation, spelling or sentence structure. An editor\u00a0can take care of that. My job is to help writers find their voices, the expression\u00a0that differentiates one person\u2019s writing from the next. That\u2019s one of the\u00a0elements that makes ghostwriting so challenging. I have to find someone else\u2019s\u00a0voice and write in it. When I decided to stop ghostwriting and write for myself,
it took me some time to find my own voice again. But I have it now and it\u2019s a\u00a0great relief.<\/p>\n
I know someone who has been in the\u00a0habit of repeating what other people say for so long, she seems to have lost\u00a0touch with her own opinions and ideas. That\u2019s a form of oral plagiarism\u00a0I try to think carefully and form\u00a0my own opinions. Sometimes they\u2019re unpopular but they\u2019re mine and I stand
behind them. I say yes to the things that I want, and I to say no to what I\u00a0don\u2019t want.<\/p>\n
When I left the the ballet bubble\u00a0and I was trying to get to know myself as a civilian, I went to a play with a\u00a0friend. During intermission, she asked me, \u201cDid you like the first half?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cYes. I did,\u201d I said. \u201cDid you like\u00a0it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot really,\u201d she said,<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t really like it either,\u201d I\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
The truth was that I didn\u2019t know. I\u00a0could have said that I was only just learning how to form opinions about things\u00a0that weren\u2019t arabesques or grand jetes. But I felt embarrassed. I could have\u00a0said that too.<\/p>\n
Expecting someone to be a mind\u00a0reader doesn\u2019t end well. Give them a chance to know you better and to\u00a0understand you. Not speaking up can be destructive and punishing. All we have\u00a0to do is tell people what we\u2019re thinking and wanting and listen to what they\u2019re\u00a0thinking and wanting. If you want the same things, it can be bonding and\u00a0comforting. If you want different things, it can be interesting and
stimulating. Either way, you\u2019ll feel lighter and more genuine.<\/p>\n
A renowned motivational speaker said\u00a0quite simply, \u201cIf you don\u2019t like it, say something.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was 1987 and a friend of mine,\u00a0Vincent, was in the hospital. He had been diagnosed with HIV and back then, it\u00a0meant that it would progress to AIDS and he wouldn\u2019t be around for much longer.There were no cocktails to fight the virus and the only drug available was reportedly\u00a0killing people at the same time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2766,"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-2767","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\/2767","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=2767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2768,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2767\/revisions\/2768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}