I woke up this morning in eager anticipation of two big gatherings this week. Tomorrow I will be trekking to NYC to participate in The Good Men Project (GMP Live) story telling  event. The theme is Arrivals and Departures. I will be sharing a story called Meet You At the Gate. It highlights a series of interactions with my parents that endures years after their departures. My father died in 2008 and my mom joined him in 2010. I am both excited and nervous since the ‘stage’ is getting bigger and I am becoming more visible. The thing is, I asked for it, I sometimes even crave it and have been known to pout about it when it hasn’t happened as quickly as I would like for it to.  The butterflies in my stomach are dancing even as I am typing these words.

I ask myself what it is I fear and it always comes down to the same thing:  letting people down when they have high expectations of me. Not likely higher than mine for myself. That dratted, dreaded Impostor Syndrome kicking in.

The last few nights, I have been having dreams that speak to that trepidation. Dark, soul sucking imagery, chaos and confusion. The good thing is that I have over the years, become adept at lucid dreaming, so I can face the characters and call them out, and myself in the process. I have been able to laugh at the creepy crawlies and then worked to decipher their meanings once they ceased being so terrorizing.

The next event is a gathering of the tribe that came into my life in 1979, when I began to work in a crisis intervention center in Glassboro, New Jersey called Together, Inc. A hotline, youth shelter, women’s program and rape crisis program were pivotal offerings that those who put our hearts and souls into, made available to the community. Even more than what I gave, is what I received in the form of long term friendships with these sweet souls. Marriages, children, grandchildren divorces, health challenges, deaths, celebrations have highlighted our lives in the interceding years. Every so often, we get together to honor what we have been through. I see it as a way of doing a look-see into who I was back then and who I am now. Sometimes there is a huge divergence in attitude. Sometimes I still feel like that hair-down-to-my-waist hippie child whose idealism was more in charge than her intellect and sound discernment. Good thing that as a 56 year old seasoned woman, I have all three of those qualities.  Whew!

Each day, we step into the ‘just don’t know’ that is life. I am determined to face it with ease and purpose, with love leading the way. Perhaps uncertainty really is my friend, since it leaves open the doors of possibility. Stepping on through, heart forward.