I recently shared a fear of mine that I experience every single time I host a Zoom event. There’s a moment, maybe for a few minutes, as I sit ready but before people connect, that I wonder if anyone will show up.
That I’ve become aware of this voice is progress. That I speak it is progress. AND it is still present.
It was present last week during my book release. Dozens of people showed up for a private event that I had invited them to, all there to celebrate with me my achievement, and yet just before the doors opened I wondered if anyone cared.
It’s not a “real” voice, I don’t know if I truly believed it, but it still pops up.
I understand better the origins of the voice. I learned it when I was young, when my parents didn’t show up or take interest in the things I did. That crushing feeling of being hopeful, and then repeatedly being let down. There’s always a reason for them to not come (they were divorced, and both had separate reasons). Usually too busy. As a child I learned where I was on the priority list.
Only 2 summers ago did I have a really good conversation with my sister, when she shared no one had come to her high school graduation. Not either of our parents, not our grandmother who’s house we grew up in, no family at all.
I felt for my sister in that moment, but it revealed a huge mirror to my own experience growing up. It also revealed another thing – it wasn’t about me. I didn’t deserve to be so unsupported. Neither did my sister. But since it happened to both of us we were simply collateral damage in a bigger story of multi-generational trauma.
I can’t relive my past. The only thing I can do now is recognize when these events and learned behaviors affect me today. Shine a light on them and not let them rule over me or stop me from taking action. My fear of no one coming can’t stop me from doing the thing I need to be doing which is to put myself out there.
I think about all the experiences I’ve had this past year when I’ve felt that fear of no one coming, and what I would have lost had I tried to avoid that feeling by not accepting those opportunities. It would have been a huge loss to me and a loss to everyone else in that room.
Where in your own life do you experience voices like this, and what can you do to lessen their hold over you?
