I never thought of myself as shy. I think I just wasn’t ready.

She got the first note from my Kindergarten teacher, concerned that I didn’t say much. “She’s so shy,” it read. My mother replied with a “She’s fine.” It happened again in first and second grade. Maybe third. My mother, knowing me, said “When she has something to say she’ll say it. I smiled in nonverbal agreement. Her belief was mine, and since the fifth grade at Washington Elementary my heart (which is really our only voice) has always been at the ready. I sing it loud through words and art and voice.

I don’t know how my mother knew about the gathering phase. Maybe it’s because she would have loved the same opportunity. I’m grateful that she offered it to me. She never forced what was growing, greening, becoming, inside of me. She gave it the time it needed — the time I needed — and that has made all the difference.

I think we’re often in such a hurry to get people “healed”, or to whatever we consider “normal.” And that’s mostly all for us. I know the furious speed at which we want to get over. But we all have to go through. In our time and in our way.

My friend was surprised yesterday, at the gallery in Palm Springs, how easily I walked up to the owner to promote myself. I wasn’t afraid. I smiled to the sky. I had the confidence, the voice, I can only imagine, because I had been given the time. 

May we all allow each other our moments in the gathering phase.