I did it. I took an important authentic step forward. I looked that irrational fear in the eye and told it to go away, for good. It was no longer welcomed in my life.
My Authentic Step
On Wednesday, January 13, 2016, I had the extreme pleasure of ‘coming out’ as my true self on air to an international audience. The lovely and talented Blog Talk Radio host, Alex Okoroji, paved the way toward an honest conversation about life, fears, and grabbing hold of my authentic self once and for all.
With the gentle guidance of Alex, I felt comfortable to talk about a deeply personal part of my life. After spending the past four years hiding my true self from my readers out of a fear born from an unfortunate moment in time, I finally freed myself. You see four years ago, I wrote a blog post in the spirit of authenticity that backfired on me. I wrote what I am going to say here: I am a bisexual author who writes best-selling lesbian fiction novels and have been happily married to my soulmate, a man, for 21 years. Four years ago, I got bullied with hate mails from some of my lesbian fans in the LGBT community for being honest about my sexual orientation. I was crushed to say the least.
Thanks to Alex, and the powers at be in the universe, I decided it was finally time to find the courage to come out after years of holding back, by openly addressing my FEARS on the show.
The result a whole day later – I feel FREE! I’ve received an incredible amount of positive feedback from so many. Their responses are what I hoped they’d be – they are grateful for my keeping it real.
The lesson: Fears will hold you back if you allow them to grow. Don’t feed your fear. Feed your truth.
Feed Your Truth
“See here’s the thing about fear. The more I allow it in, the stronger it becomes. It takes on its own power and becomes my leader. I’m not okay with following that. I’m not okay with bowing my head to it in reverence, as if it were a mightier force than me and had any rights to my freedom.” – Becca from The Journey Somewhere
For life to fully bloom, it needs love, light, and freedom. A life lived under the veil of fear is one that lacks the nurturing qualities of truth, for fear is irrational. Born from the roots of pain and suffering, fear is a by-product of the imagination. You see, anything that has not happened yet is imagined.
Fear is nothing more than our preconceived notion of how the future will play out in a given scenario. Sensing danger and taking action on that sense is what saves us from precarious situations, not the fear itself. The fear only serves to debilitate, not prepare us.
Fear needs fuel to create dramatic tension.
Why not turn the tables on fear? Don’t entertain it. Let it entertain you. Laugh at its entitlement as it attempts to wrap itself around you like a gluttonous vine. Your laughter will choke fear’s power.
Fill up on the laughter. Get drunk on its echo. Further diffuse the insatiable hunger of fear by increasing the strength of your joy. Run with arms out-stretched through a field of wildflowers, inhale the freshness of the forest, observe the beauty of a sunset. Do something that sets your heart ablaze with happiness.
Joy and fear cannot coexist. It’s impossible.
Acknowledge fear. Observe fear. Then, side-step it and move beyond it. Focus on feeding your current reality with a good dose of nutritiously delicious truth about what’s really blooming. Life feels so much sweeter once you do!