Hello, Eleanor--Goodbye, Fear
HELLO ELEANOR, GOODBYE FEAR
Do one thing every day that scares you.
-----Eleanor Roosevelt
Ever since I read the memoir My Year with Eleanor, by Noelle Hancock, I have felt a nudge to try scary things. The author, having lost her job and gone into a deep funk, decided to take Eleanor Roosevelt’s sage advice to do what frightens her rather than run. Her unique way of doing this? Every day for a year, she did something she was scared to do.
It’s a fun book, peppered with trapeze, tap-dancing and classes, skydiving, air combat, volunteering in a cancer ward, and climbing Kilimanjaro. Resounding with Eleanor’s voice in her ear—Hancock inspires the reader to get out there. I highly recommend this book.
I realized I had, being in my early 60’s, folded into a comfortable cocoon of tacit decisions to not do this, that, and the other thing anymore. My kids were grown. I didn’t need to tramp around amusement parks one more time, much less go on those horrific coasters. I have touches of arthritis. Why should I do more than fast walk for exercise? And my fear of public speaking or leading out in any way need not ever be tested again.
Since reading the book, I have chaired a sizable writers conference, hiked two rugged mountains, kayaked miles on the Delaware River, ridden three hell-bent coasters and filled a four-month gig teaching honors and AP high school English, without prior experience at those levels. I’ve ventured into Manhattan without the company of veteran New York goers, and my hair has had purple, red or pink stripes in it for the past 18 months. Today, I bought my first Converses, to match my 9-year-old great niece, Tatiana’s, new pair. Okay, hers are red, and mine are a chic grey, but still…
Why do we fear? “Anything I accomplished had to be done across a barrier of fear,” says Eleanor. “Don’t be concerned about whether people are watching you…chances are …they aren’t paying any attention to you.” That’s some of it for me: what people think. And then there’s that fear of letting my body move in ways that I cannot control it (as in roller coasters, toboggans and skis).
Oh, and then there’s the fear of rejection. If I write it, send it in, and get the rejection letter—how will I feel? Or the fear of the blank page. Where do I begin? How do I take my random/global-thinking brain and get this thing corralled into something that makes sense?
So the fear thing seeps into the writing part of my life. I put off the recording of my thoughts and feelings because I don’t know where to begin, or how to organize, or how to be as fluent as John Updike or Ann Patchett. I fear, therefore I don’t. Don’t write. Not that much.
Not any more, folks. I’m a writer. I have a lot to say, and I can say it beautifully, laying those words down in my own poetic form. I join the crazy WANA’s of Kristin Lamb’s world. That stands for We Are Not Alone: writers who, in solidarity, know that we must get our words out there, because that is our calling—what we are here to do. So, I carry on, and I write…join me, if you dare.
“…You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’” -----Eleanor Roosevelt
To read on….
My Year with Eleanor by Noelle Hancock (HarperCollins EPub Edition, 2011)
You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life by Eleanor Roosevelt (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011)
Rise of the Machines by Kristen Lamb (2013)