When I was young, I was relatively
fearless—I loved climbing trees and diving off high diving boards.
After college, I sold my car and
went to Europe to travel for several months and when I returned, I moved 3,000
miles away from my family to Los Angeles to pursue a career
in show business.
I moved with a
boyfriend, but quickly broke up with him when I realized I was
only 23 years-old and had no desire to
get married right away.
I had an interesting dating life, slow
at first, but the highlight was my boyfriend, Doug, whom I adored and who
happened to be the stepson of Art Carney.
We hung around with Art, Doug’s mom, and people like Robert Altman, Lily
Tomlin and Lucille Ball.
If I was intimidated to be in the
presence of some of the greats who came to parties, you wouldn’t have known it.
I admit to being too shy to play
charades with Lucy. She often jumped up after someone finished their turn and
said, “Wait! This is how you
should have done it!” —and then proceeded to act it out her way, which quite
honestly was always better.
One Father’s Day we were at
Chasen’s and a parade of celebrities joined our table, including Frank Sinatra,
Jack Haley (the Tin Man from “The Wizard of Oz”), David Janssen, and Liza Minnelli.
I appreciated those incredible
opportunities to meet people whose
work I admired so much while my own fledgling career
was beginning to take off. For my
birthday one year, Art wrote me a poem.
This was the first stanza:
Here’s to our dear Robin Amos,
who at this point is not quite so famous.
But she’s sure a fine gal and much more than
a pal,
and I’m sure that in time she will tame us.
I became a television writer at 27
(“The Young and the Restless”) and then a couple of years later, I started
making the rounds at studios to pitch movie ideas—and that was when my
confidence started to wane.
There weren’t many women
screenwriters in those days. Nora
Ephron wasn’t well known yet and the adage, “If you can’t see it, you can’t be
it” felt true for me. I soon got
married, retreated to New York (telling myself that there were many great
screenwriters in New York) and became a mother. Though I kept writing, I still struggled with confidence and
watched enviously as my photographer husband travelled around the world for
work and I kept plugging away at writing.
I had readings of screenplays and
plays and started writing for a website, Club Mom. Ten years ago,
my own mother got really sick and for the last 7 years of her life, I found myself becoming a caregiver. It was one of the accomplishments of my
life I’m most proud of and yet the
endless doctor’s visits, hospital stays, hospice care (twice), late night phone
calls, racing out to emergency rooms… all made me put my writing on a back
burner. I began to feel lost—and when it was all over, when my mother finally
died—everything fell away. My
marriage ended, my daughter (now grown) moved 3,000 miles away and in my 50’s, I
had to totally recreate my life.
Talk about fear.
There’s a phrase I’ve heard:
“catastrophe is what often re-orders our lives.” It felt like a catastrophe when I didn’t quite know what to
do with myself after a 23 year marriage and all the care-giving I had
done. All I had left was two dogs
and myself.
And…two big phobias. One was flying. I had always loved flying, but on a
trip when my daughter was four and we were on a flight from Cancun back to New
York, we flew through a Nor’easter, hugging the east coast. The flight attendants barely stood
up. Fortunately, my daughter slept
through the entire flight. If she
had woken up, she would have seen me clutching the armrests or holding the hand
of the stranger sitting next to me.
After that, flying became something that I avoided—and if I had to fly,
I would do so with a bottle of Valium or Xanax, ready to take the entire
bottle, if I needed to.
My other fear was speaking in
public. I was one of those kids in
school who often raised her hand (except in math) and had always been
comfortable speaking up, but after so many years as a writer, I was used to
living a more solitary life and had no need to speak in front of groups of
people.
At one point, I went to career
coach and when he asked me to tell him the story of my life I had him laughing
so much that he announced, “You must write and
speak! You are a
performer!” I said, “Yes! I love that!” and walked out of his office and told everyone I was going to
be a writer and speaker—then never once had the nerve to try it. Everything I wrote I gave to others to
perform, even though a part of me thought, “I would like to try that…” But fear stopped me cold.
Three years after my husband and I
separated, I found myself in a public speaking class called OWN THE ROOM. I was
terrified.
Privately, I said to the coach, Bill
Hoogterp, “What if I’m the only person you’ve ever taught who could never get it?” Bill laughed and told me to tell everyone in the classroom
what I said. They all laughed—they all felt the same
way. I found my voice in that
class and around the same time I performed a solo show about being a caregiver
to my mother called “Not My Mother.”
The first time I performed it I discovered what “cotton mouth” means—you
literally cannot speak, your mouth is so dry. It was embarrassing, but I learned to always have a bottle
of water nearby, just in case.
Now, exactly one year later, my
life has taken a 360 degree turn.
I coach others with OWN THE ROOM, something unimaginable to me before,
and I love it.
Our soon to be new
mayor, Bill DeBlasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, shared about her own fear of
speaking in public in a recent article in the
Daily News.
[
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/chirchirlane-mccray-fear-public-speaking-article-1.1541131#ixzz2oKwTrEgU]
Addressing a room full of people, she froze. “Inwardly, not outwardly, I was
shaking,” McCray said. “I just stopped.”
McCray also came to OWN THE ROOM to
overcome her fear and has become a great speaker. As she says now about public speaking, “It’s not that there’s
any magic to it. It’s like a muscle. You just do it, and do it, and do it
again.”
Life and fear seem to walk hand in
hand, but I see when I step through the fear, life gets bigger. And more scary. And more fulfilling. The bottom line is
that when I coach others and help them be more effective speakers by sharing
their stories, I find the strength I need to tell my own stories.
Breathing helps—and knowing that if
you have a message, taking it out into the world requires courage and a big
bottle of Xan…no, never mind.
Courage. It requires courage.
