"Bringin' Back the Fearless 5 year old that Lives In Us All" (video)

When I was a little girl, I auditioned for the part of Gretl in the Sound of Music, the youngest girl in the Von Trapp family. I had seen my aunt Annette in “South Pacific” and I remember a small voice inside me said, “I want to wear a fancy costume, sing, dance, and act up on that stage”. My mom took me. They had us all up there in a line on stage and I overheard the director say, “I think we need someone a little taller” and I went up on my tippy toes. Then I heard him say, “Well, maybe we need someone a little shorter”, and I scrunched down real low. They gave me the part. I was 5, bold and I was fearless. The idea never even entered in my mind to be afraid. What happened? Where did all of this chatter come from? I never used to have it. We aren’t born with chatter. It is our natural state to do what we love……to be who we are.

I started attaching myself to negative scary thoughts and remarks rather unconsciously. I remember a few that really stuck but I don’t remember the first one. They feed on themselves. It was as if I was creating a ball of string that kept winding around on itself, getting bigger and bigger…..and now, nearly 50 years later, I have this huge big ball of string like the boy in the children’s book , “A Big Ball of String”. I used to have a recurring dream about that string. It was kind of a nightmare. The red string would grow into this huge ball that was taking up all the space around me…….suffocating me. The thing about that string is that I could never see the end of it, it just kept on rolling with no destination in sight. I didn’t see a way to ever stop it. It occurred to me that if I could just grab a hold of the ball or the string, anything….I could start the ball rolling and it would unwind pretty quickly, effortlessly, on its own. All I needed to do was to decide…..to take action, to pick it up, and stop the madness. I did and now its rolling, gaining momentum…..unwinding.

I kept trying to find the beginning of the string….where….when…how….did this happen? Why am I like this? Why do I do this to myself? I could not clearly see or understand anything from where I was. I could not see anything when the ball of string was so big that it was taking up all the air around me. The clarity was wrapped up so tight inside that I couldn’t get to it. Only now that it is unwinding, do I begin to see how it all got started…..the little messages along the way that I received and held onto. But as I get closer, it matters less and less what the reasons were as much as that it is dissolving…..the ball is getting smaller and smaller. I can breathe as it disappears into nothingness. I still have the chatter. It’s still there. Sometimes it is louder than others, but it doesn’t consume me. It is a part me, but it is not me. I am more and more the little girl with a song to sing. I Honor My Truth!

Debra Hadraba
The Honor Your Truth Community