Following is an icebreaker speech I gave at my first toastmaster's group...thought it would give insight to my vantage point...
I have
thought long and hard about what to say, that
matters, about the woman who stands before you..
.I have
inhabited many bodies just as you all have. I have been a baby, a child, a
teenager. I was raised
in the city, in Toledo Oh where I was born about thirty miles from Detroit,
Michigan. I grew up listening to the Beach Boys in Motown, wondering how God could have gotten it so
wrong. Didn’t he know I was supposed to be a California girl?
Back then, my
favorite aunt Emma Jean gave me a book of poetry and inside the front cover she
wrote, to Darla, the vivacious. I loved that word, vivacious, I immediately had
to look it up. Vivacious: it means lively and high spirited. She made me feel
so loved, with that inscription.
Around that
time I drove across country with little more than two hundred dollars, sleeping
in rest areas, with no cell phone and it did not occur to me to be afraid. When
I told my mother that I was leaving she only said that she knew I would do something
like that. We didn’t have a great relationship at the time, and, it would take
years before it healed, but it did heal, and we shared a lot of love for a
lot of years before she died. And then, I was no longer a daughter.
I could tell
you that I was once a college student at Cal Poly in southern California.
Later,
I married and became a young mother with small children who started buying
books with titles like Sunflower Houses and Hollyhock Days I wanted to create magical play spaces in my
backyard and that was the time I learned to love working in the garden.
The truth is
the woman you see here is not me. She is not me. She continues to change. And
one day will be an old woman if she doesn’t die first.
I am the
seer behind the eyes…as my body changes so does my perception unfold. I am
aware that the more I learn and think I know the less sure of anything I
become. A belief that I once held true, can change. Since a belief is only a
thought that you are 100% committed to and you can change your thoughts. I
learned that from Anthony Robbins when I did a three day intensive and did his
famous fire walk.
I am
computer phobic who works in an internet company what does that say about Gods sense of humor? I work many hours a day managing processes at
my computer, it is here that the transformation from Susie homemaker/ stay at
home mom to business women running with mostly type A guys has happened. It
didn’t happen overnight and I changed in fits and starts…but when I released
myself to the new me, waiting once again to unfold, giving into the process
rather than trying to hold on to a life that was no longer mine. I noticed a
thread of the old me coming though.
I am a voyeur,
an observer, I pay close attention to life as it goes before me, the ebb and
the flow of the days, the rhythm of the hours.
I love the
early morning light that comes through the windows, signaling yet another day…
The two cats and a dog who welcome the morning with me, impatiently waiting to
be fed. I stretch and make coffee before my three mile walk around Lake Eola
with Roxy my Doodle dog. She continually
teaches me the art of being happy. I seriously
think she smiles on these walks…I know that she looks up at me with pure
joy… usually when we are about a third of the way into our walk.
Since this
talk is supposed to be an ice breaker which would give you, the listeners,
insight into who I am I thought sharing, how
I see myself was more true than the roles I have played. Because the roles
are always temporary while the seer inside holds them as memory and these are
the things that matter to the woman who stands before you.
Of course, this was meant to be spoken and not read...still I am compelled to share it here. Wishing you much love.
