Looking at photos of myself over the years, I can see that I've always been pretty. I have hardly ever, ever, ever felt it. I was just about killing myself over feeling fat when I was 17 and weighed 117 lbs. (5'6") and I still periodically beat myself bloody about being 25 lbs. more than that now. I see my daughter and know without question that she is a beautiful woman. I see photos of myself at that age and know, intellectually, that you can barely tell the two apart. But there's an emotional disconnect with that information. I just don't get it.

Until recently, I have never, ever, ever felt confident about anything I've undertaken and always interact with myself as though I'm some kind of machine that just has to be turned up higher in order to produce results. I have always felt, for personal reasons, that I was damaged goods and had to take what I could get regarding the men in my life (this is over, thank you, but it was my history), and have always felt so self-conscious I wished a trap-door could open under me when I have to talk to strangers. I have always countered this by being out-going and funny, or the sexiest little vixen you could want to meet == but the subterfuge only covered up the fact that I mostly have wanted to throw up and/or hide when I have to talk to people, particularly men.

No ONE who knows me would believe this, but, hey. I'm an actress. I'm good. But the lack of self-belief has taken its toll.

I finally have turned a corner with all this, thanks to much, much work on the sources of it, and much healing of old wounds. The truth is, I'm in love with people, and with this beautiful little Earth we get to live on. I'm attracted to good hearts and want to contribute what I can, where I can -- and it's very difficult to do that when you're constantly undermining yourself.

The lone exception to this, all these years, has been when I've been singing. I tried to write a song once with the line, "There's a place in my heart that only stops hurting when I sing. So I sing..." but, I haven't been a songwriter. Still, the sentiment is absolutely true. The rub has been in actually allowing myself to get up and sing, to overcome whatever it is that barricades me from sharing myself in that way and to just stand in the song and deliver. I get by on bravado a lot, but it's only in the past few months, actually, that I've been able to do my music from a place of genuine sharing, not from forcing myself to overcome wanting to throw up or pass out at the thought, not of singing in front of other people because I'm much more at home in front of 200 people than one, but of getting from here inside me, to out there, in front of the crowd, inside the song where I'm comfortable. (This may be turning into a rant, but bear with me. It needs sayin'. )

Once I've launched into a song, there's noplace on earth that feels more like home. I get this experience sometimes with my writing, too, or when holding a child. But actually singing, actually sailing right down the center of a song is as close to heaven as I'm likely to get in this lifetime... I wish I could do it all the time, now that I'm learning how to actually transit from where I am to being IN the song... Transitions are rough.

this ties to the Steve Allen thread, actually. I read a newspaper article this a.m. about him and his wife said he was a semi-introvert -- completely bashful one on one but a complete extrovert in front of a crowd. Fits me to a T.

What I'm doing now that I never could do before is just admit that. Just "come from" being shy and feeling stupid instead of trying to bluff my way through situations and coming off stuck-up or overbearing or arrogant or whatever. I'm stupid, I'm shy, I sing. Deal with it.

(Did any of this make any sense at all?)

ww