April Showers Bring May Flowers
I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself in the last couple months to blog about Queen Esther—a little of our day to day lives, what the experience has been like, etc. It has been difficult, mostly because I wanted to paint a happy picture that excited people about the behind-the-scenes world of theatre. And don’t get me wrong, the show itself has been great! But the last few months, just in general, have been challenging. I couldn’t write about only the good without feeling like I was lying to myself about some of the more emotional aspects.
I eventually just surrendered and started to write what was real and true for me.
It started out very messy but has naturally evolved and shaped itself into one cohesive thought as I myself have processed. Writing is often my way of working through difficult or challenging things and in some ways, I feel a little like a wounded animal finally coming out of hiding.
I listened to a podcast recently with Zach Bush—he was talking about how western culture is so avoidant of discomfort and pain that we’ve inadvertently robbed ourselves of experiencing the full range of human emotion and feeling; our lives have lost the full spectrum of their color. The whole concept of Yin/Yang is that of balance, and I believe that in our avoidance of negative feelings/situations, we have robbed ourselves of feeling the magnitude of positive ones.
Let me give an example: imagine the elation you feel waking up healthy after having had the flu.
You notice you can breathe through your nose: yay!
You can walk around without aches: yay!
You have an appetite and can eat full meals: yay!
Rarely do we take the time to reflect upon and celebrate health—until we’ve felt sickness. Something about experiencing the depths of illness opens us up to also experience the breadth and joy of wellness.
The same applies to our life experience. Is it possible that we’ve numbed ourselves to elation, gratitude, relief, peace, etc. because we’ve been actively avoiding grief, discomfort, fear, opposition, and unfamiliarity?
I think I was… and Queen Esther hasn’t allowed that to continue…
Working in theatre is a layered experience—it demands vulnerability, authenticity, personal humanity, and often doesn’t get put away at the end of the day as neatly as a “muggle” jobs might. The characters impact you. Living in a story and stepping into the shoes of other humans shifts your paradigm of world. And because we pour so much of ourselves into characters and performances, the opposite is also true: events in our personal lives bleed into work.
So while this show has been an incredible blessing and adventure, it hasn’t been all sunshine and roses, because much of my personal and relational life over the last couple years hasn’t been all sunshine and roses. Covering an entire ensemble and occasionally of stepping into Esther’s shoes, while ultimately very healing, has been incredibly triggering.
When I first got my role sheet (casting comes to us in the form of a scheduled email), I closed the computer and sat in shocked silence for a few minutes. My poor husband was trying to get a read on me—to gauge my reaction to my casting, but there was really nothing to read. My brain became the computer with an overload of information and crashed. Bit by bit I began to process…
I was both a swing and the Emergency Backup Esther. This was the hardest role sheet anyone could have possibly received. Not only did I have to learn the tracks of the entire 40-something person ensemble, but the titular role—with no guarantee of rehearsal (oh yeah, Emergency Backups aren’t guaranteed rehearsal). Had I been anywhere else in the Esther mix, it would have been easier. Had I had any other primary role sheet, it would have been easier. But sitting in my email inbox was the most difficult possible offer any actor could have been offered. And it was mine.
This is a lot of responsibility. They must really trust me. Or maybe they don’t realize what they did. I will have to live and breathe ONLY Esther for the first 3 months of 2023.
I am living my dream. I am working full-time as a performer making a generous living wage with benefits and PTO. My inner child looks up to me in awe. What an honor.
Holy crap, I’m in the Esther mix. There are billboards all over town advertising this show. People drive hours and hours. Thousands of people will see me perform as Queen Esther. The casting team thinks I can do this. Woah.
I have never in my life swung a show of this magnitude. I’m going to have to learn so much. What if I can’t…
I am the last resort—do they even want me in this mix? It’s hard to feel ownership of a role when nobody in power is interested is seeing you in it… when nobody is invested in making sure you rehearse well. They must hope I never go in.
If I can pull this off, it will impress so many people.
If I don’t pull this off, it’s going to be very embarrassing and could potentially cost me my job next year. (upon reflection, I definitely tie my sense of value and self-worth to my ability to succeed and impress people…we’re working on it, lol)
Primary/understudy/backup Esther will have the opportunity to make mistakes, learn from them, and try again. I will not. I will be judged based on my first try. I will have the most responsibility and the least amount of grace for error.
This has the potential to be really really fun come late spring (spoiler alert: it is).
I didn’t process all these things that night. I still haven’t processed them fully, and we opened the show 2 months ago. But I went to bed that night, signed my contract that next morning, and strapped in for one of the wildest rides of my life. I knew the job would be a challenge. I had no idea that it would be used as the force majeure to process things I’d been happily hiding in a dark corner of my mind in the hopes they would magically dissolve away.
Personally, this last year has been wrought with grief, loss, uncomfortable growth, self-reflection, coping, and learning. I’ve found myself battling (or stifling, whichever was more effective in the moment) lies of “you’re disposable, you’re insufficient, you’re the last resort, they don’t want your authenticity, you’re not a priority, people love you only because of what you provide to them…”
A lot of things happened in my personal life... and there is no pain quite like realizing your worst fears were rooted in truth: “if they only knew the real you—if you made decisions that brought you peace and felt aligned in your spirit—they wouldn’t love you. You would be discarded.”
Between the difficulty of my role sheet in action and the weight of stepping into Esther’s shoes, these last two months brought the orchestra of emotions to a roaring crescendo. The grief of loss mixed with fear of being discarded tore at my insides, hanging off my soul like a blown-down tree branch caught mercilessly in the undercarriage of a car in the wake of a violent storm. I cannot count the times this year I have prayed to be freed of the chains of grief. It clung on.
I allowed fear of rejection and abandonment to drive many of my interactions. I was afraid to trust anyone so I held them at arms length. I knew I was doing it. I hated that I was doing it. I could see that it gave people a shallow and inauthentic version of myself and robbed me of the very connection my heart so deeply longed for. It became a spiral of desperately wanting to connect, severe social anxiety in everyday conversation (with people I already know!), and shallow, awkward, small-talk conversations that neither party enjoyed. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
But bringing it back to the beginning of this blog post—my avoidance of grief, discomfort, fear, rejection, anger…it had been numbing me to joy, peace, relief, connection.
Queen Esther has been incredibly difficult and triggering—it’s also been the key to processing through the mental muck and come out the other side. It’s given me the space to grieve; slowly revealing layer-by-layer what needs to be prayed and journaled through. I weep fairly regularly, knowing that emotions need to move through my body to be processed fully. I reflect upon the past more often than I’d like to, I pray fiercely for the friends I sorely miss—sending them my love on a daily basis.
I actively speak truth into the spaces of my heart that lie and I lean into the hope that the darkness in the valley sweetens the light on the mountaintop that much more.
And it’s gotten better! So much better. I’m more comfortable with silence and stillness. I’m relaxing into conversations more. I’m learning to let external energies roll off my back. I’m surrendering to the natural ebb and flow of life’s waves. I’m making peace with the fact that I still quite haven’t nailed the vocal placement of all of Esther’s songs—and that the stakes aren’t as high as my brain tells me they are. ;)
I’m noticing little joys again: the varied shades of green in the trees around our house, the way coffee swirls when it’s poured, the warm breeze of car windows rolled down, the way flowers open gradually a little more each day, the feel of dirt under my feet, the way that flames dance…
If you’re a friend of mine and you’ve noticed I’ve been off the last few months, I’m sorry for subjecting you to the shrapnel of my personal tornado.
In avoiding the shadow places, I’d robbed myself of seeing and experiencing the bright and joyful places. I allowed fear and pain to drive interactions with those I love.
But the birds have begun to sing again and the sun is breaking through. April showers did indeed bring the May flowers. I’m grateful and eager to join you all in a lively spring, complete with a full spectrum of color <3
