At the Threshold

What  drives me in my work is my desire to support women to step out of those dark hangouts we can find ourselves in.  Those places that say: “if they really knew me, heard me, the real me, they’d know I was a fake, not good enough…”  That place we carry with us like a dark secret that whispers in the back of our minds, “Be careful!” “Watch what you say”, “Watch how you say it”, ”Don’t be too loud, too big, too bold…” and on and on.

We all have our dark places, our hideaways we don’t want anyone to see, that we’re afraid to reveal. Often, we don’t even let ourselves see them.

I’m sitting in a cafe with my dear friend, Andrea Gale Goodman who is a brilliant writer, poet, voice master, healer, and she’s telling me about an exquisite journal I gifted her years ago that was “so special with its fabric cover and handmade paper and ribbon tie” that she didn’t feel good enough to write in it.  After years of not writing in it, she gifted it to someone else. Really? She didn’t feel worthy of that journal, she who writes so beautifully?

She confessed that to me after I admitted that I have difficulty writing in any bound journal. I don’t believe my writing will be worthy of something as official and definite as a bound journal. So, even now, I’m writing on computer paper held together by a clip board. Ok, so the computer paper allows me to not be brilliant  – and, maybe then just maybe some light will shine through and I will express something that matters… to me… and perhaps to someone else.

What matters to me is being real – and real, really has no room for perfect or any other absolutes that I might impose on myself. Real is… Well, it just is.

So, I inch my toes up to the edge of the threshold…of words.

It is from this place of vulnerability in me, the vulnerability of exposure, taking a stand, speaking out, that I understand and honor the vulnerability in you.

“We teach best what we most need to learn.”

–  Richard Bach

WORDS are a threshold for me because they seem so definite, so defining…so final.

And they can be taken or mistaken.

They can be argued against or admired or ignored.

Of course.

How many women have I observed holding back their words, presenting weak voices to avoid attack or ridicule or judgment?  Or talking fast and loud to create a barrier that no one can penetrate.

And, where are you, with your life experience, with all that you’ve learned and practiced and witnessed?  What about all those abilities and understandings that you don’t even count.  What stops you from bringing your gifts to the encounter?  Any encounter?  Every encounter?  What would happen if you spoke up, spoke out, let yourself be heard?  What would that even look like?

Here’s how Andrea expresses it in her poem, “Threshold”.

• THRESHOLD
• by Andrea Gale Goodman

• How do I make the step
• to reveal,
• after lifetimes of living behind veils,
• in curtained rooms
• of private story-telling,
• entertaining invited audiences,
•  
• daring to cross the imaginary boundary line
• as thick as the Berlin Wall,
• seemingly surrounded by barbed wire
• of critical observers,
• harsh fathers, snide strangers,
• disappointed friends,
•  
• traversing the doorway
• whose threshold trips me every time,
• built too high, sometimes a mountain,
• and the door seems closed–
• if I knock, if it opens,
• I will be expected to walk through,
•  
• and what if my hair is messy
• or I forget to wear lipstick
• or my dress is torn,
• or I sing out of tune
• or say the wrong thing
• or forget what might be the right thing?
•  
• A funny thought just occurred to me:
• What if the person who opens the door
• and invites me through,
• who looks, not at my outside,
• but right into my eyes,
•  
• who listens delightedly for whatever pours
• from my lips, from my heart,
• who leads me out to meet the world–
• what if she
• is me?

Reprinted with permission from the author.

For more about Andrea, visit her website: www.rubythroatedspirit.com

Let me hear from you. What do you imagine would get you across the threshold? What does get you across the threshold?

© 2013 Naaz Hosseini. All Rights Reserved. Copying or resposting this content without written permission is strictly prohibited.

About the Author: Naaz Hosseini

Naaz Hosseini is a singer, dancer, psychotherapist, and voice empowerment coach. She developed Powerful Presence™ coaching to help corporate and entrepreneurial women step into their vocal power to command the attention and respect they deserve. As a NYS Licensed Psychoanalyst and Qualified Gestalt Therapist, she supervises and trains mental health counselors at Teachers College Columbia University and therapists at the Gestalt Center for Psychotherapy and Training. She served as visiting faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education Project Zero Summer Institute for ten years where Howard Gardner has said, "With enthusiasm, I recommend Naaz Hosseini, a pioneer in using the voice and the body for understanding."