We’d been planning for weeks to do a scheduled Facebook Live interview with Melissa Blair, our featured guest at next Thursday’s GNO. We’d spent loads of time chatting and voice texting (vexting?) about you. We’d talked for hours about what keeps you up at night. What brings you joy. What makes you feel alone. What makes you feel loved. We conducted a survey for you to anonymously share your questions in advance (keep them coming before next Thursday!). We sent out the scheduling alert the day before. We both made sure everything worked with the BeLive site to go live together. It was golden. We were coming for ya, with love and laughter and outrageous wisdom bombs. Until. . .
I completely botched it.
We went live with all our energy and passion raring to go when we realized, my mic was muted. I fumbled hysterically for what felt like hours trying to get it on, wasting the precious time of our live viewers who were dropping like flies, before finally deciding we’d have to end it and try to start again. All our scheduling and planning. Our rushing to get the kids handled. Everything we worked so hard to do, completely botched in 5 minutes flat. We were pumped, let me tell ya.
But we didn’t give up.
I restarted my computer and voilá! I had a mic. We went live again without our scheduled link and my computer dinging with alerts from the restart the entire time. Every time I tried to mute them, it muted Melissa and I couldn’t hear a word she was saying. It was quite the three-ring circus.
Here’s the irony.
We’d already planned to talk about how hard it is to go first. We’d planned to answer the question we received about why we don’t have these types of conversations more often. You know, the kind that don’t belong on Facebook. The ones that belong on the living room couch, across the table, or in a quite corner of a restaurant. The answer?
It’s hard.
It’s hard to be the one to go first. It takes guts to be the one who takes the conversation to a more meaningful place. We live in a world where it feels uncomfortable to share what you’re struggling with, because it might not be accepted. It might in fact, be rejected and judged. You might get advice instead of the empathy and healing you were looking for.
But sister, that is a chance you have to take.
I’m sure we were the laughing stalk of many on Facebook. (we even received some choice comments that had to be deleted, based on the topic of the event) And yes, that hurts my pride a little and it’s frustrating and hard. It was like a punch in the gut. But we didn’t die. We’re still going strong!
And guess what?
I’m also sure that there is someone out there who watched that second video, who needed to hear women talking about hard things in a light-hearted, fun and supportive way. Someone who would have missed it if we’d been on time and perfect the first time. Someone who needed to see that being vulnerable and going first, won’t kill you. There’s a woman out there who needed to see two women braving the hard thing. Being okay with not knowing all the answers (or the functions of technology) and doing it anyway.
Maybe that woman is you.
Maybe today, you need the reminder that living in hiding is no way to live. Pretending everything is fine, just like your perfectly filtered Facebook feed portrays it, is just plain painful. There’s freedom in sharing our stories and our lives with the women in our lives who love and support us, exactly as we are. But you have to be the one to take the first step.
Hear me today sister.
No matter what you’ve done, or what’s been done to you, you deserve freedom. You deserve peace and joy.
You deserve Love!
And it’s all waiting for you to fumble forward, to take the first step, toward freedom.
to more love,
Crystal
P.S. If you haven’t submitted questions for Melissa via the anonymous survey link, you can do that right here.
If you’re local, we’ve made it a little easier to take that first step by hosting these GNO’s. We’re cracking open the door to conversations with your safe people, your closest friends. And we’re saving a seat for you, one week from tonight, where we’ll share loads of laughs as we fumble towards freedom, together. Don’t miss this one.
