The other day I awoke early and got ready in a dimly lit room, trying not to wake anyone.  I kept applying makeup, as it didn’t seem to be “taking”.  By the time I got out into the car and the daylight and looked at myself in the mirror there, the only words that came to mind were “I’m ready for my close-up now, Mr. DeMille”.

I’ve become someone who is very sensitive to light – not in the sense that I can’t bear to be out in it.  But more so that I am extremely attuned to it.  I will notice if there is a change to anything in the environment, like a tree being removed, which affects the light patterns.  I even think of my life in terms of light vs dark.  Being a very visual person, if I “see” a picture of a scene from any particular time in my life, I see it in shades of brightness, depending on the emotional context.  I once was trying to explain to a client that his company was a “light” environment for me versus others that I had worked with.  Not so sure he got it, or me, but I know I was at least entertaining to him!

Letting the light in to my life, from the literal to the spiritual, has been a transitional process.  I was reflecting on how even my choice of housing has been indicative of how much or how little light I was willing to allow into my life.  My first apartment was a basement apartment:  enough said.  I was definitely in a shut down/cocoon stage of my life at that point.  I progressed to an attic apartment, but with not much window space there either, and then moved to a place in the woods.  Next was an apartment with dark woodwork and did I even open my curtains?  Finally, my life started to turn and I lived in houses with big windows that let in lots of light, just as I was allowing light to flow in and out of me.

This summer my goal has been to have a deep tan.  I know – very shallow of me!  But getting it means I am spending a lot of time outside, soaking up that Vitamin D (with sunscreen, of course), and letting that light just soak on in.  It’s a nice reminder to me of the need to be open to that which is around me.  And a better one than a Gloria Swanson makeup lesson!

The guys in my graduating class were nerds.  Well, that’s what I thought, probably because they never paid me any attention.  I much preferred the more mature older “men” in a class two years before mine.  And probably because that is where I put my focus, that is where I got my attention.  It totally floored me 20 years later to hear the drunken confessions at a class reunion of more than one guy who said they had wanted to ask me out but were too afraid to.  Seems I was a bit intimidating without even knowing it.

At the beginning of high school I was a very confident, self-possessed young woman who was not afraid to take chances and put herself out on the line.  I’m afraid that the ravages of peer acceptance and approval played havoc with those concepts.   My high school experience taught me, among other things, that if your essence is too big, you run the risk of scaring people away.  I became very adept at turning down the flame according to the company I was keeping or intended to keep.  I remember my mother telling me before my first date where we were going bowling that I should let my date win.  I looked at her dumbfounded that she could even suggest such a thing and set out to prove that she was wrong.  Somehow I think her words sunk in despite my initial best efforts to throw them off and subsequent years found me doing just that.  It was just easier to “go with the flow” than to risk the rejection.  It was a lesson I learned well and took many years to set aside.

What a joy it is now to realize that I no longer have to dim my light in order to feel loved and accepted.  I am most content when I feel I am shining brightly and have discovered that people are more drawn to me when I am not hiding out.  I recently reconnected with a guy from my high school class who told me I looked fantastic.  While I am flattered (and now recognize that he is not a nerd), I know that the sparkle in my eyes was probably there all along – its just that now I’m not afraid to let it out.