Kelly Corrigan & Mom

“Who do you think you are? Aren’t we all secretly aware that there are things we’d like to try and might actually be able to do if we weren’t so damn embarrassed to be seen trying? When I’m holding back, shrugging and playing dumb, leaving the world to smarter or more qualified people, I sometimes hear my mother in my head, saying what she said to me a thousand times growing up. Oh Honey, who’s looking at you?” I love this excerpt by Kelly Corrigan, breast cancer survivor and author of both The Middle Place and Lift.

If you have 3 minutes and 32 seconds, watch this video where Kelly reads an essay she wrote called “Dare You”:

Kelly Corrigan – Dare You

If you stopped reading to watch the video, maybe you know where this is going…Kelly’s message reminds me to suspend my disbelief long enough to to make My Big Hairy Audacious Dream come true.

She says, “Starting things, relationships or non profits, screenplays or marathons takes a certain willing suspension of disbelief. This suspension is hard to maintain but its perpetuation is job 1. I have written two books and I can tell you that writing one word at a time when there are 60,000 words to go requires a state of flat out dissociation. You need to blow up a nice big bubble and find a way to live in it long enough to forget the world of reason and probability; the world that is staring through the filmy edge of your bubble, barely obscured, mouthing the words, who do you think you are?” (more…)