OWN IT!

Okay- I'm going to be okay.
I still feel like I'm going to puke, poop and pass out when I think about hearing my name called up on stage, but last night in the shower, I worked it out. Sort of.
I was imagining going off the script she sent and I started to feel stiff and unnatural. This is either going to work for me, or against me, to just "be me". ;) I might make it look easy, being the world's biggest nerd, but trust me, it's a lot of work.
So I started adding and taking away from her script. Hope she doesn't mind, but it's going to make the whole thing much better. And the more likeable the whole thing is, the more wide open those pocketbooks will be, or even better (to me, anyway, since while I love what the NKF does, I don't have a particular affinity for them) someone might think "Hey! I can do that!"
I can own this. I'm still on THIS side of it. It isn't past it, when I think "I shoulda done this or I could have said that." I'm on the golden side of it- where nothing but opportunity lay before me. I have to keep myself from saying UM, and LIKE (hehe, N!) and overly northern noises, but I can OWN THIS!
I AM good on a stage. I AM a Leo. I WANT to forget the recorder so Cullen doesn't tape it, because no matter what, I'm pretty sure I don't want a replay. Do you know who helped me most? It wasn't every person who has said "You? You LOVE attention." People (other than you 3, hahaha) don't understand that I'm scared to death and pretty much bullshit my way through life in many ways. Who helped me, of course, doesn't she ALWAYS, was my mommy.
I don't ever doubt why I picked her to be my mother, or why she partnered up with me as her daughter this time, but there are times when it's even more crystal clear. In every single BIG event of my life (outside of my teenage years), she has said exactly the right thing to get me through it. Every time. When she opened the door to me on her doorstep crying so hard I couldn't walk after coming home from losing our baby in Mexico, she told me "Don't you get discouraged!!! Don't do it!" and that is what I needed to hear and who I needed to hear it from. When I wanted to be a surrogate, after her initial concerns, she "met" the couples we would carry for, and she could see how big of a deal it was for them, and why I wanted to. She watched me get my head shaved. She listened to why I was going to homeschool CJ through at least Kindergarten and saw the benefits of it. The kidney, being married, Kalene. She just knows exactly what to say, and oh, I wonder if she understands how much she carries me.
Yesterday she was with me in my fear at first. Anyone imagining doing it can feel it. It's so scary and nerve wracking. Then she considered a little more and reminded me that this is what I DO! I share with people. I write things down. This is an avenue I know something about. I can DO THIS. The hardest thing is not what *I* have to say, it's hearing what the others will say, and I just have to get the hell over that. They are made to make a stink about it as an example to the audience of what a kidney can do for a person/people.
I can do this! GO, ME!!!!!! Just in time too. I was scared I wouldn't get to this point. Momma saves the day.