God Bless You, Lily Gladstone

I started writing stories when I was 11 years old. I loved the process of traveling in my mind to a reality of my own creation, and I dove into it with glee every chance I got. The response, at best, was little notes in the margin of my work in my english class folders every year from semi-supportive teachers. My rural Arkansas school district didn't have creative writing or drama classes, or any kind of theater program when I was growing up. I saw our guidance counselor in the hallways once in awhile, but there was no mentoring of any kind--not for kids like me, anyway.

 I didn't go to college after high school. Not knowing anything about how the system worked, I was afraid that if I got a student loan, something would happen to it and I would have to move back in with my mom and her husband, defeated. After months of pouring through catalogs from different schools that showed bright adults-in-training enjoying their classes and dorm life, making lifelong friends in the quad, I put my dreams in the trash and chose a safer path. I joined the Navy, and upon hearing the news that it was hopelessly difficult to become a military journalist, I became a Hospital Corpsman instead, and that put me on a completely different path.

It's been a good life, and I am happy. But every once in awhile, something will trigger a sense of deep loss in me, that I didn't get to have a post-high school college experience. It feels petty to have these feelings, because how lucky am I? I have my little family in a house in the woods, a lot of old weight is lifted, and I have a lot of choices. Every day, I can get out of bed and choose how I want to spend my day, and that truly is a blessing. I have to remember though, that we are all floating in some psychic gel that suspends us at particular experience points. So, maybe that post-high school college experience didn't mean that much to someone else, but it does to me.

I get the sense it meant a whole lot to Lily Gladstone, too. She came onto my radar during movie awards season, on the eve of being historically nominated for her work in the film Killers of the Flower Moon. I saw a couple of her interviews and learned how her path flowed--from Blackfoot Country to Seattle, then to the University of Montana, where she learned the crafts of acting and story telling. During and after that time, she taught these crafts to kids and traveled with a theater group, performing work that mattered. I absolutely love the film work of her's that I've seen so far, and look forward to seeing more. 

I'm also deeply jealous of this woman. I think about what I could have done with my life if I had had the opportunity that she did. Not that I begrudge her at all--on the contrary, I'm really happy she got to have it. But there's a little Julie inside me who recognizes that this could have been her life, and she is in mourning, because that special gift that she found didn't get tended to by people who could have helped her learn to fly with it, and I feel woefully inadequate on this side of the veil to help her. I have to dig for that gift in all the layers of me that covered up its purity--the layers of self-doubt that built up over a lifetime of an unrealized dream. It's a lot of pressure, and there's a lot of rust on the mechanisms of that part of my brain.

But I know a couple things: I know I love to tell stories, and I know I have the ability to write well. A friend of mine recently told me that the hardest part of life is getting out of our own way, and that's the truth. 

Another truth is in recognizing that we tell our stories from where we stand. My perspective from a life lived the way I have is different from everyone else's in the world. All these stories in books on shelves? They were created by the people who chose to write them down. It's that simple.

In the spirit of getting the hell out of my own way, I've asked the imagined spirit of Lily Gladstone to be my coach and my cheerleader, because maybe what I need is the help of a kind and strong woman self-charged with holding the door open for others. Now I just need to stop being the cat who can't decide whether to go in or out.

God bless you, Lily Gladstone. Thank you for shining your light.