My sister-in-law Sally has been following my blog posts on the flood that forced us to evacuate our offices June 2.
Sally is a professional musician in Santa Barbara. She’s also one of only two people in both sides of my extended family who has traveled to Africa, something I will be doing in the near future.
After reading my post on Day 7 of the flood, Sally made a comment on my Facebook page. “Girlfriend, you are more ready for Africa than you know! Let go, let life in!”
I have never told anyone how much the prospect of this trip frightens me.
But Sally gets it. She faces fear in her job every day, putting herself and her art on the line for other to enjoy — or criticize. In all of the many places she’s travels, she takes her violin, practicing her craft, sometimes sharing it with others through impromptu performances.
She also has the guts to stand up for what she believes in, which is what took her to Africa in the first place. She toured the country in July 2007 with Santa Barbara-based Direct Relief, an organization she has embraced and supported with her money, her time and her talent.
I’m not afraid of traveling to Ethiopia. I’ve never been one to worry about my personal safety and I’ll be traveling in the company of veterans — a Paradise Valley couple making their third trip to the country, this time to adopt two babies.
Here’s what frightens me: Can I tell their story? Can I put into words the profound experience that I have the honor and privilege of witnessing on this trip? Can I take pictures that won’t be fuzzy and poorly lighted? Can I record some of the highlights of this experience in audio and video?
Can I do the very work I started my career hoping to do, with the added complications of today’s technology and the stamina of a woman in her 50s instead of her 20s?
The first time I traveled to do a story, I was living on the island of Guam. A photographer and fellow student at the University of Guam, Manny Crisistomo, flew north with me to the island of Rota, part of the Marianas Islands chain. We had no idea what we were doing. We didn’t even know for sure what story we were going after. But we got up each day and tromped through the villages, fighting the choking heat and humidity, interviewing curious onlookers and taking photographs. We were too young, too arrogant and probably too stupid to realize how ill-prepared we were for this prospect.
But we came back with a story. And we sold it to the Pacific Daily News, a Gannett-owned newspaper still operating on Guam. And eventually both of us were offered full-time jobs there. (Eleven years later, Manny won a Pulitzer Prize for feature photography he did while working at the Detroit Free Press. He is currently a multimedia editor at The Sacramento Bee.)
That was 32 years ago. And while I spent the next three years of my life in some unbelievable places writing some unbelievable stories, I haven’t done anything like that since. And for most of the last 21 years, as publisher of Raising Arizona Kids, I’ve been doing almost anything but writing.
I didn’t even know if I could be a reporter anymore.
And then the salon above our offices sprung a leak and our space was flooded. And we had to evacuate and move our business into my home. And without even batting an eye, I started filing daily posts — in words, pictures and video — in this blog.
A trusted confidant recently told me about a book that helped me face my fear and “just do it.” The Courage to Write {How Writers Transcend Fear}, by Ralph Keyes, helped me understand how fear guides all writers — and is something you never fully outgrow or overcome.
This flooding incident forced me to face my fears and sit down for 10 days in a row to tell a story. It helped me accept the certainty that I can do that. So now I know I am ready to “let go and let life in.”
Some of Sally’s photos:
