Adolescence was a mixture of exciting opportunities, discovery, growth, and academic success combined with daily feelings of inadequacy, self-hatred, comparison, fear and loneliness. I was an excellent student, highly involved in choral groups (the TV show Glee is based off of the Show Choir I was a part of!), theater, and church. I remember the joy of performing in Mixed Company, as it was called, and how I loved singing and dancing. I also remember feeling desperate for my director to give me a solo, working so hard on my voice in private lessons, and feeling lousy about my tone quality and lack of sight-reading ability. I relentlessly compared myself to almost every other girl, always coming in uglier, fatter, or terribly less talented. I found a picture of myself recently of myself from those days with other students, laughed out loud, exclaiming to my younger self “you are beautiful, why did you compare yourself so much? If only you had believed in yourself!” Personally, this is a trend for me- not believing in myself and feeling “not good enough.”
I remember my personal fable in high school, was to be the lead in the musical, win the director’s favor (who actually ending up losing his teaching license for inappropriate conduct with female students!), and then someday become a professional actress and singer- “showing them how great I really am.” There was an implicit curriculum within musical and theater department due to the band director’s daughters being in commercials and films- one of his daughters is actually a working, somewhat famous, Hollywood actress on a popular TV show currently. I think this reality, of the Morrison girls being groomed for stardom, getting agents, and auditioning for television and commercials definitely added to the pressure and desperation I felt to be affirmed and approved of. I felt starved for someone to tell me I was “good”, “talented” or had a “beautiful voice.” I don’t think my passion was for the craft as much for the approval.
Honestly, I still struggle with dreams of stardom- I think “little Bethany” really believes she is a movie-star in the making, singing her heart out to Amy Grant songs, and pretending to be Julia Roberts on a movie set, as hilarious as that sounds!
And yet, as an adult, it has taken me some years to realize in a personal, existential way the reality of doing “small things with great love” (Mother Teresa) exceeds doing “great things that get a lot of attention or acclaim.” I think this has a great intersection with my work as a teacher: in a way I still get to be the “star” for my students, but I get to bring the “audience” up on stage with me! That was always a frustration for me as an actress, pursuing a career in acting, auditioning for commercials, and working on films- I felt bored, stifled and wanted so much to affect real change and LOVE another. As a teacher, I get to act, sing, dance even, and most of all LOVE.
Anyone else have a personal fable or adolescent dream they want to share?!
